Much Ado About Nothing

I am a dreamer. I always have been. I even minored in philosophy in school, so I am actually a well-studied thinker. (Or something like that. Who knows what people with philosophy degrees actually do.) I make really big aspirations and resolutions for myself. I develop lofty expectations of what I think things should look like at their completion. And I have a very definite vision of how I think things ought to be.

But you know what dreaming big looks like? A person sitting there doing nothing.

When we moved into our fixer upper in October, I would walk around the various rooms and just stare at them intently while reorganizing materials, color palettes, and furniture vignettes in my mind. My husband would walk in the room and ask me, "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," I'd answer. "This is just my thoughtful face."
I have probably spent hours staring into space and mentally renovating and redecorating those rooms. Hours. Literally doing nothing. Just standing there looking at the walls.
Guess who did the actual work on those rooms? I'll give you a hint...it wasn't the girl with the thoughtful face.

The problem with being a dreamer is that the dreamland usually looks so good when it's finished, you feel overwhelmed when it's time to start getting yourself there for real. Work?! Blah. I don't do work in the dream. I just reap the benefits of my hard work.
Or here's a real kicker---finally starting the work, and realizing the hard work you are beginning is not leading you to the picture perfect vision you had focused your thoughtful face on for so long.

What should you do then? Do you keep on going even after you discover you are not taking the exact route you wanted? Or do you stop where you're at and envision a newer, better plan?
















...Sorry. I had to think about that for a minute.

Remember 2013? That year I was supposed to blog once a week for a year? That year that should show a number 52 next to it in my blog list, but instead shows an abysmal 20?
It's over now. What's done is done. And what isn't done is probably due in large part to my dreaming and scheming.

I made no promises to myself this year. For the first time since I can remember, I had a resolution-less new year. Obviously, my resolution lists were getting me nowhere in the past. And I had real things to do---like tell my husband how to renovate a house. But while I "researched" Pinterest to find some inspiration for the bathrooms, I found a quote that said:

Resolution = a firm decision to do something; Goal = giving your resolution a plan of action and time constraint

I stopped. I reread. I put on my thoughtful face and I pondered the implication of what I was about to do next.

I want to be more than a dreamer. I want to be an achiever. Regardless of whether it takes me to my dreamland or not, I want to get off of my philosophical butt and do things. I want to stare at a finished project instead of void spaces, even if the projects are not as pretty as the ones in my imaginings.

So I thought about a resolution I had: Blog more. What problems did I have doing this in the past? Committing a time to blog and running out of ideas for writing. Was there something I could DO to help me achieve this?

So I dedicated a time to blog. Thursday is the day. And, I made a journal jar.
I would post a picture of it, but my image reader isn't working and I'm a little scared that if I don't complete this post right now in the time I allotted myself to blog, then it will be 2015 before you read this. I also would post a picture of the journal jar that inspired me (and which my own jar looks nothing like,) but apparently you have to own images to post them to your blog or something. Darn copyrights.

So here is my less than ideal blog about getting stuff done. It's not what I envisioned I would write when I began. But it's better than nothing.

I think...








Here's to a year of accomplishing goals...or at least starting them!