Champagne and Socks

In a very odd turn of events, I gave up instant coffee in December. It wasn’t really planned in advance. I think I might have thought about it fleetingly when I ran out of instant coffee the jar before and replaced it but this time round, I didn’t mention to C when the jar was close to empty (he does the grocery shopping) and I just put it in the bin when it was.

I made the decision to only drink fresh espressos because I’d noticed on days where I made espresso coffee at home, I enjoyed the cup more and I drank less coffee in the day overall. And I slept better at night.

Not an overly earth shattering discovery. One year after World Fantasy Convention (was it Ohio?), I gave up coffee for a year – Crohn’s flare up while away meant I drank none in the US so I came home detoxxed – and it was probably one of the most energising years in recent history for me. I felt great, I slept great and I woke up refreshed. I felt like a freaking Special K ad.
So, I know that caffeine doesn’t give you energy. It’s like any drug. You need to come back to it to make you feel half as good as you do without it but twice as bad as you would detoxxed from it.

But I *like* coffee. I love it. And I enjoy really good cups of coffee. In the last year, I’ve found that I’d rather come home and drink one of my own cups made from good beans and in the way I know I like it, than pay $4 for a dreadful one in a not great cafe somewhere. I’m coffee snubbing it up by buying better and better beans, upgraded my grinder, learning better techniques to draw the shot and heat the milk. And finding I can stand mediocre cups less and less. Life’s too short for bad coffee. Especially if I’m trying to stick to two cups a day.

Since I’m at home most days, I found myself mainlining instant coffee and not even noticing it. With a newborn, I was constantly making cups but not getting to finish them and I got used to just making new cups and having no idea how many I was drinking in a day. As I got to finish my hot cups more often, I just kept making cups, now in the habit, and when bored and so on. And I’d be wide awake til 2am and later every night. And feeling brain foggy for most of it.

Instant coffee is not a great thing to drink with Crohn’s disease. And it’s also not the best beverage in the world. I can’t say I even really notice it now it’s gone. I’m going to bed earlier at night and hopefully getting better sleep. And most importantly, I’m enjoying the cups of coffee that I am drinking in the day – only 2 (double shots) a day. And when I’m bored, I’m drinking the odd cup of tea. Which should help me to reduce my very large tea stash!

Today’s drink: Single Origin by Five Senses (pic above)

Today’s total word count: 580

Year Total running word tally from (Nov 24): 18 174

Progress on: Took half of the uni online course I have to finish by 31st, completed Day 2 of the 20 Days to Organise your House.

I’m going to track all the things I complete this year (did you notice yet that I’m cheating and making 2015 13 months?) for easy reference. It’ll serve as a contradiction to the “I never get anything done/finished” mantra. Feeling productive, and being productive, it seems, are two different things.

Here is the very first finished knitted object – Izzie Cloche hat in Zen Gardens Serenity which was the first project for my KnitCrate subscription.

KnitCrate is a very cool knitting/crochet subscription service. You can sign up for about 6 or 7 different options. They used to have a baby crate when I signed up so I initially subscribed to the indie crate with add ons of the baby crate and the mini skeins (add ons allowed you to get the yarn and pattern for a second or third crate for a lower additional cost to your main subscription). Earlier this year they dropped the baby crate and I moved to an int/advanced crate but I hear they’ve since dropped the option of add ons (except maybe sock and mini skein). As well as the yarn and pattern, you also get a cool knitting extra (like a stitch counter or needles holder) and a sweets extra (cool things like hot chocolate or biscuits etc).

My deal with myself was that KnitCrate was not going to be a stashing exercise. I had to knit the projects as they came in and in that way, I would be knitting along with Deb, whom I’d coordinated to subscribe on the same bimonthly schedule.

I knitted this cloche at the same time as Deb and um, I totally just never actually sewed the button on so it could be considered “finished”, and, you know, worn. I’m not a hat person so after this photo, it went on the hat rack but hey, I might get to a World Fantasy Con again and need a hat. If you care about pattern details, I’m attempting to be better at keeping my Ravelry projects current – come find me there as “girliejones”.

It was a quick and easy knit. And I like the yarn and the finished project. I think I ended up with close to one full ball of yarn leftover that did get added to my stash.

And that’s one knitting WIP done and finished. May the tally roll.

Related posts: Craft Space Organised

Today’s drink: Santo Antonio Estates – Brazil by Five Senses

Today’s total word count: 0

Year Total running word tally from (Nov 24): 17 594

Progress on: Completed knitting of Hoek Shawl, Entourage S5

In a nice case of multitasking I finally got round to organising my craft space.

In order to be able to do an inventory of what projects I have in progress (aka WIPs) and what projects I would like to get to or am excited about starting or having invested money in and completely forgotten about, I had to pull everything out and look at it.

GTD requires you to figure out the next action for every project you have on your radar. Without a next action you can’t actually progress something. And most of the time, when you don’t have a next action, it’s because you need to do some thinking around it, or some emotional development in relation to it. If you don’t have a next action and you aren’t planning on figuring out one, that project should not really be on your current projects list – you aren’t working on it, and you’re overloading your lists by having it there.

Getting reinvigorated with my GTD systems from the ground up, I decided to start with my craft projects (at some point I’ll move onto scarier things like thesis, and publishing). I started a new section in Omnifocus that is my current working space (at some point I’ll deal with all the other abandoned bits in that program) and I took inventory of everything in my craft life. I pulled out everything in my craft room, I fossicked for all the other stashed WIPs all round the house. Everything was accounted for and logged. And everything got a next action. If I didn’t want a next action for the project, I queried if I was really wanting to finish it. Sometimes the next action was – toss out, frog or unpick, – and those ones I did on the spot. A bunch of knitting projects that were stalled cause I hated how they were going got unpicked, the yarn restashed. Every other project got it’s own project bag and prepped to be grabbed to be worked on next.

And then I prioritised all my WIPs into what I will currently work on, what I will work on next (in an On Hold folder) and then Someday Maybe has projects I would like to start or would like to do. And the idea is, things On Hold get to be brought into WIPs one at a time as I finish one of the current active projects. Some of the current projects just needed buttons sewn on or ends finished up. Those went to the top of the pile and I already have some finished objects to blog about later. Here’s a screenshot of what the projects look like in Omnifocus:

A couple of shots of what some of these folders break down into:

Everything is dated 2014 for when it entered the system. New things that come in will get dated 2015 so that I can assess progress at the end of the year, assuming their is a constant number of projects but some turnover.

I really really enjoyed the process of GTDing the WIPs (ooh look at all those fancy abbreviations!). It helped me to see that putting something in On Hold is about being honest with myself about what I can realistically work on at the same time and what is splintering my attention too much. And that putting something On Hold til I have space is not forgetting about it, or not being committed to it, it’s time management. And I get to be excited about having space/time freed up by finishing something to grab a project from On Hold to work on. That excitement turns into a positive energy injection into finishing things that have become boring or tedious. I’m hoping this will help me when I face my scary study and work projects and next actions.

For my sewing projects, I located a bunch that just require me to buy batting so that I can baste and quilt the quilts. And a few that haven’t worked that I need to admit and just unpick. I also found that a few project kits I’d bought and put away as being too complicated for my skill level are now not so. I queued up a few and did things like cut templates and cut out all the pieces and pinned ready for sewing etc. And I located supplies that needed to be bought before I could proceed. And then I reorganised all my fun fat quarters and other fabric stash and put away all the rest of my supplies into a space that has already been proven to be much more fun to approach and work out of. It replaces a space that always required sorting through mess to find things, so progress was put off when locating the next supply was needed. The space was stressful because approaching it always called out it needed to be tidied or decisions made on abandoned things. I now have a craft cupboard that looks like this:

On the top shelf, my most prized part of my fabric stash. I stood and ironed all my fat quarters, and other pieces, and then made mini bolts to wrap them (see tutorial here). So much nicer to look at and also to take out and then put back on the shelf. The second shelf has quilt WIPs. Those on the left are finished tops with their paired backing just waiting for batting etc. (Underneath them is another Jinny Beyer kit project waiting to be started.) The middle has current piecing quilt WIPs. And the jars are my sorted scraps.

More jars of my scraps sorted by colour. Ages ago I bought some books on scrap projects and sorted all my piles (bags) of random scraps from other projects in preparation for some scrap quilts I want to make (like Sunday Morning Quilts). I’ve since realised these scraps are likely best for string scrap quilts and the fabric that is the rest of my stash (which is elsewhere to this cupboard) might actually be considered scrap. Knitting supplies to the right on that shelf. And below more quilt WIPs, jars of scrap fabric, and supplies in the boxes.

Not shown is the bottom shelf which has a basket with a whole bunch of knitting WIPs in bags ready to go.

This means that now my craft space is a place I can work out of rather than avoid. C is always annoyed because I leave craft all over the place and it’s usually because I’ve got nowhere to base myself for crafting. I also leave everything out in order, as I was working on it, to be able to pick it up and work on it again later. That is turning out to be a fallacy. I’ve discovered that packing away my current project at the end of the day doesn’t mean I will forget I was working on it the next day. It does though mean that my living spaces are clear and uplifting, and that all the things I need are always back where I expect them when I go looking for them. And if the “away” place is organised, I can actually work out of that organised storage space rather than co opt another one. So I can put the next stage of say a quilting project (the next pieces after the ones I am piecing) away and then go and get them when I’m up to them. It’s life changing! So much so that this one small act has flowed over for me to the rest of my life where I’m trying to put things back where they belong as soon as I’m done with them. Turns out maintenance is much easier than tidying up from first principles. (Honestly, I used to be a very neat and organised person. I think you never notice the habits of that kind of a life til you end up in the other extreme and have no idea how to get back.)

Today’s drink: La Pastora, Natural Catuai by Five Senses

Today’s total word count: 1596

Year Total running word tally from (Nov 24): 17 594

Progress on: More end of the year relaxing and knitting. Writing.

Posting around here has stalled because of a particular post I’m writing. If you can’t go through, go around, yeah? So instead, here is the list of 2013 Resolutions that I’m going to be working off in 2015 (and 2015 started Dec 2014…)

Here’s the list I wrote in 2013:

1. Learn to focus on the positive not the negative
2. Lose 5-8kg
3. Develop daily regimen
4. Commence PhD
5. Be regimented/routine for studying from home
6. Get back into running
7. Publish at least 3 12Ps
8. Publish 2 novels and anthology
9. Apply for every arts grant eligible for
10. Do TSW Arts Project
11. Grow TPP 20% on 2012
12. Win at LSS 2013
13. Read 20 books for fun
14. Blog every day
15. Get house to enjoyable living state
16. Start greening backyard
17. Cook more
18. Reduce yarn stash
    1. Create my own sock of the month club
    2. Challenge myself as a knitter
    3. Knit a new jumper
19. Reduce fabric stash
20. Learn to use a sewing machine
21. Reduce TBR queue
22. Spend more time with those I love
23. Get GTD to cruise control

I’m going to put 20 on hold to a Someday Maybe list.

Number 10 we did in 2013. And 7 and 8 I think we’ve kinda done in the last 2 years – I have the final Twelve Planet to deliver in 2015 and the bonus Thirteenth.

I’m actually kinda done with number 9. I’ve applied for a bunch of grants and I’m at a point where I believe that arts grants panels don’t want to fund SF/crime and I don’t think applications are a good use of my time, to be honest. I learned a lot in the process – we got incorporated and got our accounts audited. I have an accountant now who does our books and taxes each fin year. And we have budgets and marketing plans now for new books. But justifying why TPP is a press worthy of investing in? And writing 10 page reports on this and being told in the feedback at the end of the round that we needed to further justify that we are a press publishing titles of “literary worth” (direct quote)? It’s soul destroying.

2013 we did in fact grow sales by 20% – 28.12% actually. (Most of that came from ebooks – because backers of Kaleidoscope mostly backed at the ebook level, which was our strategy for that project. Larger print sales for Kaleidoscope came into the following year’s figures where print books sales outstripped ebooks, back to where our normal figures are.). The last several years our sales have grown around the 20-30% mark so setting that as a goal for 2015 seems quite reasonable.

So here’s how my to do list looks for 2015 aka New Years Resolutions.

1. Focus on the positive not the negative
2. Lose 5 kg
3. Develop daily regimen
4. Progress PhD
5. Develop a weekly work/study routine
6. Get back into running
7. Practice yoga daily
8. Deliver the final Twelve Planets! Woot!
9. Deliver 2015 publishing schedule and develop 2016 schedule
10. Run a successful crowdfunding campaign
    
11. Grow TPP 20% on 2014
12. Win at LSS 2015
13. Blog every day
14. Get house to enjoyable living state
15. Complete backyard project
16. Cook more
17. Reduce yarn stash
    1. Create my own sock of the month club
    2. Challenge myself as a knitter
    3. Knit a new jumper
18. Reduce fabric stash
19. Reduce TBR queue
20. Spend more time with those I love
21. Get GTD to cruise control
22. Reduce my tea stash!

These aren’t really auditable. How will I know if I’ve met them or not? Some I’ve rolled into each other and I’ve already started. With mt TBR queue, I have taken pics of the first wave (aka the post Wall of Shame Part 1) and am working on reading through all my nongenre books in the TBR first. This way I am demarcating work and leisure time. Once upon a time I used to read SF novels for fun. I want to get back to that place. So far, I’m back to reading a novel a week and I’m pretty happy with that. If I read 50 books in the next year I would be pleased with that. I’m also hoping I will knock out books I’m not enjoying so that I weed out the queue as well as work through it.

I’ve set up a section in OmniFocus for my sewing and my knitting projects. I might be more nerdy about the GTD side of that elsewhere but here I’ll say that I’m tracking what I actually finish and I’m only allowing a certain number of project to be “active” and worked on at anyone time. I’m also trying to finish off WIPs before starting new ones. If I can keep control of buying new yarn and fabrics in the year ahead and continue to stay the course on WIPs, I should meet the reduce stash goals, which will also meet the unstated “finish things I’ve started” one. I’ll post finished pieces as I go and do some kind of reconciling post at the end of 2015. Same goes for the house and the garden projects. These as well as a couple of others, fold into 20, Get GTD to cruise control. And some others require buy in from both me and C – eg the lose weight goal, we already follow the 12WBT program but I need to buy in properly to eating the meals each day. And the running goal will fold into that and the 12wbt whilst also picking up something I genuinely love at the same time.

The goals above are some of the things I want to do and are an attempt to capture something to tick off for a feeling or direction about the kind of life I want to live. They aren’t all, I guess, is what I mean. And they don’t fully capture it either. For example, reducing my stash is really about feeling like I am an active crafter who crafts with purpose and finishes projects. Reducing my TBR is about saying I’m not a book collector but a reader and finding a way to bring being a reader back into my daily life practice.

I’m going to think about what these goals really represent and what they should have been written as over the year and tinker with them for 2016. But they will do, for now.

Today’s drink: La Pastora, Natural Catuai by Five Senses

Today’s total word count: 1599

Year Total running word tally from (Nov 24): 15 998

Progress on: Relaxing end of year down time (knitting Hoek shawl and watching Entourage Box Set)

The book wall of shame, part 1

A photo posted by Alisa (@girliejonesadventures) on Dec 12, 2014 at 4:38am PST

Behold my Book Wall of Shame, part 1. First, I should apologise if you can see your book or a book you gifted or loaned me in this pile – I really like it, I do! I just actually haven’t finished a book in a very long time. Well, I read Landline a couple of months ago. And one or two other novels in the last year or more but otherwise, I’m not very good at finishing anything. But I’m getting better at saying that I’m not reading because that’s actually incorrect. I’ve read hundreds of short stories this year and a couple extra novels that I published, and I read those at least 3 but probably closer to 5 times each. And I read a lot of non fiction every day. But reading for leisure? That’s long since become a thing of the past. And that kinda makes me sad. That my “job” has made what used to be a hobby no longer fun, or possible.

It will not surprise you that one of the items on that heinous 2013 Resolutions list was something a) ridiculous and b) vague like Reduce my TBR queue. What does that mean? Does that mean a net reduction? Or a title reduction so that if new books in = books read, it’s still achieved? Truthfully, I want it to be both reduce the backlog of books I would like to have already read aka all the books that had buzz last year etc as well as stay on top of all the books that will have buzz or that I want to read. Be a reader! in other words. Which I realised the other day, is fine, as long as I don’t also want to be a quilter, a gardener, a knitter, and tidy my house and achieve the other 22 items on the resolutions list. I’ve been avoiding this item on my To Do List and possibly attacking the rest of the items on it because I just didn’t know how to work this one. My TBR is high, and deep, and filled with deep personal *feelings*. I’ve been stalling.

However! It came to me! The idea came to me after I was killing time on Friday waiting for C to get his haircut. I’d wandered to Big W (we now have Big W and 28 Specialty Shops! down our way, it’s a *big* deal) and ended up in the books section. Whereupon I found about 8 books I needed. I mean, wanted. I ended up buying two – The Rosie Effect, the sequel to The Rosie Project, which I loved, and a book about two women who comb England for the best high tea (yes, it’s a book with a whole heap of high tea menus and frivolity, I expect, and some kind of a love story, probably). I took these books home, felt slightly bad about adding to the TBR and then promptly started The Rosie Effect. And I’m enjoying it – it’s a quick read.

So this had me thinking, I have so much less expectation with non genre (SFF) books. I feel less judgement from others because I don’t really discuss the books I read and like outside of genre. I’m probably a very mainstream reader in other genres, and I don’t really care. I read those books for leisure and fun. And I tend to find myself wanting to come back and read another chapter. And if I don’t, I figure I’m not enjoying the book, it owes me nothing, and I ditch it. Noone judges you if you didn’t like a chick lit book. So. I have decided to rekindle the joy of reading books for fun. And I pulled out all the books from my TBR bookcase that are not SFF or horror  (but crime is okay). My dear husband wandered in in the middle of this and got excited cause he thought I was culling a whole heap of books. I also pulled out the YA – SFF or no – as a second wave. And the picture about is the books that I’m going to read over summer. Hahaha. Well maybe not. But they are books I am going to start and if I’m not enjoying I’m going to ditch so I expect to finish many of them in only a couple of days of reading or else move them along. The hope is that by the time I get to the end of this wall of books, I’ve retrained myself to read for fun again. And then I will look at the remainder of the TBR and the wishlist.  

A photo posted by Alisa (@girliejonesadventures) on Dec 12, 2014 at 11:26pm PST

Today’s drink: San Guillermo Costa Rica by Five Senses – weak because I scared the machine by running out of water

Today’s total word count: 604

Year Total running word tally from (Nov 24): 14 399

Progress on: Thesis data sets, scarf for xmas gift, filling book orders, emails, Garden Project commenced

Well, I tried to be somewhat restrained during the sales at the end of November. I can’t say that I feel bad (that I wasn’t) now that all my loot is arriving.

Fabric:

My favourite fabric store is the Fat Quarter Shop. I get their daily newsletter. That’s not always a healthy life choice. From their Black Friday sales, I grabbed these:

The fabrics on the left are a fat quarter bundle called Sewing Studio. They will go into my Farmers’ Wife quilt which I think I’m probably still collecting fabrics for, maybe. The ones on the right are just a grab of stuff I liked. The hot air balloons print is for the baby’s room, Paris map!! (I am collecting fabric maps of Paris for some reason – oh yeah, PARIS), tea cups, coat hangers and lingerie for the Farmers’ Wife quilt, coffee for a coffee themed quilt I’ll make Someday Maybe, flamingos for whimsy and more bras on the far end.

Just exciting enough to make me want to start a new project RIGHT NOW.

I also grabbed some fabrics from Jinny Beyer from her sale. My mum and I went halvesies on postage and ended up picking the same yards for 3 out of 4 of our choices (8 yards to the flat rate postage). The two prints on the end on the right are the ones we differed on. I’m looking forward to trying out some of the fussy cutting techniques I learned this year from Beyer’s Solstice quilt and so I bought more of her mirror image fabrics and some border pieces. Not quite sure but I might try some of her other stars in her big book of patterns with fussy cut piecing. The thing that makes the Solstice Quilt work, though, is the accompanying fabrics she ties in to the fussy cut pieces. Shall be intriguing!

Yarn:

I actually ended up being rather restrained on the yarn front this year.

• Firstly, we all know I don’t need any more yarn.
• Secondly, I don’t need any more yarn.
• Thirdly, Deb and I have plans for our own knit along thing next year with a whole heap of indie yarn companies we want to try so I maturely decided not to add more stash to the pile when I already feel yarn overload.

Yeah, I dunno, weirdly I was in some kind of ruthlessly realistic mode that Friday. Also, I screwed up one of the sales pretty early on and decided that was it from me for the buying. And, that’s the third year in a row with that particular store that my Black Friday experience has been less than awesome so … I might sit next year’s out. HOWEVER, look at the most gorgeous yarn I bought from them … so …

The middle skein is Tough Love Sock yarn in Snapdragon from SweetGeorgia Yarns and I’ve been eying off that colourway for YEARS. It’s just divine! I kinda feel like it should become socks for me but then I’ve been disappointed with the socks I’ve been making of late. Maybe a shawl? (How many shawls does one person need, do you think? Is it more or less than 26?)

The two skeins on the outside are a whim that I bought, to try something new (I’m in a yarn rut, have I mentioned this previously?). The yarn is by Yarn Love in Elizabeth Bennett (Merino/Silk/Bamboo blend) in the colourway … wait for it … Fairy Tale. TELL ME how you don’t buy that??? Again, socks?? Meh. I’m in a knitting rut too.

I think I’m only waiting for one more parcel of yarn.

Artisan Jam

And not yarn, not bought on sale or on Black Friday, but that finally arrived – OMG artisan jam!!! OMG.

This is by Just Add Moonshine and OMG. Deserves a post of its own. With tasting comments.

Today’s drink: San Guillermo Costa Rica by Five Senses (no photo!)

Today’s total word count: 408

Year Total running word tally from (Nov 24): 13 795

Progress on: TV watching (Doctor Who, Jane The Virgin), Dream in Color Shrug, decluttering the dining room

A few Saturdays ago now (how does time do that? Seriously, I blink and suddenly it’s December and my baby is kinda walking), I spent a night alone in a hotel. To relax. And spend time aloooone. It was very surreal – I had lunch in the city with friends and we tried out a new high tea place. It was fine. The highlight was catching up with them for two+ hours and hearing how everyone was doing. And getting lots of tips and recs for things! After tea, I headed off to my hotel to hang out by myself. It was odd. I popped out once to grab coffee and a muffin (Perth CBD is not really awesome if you want coffee at 3.15 FYI) and a second time to grab dinner (9Marys – the eggplant curry was delish). But otherwise, I holed up in my room.

It was the very first night I’ve spent apart from the baby. Ever. I packed five different craft projects. And downloaded latest episodes of several of my favourite podcasts. I made sure I had work and reading on my laptop. I settled in for Me Time. And I had a really great time. It’s been ages since I could catch up on podcasts and I finally got to listen to the final episode of my all time favourite Cast On by Brenda Dayne. It’s a knitting podcast and my example of one of the best ways to priduce a single host podcast. It’s been nine years now, and Brenda feels her project is complete and it’s time to move on to others. It was a really sad podcast for me, what will I do without the dulcet tones of Brenda Dayne to soothe in my hardest of days? I’ve listened to her to quell panic attacks in LAX and on public transport during my hardest of anxiety days back in the very dark early 2000s. She’s made hours and hours of my long commutes not only bearable, but fun. I’ve listened to her regale Today’s Sweater and traditional dyeing and spinning methods in Wales and her gardening escapades. Who will tell me now that if it’s cold, I should put on a sweater, that’s what their for??? I admit I shed a tear or two. I shall miss her dearly. I spent the hour or so sewing on a new project I dug out during my craft room clear out and declutter. More on that hopefully soon!

After the final ever episode of Cast On. I listened to the first, or close to first, episode of new podcast I found on GTD – GTD Virtual Study Group. I’ve listened to probably all or at least most of the podcasts available on David Allen’s website (and have a membership to Connect because I am deeply deeply embedded within the cult) and I just wanted something new/more. This podcast is a recorded group phone call and it looks like different members take turns presenting the session. The first episode of is titled “Tackling Immunity to Change” and I liked the sound of it because maybe that’s what my problem is in not getting any of my 2013 To Do List done. Well, maybe that’s what part of the problem is? Obviously the other part was that they weren’t written as achievable goals that lent themselves to easily broken down parts for action.

This episode drew on two books that basically address why you have a stumbling block to achieving change. the presenter asked you to pick just one Big Thing you want to work on about yourself. Then she talked you through the process of breaking down why it is that you aren’t whatever the opposite is – so, say you picked “Be a better listener”, then why aren’t you a good listener? I picked wanting to be better at GTD, or having GTD at cruise control, mostly because, well, why am I listening to this podcast otherwise?

The process involved soul searching to figure out what it was that you most fear about doing the thing that you are resisting (ie want to change) and what would be the Dire Consequence if that thing you feared happened. This was such an interesting process. As I worked through it, I uncovered that I think my worst fear is of missing an idea. Or missing a great idea. So in the case of my GTD practice, for “stuff” that is yet unprocessed – undealt with emails, items in my in tray, jobs left to start, even – there is still the possibility of my not missing a hidden idea. Once I’ve done the capturing process I could have missed something and lost it forever. That is my fear. And I guess extrapolating from that, doing something, or choosing a path, automatically cancels out the other option/s. And what if they were better/right/correct? Drilling down into that to find the Dire Consequence, I think, that’s missing or wasting an opportunity, or a chance to do something or making an irretrievable mistake. Or that the idea will be too hard for me to nut out how to solve/execute it.

What you then were required to do is to point out to yourself, in your daily life going forward, every time this Dire Consequence is proved false, that it’s a false consequence. So, for example, if your fear is that asking for help will make you look weak or stupid, notice how many times after you ask for help, people are willing or actually want to help you and how they don’t think you are stupid. In my case, I began to process my “stuff” and as I moved further through my in tray, I discovered that actually I come up with the same idea several times. I’ll leave myself the same idea on different pieces of paper or I’ll write very similar notes/conclusions about thoughts (I’ll wrote the exact same Resolutions To Do List two years apart). That actually, I step through the same thought process more than one time. Meaning, it’s ok if I miss an idea. I’ll probably catch it the next time through i.e. FILE that piece of paper as reference, trust I captured all I needed to from it for my Actions To Do List and MOVE ON WITH MY LIFE. The standing paralysed by fear of missing anything is self fulfilling. If I don’t do anything about something, I will definitely miss/waste the opportunity. Something only done 80% as well as I think I can do it is better than not at all (and still an A+). And funnily enough, I often say that sometimes there is no right or wrong decision or choice, you just choose one and move forward. My own rhetoric proves the false consequence.

It was a very interesting hour, in any case. I’m still not at GTD cruise control and in fact all my lists I was making at the time are currently sitting in my in tray waiting for processing. But this idea of missing/wasting has been an interesting one to dissect. I think it’s why I read so slowly so I’ve been challenging myself to let go the idea that I need to memorise books as I read them. That it’s okay if I miss some vague description or a bit of the subplot or whatever. And I’ve been trying to put things away after I finish working with them for the day – be that PhD materials or craft supplies – because I don’t need to leave things out to remind myself I am working on them. The False Dire Consequence is that I will forget what I was working on and never come back and finish it. But actually, an ordered life where everything is where you need to find it when you go looking makes for a much happier and productive life. Who knew??

I think the same reason is why I fear the weekly review. That doing a review of all my projects and what I need to do next on them draws a line under them and I might miss things. Or it requires you to trawl through reference material for projects and with the fear of missing something I think this means doing it from first principles every week. Or if I don’t do it this thoroughly every time, that I might be missing ideas. Or that these will be the only ideas I ever have. Well, that and that it would take all day because I have so many projects going that I like to believe I am currently working on. I’ll work on that later.

Not long after doing this podcast workshop, I was in my counselling session and we were talking through why I try to do so many things. I had also recently listened to another episode of the same podcast where Leo Babauta (The Zen Habits guy) had been talking about how you should just pick the 5 things most important to you in life and work on those and anything that didn’t make that list you should quietly ease out of your life because they aren’t a priority. This gave me quite a panic because my list is probably 50 things and they are all a priority! So my counsellor was all “let’s unpack that” and we discussed why I feel such an urgency to do so many things. And really all I could keep coming back to is that I don’t/can’t waste time and I have a fear of wasting time and I have so much that I want to get done.

I think in part, a characteristic I have long worked on is “to strive to be better” but the thing about striving for something is that you never get there – which makes sense when you want to be sure you push yourself to achieve beyond what you believe you can do or to contribute to improve, be better, be more than. All good things. But the problem is, that means you never achieve, or you never feel happy when you achieve. And it falls into the “you can never be too rich or too thin” etc. Can you ever be happy? Can you ever feel that you deserve to enjoy your wins?

All open ended thoughts because I didn’t come to any real conclusions in that session other than maybe I am in a bit of an existential crisis of sorts. Questioning what my personal meaning of life is. But at least the conclusions I have taken away so far are not to be afraid of missing ideas. I have plenty and sometimes the same ones over and over It’s okay to let them go. And that’s something. I guess?

Today’s drink: San Guillermo Costa Rica by Five Senses

Today’s total word count: 2184

Year Total running word tally from (Nov 24): 13 387

Progress on: writing, running, knitting projects

Here are a couple of great vids I’ve enjoyed this week:

I met Books and Pieces at Loncon and she’s as lovely and funny in real person as she is in her Youtube vids. Here she talks about her November reads and her December TBR and she is hilarious. Also I like to note that Kaleidoscope is sitting rather closely nuzzled to Ancillary Sword there.

Hey! Felicia Day has an anounccccceeemennnnt:

I quite enjoyed a short vid of this interview of Oprah Winfrey at Stanford that I came across so I watched the whole hour. It’s not new material if you’ve watched a lot of recent Winfrey production but I still like to hear a lot of her thoughts over and over.

And hey! Did you hear that we released a new book title at Twelfth Planet Press yesterday? You didn’t?! Well! Let me tell you! The eleventh volume of the Twelve Planets (you see how close were are now? Do you see it??? Sooooo clooooose) The Female Factory by Lisa L Hannett and Angela Slatter arrived in print form at my house yesterday:

Every every every time I open a box of a new title, Amanda blows me away by how much prettier her book covers are in person than the images I’ve been peering over on screen, and I always love those to start with. We did it! We made another book in 2014! (Yes, my husband made me award myself a gold star for that.) And this one is fab! We’re offering the ebook add on for every print book purchase in December 2014. And thanks to Charles Tan, we were able to publish the ebook on the same day as the print for this one! So everyone who had already preordered the book (should have) got the ebook emailed to them last night. (Email me if you didn’t get yours. For those who had prepaid for the ebook as well, we’re offering any other ebook in our catalogue in exchange – email me if you didn’t get the email to organise that!) It’s a book bonanza!! Wheee!!!

Today’s drink: Chuang Hong “river red” Black Tea from Monstrositea

Today’s total word count: 758

Year Total running word tally from (Nov 24): 11 203

Progress on:  Bit of intray management, writing and prep for some upcoming blog posts, finished my knitting stash audit for To Do List 2015 Project

I have a bunch of half written posts here which is leading to a lot of posting procrastination. I’ll just pop those over to the side though. It’s 10pm and I’m being a bit naughty. I’m hanging on the couch. The house is asleep. I’m watching terrible television and crafting guiltfree.

I had a mixed bag of a day. Today was supposed to be step 1, first day of getting my garden project underway. The bobcat was to arrive and dig out the top layer of sand/couch in my backyard and take it all away so I could start from scratch etc. And then a landscaper was possibly dropping in to give me a quote on some planned works. Well, the bobcat and two big trucks did arrive. And after a short briefing, they set off to work, pulling off my side gate for access before deciding to check the tip fees for my waste. Yes well. I’m very grateful that they did since apparently the disposal of the mixed waste of sand and grass is a heinous crime the punishment of which is exorbitant tip fees. Like almost my whole project budget. So. My backyard did not have the ground works break. And I did not spend the day project managing (I wanted them to dig in soil improver and clay, build a mound for part of the interest features we are creating, and take out some trees and my hills hoist washing line). Meanwhile, I’d not managed to coordinate my enormous volume of mulch to be delivered in time anyway.

I decided instead to go to mummy’s group. Which was a nice place to hang, especially with a bit of a ratty and bored almost-toddler. My crew do make me laugh. But I would have baked J a birthday cake if I’d known I would have been going. Or a batch of brownies – we’re doing an experiment to see how many weeks in a row I can bring the brownies before they get tired of them. (No signs yet.)

I’m pretty keen to get this project started though. I can not stand my barren wasteland backyard anymore. It’s glaring and sandy and sunny with no shade or any nice places to just sit and hang. No space for babies to go out and play. Not really anything interesting for the dogs. And I really wanted to have this done for the summer break – with C home on leave, I thought it would be a nice space to have to relax. Not gonna happen so I have to suck it up for now.

The landscaper guy didn’t turn up today either. Maybe tomorrow.

But! All was not lost! When I got home from mummy’s group, I did a double take when I realised the boxes piled at my front door were in fact The Female Factory! The printer had said delivery by Dec 12 but I was a bit skeptical, I admit. But there they were! We published a book! And they are beautiful, always prettier than the jpg file, I find. So that was exciting! And just as I was rolling out all the ebook preorders today as well. So at least I know that tomorrow I’m doing envelope addressing! We made another book this year! Yay! I get a gold star!

And now? I dunno. Now I think I’m just admitting today was a bit subpar and I’m gonna catch up on some TV and just let it go.

Shownotes

In which we help you with your (possibly last minute) Christmas shopping with a ton of our favourite recommendations from the year, plus culture consumed.

Don’t forget to send us your recommendations for the GS Award: for activism and/or communication that advances the feminist conversation in the field of speculative fiction

Christmas gift suggestions!!

Thursday, Tor.com featured an excerpt from Lisa Hannett and Angela Slatter’s story “Vox” from their forthcoming collection The Female Factory. You can read the teaser here.

I’m getting pretty excited to see this volume of The Twelve Planets in print. I’ve signed off on the printer’s proofs and am expecting the books to arrive next week some time. I’m sure it will be Wednesday as that is the least convenient day for me to be getting a delivery. We’ve got a few more things happening head of the release date. Can’t wait to share!

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I got lost in what words I’d written when this week and couldn’t do my tallies. This one is just the tallies to this morning (aka up til yesterday) so that I can keep track and moving forward.

Today’s drink: New coffee blend – Rose Street

Today’s total word count: 5042

Year Total running word tally from (Nov 24): 8350

Progress on: Baked breakfast muffins for next week and a zucchini slice for the baby; almost completed the craft WIP audit for 2015; soil improver delivered (Garden Project).

Rough counselling session yesterday. Rough in the sense that there were more questions than answers, more work to be done. Maybe that’s not so different to usual but it’s the first time in a very long  while (maybe since I first started seeing her) that my next appointment is in two weeks and not a month. And worse, it’s possible what I’m having is an existential crisis – what is the point of life? Etc. And I’m guessing that’s not a quick fix.

I have no idea why this post is so hard to write. I’ve been working on it all week. Balance is a weird thing. Or maybe it’s not weird at all. Maybe it’s a completely fictional concept. Something to strive for but to be okay about never actually getting. That’s what Elizabeth Gilbert thinks – that it’s just another bullshit way to make women feel bad about themselves – and I kinda think she’s onto something with that. That’d be because I’ve been feeling bad about myself lately. I spent all last week down, and pretty frustrated, at me, at things, at the lack of time in a week. People say “but hey you had a BABY last year” and that’s true, I did. And they say “don’t worry [about your laundry, the state of your house, what you eat, what you look like etc etc]” but they don’t really mean that, do they? They still judge you, your house, why you haven’t done whatever it is they think is the thing you should have already done by now.

I’ve been frustrated. Frustrated that I don’t have enough time and that I won’t ave enough time in the year to come to get everything I want to get done done. Sure the obvious response to that is “move your deadlines” but the problem is that I don’t want to. I also don’t want to deprioritise anything. Frustrated that my brain feels like it doesn’t work the way it used to.

I work after the baby goes to sleep for the night. If she goes down at 6pm, I can get maybe 6 hours straight of working done. I have Skype meetings with coeditors in this time. I do my work and my research. And really, 6 hours is a pretty good chunk of time. Sure I might be trying to squeeze some me time in then too but what am I? Greedy? The problem is that I still have a pretty severe case of baby brain. I still have gaps in my vocabulary and my brain still doesn’t work as sharply. It *feels* like it doesn’t work as fast, but maybe that’s just that I have less actual time in the day and I’m still expecting the same output (or the same output plus 20%). But last week. Oh last week. Everything I touched after 9.30pm, I broke. And I mean really broke. I ended up screwing a book up so badly it had to be remade 3 times. I had tided my craft cupboard into one worthy of a pic on any self-respecting Pinterest board and in one rash decision to resize the shelving spaces, the entire contents ended up in a Hoarders Buried Alive mountain on the floor in front of it due to a horrible miscalculation of structural integrity. There might have been tears.

Meh. Things got dire. I’m pretty down on my myself, on everything I’m trying to get done, on all the things on my to do list that even a year won’t be enough time to do. On all the things I’m not getting done. On the state of my house, my studies, my press, my unfinished craft. You name it, I suck at it. And how. My lovely husband booked me a night away in a hotel. I suspect I was getting a tad stressful to be around. It was a nice moment to try and short circuit my downwards spiral.

I’m not in a great headspace. And I can see where this all leads and I can tell you that I ain’t sliding back into the abyss. I’ve got me a pretty overstuffed bag of tricks here to fight back with. The abyss might be waving at me but I’m flipping it the bird. Last week I skipped all social activities and that was bullshit. This week I’ve done better at that and gone to mothers’ group and hung out with people who get a lot of this.

On Monday, I woke up and decided to start running again. It’s so weird how you can just not feel like doing something like running for two years and then suddenly change your mind. I’ve been trying to do (any) one of the 12WBT workouts for weeks now and just can’t find myself enthused. Michelle Bridges even has a learn to run program but I’ve never had much success following it. I decided to return to the Couch to 5k program because I’ve done it before and kinda loved it. Plus I already had the app on my phone. And OMG it felt great. I live about 1km from the ocean so I had this delicious breeze which just smelt and tasted revitalising. My tunes (I went for the Pitch Perfect soundtrack) reminded me how much I love music. And as I threw myself into that first run, which wasn’t too bad at all, I remembered that this is exactly the way to fend off frustration and depression.

I’ve made some progress this week. I finally managed to get my grand garden project off the ground. I’ve taken my before photos and today the first delivery of soil improver has been dumped on my front lawn ready for next week. Step 1 will happen and from there, step 2, hopefully, to get some lawn in. I’ve nearly finished organising my craft cupboard and started work on my 2015 to do list (as in how to tackle some of it). I started running. I’ve cut down on the coffee I’ve been drinking and increased drinking water. I sent a book to Print. I’ve worked on ebooks and other books in progress. I had a great meeting with my Phd Supe. I’ve taken some podcast workshops and set other things up. Progress has happened. I’m still not in a great headspace but I can see a way forward, at least. I’m not going down without a fight.