31 Days... Every Day

When I get home, I'm going to walk the dog.

 

Ugh, I had a long day. I don't really want to walk the dog.

 

I have too much to do... Laundry, make dinner, ironing, do dishes.

I don't have time to do it tonight.

 

Its going to be dark out by the time we get back. It's not worth it.

 

The dog walker is coming tomorrow... He doesn't need a walk today.

 

Am I being a bad mommy if I don't take him on a walk?

 

If I spent half the time I spend making excuses actually doing something, I'd be the most productive person on the planet.

 

I did take Amos on a walk last night. And I'm so glad I did. The crisp autumn air was so refreshing, and I got to spend quality time with this guy.

  

 

 Not a bad use of my time at all.

 

You can view all of my 31 Days of Don't Think... Just Do posts here.

31 Days :: Where Do I Start?

I'm going to be perfectly honest here. When I decided on Don't Think, Just Do as my topic for 31 Days, I immediately started a huge list of recipes to make, projects to do, things to sew... you get the picture. By the end of October, I was going to be a completely different person. Organized, with a beautifully decorated house, full of creative, thoughtful little touches carefully hand-crafted by yours truly. And while I'd love for all those things to be true eventually, it's probably going to take a bit more than a month for all that to happen.

And you know what? I need this challenge to be about a lot more than the big things. So often, I get super motivated to do a lot of big stuff and then fizzle out right away because it's all so big and takes so much time.

With that in mind, I decided to start this challenge a little differently than I normally do. Instead of picking a huge project to start with, I picked one thing. One small thing that has been on my To Do list for a couple weeks now. One small, tiny little thing that would probably only take ten minutes, but that I promised my husband I would take care of and haven't done yet.

I made a phone call.

Yes, that's right. I called a local landscape materials supplier to find out how much a delivery of topsoil would be. The entire process -- looking up the phone number, making the call, writing down the information -- took less than 5 minutes. Probably more like 2 and a half minutes. Seriously. I've put this off for weeks.

But you know what? Now it's done. And I got to cross it off my To Do list. And I made my husband happy. I'd call that a win for today.

Did you miss out on Day 1 of 31 Days of Don't Think...Just Do? You can view the whole series here.

Introducing: 31 Days of Don't Think...Just Do.

 

 

Don’t think, just do.

I have developed a love | hate relationship with this phrase. It’s one of my husband’s favorites. Any time I start whining about a task taking too long, or being too tedious, or too daunting, I hear “C’mon babe, don’t think just do.” It’s his way of saying mind over matter, combined with a little it won’t be so bad once you start it.

My husband is the king of “don’t think, just do.” He is so great at just tackling projects head-on. He is motivated, driven, and fearless. These are some of the traits I love most about him - he is rarely paralyzed by a fear of doing something wrong, or worrying about it taking too long. He just does it. This is why our master bathroom has been completely gutted for the past 2 years. We made the decision one night that we wanted to redo it, so the very next day he just ripped the whole thing apart.

I, on the other hand, am the world’s biggest procrastinator. I’m paralyzed by the “what if’s.” I will decide to do a project, will buy all the materials, and then everything just sits in a closet for months (or years) waiting for attention. I will have “call butcher about meat order” on my To Do list for weeks (or months sometimes) instead of taking the 5 minutes to call. Why do I do this? It drives my husband NUTS and frustrates him to no end. It also makes me an unreliable person. It’s not fair to him that I tell him I will take care of something and then not do it. It makes me dishonest, and makes him feel like he can’t rely on me. That’s not the kind of wife I want to be. Remember that bathroom I was telling you about? Yep, still waiting for me to pick out tile and a tub so we can get started putting it all back together.

 

I have spent a lot of time contemplating why I do this. (Trust me, I am a pro at pondering. It's just the execution where I fall short.) I don’t want to put things off anymore. I'd like to have a master bathroom we can use before we eventually sell our house. I'd like to be able to tell my husband "Yes, I'll take care of that" and not see the doubt on his face.

 

Here’s what I think: Fear.

 

Fear is stopping me from reaching probably 95% of my goals.

 

I’ll do it wrong and ruin it and will waste lots of time/money/energy on nothing.

 

It will take too long. I shouldn’t start it because there’s no possible way I can do the whole thing in the tiny bit of time I have to work on a project.

 

I'm going to use this 31 day challenge to tackle my fears head-on and accomplish something. A lot of my goals are project-focused -- crafts I bought materials for and never did, minor renovations/upcycles I've been wanting to tackle, things like that -- but I'm also going to try to really hone in on some of the goals I've kept hidden away in that closed-off place in my heart that I'm too afraid to share with actual people.

 

Thank you so much for coming along with me on this journey. It should be one heck of a ride :)

 

 

Getting Back in the Swing of Things

I have been in quite the funk for the better part of a year now. I have found myself questioning who I am, what I'm doing, who I want to be, and if any of my dreams for myself are even possible. I've been filled with self-doubt, and looking back, I realize I have been filled with a lot of pain, too.

You see, Ryan and I have been trying to get pregnant since August 2012. I hoped it would happen right away, and I think Ryan was just a little bit afraid it would. It consumed me - I thought about very little else. I was so focused on getting pregnant that I didn't even put up Christmas decorations last year. Months went by and nothing happened. I was crushed each month, and felt like such a failure. More time, and a couple visits to the doctor, and it turns out this whole becoming parents thing is going to be a little bit harder than we originally thought. Not impossible, but obviously it wasn't going to be the easy thing I spent 15 years of my life trying to prevent.

I spent the spring and summer (hell, the whole year, really) feeling pretty sorry for myself - I was supposed to be a momma already, and here I wasn't even pregnant yet. I was so sad, and so focused on what my life was missing that I completely lost sight everything I have. I have an incredible husband who loves me despite all my sortcomings. I have a beautiful home and a yard with flowers and a vegetable garden filled with a bounty that, given the right attention, will nourish us throughout the weeks and months to come.   

It took me a long time to realize that I have a lot to be thankful for. I was chatting with a very dear friend a couple weeks ago, and was lamenting (and let's be honest, whining a bit) to her about how frustrated I was with this fertility business and how nothing was going according to plan. She said what a sweet, unexepected gift this year must have been for Ryan and I, then, to have been able to spend together before we become parents. At first I scoffed a bit - how could it be a gift? She doesn't want kids, she couldn't possibly understand. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this friend, who is always so honest with me, was also so very right.

We went on a wonderful vacation to Mexico in the spring, saw lots of great music, had lazy afternoons at the Terrace, wandered hand in hand at the Art Fair on the Square sipping Summer Shandy, browsing our favorite artists, had lazy lunches that turned into afternoon cocktails and early dinners, went camping, went on a crazy roadtrip to Ohio to see my favorite band of all time. We've had a blissful, happy year, and while some of it was clouded by my fertility-related frustration and sadness, we really did have a wonderful time. I feel so guilty for not embracing it more fully, and for tarnishing so much of the good with my disdain for what it wasn't instead of what it was.

I keep thinking about what my friend said, and I've come to realize that I need to cherish these moments as gifts, and (try to) accept what comes for us with grace. I have a good life. It's not fair to my husband or to our marriage to keep wishing it away and waiting for something better to come along. Especially when I can't be sure it will ever come along. Because what we have right now is really pretty great.

I know I won't do this perfectly, but I'm really going to try.