Web Developer, Photographer, Musician
Sounds to me like a lazy sedge.
I came out of a building the other day with Rachel in tow and stumbled over what most other people would be trying to throw weed killer on. It was growing up out of a crack in the sidewalk. My exclamation of “Oh! Look how cute it is!” was met with “Mom, you are SO weird!”
The arrangement I made of it in a Waterford vase makes it look very different than it does coming out of a crack in the sidewalk, but that’s okay. I love it anyway.
I love this rush. I saw a drawing of it in Lauren Brown’s book Grasses: An Identification Guide a few years ago and thought it was funny. Imagine my delight when I saw it for real on the path to a falling down hunting cabin in Maine. It was like finding an old friend.
I was surprised to see how tall it was. It just shoots straight and true way up out of the ground like a giant cartoon piece of grass, only it’s not grass. And then the flower jumps right out of the middle and says, “HEY!”
I just think it’s funny.
On the one hand, creating time sheets in ManicTime is very gratifying. All those pretty colors, and I can mush stuff around until my time sheets reflect the day I wish I was having. It helps keep me more focused than if I’m not using time sheets.
The problem is that I am way too obsessed with these time sheets. I am documenting every waking minute of my day.
It all started when the Yoda of Super 9 Studios, Gerry LaChance, suggested that I spend 20 hours a week marketing our business. I swear he can see right through me because he said, “I know you. You’ll say you’re gonna spend 20 hours doing marketing, and you’ll have all the good intentions of doing it, but you won’t. You need to have accountability. In fact, I want you to start creating time sheets and showing them to Irene every week.”
I laughed my head off because I was nailed. Irene doesn’t care. She doesn’t even want to see my time sheets. But I care. What kills me is that Gerry doesn’t even know who Yoda is.
So, in my efforts to find a system of creating time sheets that was easy, I found this program called ManicTime. The name of it even screams for me to use it. You install it on your computer, and it keeps track of every program you open and even what documents you have open and for how long, down to the second. Very useful!
But then I decided so many other areas of my life needed to be reigned in in this way. In fact, let’s just document EVERYTHING. This is another weak point of my character. I can’t do anything in a small or mediocre way. Everything must be done in the most systematic and organized fashion possible. Nothing gets finished, but it does all become very systematic and organized toward the goal of having the most fun possible. Fun is the bottom line goal of almost everything in my life. Even laundry can be fun if you do it in a certain way.
Here is a summary of last week from Monday to Saturday (Sundays, I often fall off the grid due to the “no screens” rule I enforce with my children.):
[table id=1 /]
Now that I’m creating these beautiful time sheets, I need to figure out what they mean. One thing that is bothering me about this is that it doesn’t add up to a perfect 96 hours of awake time. I’m missing .3 of an hour somewhere.
The lifelong thorn in my side has been that there is never enough room in my purse, never enough table top to hold all my projects, never enough space on my hard drive, and certainly never enough time in a day to do all the stuff I want to do.
I am constantly trying to make my life more efficient so I can cram more stuff into it. More activities. More people. More red lollipops. More sharp Ticonderoga #2 HB pencils. More sheet music. More jam sessions. More pianos. More huge projects that take more and more people to pull off each time.
I find myself at a turning point in my life: I am wanting to change my behavior so that I don’t have that “heart in the throat” feeling all day long every day. It’s gotta be a mid-life crisis. I’m 49. I would like to be able to wake up refreshed every morning and looking forward to all my tasks for the day. And all those tasks would be fulfilling, and I would be able to easily accomplish them in the course of a regular day. And they would all be in line with the values and goals that I have.
For my own satisfaction, I thought I would document my progress. I have begun creating time sheets for myself of every waking minute in the hope of ripping out everything that gets in the way of my bigger values and goals in life.
Reading and answering e-mail can just not possibly be that important. At least not as important as giving timely pedicures to my 11-year-old daughter as she dances in these crazy things called pointe shoes.
Non sequitur #1: Meanwhile, I create incredible numbers of lists. I’m not sure why I do this. My friend Lauryn Feiler showed me how to draw tidy little check boxes next to all the items on my “To Do” lists. Now I find great satisfaction in checking off the boxes. It keeps everything looking pretty, and then you can still read all the stuff that you did.
Non sequitur #2: My friend John once referred to me as “a fly.” I think it’s because I can rarely stick with one activity or topic long enough to bring it to completion in one sitting. I begin several things at once and make my rounds around them until most of them are finished. A few usually get left off.
Tomorrow, I plan to record my first time sheet and get on with this project.