I dislike the idea of New Year's resolutions--why wait until an arbitrary day to make changes?--and so already started making major changes last month. I toyed with the idea of killing this blog, but didn't feel ready for that. I am deleting other internet accounts, reducing the number of feeds I follow, etc. to make more room for non-digital life. It's nice: I spend more time knitting and reading and less time in front of a computer screen getting headaches.
I'm also FLYing to clean up my life. I need change. I strive so hard to attain a sense of flow, to be completely immersed in a project, forgetting about time and other, non-related worries, but I rarely even get close to that point anymore. I could blame a lot of things, but the bottom line is that regardless of why I keep interrupting myself, this isn't working for me anymore.
The FLY Lady was mentioned in passing on a Ravelry forum so I checked it out. While I don't agree with everything she suggests (e.g., I never wear shoes around the house), I've picked and chose enough where I think this really has a shot at working for a change. I know this is kind of off-topic from this blog's purpose, but if I succeed in this, I'll have more, guilt-free time for crafts, so I want to share these points here:
- Establish routines and habits. They're much more efficient than thinking and deciding about what to do next and when.
- Break down the place into zones to work on. Again, this takes away time needed to decide what to do next. I have one week to do everything I can in the current zone, then I move on to the next without looking back.
- Declutter. 'Nuff said.
- Spend 15 minutes each day in the current zone. That's it. If it's a weekend or I have time to spare, I still break it down into 15 minutes sessions to avoid burnout. The most important thing I've learned from this is that it doesn't have to be perfect or completed by the end of 15 minutes; I can come back to it later. As a perfectionist, I often freeze when confronted with multiple options and will easily spend more time planning instead of doing. By letting go of that, I'm free to move and actually be productive instead of just sitting still imagining the best way to do so.
- Each month, introduce a new habit.
After 3 weeks, I'm still going strong on this. I've made significant progress in two zones, and for the week of Christmas, I just stuck to my goal of breaking even (i.e., it doesn't get any messier than it already is). I plan to include routines for exercising, eating better, knitting, editing photos, and maybe even blogging. I feel good about this.
In more directly related news, the DBF and I baked about 600 cookies for Christmas to be shared amongst the families. Two batches each of Italian knots, snickerdoodles and Reese's mini peanut butter cup cookies. It was fantastic, but exhausting (and, consequently, photo-less).
I'm glad to be taking a break now. Have a happy and healthy new year.
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