My To Do List for Week One of 2011 – NOT a Resolution

I’m not making resolutions this year.

Day by day, step by step, conscious decision by conscious decision.

That’s the only way I’ve found to make progress in this deslobification thing I’m doing.

So rather than share a bunch of “Imgonnas” for the entire year, I’ll share a few “I’m going tos” for this week.  Some will hopefully affect the rest of the year, but they’re things that can be checked off a list in the very near future.

Because my attention span rarely lasts longer than the very near future.

Starting tomorrow, I’m going to implement my new daily routine.

This isn’t a big change or a complete re-working.  It’s re-prioritizing for my current season of life.  I shared in my blogging goals that I’m in my last school-semester of having a child at home full time.  We’ve worked randomly on numbers and letters and sounds and such, but for this last chunk of time, I want to have more structured learning times.

My current routine is this:  Drop the boys off at school, work on my Bible Study, do my cleaning task for the day, and then randomly choose another thing to do.  Sometimes it’s a decluttering project, sometimes it’s a spur-of-the-moment learning activity with my daughter, sometimes it’s a kitchen task, but whatever it is, it’s random.  Then we eat lunch, and my daughter has independent-play-time while I blog.

So I’m adding two new things to my definite-every-day-before-I-can-justify-random-piddling list.

I wanted to only add one.  Learning time with her.

But then . . . my dear, sweet, encouraging husband asked me a question as he braced himself for a less-than-happy response.  He said something like, “I know how frustrated you’ve been about not exercising.  How are you going to work in a time to do it?”

While my initial response was less than sweet, I’m thankful that he asked.  Because he’s right.  If I don’t designate a time, it won’t happen.  So I’m putting it in after learning time.

Here’s a general time schedule.  The amounts of time spent on each thing may change a little day by day, but I need to write specifics down to give myself an idea of how much time I’m really talking about.

8:00 a.m. – Bible Study

8:30 a.m. – Exercise

9:00 a.m. – Learning time.

10:00 a.m. – Daily cleaning task.

11:00 a.m. – Decluttering task, etc.  Random piddling.

Noon – Lunch

12:45 – 2:45 – Blog.

3:00 – Pick up boys and begin afternoon/evening routine.

Looking at that schedule . . . I see that it is possible to get the things done that I need to do.

But my free-spirit creative side is grieving.  Because there’s not a lot of time in there for anything else.

Anything . . . . fun.

Which is why I’m not declaring this law for 2011.  I’ve written down the things that I need to do each day.  Now, by actually doing them, I’ll figure out how they will realistically work.  Perhaps I can get two cleaning tasks done on one day and free up another day for more time to devote to a project.

Day by day.  Step by step.  Conscious decision by conscious decision. 

Stay tuned as I share more things that I’m doing this week to affect the rest of the year.

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