Magnetic repulsion

[hrj]

You know that thing with powerful magnets where the closer the similar poles get together the more powerfully they repulse? That's my attention and an "owed" project the closer it gets to completion. But I will -- I absolutely will -- finish the book review before walking out of the Sweet Adeline cafe this morning, and I will -- I absolutely will -- finish the presentation for "Cuisine Without Cookbooks" before going to bed tonight. This probably means that tomorrow I'll decide to veg out entirely and get nothing useful of mine done. (Ok, so in what sense is the cooking class "not mine"? I volunteered. It will be fun. It stems from topics and approaches I feel passionately interested in. Nobody held a gun to my head. And yet ... and yet ....)

I think I shall sew tomorrow. I took the 14th c. "party dress" to one of etaine_pommier's sewing nights and ripped out all the body and sleeve seams then got help pinning it up for alteration. The other morning I tried on the gray flannel suit coat and realized that I could make it fit again by virtue of taking in just the back and side seams and resetting the sleeves. This same approach may work for the forest green brushed denim coat, but I'll leave that for another time. And last weekend I picked up a handful of blouse-lengths of deep-discount "necktie silks" from Discount Fabrics (plus one polyester that snuck in on me and will be rejected). After last weekend's heat wave, it's been feeling like autumnish weather all week and I have a desire to get my colder-weather work wardrobe in shape.

So far the program to start waking up early enough to work out in the mornings has been successful. Two weekday mornings of waking up at the 6am radio and not drifting back off to sleep again. The second step, of course, is getting myself out of bed and out the door on a reasonable schedule. I have until October 1 to work up to being up and out the door by, oh, say 6:15, which theoretically gives me time for an hour workout, shower and change, and get to work by 8am. (Which is only a target, not a deadline -- my fixed commitments don't start until ca. 9am, but if I let my workday slip that late, then I'm getting off at 6pm and have lost much of the advantage of the morning workout.) Yes, I really do strategize this intensely over trivial details of my daily schedule. It helps overcome the magnetic repulsion force.

Comments

[lapioggia.livejournal.com]

"Ok, so in what sense is the cooking class "not mine"? "
This really resonated with me. I know I feel this way about far too many projects I undertake. How do you either take ownership of these things and get back to wanting to do them? (Or figure out which ones you just shouldn't agree to in the first place?)

[hrj.livejournal.com]

There are several clear categories to the problematic stuff:

1) Opportunities that are too flattering to turn down (and that might not be offered again).

2) Opportunities that involve teaching (my secret vice).

3) Opportunities that provide personal or professional contacts that may come in useful later.

I have no problem saying "no" to projects where the subject matter is simply uninteresting to me ... but so many things are interesting to me!