Right round, Right round

Man, I've been slacking this week. Not just on my promise to blog 3x a week, but pretty much everywhere in my life, it seems.

This weekend I didn't really have any plans, so I had grand ideas of spending all day Saturday and Sunday getting tremendous amounts of work done - 5 hours of my TEFL course, the SPCA newsletter (haven't even STARTED this, terrible!), a short bio on the kitty so that I can get the ball rolling on "Operation Heartwrenching Adoption", finish my full application for the i-to-i internship and send it off, clean, etc, etc, etc. I got exactly two of these things done, and one not quite as fully as I would have liked. Of course, I had all day Sunday to redeem myself and what did I do? Went to mum's for most of the day, without materials sufficient enough to complete these aforementioned tasks.

Now some reasons I didn't get as much done on the weekend as I would have liked were not in my control (the TEFL coursework took longer than I thought it would, plus I had to take my sister to swimming Saturday, which took up half the day). But I could have crammed in a lot more work if I had been more self-disciplined.

This is something I need to work on. I think part of the issue with my current lack of self-motivation is just that my head is spinning with non-stop, frantic thoughts about all the said things I need to get done. This franticness causes my brain to run away screaming like a little girl and hide under the proverbial bed, rather than stand up and face the obligations and make THEM run away (after being completed, of course). I also like to have fun and therefore will opt to go to that movie I want to see or do something with a friend when I have a night or afternoon off, rather than "booking" it off to get some important obligations taken care of. This procrastination causes that many things weighing on my mind to get heavier and to spin around more quickly, which only serves to add to the problem.

Clearly, I need to make order of these thoughts, but I'm not sure how to do this. My slightly anal personality dictates that I should outline all of the things I need to get done in some kind of table or list, defining the deadlines and goals of each. But, then I'd have to add this chart to my TO DO list and my brain would have more things to worry about and this would also add to the problem again (see what I mean??).

Perhaps this is all just a case of the "Februaries", I dunno. What I do know is that I have to kick myself in the butt and come out of it. It's time to manage my time more efficiently and stick to what I say I'm going to do (no procrastinating! Put off procrastination now!). I also need to eat the elephant one bite at a time (as my mother says) and not expect to get everything done at once. I need to prioritize and take care of the most important things first (DUH). One thing about me, I may be a little slow at getting started but once I start and put my nose to the grindstone, I can get a crapload done in a short amount of time - I can be a machine!! I know I have that in me and I need to find it, STAT!!

Perhaps I will do a little bit of daily "scheduling" for myself - nothing too OCD, just a rough plan of what I will try to complete during the slots of free time I have each day (e.g. tonight between when I get in from work around 5:15 to when I leave for choir at 6:50, I will sit down and get the SPCA newsletter layout started). I mean sit down at the beginning of the day with my planner out, really look at the time in the day and write down the options for getting one or two things taken care of. AND STICK TO IT IF IT KILLS ME*! Done. Plan hatched. Execute. Well, at least I will as soon as I'm done this post....and catching up on the blog updates in my reader...and looking at this cute kitty video**...

On another, completely unrelated note , I went to see a psychic last weekend who told me some very intriguing things about the future, among them that I have stopped being a "doormat" (her word) and have relaxed a lot (though I still need to do this a lot more), that I will meet the man I'm going to marry before Christmas, that I'm going to take a trip very very very far away, and that I will receive a set of Tibetan prayer flags. So, see, if I don't kick my butt into gear now, I may never get to experience any of this!!

*I wonder if coffee would make my head spin more slowly??......no?? Well, it certainly helps one's incoherent rambling, that's for sure, so vodka it is then!
**Can I give myself time-out if I don't follow my own rules of homework??