On cleaning up cobwebs

I used to always think, “Wow! What an amazing coincidence!” when the pastor’s Sunday morning message corresponded with a devotional I’d read that very day, or when a topic I was reading about for a weekday Bible study class ended up being discussed in our Sunday morning small group... and then I wondered, why am I surprised by this? God’s Word encompasses and is applicable to every area of our life, no matter the topic; His Word is never contradictory; and much of His divine plan for our lives and wisdom for living is repeated over and over again (just in case we missed it the first time, which we usually do) throughout the Bible, in various passages, books, subtexts, and parables.

Yet, I still get tickled when I read a blog and it just happens to coincide with the passage of Scripture I’m studying, which is exactly what happened (again!) this weekend. My friend, and worship leader (er, I mean, lead worshipper) at our church, wrote about the evidence of self-examination. If we claim to have examined our way of living, and profess to be making a change… well, we might convince some folks just by our self-proclamation, but those closest to us will know the truth, for they either will or will not see the evidence of the change.

Our Sunday morning small group has been studying the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. These books not only provide a fascinating history lesson, but are also rich with application for right living (specifically, how to overcome fear and obstacles in our quest for obedience).

After some fits and starts in their attempts to rebuild the city walls, Nehemiah comes in, gets them organized, and, under his strong leadership, they rebuild the wall in 52 days (which they’d been working on for some 70 years at this point!).Upon its completion, Ezra the scribe reads from the law, and the people have an incredible revival – a six-hour worship service that culminates in one of the greatest prayers in history (see Nehemiah 9). They are so moved, so convicted, so determined to live right, that in Nehemiah 10 we read that they signed a covenant, promising to keep God’s commandments.

As I prepared to help lead the discussion on this, I turned to Warren Wiersbe’s most excellent commentary, Be Determined. He opens his discussion on Nehemiah 10 with the following story:

In a certain church, there was a man who always ended his prayers with, “And, Lord, clean the cobwebs out of my life! Clean the cobwebs out of my life!”

One of the members of the church became weary of hearing this same insincere request week after week, because he saw no change in the petitioner’s life. So, the next time he heard the man pray, “Lord, clean the cobwebs out of my life!” he interrupted with, “And while you’re at it, Lord, kill the spider!”

When I read that, and then read my friend’s post on self-examination, I thought, “How true this is for us!” We take a look at the superficial messes in our life, those pesky cobwebs, and ask God to clean them up, all the while ignoring the true source of the problem – the spider!

When we pray for God to help us tidy up the messes in our life, are we serious about making the changes necessary to keep it clean? So often we try to keep that spider as a pet. We wipe away the cobwebs and try to destroy the evidence of the spider, but can’t quite seem to bring ourselves to remove the spider itself.

As my friend points out, some people will think we’ve exterminated the spider. We get ourselves ready for our guests by cleaning the cobwebs out of the corners and off the chandeliers, and they come in and think, “Wow! You really have it all together!”

But our family, the ones who spend the most time with us, who live with us day after day… they know that the cobwebs keep coming back. They know the truth.

So, as I thought about that, I wondered about my own sticky webs of deceit I’ve been spinning… the ideas that the spiders I have hanging around aren’t all that bad, not really a problem, only occasionally bite me and leave their venom coursing through my veins…

Hmmmm, on the other hand, maybe it’s time to finally call in the Orkin man.

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These spider pictures were taken in our backyard, around our AC unit. This friendly little orb weaver had made quite a home for herself and her two huge egg sacs, right under my oldest son's window. He's no pansy, but the thought of hundreds of little spiders hatching and possibly crawling into his room was more than he could handle.

On the completion of our first project

I thought you might enjoy seeing our cuneiform tablets – the one planned activity my son and I actually accomplished this week.

OK, so we didn’t get a 3D solar system mobile made, and we certainly didn’t try to rebuild the ark in miniature… but we did get to squish and squeeze and knead clay, then roll it and squish it and roll it some more… and then, when we got tired of that (and, frankly, I think we were both having so much fun that would have been enough!)… but, when we got tired of doing that, we used our wedge-shaped craft sticks to attempt cuneiform writing.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, I’m afraid. Like his mother, my son sat paralyzed with indecision over what to put on his tablet. “I can’t do this!” he wailed. “I don’t know how to write in cuneiform! I don't even know what to say!”

Once he saw that I was just “making it up” (after trying and failing miserably myself at copying the symbols in our encyclopedia), he tentatively scored the surface of his flattened piece of clay, then grew more confident, and tried creating his own versions of the chicken scratches known as cuneiform. I thought he did a pretty terrific job.

On time... and the lack thereof

“We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
- Pogo (Walt Kelly)

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Time seems to be my enemy these days. There is so much I want to accomplish before the end of our school year, but I am clearly not going to reach my goal. Every day we seem to run out of time and end up leaving one or more items “undone” on our list of subjects or activities.

Make our own cuneiform clay tablet? Not today. Create a 3D mobile of the solar system? Uh-uh, no time this afternoon. Build a scale model of Noah’s Ark? Not happening.

(OK, I made up that last one. I never intended to do that. Granted, it crossed my mind... but only for a moment, I swear!)

Actually, I don’t really plan all that many activities. I did plan for the cuneiform tablet project, because it was actually do-able (a little bit of air-drying clay, a chopstick, and a rolling pin to flatten the clay into a tablet shape, and you’re ready to go). But it’s more than just the fun activities that go by the wayside.

In part, I believe this is because I set some pretty ambitious goals for each day, perhaps bordering on unrealistic. Can you cover math, reading, writing, grammar, spelling, Bible, science, and social studies (history, culture, geography) every day? What about fine arts? Handwriting? Typing? Phys Ed?

At the same time, I don’t know how much time to allot for certain activities or for teaching a new concept. Should math take an hour? Should it take more? Less? If I plan on math only taking an hour, but we really spend 90 minutes on it, is that because I overestimated the amount of work that could be accomplished in an hour? Did I spend too much time on introducing the concept? Did I assign too much seat work? Or is my son simply wasting time daydreaming, dawdling, and generally procrastinating? (This last possibility is most definitely a contributor factor to our time problem, but not the sole cause.)

Veteran homeschoolers keep reassuring me, “Don’t worry! You’ll figure it out!” In the meantime, the perfectionist in me feels like a complete failure because we aren’t even coming close to completing our daily “to-do” list. I hate looking at my weekly lesson plans and seeing all these unchecked boxes and circled items with a big fat ? beside them – as in, when we will ever get back to this?!

If I were going to be perfectly honest, I’d have to confess that time, itself, is not the enemy… rather, it is my inability to wisely manage the time I do have. For now, I’ll chalk some of that up to being a novice at this homeschooling thing. Y’all are buying that… right?

On baseball and kids

This past Saturday, our 10yo son’s baseball team, the Red Sox, went up against the Nationals for the second time this season. In the earlier game this year, his team beat them, 11-7. Our senior pastor’s 10yo son is on the Nationals team, and Pastor is the coach.

Our son came up to Pastor before the game and asked him, “Are you a preacher every day?”

The pastor replied, “Yes, but today I’m also a coach.”

“Oh,” said our son. He thought for a moment, then added with a wicked grin, “Well, in that case, you’re going down.”

In retrospect, perhaps it was not the kind of bragging to do before a man of God. The Red Sox lost, 7-2.

On the start of a new adventure

Bless me, what *do* they teach them at these schools?
C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe

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No doubt it was bad form to write a lengthy article about perfectionism, and then not write again for two months, thus implying that I have, indeed, been paralyzed by my perfectionist tendencies.

While that is undoubtedly true (and certainly a contributing factor)… I have other, truly legitimate reasons for the lengthy delay between posts. I have recently entered into a new dimension, one replete with its own language: homeschooling.

Eight weeks ago, if you had mentioned Charlotte Mason to me, I would have replied, “Who?” Or, if you had asked me to explain the trivium model of a classical education – the grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric stages of learning – I would have stared blankly and said, “Huh?” If a homeschooling mom had told me they used an eclectic approach to their curriculum, I would have asked, “What does that mean?” If she’d then told me she measured her child’s knowledge through notebooking and lapbooks, rather than worksheets, quizzes and tests, I might have skeptically responded, “Um, o-kaaay.”

Now, these are the terms by which I am defining my days. And nights. And weekends. It’s been a crash course in elementary education. Everything else going on in my life came to a screeching halt as I dove head-first into this wild and crazy adventure. We hit the ground running, as they say – there was no time to prepare; it was learn-as-you-go.

My home office is now a school room; the artwork on the wall has been placed by world maps, the cursive alphabet, and posters of Ancient Mesopotamia. Books on public relations and graphic design have been temporarily boxed up to make room for encyclopedias, atlases, dictionaries, thesauruses, and tomes on ancient civilizations, astronomy, dinosaurs, oceans, and the human body, all in preparation for our next year of school.

I’ve owned it for only a couple months, but the most dog-eared book on my shelf right now is Cathy Duffy’s 100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum, after having spent hours and hours pouring over her recommendations for math, grammar, reading, and writing. In less than 60 days, I’ve already formed opinions on the benefits of unit studies, spiral math curriculum, and the merits of teaching vocabulary by first studying Greek and Latin roots, prefixes and suffixes. That I not only understand but could also explain these concepts provides proof that my immersion in this new culture is complete.

Frankly, I’ve learned more in the past six weeks than I have in years, and I’m not just referring to the theories of education that I’m absorbing in my quest for the perfect curriculum. I made a somewhat hasty decision to purchase a year-long unit study that starts with Ancient Egypt, and takes us through the Age of Exploration; ultimately, it was not a decision I regret one bit. It ties in appropriate areas scientific study (e.g., a study of the human body while we study Ancient Greece; an oceanography unit while we study the World Explorers), as well as literature (we’ll read The Golden Goblet while we study Ancient Egpyt, and The Bronze Bow while we study Ancient Rome), spelling, grammar, writing… pretty much everything except math. It’s really an amazing curriculum, which we will begin in the fall.

In the meantime, for the remainder of this school year, I decided that we needed to cover world history up to and coinciding with the time of the ancient Egyptians; i.e., the other early civilizations: the Sumerians, Minoans, Myceneans, megalithic Europe, and the peoples of the Indus Valley – basically, civilization up to 1200 B.C. For science, we have studied the creation of the world (from a biblical worldview!), the solar system, and the layers of the earth, and will spend the last few weeks on dinosaurs (which, my 10-year-old son claims, he has never gotten to study in school).

Just preparing the lesson plans for this last quarter of school (which is when we began our homeschooling journey), has been an education. I’ve learned more about the origins of our universe and the life of early man than I ever knew before. I’ve learned facts about the layers of the sun that I never knew. In fact, I didn’t even know the sun had layers! I didn’t know that cuneiform was one of the earliest writing systems, I didn’t know that farmers used constellations to tell them the times to plant and to harvest, and I didn’t know that Stonehenge was being built around the same time as the ziggurats in the Middle East.

I didn’t know a lot. I still don’t.

But after this next year, I’ll know a little bit more.

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For those who might be interested in a unit study approach, I heartily recommend A World of Adventure! It is one of Cathy Duffy's Top Picks – considering the vast number of unit studies to choose from, and that only a handful (six, to be exact) "made the cut," that's high praise, indeed. I really wanted to start this study right away, but decided to truly go with a chronological approach to our son's studies, by starting with the creation of the world and the ancient civilizations that preceded/coincided with the Ancient Egyptians.


Find out more: A World of Adventure

On being perfectly imperfect

Artists who seek perfection in everything are
those who cannot attain it in anything.

~ Eugene Delacroix (1798 - 1863)

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“Why haven’t you written on your blog?” my friend asked the other day. “It’s been a month since your last post!”

I know, I know. I have a half-dozen, half-written posts, but can’t seem to finish any because they aren’t, well, perfect. None of them are perfectly humorous, or perfectly insightful, or perfectly inspiring, or perfectly relevant, or perfectly thought-provoking, or perfectly anything – except perfectly incomplete.

For as long as I can remember, people have called me a “perfectionist.” In my youth, I was secretly pleased at this label, for in my limited understanding of that word, I believed that meant that when others looked at my work or my accomplishments, they saw perfection in them, and, therefore, perfection in me, as well. At the same time, I never quite believed that could possibly be true, because all I ever saw were flawed, damaged goods – both in the things I created, and, sadly, in this person God created, this incredibly imperfect person staring back at me in the mirror every morning.

I take some small comfort in the fact that I’m not the only one who thought of “perfectionism” as some sort of positive trait, albeit one with negative undertones. I’ve read many-a “job interviewing how-to” article that suggested answering, “I’m a perfectionist!” when asked by a potential employer what your weaknesses are because, these experts reasoned, what kind of employer wouldn’t want to hire someone whose primary “flaw” was their desire for perfection?

What I’ve come to realize over the years is that it truly is a negative trait (at least, as it is manifested in me), and one that has severely hampered my ability to find pleasure in life. That sounds somewhat maudlin (perhaps this post will be perfectly depressing in the end!), but as I come to understand this undeniable trait of mine, I recognize that my perfectionist tendencies tend to rob me of joy.

While some researchers might suggest that perfectionism is a healthy motivator for reaching goals, I am living proof that, quite frankly, it has altogether the opposite effect. I do believe there are “healthy strivers” who desire to excel, but they are not to be confused with perfectionists, who will often not even attempt to reach a goal for fear of failure.

Why this sudden introspection? As I sat here in my office staring at my whiteboard, still covered with lengthy lists of New Year resolutions, I came to a startling realization: aside from a couple of items which were immediate, must-do tasks, I had not accomplished a single goal I had set for January, let alone for the year as a whole; nor had I even begun. My procrastination in getting started on my list had eventually led to complete paralysis.

Let me tell you: it was an ambitious list. And after doing a bit of research on what it really means to be a perfectionist, it made perfect sense that I would set these kinds of goals for myself. The Counseling and Mental Health Center at the University of Texas-Austin has a web page devoted to perfectionism, and they don’t pull any punches:

Perfectionism a double-edged sword… a duel with oneself, the ultimate “no-win” situation. Perfectionism is not a healthy pursuit of excellence. Those who strive for excellence in a healthy way take genuine pleasure in trying to meet high standards. Perfectionists on the other hand are full of self-doubts and fears of disapproval, ridicule and rejection. The healthy striver has drive, while the perfectionist is driven.

They then proceeded to list differences between perfectionists and “healthy strivers,” including the fact that perfectionists set standards (goals) beyond reach and reason (versus the healthy striver who sets high standards, just a bit beyond reach).

The site continues with a list of myth-busters regarding perfectionism, including this gem, which perfectly (pun intended) sums up my own inability to post regularly to this blog, among other things:

MYTH: Perfectionists get things done and they do things right.

REALITY: Perfectionists often have problems with procrastination, missed deadlines, and low productivity.

Psychologists find that perfectionists tend to be "all-or-nothing" thinkers. They see events and experiences as either good or bad, perfect or imperfect, with nothing in between. Such thinking often leads to procrastination, because a requirement of flawless perfection, in even the smallest of tasks, can become fearfully overwhelming. The perfectionist believes that the flawless product or superb performance must be produced every time. Perfectionists believe if it can't be done perfectly, it's not worth doing.

Such beliefs often lead to undesired results. A perfectionist student may turn in a paper weeks late (or not at all), rather than turn it in on time with less-than-perfect sentences. A perfectionist worker may spend so much time agonizing over some non-critical detail that a critical project misses its deadline.

What does it matter if one is a perfectionist or not? Because the costs are high: According to multiple sources, perfectionists are vulnerable to clinical depression, low self-esteem, performance anxiety, writer's block, workaholism, obsessive behavior, compulsiveness, suicidal thoughts, loneliness, impatience, frustration, and anger. And that’s the short list.

So, upon further reflection, I began to see a repeated pattern in my life – in my professional life, my personal life, even my spiritual life:

Perfectionism –> Procrastination –> Paralysis

No doubt identifying the problem is the first step towards overcoming it. And, so, a revised list of New Year goals may be in order. I’ll be writing those down… just as soon as I come up with the perfect list.

On wasting no time reading

I took a speed reading course and read “War and Peace” in twenty minutes. It involves Russia. ~ Woody Allen

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I know that all three of you who read last Monday’s post on my New Year resolutions have been anxiously awaiting an update on what those annual goals actually are. It will come as no surprise to many of you (at least, not to those who know me) that I’ve already revised and rewritten my yearly objectives several times because I realized that I was dreaming some impossible dreams, and most likely setting myself up for (what has already proven to be immediate) failure.

For example, inspired by some new acquaintances, I set as one of my goals to read 52 books this year – one a week. Now, I am used to be an avid reader. In my younger days, if I was engrossed in a compelling novel, I could easily stay up until the wee hours of the morning devouring the words on each page until my eyes were bleary and my tongue felt thick and coated with cotton from lack of sleep. My bookcases are still lined with some of the best fiction and non-fiction on the market, including classics by C.S. Lewis, Jane Austen, Hemingway and Steinbeck, but I am less of a reader these days as a mere collector of books.

Conversations with fellow readers often go something like this:

Friend: Oh, I just read the best book! It’s called [insert name of bestseller/classic novel here] by [insert author name here]. Really inspiring!

Me: (excitedly) Oh yeah?! I have that book! I got it four years ago.

Friend: What did you think about it?

Me: I’ll let you know after I read it.

I’m not sure when I stopped reading as voraciously as I did in my teens, twenties and early thirties. Work, family, ministry obligations all came before reading. Or, perhaps my declining desire to read a book was hastened by the increased number of TV sets or the availability of high-speed internet access in our home . It became so much easier to “vege out” in front of the boob tube or surf the web at night than to pick up a book.

So, too, my changing tastes diminished my appetite for reading, at least, for reading the types of books that were once stacked eight deep beside my bed. As my secular worldview shifted to a more biblical worldview, I found less pleasure in the Oprah Book Club and NY Times bestsellers which were my usual fare. Gradually, I replaced the trashy beach novels and murder mysteries with self-help books and spiritual growth guides; gone were authors whose names I frankly can no longer recall (that’s how temporal their work); in were authors Beth Moore, Francine Rivers, Kay Arthur, Randy Alcorn, and Frank Peretti. (And, okay, I didn’t completely eliminate secular authors: Sue Miller and Pat Conroy and Diana Galbadon remain my guilty pleasures, as much for their beautiful prose as for their storylines, and I must confess that the stories themselves, although most decidedly secular in nature, are compelling and tender and heartbreaking all at once.)

Unfortunately, I think that there is dearth of quality Christian fiction (it’s plentiful, but most of it is not that good), and one can only read so many non-fiction personal growth books before the eyes glaze over and you realize what a hopeless mess you are and what’s the point in even trying to improve yourself now because you’re already middle-aged and old habits die hard. But, hope springs eternal, and one of these days I will no longer be a bad girl but instead a woman after God’s own heart who has broken free then learned to set boundaries, who has won the battlefield of the mind and celebrates discipline, who shows love and respect to her husband and parents her kids with love and logic, and has found financial peace.

Someday.

In the meantime, I better get busy reading up on how to do all that.

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Which brings me back to my New Year goal of reading 52 books this year. I have since scaled that downward to 24 books, because reading two books per month is a far more likely (and reasonable) scenario for me at this point in my life, and a goal I might actually achieve. And, along those lines, I have set some other “sub-goals” in relationship to my primary goal of reading 24 books this year:

1. Read no more than two books at a time. In the past, I was often reading four to six books at any given time; it just depended on which room of the house I was in, and yes, that includes the bathroom. There were often half-read books in the office, beside the couch, on my nightstand, and even in the car, and because I was trying to read so many at once, I never ended up completing any of them, which leads me to my next sub-goal:

2. Complete the books you start (unless they are awful). If I reduce the number of books I’m trying to read at one time, I’ll probably be more likely to finish said books. On the flip side, and usually in regards to fictional books, I have often wasted several hours of my life reading a novel that was poorly written simply because I just had to know how it ended. I’m the same way with movies – once I start it, I have to see it through. Only lately have I found the strength to turn it off if it gets ridiculously stupid or boring, and it’s even easier for me to turn it off if it gets overly raunchy, as I find I have less and less tolerance for that kind of trash these days. But, when it comes to Christian fiction, sad to say, it’s usually just… bad. I’m finally learning to “just say no” to weak characters and underdeveloped story lines. Life is too short.

3. Mix it up. I’m trying to expand my horizons, read more than just the easy stuff. You know, actually challenge my brain. In addition to personal growth books and the occasional quality Christian novel, perhaps it’s time to pull some of those tried-and-true books off the shelf. I suppose I’m of the mind of Mark Twain who once said, “A classic is something everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.” But, maybe it’s time to finally read some of those. At the very least, I’ll read the Cliffs Notes.

4. Use the library more often. I love nothing more than spending an evening at Barnes and Noble. Between the Starbucks coffee and the smell of new books, I’m pretty much in heaven. However, I’m also striving for financial peace, and realized, after a review of our five-year spending history, that I had been subsidizing B&N for far too long. (If you hear that they are going out of business in the near future, it’s probably because I decided to start using my library card instead of my credit card. After all, why pay when you can borrow?)

Currently reading:

Simplify Your Life by Elaine St. James
The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko
The Little Red Book of Wisdom by Mark DeMoss


Hmmm... so much for sub-goal number one...

On being a closet organizer...

In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it. ~ Robert Heinlein

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I’m afraid this quote by some guy I don’t know (which I stumbled on quite by accident… when I went looking for quotes on goal-setting) pretty much sums up my life. Or, at least, the past 18 months of my life.

Since moving to Alabama, I’ve been a SAHM (“stay-at-home mom” for those of you unfamiliar with the acronym), something I never always wished I could do. Yet over the past 18-odd years, I somehow found it a relief necessary to work outside the home, at least until my kids were old enough to be in school all day, thus allowing me eight uninterrupted hours for napping blissful soul-searching and personal growth and development.

And I’m happy to report that, in the past 18 months, this is what I’ve accomplished:

……………

Nothing. Nada. Zip.

Not a blessed thing.

OK, I did get a new house in order. A job that should have taken all of two months, but due to my obsessive-compulsive nature desire for perfection, took much longer because I had to completely repaint the entire house, including the closets.

Yes, that is sad, I know. Ever since wandering through a model home one day (a favorite weekend pastime of ours when we lived in Virginia during the crazy housing boom) and seeing this incredible kids’ room which featured, among other things, a closet that was painted in a contrasting color to the room, I’ve not considered a room “finished” until I’ve ripped out all the cheap ClosetMaid contractor shelving, patched five million dozen holes the size of a moon crater, and repainted not only the walls, but also the ceiling and trim. All in a space no one will ever see except said occupant of the room, and even then, it’s unlikely my fine handiwork would be evident behind the racks of clothes, shoes, toys, books, games, purses, hats, sports equipment, and various other junk that probably shouldn’t be in the closet yet somehow found it’s way in (like empty pizza boxes and soda cans, and let’s not even go there). But when the closet is EMPTY, it looks really cool!

And let’s not forget the organizers. The closet organizers that I saw in the model home that coordinated beautifully with the painted closet and were going to solve all our clutter problems, and these weren’t the cheap contractor grade wire shelves that leave lines on your sweaters and make it impossible to slide your hanger more than 5 inches without hitting some obstacle, oh no. These were the laminate, you-can-build-and-install-it-yourself-if-you-have-an-engineering-
degree closet organizers that were destined to make us feel like we were living like the rich and famous but without the bank account to back up the lifestyle, because it was drained to pay for the closet organizers.

When we moved to Alabama, I said, “Enough!”

That’s right, enough. If we’re going to spend a small fortune on organizers, let’s get the very best. Elfa.

So one Saturday around 11 am, shortly after having moved to Alabama, when we were still giddy from having sold our house in Virginia during what would prove to be the early days of the now-obvious housing bust, and actually had money to burn (which is to say we had a paid-off credit card with an available line of credit burning a hole in our pockets), I said to the kiddos, “Let’s go to Atlanta!”

They were so excited! A trip!

It took two hours to get ourselves ready, and another five hours to reach our destination: The Container Store!! I spent four hours designing the perfect closet organizing systems, nearly had a heart attack when I saw the prices, but put on a brave smile and ordered enough to deck out two of the 10+ closets in the house. Please don’t even ask me what the kids did during this time frame, because I really have NO idea, but I can tell you that when I got back to Alabama, I still had three children in my van, and I’m pretty sure they all belong to me, although sometimes I wonder.

I think I’ve lost complete control of where I intended to go with this post.

Oh, right… I was going to talk about my goals for the new year, and how, in the absence of goals, we tend to get so wrapped up in the trivial routines of life that we can no longer imagine setting, let alone reaching, any kind of goal beyond the monotony of our daily life… or maybe that’s just me.

More on that tomorrow, after I drink my coffee, skim through the paper, catch up on the posts at my favorite forums, drink more coffee, take the dog out for his “daily constitutional,” read my favorite blogs, post some comments, do my devotions, play the piano for a bit, shower, eat breakfast, drink more coffee, update Quicken, pay a few bills, send some emails, play a game of Spider, make a to-do list, drink more coffee, check to see what’s in the refrigerator, look for the source of the stink coming from the kitchen (ah! it’s the dirty dish cloth!), unload the dishwasher, take the dog out for a couple rounds of fetch, go fetch the balls he’s chased but then left out in the woods, work a Sudoku puzzle, check to see if anyone’s posted a comment in response to my comments, then respond to those comments, and wonder why it’s noon and I haven’t accomplished anything on my to-do list, including updating this blog.

But, as you can see, I’m very busy.

Maintaining my resolve

It’s been awhile since I last blogged. I guess I subscribe to the philosophy that it’s better to stay silent and let folks assume you’re a fool than to open your mouth and prove them right.

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OK, not true. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, I abhor silence, and must fill it, so I’m pretty much constantly proving myself a fool. Today, I am sure, will be no exception.

After a long absence from writing of any kind (unless cell phone texting counts, which I’m pretty sure it does not), I figured, considering the time of year, that the most natural way to ease back into this would be start off with some New Year’s resolutions.

Of course, I resolved a few years ago not to make New Year’s resolutions anymore, as I can rarely get past mid-January without having shattered all resolve to stick to my ambitious resolutions. I started setting the bar lower and lower every year, in hopes of achieving some modicum of success. For example, I stopped resolving to exercise five days a week, and lowered it to merely resolving to walk five days a week. Then it was three days a week. Then I resolved I would walk at least three times a month. Finally, last year, I said I’d walk three times that year, which I did on January 2, 3, and 4 so as to get it out of the way and be able to say I was successful in fulfilling my resolution.

This year, I’ve decided to simply set some annual “goals.” Somehow, setting goals seems less intimidating, and a bit “friendlier,” quite frankly, than making “resolutions,” which has a bit of a militaristic feel to it, does it not?

So, on Monday, a week into the New Year, I spent the day charting my yearly goals, and breaking those down into smaller chunks, first monthly, then weekly.

At the end of the day, between goal-listing, chatting, emailing, errand-running, dinner-making, and more errand-running (for my high school daughter who came home with a list of supplies for this new semester that rivaled our back-to-school purchases), I decided I should have added “Make New Year’s Goal List” to my weekly goal to-do list so that I’d have something to cross off for the day.

*sigh*

It’s going to be a long year.