Small Victories

I find nothing more overwhelming than a massive “to do” list, where you have 87 things that all have to be done right now. Unfortunately as of late I’ve let myself get tricked into looking at the big picture, when what I need to do is stop and focus on small details and victories that I can get done, and let them add up over time.

(Earlier this year I did that to get rid of a lot of old clothes and things I no longer needed, and it worked pretty well.)

On the bright side, now that I’ve started to shift back to smaller projects, things are getting done. One of the big projects that’s been on my list for a while is to clean up the bookshelves, which are choked with extra stacks of books on their side here and there and everywhere; it’s a royal mess. I’ve been focusing on just one or two shelves at a time; pulling the extra books off, finding homes for them, and (in the process) trying to figure out if there are other things on the shelves they’re going towards that I could instead find a good home for, or donate to charity. I’d say about half of the bookshelves in my room are now looking great, so I’m getting there.

The one downside is that I now have about eight bags of stuff that need to be sorted through in order to leave, but that has to wait until the library starts taking donations again, which will be later this month.

The other project, which I’m aiming to start tackling next week, will be to go through my t-shirts and polo shirts and weed out ones I no longer wear and donate them. I have way too many of both type of shirt and could really stand to get rid of a lot. (I like to pretend I could get rid of half of them. If I actually hit 25% I will be pleased.) Since the temperature is shifting to cooler weather it’s time to rotate back out the long-sleeved shirts anyway, so it’s as good a time as any.

Last but not least, after having let it stall out 2 1/2 years ago (yeesh), I finally started scanning in more of the beautiful sketches artists have drawn for me in my wine-themed sketchbook, and starting tomorrow they’ll start showing up on Wednesdays again. You can see the past drawings through this link, and it’ll be fun to start sharing some more of them. The sketches I scanned in yesterday only take me to the end of July 2002, so there are still a lot to come. I finally finished up the book at SPX this year, so it felt like the time was right to get them up and out there again.

(How the heck is it already October?)