Bedrest for Titi

Titi was made in the image of Christian.

I have a heck of time finishing projects. It’s not just procrastination, but also a small dose of boredom and a great deal of resistance to finicky detail. I get excited once the end is in sight, and somehow lose that edge that keeps me focused – and the project falls off my radar.

Because of this personal proclivity I tend to work best with multiple tasks; and this applies to practically everything I do. I like to tidy house haphazardly allowing one thing to lead me to the next (I admit that for deep cleaning I’ve come to appreciate the speed and efficiency of a speed cleaning onslaught), I read piles of books at the same time, and once I start cooking I am most content when I’ve got every burner going.

The downside is that it takes me longer than it should for me to complete tasks, if they do get finished. Most of the time I don’t mind this. I’ve got Titi to repair, another heavy baby doll (Wallace) almost finished, a baby vest almost knit (for Christian), four sandwich wraps cut, a batch of cloth menstrual pads ready for the serger, and half a dozen wet bags ready to be sewn. It’ll all get done and I won’t be bored for a minute of the project-making. I expect it all to be done before the end of May at the latest.

The only glitch is that I have to get that doll repaired right away. TiTi, the doll in the picture above, is the doll I made for my niece Nabi Grace. And while Nabi Grace loves Titi, apparently his woolen hair has been shedding and causing some eczema. So Titi was mailed back to me for a hair transplant. (He’s been amazingly upbeat about his prolonged bedrest.)

I got cotton yarn, but cotton is never going to be as hairlike as mohair, so I thought I’d try a new hair type – crocheted. The crocheted wig I’m making for another doll is working out beautifully. But the cotton crocheted cap for Titi never stopped looking  like a bad yarmulke, so I pulled it apart. Next I tried embroidered hair, which was recommended for dolls of young children. Also a complete failure. So now I’m back to making a (time-consuming) cotton wig with my hair tool and I can’t find it ANYWHERE.

Normally I would deal with such frustration by putting Titi aside and starting a new project (like a knit pig!), confident that the hair tool would show up sooner or later. But because Nabi Grace’s second birthday is next week, and Titi already has a new set of clothes, a hooded towel, and a pair of velcro diapers to travel back with, I’ve refrained from starting something new and tried to channel my energy into finding this hair tool.

This is excruciatingly painful for me to be stopped on one project. EXCRUCIATINGLY PAINFUL.

 

Baby Step

When somebody says they think I’m brave or gutsy or full of confidence, I have to snort. It’s nice that I can appear that way, but fear; fear of rejection, fear of the unknown, fear of pain, fear of unintentionally hurting somebody, fear is an emotion I battle with on a regular basis. Especially this past year which has been filled with dramatic life changes: I left my stable job as a public school teacher, I left Joshua Tree after having lived there for fifteen years, I got married for a second time (after a pretty devastating first marriage) – all of which meant brand-new starts in a new place.

Many of those changes though felt as if there was an order or logic to them: steps I could follow. Moving meant looking for a new house to rent, packing boxes, enrolling Bella in a new school – things that I couldn’t very well procrastinate or ignore.

On the other hand, deciding that I wanted to be a free-lance writer has felt much more arbitrary and formless, and therefore easier to procrastinate and ignore – so in some ways I have.

Yes, I’ve kept up with womantalk.org and written many, many daily posts. Yes, I got a job as a website manager/copywriter. Yes, I get paid to write press releases. But the real work I had intended for myself, that of writing about art, has remained hovering out of reach. I am embarrassed to admit that my first attempt at contacting an editor and “selling” myself didn’t happen until last month. Last month. That’s nearly a year of practically pooping my pants at the thought of being rejected as writer.

A month ago, I contacted the editor of ArtScene to let him know I was interested in writing art reviews.

And yesterday I found out that…

They’re going to give a me shot this month at writing a blurb for their “Continuing and Recommended” section, which neither pays well nor gives me by-line credit – but no matter – the most difficult part is past, I’m in!

It kills me that I could have done this a year ago and I didn’t. I’m going to see art and write about it for folks I don’t know. Good grief, I guess I am brave.

 

Just When I Was About to Get On With My Life

We finished the last episode of Season 3 of Battlestar Galatica last night – that show is scarily addictive. I love that the show is really about dealing with the underlying questions that might arise if there were less than 50,000 humans remaining in the universe and how to roll the hard six. I think religion is handled well too – as a mixture of truth and myth, but mainly there to inspire hope in a general collective. We are just in time for the final remaining season, which begins this week on the sci-fi channel.

I was just rolling up my sleeves to get back to my desk, my computer, my blog, my writing, my bills….

When my husband sent me a link to a highly addictive game called Excit. It is a simple game of logic; all you have to do is move your cursor with your keyboard arrows until you reach the exit. The trick is that once the cursor starts moving, it will continue to move until it bumps into a wall – what happens is a cerebral maze that will slowly draw you in with increasingly complicated scenarios. If you enjoy problem-solving, STAY AWAY FROM THIS GAME.

Or ignore my warning and try it here.

This is what it looks like after you’ve played a level or two. I’m trying to get the cursor to the green exit door -going through MIS gets you extra points… Hmmm, the picture doesn’t look as fun as it really is.

 

procrastination

Sometimes in the river of my psyche a project gets trapped by an underflow. A current of cold water drags this project deep under water and pushes it up against a log. And the project sits. and sits. While the rest of life keeps coursing over and beyond it. The project sits.

It develops sedentary properties; it grow a little moss – and other smaller projects tumble upon it and make it grow in size. The project sits for so long that it becomes part of the general landscape. The project just sits.

I thought that GTD might help me and my projects from getting caught by sucker currents like that, but it turns out that procrastination is different from organization. GTD does help me find and retrieve old stuck projects, but now new projects keep floating out of my grasp. Or perhaps it’s just a new sense of balance and I’m falling in and out of practice with it.

Am presently working on wedding thank you cards.

It is a difficult, but rewarding task. It’s also twice as difficult now than it would have been two months ago when my memory of the wedding was so much fresher.

Have we really only been married 3 1/2 months?

Cake by Wendy Edwards. Photo by Stephanie Fowler of rosewaterstudio.com.