I did a dumb thing. I downloaded one of those free guides from a commercialized mommy blog... the kind that means I'll be getting spam email for a while. (I realized this was a risk, so I didn't use my personal email, just the one I use for spam!).
The ad for it looked so promising... The secret to Spring Cleaning faster. It had a little preview of the document with some kind of list on a spreadsheet. I thought, awesome! This is a list of things you should do during spring cleaning. Being new to this homeowner thing, I hoped the list would be fairly comprehensive and include those random little tasks I probably haven't thought of yet. I was especially hopeful that this would be an actual schedule--do these 3 things on day 1, and these 4 on day 2, and so on for 10 days and then you are done. Something awesome like that.
Nope. Not even close!
Page 1 shares the amazing secret to cleaning faster.... which is... drumroll please.... to CLEAN FASTER. I am not kidding. That's what it advises. It says this right at the top of the page. Unfortunately in my initial skimming, I didn't notice this. I did see that I was supposed to list my top 10 most common chores. Then, she says, the next time you do those chores, time yourself. See how long it takes. Then, the next time you do the chores, try to be faster! If you are making a conscious effort to be faster, you will be!
This was not an impressive beginning, but okay. I kept scrolling on to page 2.... which ended up being a mostly blank spreadsheet with columns for your chores, how long it took to do them the first time, and how fast you were able to go the second time.
End document. 😂 I feel duped. No more free guides for me!
Tuesday, May 14, 2019
Tuesday, May 7, 2019
Rediscovering My Love of Reading
Reading has always been one of my favorite pastimes. When I was a kid, each time my mom took me to the library I'd check out a good 20 books or so, and I'd always read them before they came due 3 weeks later.
As an adult, sometimes it's not so easy to find the time to read. In grad school, I had to cut back a bit. Since I've gotten married, I've cut back a lot. My husband and I are admittedly pretty tied at the hip. When work is done, we are almost always together doing some shared activity--often something related to housework, or our callings, or whatever, but also fun things like board games and movies and just talking. Something that requires our focus on each other and whatever task is at hand--not prime time for reading.
But I've been feeling an itch to get back into my writing, to finally take my stab at the great American novel. And it's been said many times that you can't write if you're not actively reading.
So I've set a goal to make time for reading every day. I first set the goal about 2 weeks back, and so far it's gone well! I went on my library's CyberShelf page and found something readily available that I'd been meaning to read for a while--Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. That was a quick read done in just a couple days. I went back to see what else was easily at hand, and stumbled across a thriller novel (that sucked me in with a child psychology beginning) called The Girl With All the Gifts. So far I'm halfway through. This is just like old times. It feels good!
Now to see if I can beat down my perfectionism beast enough to delve into creative writing again...
As an adult, sometimes it's not so easy to find the time to read. In grad school, I had to cut back a bit. Since I've gotten married, I've cut back a lot. My husband and I are admittedly pretty tied at the hip. When work is done, we are almost always together doing some shared activity--often something related to housework, or our callings, or whatever, but also fun things like board games and movies and just talking. Something that requires our focus on each other and whatever task is at hand--not prime time for reading.
But I've been feeling an itch to get back into my writing, to finally take my stab at the great American novel. And it's been said many times that you can't write if you're not actively reading.
So I've set a goal to make time for reading every day. I first set the goal about 2 weeks back, and so far it's gone well! I went on my library's CyberShelf page and found something readily available that I'd been meaning to read for a while--Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. That was a quick read done in just a couple days. I went back to see what else was easily at hand, and stumbled across a thriller novel (that sucked me in with a child psychology beginning) called The Girl With All the Gifts. So far I'm halfway through. This is just like old times. It feels good!
Now to see if I can beat down my perfectionism beast enough to delve into creative writing again...
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