Death and taxes? Let's hold off on the death bit right now

Should be doing instead of blogging: Sleeping. Either that or my taxes. I think I'll go to bed after I post this...leave the number crunching for tomorrow.

Why is doing taxes always a pain, even when your situation isn't very complicated? Unfortunately, my mind tends to shut down when I'm doing something that involves calculating numbers. I've been told it's because I'm a writer, because I'm a woman, and because some people just don't have a head for numbers. I don't believe that, but a lifetime of psychology is hard to break. Also, I do remember having a tough time with math during the few years I was in public school. Imagine if I owned that business I have on my future goals list. I'd definitely need an accountant to manage that for me (actually, it's mostly that financial/tax law bit that's kept me from starting up my own business so far. The actual business management part sounds doable, and I could deal with the marketing).

It sounds like something I need to break up into next actions...I really need to buy a new copy of Getting Things Done now that I'm pretty sure I'll never get my own copy back (oh, well, it went to a good cause). Actually, I could stand to break up all my current tasks into next actions. It's definitely time to review GTD.

Halfelven needs sleep

Should be doing instead of blogging: Working on my book. But at least I'm generating some sort of written output.

Insomnia's a bitch. Well, I do eventually get to sleep, but when you have enough days where you've spent a great deal of time tossing and turning in bed, then combine them with a cold and the incoming crimson tide, the result is a fairly sucky week.

I put it to some use this morning, writing some fiction since sleeping wasn't happening, anyway. It's also given me some time to think about many random things. I feel like I haven't made any progress at all towards my goals. Granted, the combination of sleeplessness, sickness, and girl issues can't possibly help me here, but I'm very negative towards myself even on a good week. I'm thinking that instead of beating myself up about having a pile of craft supplies I'm still trying to figure out how to sort and store, or about not making much progress on my book, I need to take some time to work internally and shape up my attitude. After all, how much progress am I going to make if I'm not positive and confident that I can accomplish my goals? If nothing else, maybe it will make me a nicer person.

It's worth a shot, right? I need to develop the specifics of this plan and put it into action.

Filing Doesn't Have to be Scary

It's my front desk partner-in-crime's first day on a two-week vacation and I also managed to muck up my boss' office supply order, giving me more work for the afternoon. Therefore, today was a little more hectic than usual, and left me little time for continuing my Snowflake novel planning. I did, however, take the time at lunch to read a bit about antagonists to see if I could fix my shallow "bad guy" a bit. The pocket in the back of my moleskine filled to bulging until I could bring my notes home to transfer them to the computer.

On the non-work/writing front, I also get to tuck those notes into a special file folder in my **new** filing system. It's been about a week since I set it up, and I'm still amazed at just how useful a general reference filing system is. Instead of having a pile of writing notes, sushi recipes and organizing ideas cluttering up my desk, it's neatly stored away and easily accessible. Before reading GTD, I only thought of a filing system as something to stick my banking and credit card statements in. It's incredible to not only put things in their places, but also know that new things are easily assigned places, too.

Here are some things I've learned from rereading about filing in my now dog-eared copy of GTD:

• A folder for a weird category isn't stupid if you have material for it
  
• Folders hang better in open-bottom filing drawers if you only have one manila folder in each hanging folder
• Hanging folders are a pain, and only worth the trouble if you have an open-bottom filing drawer
• Folder labels made with a labelmaker look so nice and uniform in a filing drawer
• Both the files and the filing supplies must be easy to reach if you want to keep up on your system
• You probably don't need half the crap in your evil "to file" pile
• Comfortable old chairs are for reading in, not for the "to file" pile (well, I indirectly learned this one after I cleared the junk out of one of my major piling hotspots, discovered that it really was a chair, and moved it so I could easily reach it)

I'm not completely contented with my living space yet, but it's a lot more comfortable. I'm still trying to figure out how I managed to spend so much of my life living in so much mess.

Tougher than Decluttering

This is where I jump from decluttering and to another goal: writing the damn novel.

The thing that makes novel writing so difficult actually isn't that you have to write the thing. Writing is easy. I sit at the front desk and write pages on slow afternoons...it's one of the few things I really like about my current position in that company. I write at home. I write while I'm waiting somewhere, if I'm not reading.

It's the focusing on what you're writing part that makes novel writing so hard. I have to force myself to stand still for a moment and say "What part of this vast universe that I've created shall I write about?"

And then I have to figure out who I'm writing about, and that's harder. When you've been steadily conculturing since you were eight, you amass so many characters that you forget more of them than you could possibly fill a book with. Considering I've been conculturing and trying to find character storylines since I was eight, forgetting a great number of characters can be a good thing (at least the two or so that did survive have evolved so much that the only way I know that they came from those old drafts is because I created them in the first place).

So, I've decided against officially joining NaNoWriMo since I've already started on my latest attempt at picking a spot and person to write about. This attempt is fueled by Randy Ingermanson's Snowflake Method, which I'm currently thrilled with simply because it's helped me pinpoint that person and spot thing, as well as help me work through a storyline that doesn't sound completely lame. Time will tell on that one, though.

So there's yet another goal of mine. I'll make sure it's on the list, between "Declutter Living Space" and "Invest in Mutual Fund".

Progress through Confetti

Observation of the week: decluttering is so much easier with a good paper shredder close at hand.

Now that I'm to the last bit of visible clutter in my room (my bathroom's another story that'll have to be dealt with later), I find myself procrastinating on finishing it. It's my perfectionism kicking in, or so FlyLady tells me. I don't want to finish something because it's not done perfectly. I've been a lot better at recognizing that since I admitted it to myself sometime last year, though actually finishing something is still a lot harder for me than starting something.

But back to procrastination and paper shredders. One thing that gives me the perfect procrastination excuse is the shredding pile. I have some perfectly normal junk mail in there, but among the more ridiculous things I had earlier in this pile was countless credit card offers unopened and dating back to before I started college. Considering I'm well established as a graduate, I think it's time to get rid of them. However, the household paper shredder is super cheap, only shreds five pages at a time, and its bin fills up far too quickly. I spent a good few hours one weekend this past summer just going through and shredding the two-crates-full "to shred" pile. I found a lot more things to shred when I went through my craft supplies. Maybe my biggest source of mess wasn't the craft supplies after all.

Well, I've recognized for some time that I won't regularly go out to the family room and shred my junk mail, so I finally went out after work one day this week and bought Staples' Mailmate shredder. I haven't owned it a full week, and it's already well worth the money I spent on it. I don't even have to open the AmEx offers, and I can run the old backup CDs through without taking the extra time to scratch the label and/or cut the disc apart. Because of this, I haven't had paper and CD crap laying all over my desk this week. The only pain about the shredder is that the basket is small, so I have to empty it often. Hopefully emptying it won't happen so often once I get my papers and discs more under control.

It's nearly official: I've moved all of my giveaway boxes into the car so they can go out tomorrow. I still can't believe I maintained the discipline to go through each of those craft boxes and completely process them to empty.

The amount of space in the room is great. There's a good feeling about it, because it doesn't exist simply because I've shoved everything into the closet. Granted, I still need to go through my clothes again (I'm due for another wardrobe purging), and I haven't worked on the bathroom, yet, but there's something about knowing that the majority of your possessions have a place.

There's still a lot to do. Now, I have to go through my non-crafty possessions. However, I have fewer of those (and if I don't, it sure feels like I do), so I don't feel like this will take an eternity. Now to maintain the discipline to carry this through to a comfortably tidy living space.

Decluttering Milestone Reached!

The craft closet is officially cleaned out! I haven't been this thrilled since I got the new job earlier this year. *note to self: get life*

One thing I noticed as I was sorting was that the higher the shelf that I pulled the box from, the fewer items I wanted out of the box. That closet has five shelves. I kept almost nothing that I pulled off the top two. I had the shelves put in at least a year ago, and I didn't sort through and purge my long-kept supplies before I started throwing stuff into the newly-shelved closet, so some of this forgotten junk has taken up space in this room for at least a couple of years. Some of it has been around even longer. I'm still trying to figure out why I allowed myself to waste that much space with so much junk for so long. It's very unproductive, even if it is stashed away in a closet. I may not see it all the time, but I know it's there, creating mental clutter as well as visual clutter. Eww.

I was asked a question recently: "So, if you're getting rid of a lot of your craft supplies, does this mean you're going to craft less?" No. Crafting is one of my major hobbies. What I don't want to do is have so much stuff around that I can't find the good stuff in my stash. I'd rather keep a smaller stash fresh than sift through a lot of lousy stuff I've been holding onto for years. After all, what good is a crafting stash if you don't use it?

Checking Out GTD

I'm not a GTDer yet, but from what I'm seeing so far, I like David Allen's system.

After seeing GTD come up in a lot of places, getting curious about the GTD cards in the Hipster PDA templates I found and was playing with a while ago, and because of my natural attraction to an interesting-looking productivity system, I bought the book I've had on my mental wishlist for months now.

I've been reading for the past two days, either on lunch break, in that block of time I have between work and aerobics class, and in the evening before I go to bed (not so much then...since I got this job, I haven't been so keen on staying up until 2 a.m. and now I find I'd be happy to be asleep by 11 or 11:30 most days...now to convince myself that's a good thing and actually do it). Tomorrow, when I'm more awake and don't have somewhere to be after work, I'm going to collect as much as I can in two hours and put it into my "in" box.

It has to be worth a shot. For one thing, Allen advocates the use of a label maker, and I've wanted one of those since I was a little kid, anyway. That little detail currently puts him on my "cool author" list (which is also currently contained in my head). I've put off that purchase for years, since I'm so cheap, anyway, so here was an excuse (whee! productivity tools!). It's probably a good thing I didn't have a label maker back when I was heavily conlanging, though, or I'd have labelled everything in different forms of constructed elvish.

Back to the old habits

I've been working this week on establishing systems so that I don't have to think about the routine things I do. Lately, just my routines (or my lack thereof) start to zap my energy, and I end up just wasting time in front of the computer. Now, I know I don't have to live like this...I did well when I kept a Control Journal when I followed FlyLady's system. However, after I stopped FlyLady's system (sometime after I unsubscribed from her list...the email clutter was getting stressful), the daily routines that kept me going gradually stopped.

So recently, after discovering Zen Habits, I read the article Streamlining Your Life and said to myself, "Hey! I do this! Did...something like this...at some point...though now it's hardly there." On a positive note, making my bed in the morning and laying out my clothes the night before stuck even after many of the other routines I established fell apart.

Anyway, as I was reading, I remembered why routines (Leo at Zen Habits calls them "systems", and I like the sound of that for whatever reason) are so useful: they keep you from having to stress over the everyday things. When you're not wasting energy stressing over the constant things like errand running, laundry and remembering when your appointments are, you get to use that energy doing something useful and enjoyable, like decorating, altering books or using the gym membership you took out and have only used once in the past two and a half weeks. It's a bit of structure to free up creative time, which satisfies both sides of my fairly balanced brain.

I started re-establishing my own systems, taking into account the changes that have happened in life over the past several months, and even started following the ones I've revisited. Life's already starting to feel saner.

Now to get that gym time in.