Go Ahead, Call Me a Quitter

Say what you will, I'm not going to apologize for this. There's room in my worldview for a reassessment when circumstances call for it.

Back on November 28, I decided that I would set some personal goals using the 101 Things in 1001 Days method. It seemed like a great idea at the time. However, now that I'm 6 months into it, I've decided it's not for me. It's a clever idea, and probably very useful for some people, but too much pressure for my taste.

I've discovered I don't like long-term lists. I like lists I can knock out in a relatively short period of time. A very long list is too daunting, but a list of To Do Today with 5 or 6 items on it is energizing. And almost 3 years is way too long to have one single list hanging over my head, mocking me.

This doesn't mean that I have abandoned my general desire to (among other things) donate blood, revive my dormant Spanish, make a bead necklace, decorate the porch for $150 cash, make jam in the bread machine, memorize a sonnet, or see snow again. It just means I haven't agreed to do them on deadline.

101 Update (March)

Not too much happening overall in the 101 Things in 1001 Days list, but I crossed off a few good items this past month:

3. Eat breakfast daily. I wouldn't say this is becoming a habit I embrace, but at least I notice when I skip. (93 breakfasts and counting.)

40. Grow a plant on the porch. A happy pothos family lives there now. I'm not sure any other kind of plant would survive more or less independently (my green thumb tends to be brown around the edges, so to speak), but the very independent pothos is a perfect fit.

59. Go on a picnic. Note that I didn't aspire to a high-class picnic. Thank goodness. (Shuttle launch, 3/15/09.)

72. Go to a big deal book fair. Check! Heck, this one should get two checks, if possible. (Florida Antiquarian Book Fair, 3/14/09.)

101 Update

In a word: miserable.

February totally got away from me and most of the progress I made on my 101 Things in 1001 Days project was in tiny increments on some of the longer items. In March I'd better do better than this!

3. Eat breakfast daily. (72/1001 and counting)

10. Catch myself whining and stop. (2/unlimited and counting, but sometimes I would rather be whining and don't stop)

11. Catch myself procrastinating and stop. (4/unlimited; please see rationalization accompanying #10, above)

27. Knit a scarf. (knitted 1 pitiful hour in February)

48. Have my laptop maintained. (2/23/09, and who cares if it was motivated by a near-crash?)

49. Recycle all my glass, cans, plastic, newspaper and catalogs/magazines. (so far, so good)

79. Add 10 birds to my Life List. (1/10; barred owl on 2/22/09)

100. Decline to renew any magazine subscriptions. (so far, so good)

Now, you'll have to excuse me, I need to get to work on some of these . . . . Guilt is such a powerful motivator!

101 Update

It's time for a progress evaluation of my "101 Things in 1001 Days" self-challenge. I started it November 28 and didn't report anything in December, mostly because I didn't exactly get off to a roaring start, with the holidays and all. I had pretty good focus in January, but my concentration has tailed off recently as I've been consumed by preparing for a big work event coming up February 9-10.

Over the last week, everything I've been working on has been due NOW. There are only so many NOWs to go around before my personal life gets put on hold about 20 hours of the day. Then I use the remaining 4 hours for sleep, and start all over again. Fortunately, I learned how to do this in law school. (At the time, who knew even that part was a useful lesson?)

I'll be back on track soon. Meanwhile, here's what's happened so far:

3. Eat breakfast daily. (46 times, ongoing, and could be more if a handful of Hershey's kisses counted; can I get a ruling on that?)

13. Do a secret good deed for someone. (my neighbors left their bagged trash outside their door for an entire day; instead of giving it the stink eye, I carried it down and threw it in the dumpster, 1/3/09)

18. Donate to a cat charity. (Space Coast Feline Network, 12/7/08)

27. Knit a scarf. (Signed up for class and bought yarn 12/30/08, took class 1/10/09, enjoyed every minute, haven't touched it since so . . . ongoing . . . sort of)

28. Spruce up Little George's gravesite with pavers. (added pavers and flowers with C.S.'s help, 1/5/09)

41. Weed out my closet. (1/1/09, now I need to go shopping)

54. Join a food co-op. (12/29/08, but have only placed one order so far)

58. Try habanero cheese. (this one's a keeper, 12/23/08)

67. Tour the gardens at Leu Gardens. (and posted about it, 12/28/08)

68. Enter a contest. ("Win a Trip to the Inauguration," 12/31/08)

97. Make a real budget! (past "budgets" have meant paying the bills and spending what's left, but now I actually know how much I should be spending each week, a big improvement in keeping myself financially oriented and ensuring I don't have, as the saying goes, too much month left at the end of the money, 1/19/09)

Anticipation 2009

First, the Challenge Stack, thanks to the Themed Reading Challenge. These are books that I started and never finished, or that other people have told me they started and never finished. I'm calling them "Guilty Conscience Books" and I'm taking one for the team on those, so to speak.

And if that isn't enough, there's also the Prizes Shelf: the rest of the Man Booker winners, and the rest of the Orange Prize for Fiction winners. I still have to track down a couple of the Man Bookers to make my list complete. But tracking them down is part of the fun!

Oh, and the Great Books compilation my new book group reads . . . . So far, it looks like 2009 is going to be a very good year.

101 Things in 1001 Days

I'm probably one of the last people to find out about this, but it's sure a tempting idea: identify 101 specific, measurable, aspirational, moderately life-expanding things to do, or clearly defined results to achieve, and then set out to accomplish them within 1001 days.

Coming up with the list can be started immediately. Doing everything on the list can take almost 3 years. And it gives you a nice place to write down those impulses that otherwise go into the back of your mind in the "Someday I'll . . ." category.

Of course, that category will still exist. It just doesn't work for me to decide to visit China within the next 3 years, although I definitely would like to see the Great Wall someday.

However, other Impulse Goals are easier to latch onto. Here's today's: See the Milky Way from Acadia National Park in Maine.