52PC47: Time

Good Sunday Morning To You!

I hope that things are going well for all of you! I'm making progress on the get-a-handle-on-my-life front, I'm happy to report! I've decided that my issues of late are part of a learning curve while I adapt to increased demands on the parental front (they are, after all, very old), and increased demands on the work/career front.

That being said, the biggest issue in all of it has been TIME - as in, not enough of it to go around! As usually happens in Sue-land, once I identify an issue or a trend or what-have-you, I start seeing all kinds of tie-ins in the people and things around me. No exception on this: I got a handy little post from Chris Guillebeau in my inbox this week. The theme? Killing Time! Here are a couple of excerpts from it:

"We all have to make judgment calls on where we should spend our time. I am an advocate for spending it deliberately: if you’ve got a spare hour, put it to good use. Or enjoy it by deliberately choosing to chill out. But don’t waste it, and don’t kill it. “Killing time”… what an unfortunate phrase.

Sometimes it helps to put things in perspective: what one thing will you get done today? If nothing else happens, how will you help others while pursuing your own dreams? (These goals are not mutually exclusive.)

When you find yourself with time to spare, don’t kill it. Respect it."

I also referred back this week to a post by Leo Babauta that Stephanie alerted me to regarding procrastination which, as I've told you before, is something I struggle with and that eats up waaaay more time than is even remotely allowable! He begins the article with this:

"Procrastination is one of those topics that, it seems, I can’t write enough about. There isn’t a person among us who doesn’t procrastinate, and that’s a fact of life.

It’s deep within us. We think we’re going to do something later, or read that classic novel later, or learn French later. But we always overestimate how much we can do later, and we overestimate the ability of our later selves to beat procrastination.

If our current self can’t beat procrastination, why will our future self do it?"

He then outlines the "why" of procrastination and some very practical steps to take to overcome it. VERY worthwhile article, as all of Mr. Babauta's articles are! (Thanks again, Steph!)

For my project this week I decided a clock was in order! I up-cycled a freebie CD to make it (there's a tutorial coming Monday on my other blog), and serendipity dropped a fun thing in my path for it, too! The clock hands that I had were too long for this small clock, so I headed out to Michael's to buy new, shorter ones with my 40% off coupon. Know what was on clearance? Oh yeah, a set of "Time Flies" stamps (Recollections)! I used them with a piece of paper from Basic Grey's Sugared collection and some distress inks to make the face for this:

That's one of my favorite "time" quotes, typed up on the computer in Pegasus font (bold). The clock hands were brass (not my fave) and I tried to spray-paint them, but the paint didn't stick. I hit them with some alcohol-ink markers, but they're still not right. Good enough to share for now - I'll fix them later! I don't need an excuse to stall on this post, right?

And that's it for me! Here's hoping we'll get a few more participants in the last few challenges of the year. I canNOT believe we're in single digits with how many weeks are left! Hopefully Mr. Linky won't be quite so lonely this week: