Doing, Baby Steps

I see that it’s been almost two weeks since I last posted. Where does the time fly? In my defense, I have had a nasty cold last week and there was about five days when I did as little as possible, and that included writing. Thankfully, this week I seem to be on the mend and feeling human again!

My last post mentioned choosing to do and I am struggling to keep that thought an action. All my life I have struggled with procrastination, which wouldn’t be so bad if I did positive things while procrastinating. I could have a really clean house or cook elaborate meals as a way of procrastinating, but instead I play mindless games on the computer. And it’s twice as bad when I don’t feel well, so you know what I spent a good share of last week doing.

This week is going better (yeah, I know, it’s only Wednesday!). I managed to knock a few “to do” items off my list on Monday and Tuesday. Little things have helped, like not crawling back in bed in the morning for some more snooze time after Bill heads out to work. That is something I love to do but always feel guilty about afterwards. Lately I have only done so when I’ve had a bad night’s sleep, but the temptation is ever present. Instead, I turned on the living room lights and the television the last two mornings at 7 and sat down to crochet. By doing so, I finished the baby afghan I have been struggling to complete, down to tucking in all the loose ends and taking pictures! Today it is ready to be boxed and shipped to Kat so that her friend’s new baby, Aria Lyn, can enjoy it.

Now I can begin working on Miss Munchkin Christmas Crochet Projects, of which there are several!
Yesterday I also quit thinking about the Miss Munchkin story that’s been swirling in my head the last two (or is it three?) weeks and actually sat down to begin typing. It took me most of the afternoon, but I have the beginning paragraph to my liking. I first began thinking about the story idea when I bought this hat for Miss Munchkin:

I thought it was the perfect hat for a little girl that loves playing Princess but can never pass up a good hat, as you can see from this June 2009 Munchkin picture:

And then this story started going through my head about how a Princess could be a cowgirl and a train engineer and a boat captain and wear all sorts of hats. The plan is to have the story done by Christmas and send to Munchkin along with the cowgirl Princess hat! Again, it’s in the doing, not the trying … you can’t try to write something until you actually put it on paper and then you ARE writing something!

I loved Kel’s positive reinforcement this morning on The Dao of Doing blog. Kel talks about her “trying” rather than “doing” in her post today, Words of Wisdom: Does Trying Mean Doing?, which really resonated with me. My husband has always hated it when someone says they are “trying” and I never really understood why, but I am beginning to realize that trying can mean so many things, but usually, with me at least, it means attempting to appear like you are doing something you do not want to do and accomplishing the appearance while never accomplishing the task. The task either still needs to be done by someone else, or is still on the procrastination list to “try” to accomplish again at a later date.

One last “to do” item to mention here, “begin learning CSS” in order to update my LeapingFromTheBox.com website. This has been in the back of my mind and on that “to do” list for at least two years now, maybe longer. It’s a daunting project that I have put off and put off because it is going to take so much time. Funny thing is, it’s going to take the same amount of time now as it would have two years ago, but if I had begun it two years ago and upgraded only three pages a week, the site would be done now! Several times over the past year I have researched online different “learn CSS” websites, only to be very confused and discouraged. And then I realized that I rarely learn something like this from a website; I’m definitely a “hold the book in my hand” learner. So I purchased a book last month and actually cracked open the cover last week in my cold-induced fog. And lo and behold, I’m in the middle of Chapter 2 and getting ready to do some hands-on tutorials to practice what I’m learning. Even more amazing, what I am reading is making some sense! I can DO this!!