Operation Stash-Down

 

Last month, I spent a week thoroughly cleaning and reorganising my workroom so that I could actually get to all the shelves, and not have my back to the door. I even made space to fit a skinny bookshelf (I can finally have all my books out where I can reach them. It's been more than seven years since that last happened).

Last week, I watched one of my favourite YouTubers issue their now-annual "January is for working on The Pile" challenge. I considered my Piles (what a phrase) and decided this was an excellent use for the rest of January. I went through the mending pile, adding and subtracting as necessary, and updated the running list I keep of the things in there (it's the only way to stop things from disappearing into the aether). I tidied up the cabbage patch, taking the opportunity to go through a few boxes that were stored outside the workroom and sort their contents into piles.

Yesterday, I looked around my workroom (it had once again gone from clean and tidy with actual floor space, to One Big Trip Hazard within half a day), and decided that I have too much bloody stuff.

This was almost completely clear twelve hours ago.
L-R, T-B: for coleslaw (green), cabbage once deconstructed (yellow), actual recycling (blue), and rag rug bits (red).

2024: New Year, (some) New Goals

An Unnecessarily In-Depth Explanation of How I Set Yearly Goals

It's a new year, which means that for me, it's time for a new set of annual goals. (These are NOT resolutions. Resolutions are fuzzy and vague, usually cliché things like "lose weight" or "be happier" or "achieve world peace". Goals are things that you can actually aim at, and with enough practice, hit.)

I started formally setting and tracking yearly targets a few years ago, and while I won't call it the cure to all that ails me, it's certainly been a helpful practice. And hey, 'tis the season for everyone's "how I set goals" posts, so who am I to rock the boat?

The TL;DR

I usually start this process sometime in December, whenever the urge to wrap up the current year and look towards the new one starts to itch me. (Incidentally, this is almost the exact same process I use when doing monthly goals, just with less introspection/review.)

It goes something like this:

• Review the areas of my life and how things went over the last year.
• Review last year's goals - what I hit, what I didn't, what needed changing part way through the year when it became apparent I'd picked an over-ambitious target/something I didn't actually care about, that kind of thing.
• Do a brain dump of all the things I want to do next year. Delegate them by life area.
• Refine the brain dump over a few days, until I have a reasonable number of targets to aim for over the coming year.
• Break those targets down into the things I'll need to do to actually reach the goal I'm aiming for.

May Progress

Well. May sure was A Month.

I was hoping to get this out closer to the start of the month than it's ended up being. Alas, blogging is the last on the (very long) list of things that aren't absolutely critical, but that I'd like to eventually get done. 

I ended up exactly as exhausted after the medieval fair as I expected. I promised myself that I would do pretty much only what I wanted for the rest of the month. No obligations beyond "keep everyone alive" and "keep the house liveable" (no small task with both children and ADHD running rampant around here).

It turns out that "Do whatever you want" bears a striking resemblance to my regular life, but with vastly more reading (eight novels and a LOT of articles and short stories), gardening (17 hours), and weaving (20 hours 21 min). Funny that...

• Words written: 1,925
• Weaving time (goal 650 min): 1,221 minutes
• WIPs finished: 1

April Progress

This was a weird month, and its flow-on effects were vast (as I'm sure you can tell by the April post going up on the very last day of May).

I attended the Australian Permaculture Convergence at the end of the month, a five day conference held just outside Adelaide this year. It was far enough from home that camping there was the only sensible option. To compound the matter, the SA Medieval Faire was only two weeks after the Convergence, where I camp with my HEMA/theatrical sword fighting group for the weekend.

Both these events were a string of long, active days, in unfamiliar settings, with even worse sleep than usual. So I basically wrote off the entirety of May for recovery, and treated myself gently for the last half of April.

March Progress

Well, that was a month.

It started out fine. Things were happening, projects were worked on, life was hectic but (mostly) manageable.

And then the Fire Nation attacked I found moths in my workroom. (I probably would have sworn less about the Fire Nation attacking.) With the amount of fibre, fleece and fabric in there, not to mention my entire wardrobe of both everyday and re-enactment clothing, it was all hands on deck to banish them. I’m still not done. So if this month or the next is a little light on progress, that’s why.

• Words written: 3,065
• Weaving time (goal 650 min): 734.5 minutes
• Note: 150 minutes per week becomes 650 minutes per month, when spread over a year
• WIPs finished: 2

February Progress

I am slightly shocked that February is over already. (I suspect I'll be feeling that way for every single month this year.)

The month started and almost immediately became A Lot To Handle. The school term started the last week of January, and that meant the return to extracurriculars for me and the kids. It's amazing how much time and energy that takes up, even when it's a thing that's both enjoyable and looked forward to.

Two strings of 37ºC+ weather didn't help matters - I become a useless puddle of falling over and sadness when the temperature goes above 35ºC. Thus I spent a good chunk of the month wobbling between the couch and the kitchen, ducking outside just long enough to keep the plants and chickens alive, and catching up on my pile of reading.

Still, projects were worked on and progress was made.

• Words written: 2,394
• Weaving time (goal 650 min): 662 minutes
• *Note:* 150 minutes per week becomes 650 minutes per month, when spread over a year
• WIPs finished: 2.5

January Progress

 Yes, I know it’s almost the end of February.  We shall ignore that.

January was a surprisingly good time.  I did a bunch of things I wasn’t expecting to do, but nevertheless enjoyed getting done immensely.

• Words written: 4,865
• Weaving time (goal 10 h): 12 hours, 1 minute
• WIPs finished: 3(!)
• Items mended: 7

Word count and weaving time are self explanatory, I think. Let’s look at the other two instead.

Habitica and Plans for 2023

After a ~5 year break, I’m back to using Habitica for day-to-day task management. While the vast majority of my project/task management happens in Obsidian (love that app), I found I needed some distance between “everything that I ever need to do, whether today or five years from now” and “stuff I need to get done within the next week or so".

Both my needs and attitude towards task management have changed a lot over the last few years, so I was hesitant to go back to it, but for right now it meets 95% of my needs. It helps that the elder child is old enough to start learning to manage their own stuff, instead of me. The gamification (especially the pets) is catnip to them. Our little two-person party is doing pretty well for a perpetually-stressed adult with too many responsibilities, and an ADHD homeschooled tween with no sense of time.