Update on New Ways of Thinking

Months ago I posted about having a new mind for the new year. Here's a quick update on that "new" mind. 

First, in spite of being excited and inspired by the principles espoused by Mr. Money Mustache, we are not quite Mustachian, but we're getting there. 

I want to blame Kat for our slow progress. She is the perpetual project-making machine. Always starting a project around the house, and never an inexpensive one (is there such a thing?) On the plus side, she is a focused worker, always finishes what she starts, and her projects do improve our quality of life. 

The latest is a re-do of our back patio, converting it from ugly, bumpy, impossible to walk on, concrete molds to a beautiful, natural flagstone and crushed granite. And on top — an inflatable hot tub. I wasn’t too keen on the latter, but it was relatively inexpensive, and it feels so luxurious relaxing in it during our meltingly hot summer days. I hold so much tension in my shoulders that it causes me headaches, and those have been less frequent. Overall a great stress reliever with a cost of just under $1,000.00, paid cash because of actually being better about not consuming what we don’t need. 

One day though I want us both to adopt a more saving mentality rather than a consuming one. We have more money because we’re consuming less and have cut back on many bills, such as cable (gone), but that doesn’t mean we have to spend it just because we have it. Some does get saved, but not near enough by my estimation. This is an on-going battle, both with Kat and with my own wants. As satisfying as it would be, I can’t lay this at Kat’s feet (paws :-))

Second, the vegan diet we adopted morphed into a vegetarian one. We are both enjoying our vegetarian lifestyle. Like our spending cut-backs, it doesn’t feel like deprivation. Instead, we find ourselves eating lots of different foods, breaking out of ruts a lifetime in the making. We feel good, our actions are better aligned with our values, and we haven’t sacrificed on taste. 

There’s been so much going on this year; I let this blog go, but I’m not ready for it to die. I’ll be back.

Catching Up

I'm back!

I’ve been struggling to jump back into the blog pool. I climbed out, dried off, went in for a snack, and have felt reluctant to get wet again. I’ve been circling the pool for months and . . .

Ok enough of that metaphor. I ignored my writing goals and time passed. 

Since I last checked in, Kat and I have a new(ish) kitchen and another murphy bed. Hooray!

First, the kitchen. We had saved toward sprucing up our kitchen — adding storage and counter space — but we knew it wasn’t enough. We took out a small loan, hired a semi-retired carpenter who quoted us a very reasonable price, and went to work. 

Second, Kat took the opportunity of some time off and having her dad visit to build a murphy bed in our office. We had one already in the sewing room, and it is beyond wonderful. We have LOTS of visitors and need both rooms (sewing room and office) for guests, and now I will be able to simply pull down the already made up beds each time a sibling with family comes to visit. We’re heading into that bed and breakfast time of the year, and I am ready.

With our home improvement projects, along with work and being in charge of multiple events that happened to fall in September and early October, we let good habits lapse but also shed a few bad habits. More on that in a future post, and I’ll also be posting before and after pictures of the kitchen and office.

It’s good to be back!

House Project "Reveal"

Since my latest house transformation project is done, I thought I'd tinker with the look of this blog. My tinkering is not over, but I feel I'm getting closer to what I want.

But now, on to the sewing / guest room transformation and the reveal!

My "before" pictures are of the room in sewing mode:

Drab and cluttered, right?  Normally I have my sewing machine out on the sewing table (where the gray kitty sits in the first picture), and to my right (I'm standing in a small closet) along the wall is my cutting table. I took this after we moved the piano, which used to sit where the small chest is. No wonder I felt claustrophobic when I tried to quilt.

And here are the "after" pictures, two of the sewing room and one in guest room mode:

Thanks to Molly for all her help. I couldn't have done this without her.

Thanks to Neville for adding the perfect touch to the bed.

In guest room mode, the sewing table folds up into a nice-looking cabinet and rolls to the right of the closet in place of the cutting table, which rolls back to our bedroom for the duration of the visit. The pretty green chair sits against the wall to the left, so that the sewing cabinet and chair provide places for guests to set their luggage.

I can't express how pleased I am with our results! I've never considered myself especially creative in  interior design, and neither does Kat. Believe me, our projects don't always turn out this nice.

One of the unexpected bonuses is that the shelves on either side of the Murphy bed provide enough space that we were able to get rid of one of the book cases in our office, opening up that space a little more. And I love, love, love having my beloved books in my creative work space.

There are some additional finishes we could do. It would be nice to have a smaller, more decorative lamp, and maybe an accent rug, a different ceiling fan, but we splurged on the chair ($80 at Kirkland's for the perfect green chair), and on good quality wood and paint. The others are things we can pick up as it fits in the budget.

So, we broke our pledge again of no house projects in January and February, and we used tax return money we were going to put toward the kitchen re-do scheduled for later this year, but I have no regrets. I feel that ultimately we bought light and space. Money well spent.

DIY Project - From Despair to Good Times

How is it that once a project is begun, the world comes crashing in?  Kat and I know to allot more time than we think is needed for any house project. We started the minor renovation of my sewing / guest room with a hard deadline of March 10, the date of the arrival of my sister and nieces for Spring Break. We had two mostly empty weekends to work with, and figured the project would take only one of those weekends with the cracks filled in during the week.

I’m sure you can guess the rest of the story.

On Saturday the ninth, we were frantically finishing up the room while trying to clean, shop for groceries, prep for meals, and all the other things that go with getting ready for guests. We made it, barely.

The unexpected problems that cropped up were, first, my getting a nasty cold and passing it on to Kat. We worked through it, but fatigue was definitely a factor. Then Kat was assigned a trainee at work, which meant much longer hours, and this on top of battling a cold virus. Then I had some issues pop up with volunteer work that needed attention. I fell into that middle-of-project funk when I despair that we’re improving anything and wonder why we made so much seemingly unnecessary work for ourselves.

But in the end we finished just in time for guests to enjoy (very satisfying!!) Today guests have gone home, and I need to clean before I take “after” pictures. I’ll be back soon to show off the project. I am VERY pleased with how it turned out.

Despair is gone, and now time to enjoy, and try hard to ward off the itch to tackle some other project anytime soon.

Making a Small Space Function

See that innocent looking tape measure? I left it on the dresser the other day.

"Why'd you have the tape measure out?" Kat asked when she got home from work.

Doh! I didn't want her to know I was scheming to get the piano out of my sewing room (and primary guest room). I've been feeling way too claustrophobic in there since I'd installed a cutting table. The room is only 9 1/2 feet by 10 feet, and in it fits my sewing table, ironing board, piano, murphy bed, cutting table, and a small chest of drawers. The cutting table folds up nicely, but when I'm using it, I have about a 4 by 4 space to move around in.

My idea was to get rid of the large dresser in our master, downsize my clothes to the small chest currently located in the sewing room, thus freeing space to put the piano in our bedroom. I didn't have everything thought through when Kat found the tape measure, and I didn't want to present my plan prematurely, but too late! She got it out of me -- and flipped upon hearing I wanted to jettison the not-very-old dresser.

Much arguing ensued, during which I dramatically proclaimed that now she could understand why I hadn't wanted to tell her anything until I had it all worked out.

After we both settled down, she thought things over and figured out a way to rearrange the room to make it work without losing the dresser. At first I wasn't too happy, "Why can't we just let go of things?" I said, but Kat is a natural organizer, so in the end I decided to trust her.

I can't believe it, but I love our new bedroom. We did remove a few things -- some book shelves and two pieces of kitty furniture -- but what really opened up the space was rearranging a few pieces of the bedroom furniture. Our piano fits, and the room seems somehow more spacious to me. More comfortable.

And what is more exciting is the sewing room. We pulled everything out and painted, then we centered the murphy bed on the wall; it had been off-center to accommodate the piano. Kat is building cabinets for the top of the murphy bed and shelves along either side so that the whole thing will look built-in (we hope). Our inspiration picture is here at  Houzz.com.

What is so cool is that we're making good use of vertical space. We'll be able to store pillows and bed linens in the cabinets over the murphy bed instead of in our small linen closet. The shelves will house the books that were in the master bedroom with plenty of room for baskets to hold my stash (as in quilting fabrics :-))

I've taken "before" pictures, but it may be a week or so before I have the "after" shots, so I'll wait to post them.

Wish us luck!

Blowing Deadlines and Re-Scripting Failure

Spread before me right now are all my tools for working toward goals and organizing time. These tools go from the general to the specific -- personal mission statement, 2013 resolutions, and project pages. Project pages are what I live from. I check them every morning to orient myself. In them I list the areas of my life that require attention -- writing, volunteer commitments, household, finances, quilting, relationships, health -- and for each area I have columns for goals, tasks (a catch-all to-do list), and next step(s). Having just one or two tasks per area in the next step column makes juggling everything so much more manageable.

But here's the thing.

My project pages are full of missed deadlines. Dates crossed out, sometimes multiple times, for a project or next step. I used to be down on myself for this seeming inability to keep self-made deadlines -- especially as I am obsessive about meeting any deadline set for me by someone else. I can see the likes of Stephen Covey and Tony Robbins shaking their heads and thinking that success is not likely here; one must be accountable to oneself, or at least find a buddy to aid accountability. And while there's truth in that, I've come to realize something important.

For years I've badgered myself about blown deadlines, and my inner nag had just about convinced me that I could not perform work that is self-directed, that I needed a boss to set external goals and deadlines. Yet if I look back over the last several years, I managed to write three novels -- revising each mulitple times -- start a blog, complete five quilts, maintain a clutter-free home full of heatlhy pets, contribute a lot to volunteer efforts, keep up with friends and family, and make a mildly successful stab at a different career before deciding it wasn't for me. Not bad for suffering from nagging doubts that I can't be successful because I fail at keeping self-imposed deadlines.

Somehow my methods work (for the most part), and it occurred to me that my goal-setting and project planning are my way of plotting my life. In the writing world, we speak of plotters vs pantsers, or those who create character charts and plot outlines before writing the narrative (Elizabeth George), verses those who enter the world of a character and write the narrative by the seat of their pants (Stephen King). Many of us fall on the spectrum between those two positions. I am a plotter, but often I diverge from my carefully outlined plot and go off by the seat of my pants until I get so tangled I need to stop and readjust the outline. I do this over and over.

So I plot my life with goals and tasks and target deadlines. This works for a while until interests and circumstances intrude, and off I go. Then I get bogged down and disoriented, and back I go to my mission statement and project pages, crossing out and readjusting and moving forward with a plan for a while. Messy, messy, but it works and I'm done trying to change myself or measure myself against the plot outline, declaring myself a failure for not having stuck with it. If I am not managing to accomplish some of my objectives, then I'll figure out why and re-write the goal and/or tasks related to the goal. No failure there, and so simple. My inner nag will have to find something else to yammer about.

How Many Hours Do You Need Part II

Phew, so glad October is in the rearview. What a busy month! Kat's dad came in for a week and helped with house projects. We did make time for a little fun, including taking in the mummy exhibit at the Witte Museum and partying in the driveway with our neighbors Halloween night. Although fun, Halloween seemed subdued on our street this year. Still plenty of trick-or-treaters, but not as many as in years past. Seems that fewer of our neighbors are turning on their porch lights. Too early to tell if this is a blip or the start of a trend.

I did manage to work on the tracking hours exercise. For a week I tracked how I spent my hours, then plugged those hours into categories to see how my time is spend. A few insights:

• I had compared this exercise to tracking where your pennies go with the idea of planning a reasonable budget; however, it was really more like tracking calories with a goal of losing weight. It's a disciplinary technique. I found that I maintained focus and kept on track better with writing and project goals because I knew I would be jotting down how the time was spent. Keeping track of time will not be a daily task, but on shapeless days that require lots of self-motivation and organization, it's not a bad tool for staying focused.

• The hours of my week (a "normal" week) are fairly well balanced among the major areas of work, family, church, and community. While that seems good, my frustration is that I do not spend enough time on my job, which is writing. Some balance is good, but that's not what I need to improve. I need more intensity with my work.

• I don't have very many "normal" weeks. Some weeks or stretches of days are given over to guests or big events that come up. Yes I need more intensity with work, but sometimes I can simply accept what life is offering and not get frustrated.

• One area that is very much not in balance is Personal Growth. While I do read books that would fall in this category, things like exercise, taking classes, and working on Spanish are earning big goose eggs.

One last thing. I've been a little obsessed with time lately. I'm closer to fifty than to forty, and there's so much I want to do. My perception of time and attempts to manage it are related to this particular season of my life, a season that is busy -- fevered almost -- full of meetings and family and hopeful projects. I am determined to enjoy it for what it is while I have it. If I live long enough, the day could come when time moves slowly again and I have acres of it.

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven." (Ecclesiastes)

Leaping Without a Net

So I've made the decision to quit my job as a real estate agent. And as I've done so often in my life, I have only a hazy plan of what to do next. This is called leaping without a net.

This time though, I'm wearing a bungie cord.

Kat's income is enough for the household, including money toward retirement and savings. Knowing we're doing ok without my income makes it even more important for me to have a transition plan in place.

I put together a list of projects to shape my days for the next month:

• Make a list of all leads and clients, and decide whether to follow up or refer them.
• Work with Kat to make a plan for cost-saving and simplifying.
• Create a new budget for the rest of the year, subtracting expenses and projected income from real estate.
• Clear out and re-organize home office space.
• Work on Fumbling at Joy; re-purpose and polish it up. FaJ has been a toe in the blogging waters, and so far I like the temperature.
• Review manuscripts and query letters. After receiving several rejections, I had received positive feedback on a middle grade novel from a literary agent and an editor, though both ultimately chose not to take on the work. In spite of the positives, I lost the faith. My reaction to the manuscripts will tell me if I should renew it.

I will need to be disciplined about working these projects into my days. Now that I'm not at the office as much, I'm doing more household management and volunteer work. I know from before how just those two things can completely take over.

Now to tie up a loose end -- I did speak with my broker. He was of course gracious and gave me suggestions for how I might transition out. If he weren't such a great guy, I wouldn't have felt guilty about telling him I'm leaving. So there was nothing to worry about -- a lesson I have been taught many times and will continue to learn.