“It’s not that you’re lazy…

… it’s just… sometimes I think you lack motivation?”

So sayeth the hubs. Yesterday I had kind of a cranky day. Tried to shake it with the baking of delicious muffins, but the crummy feeling persisted. As per usual, there is nothing BAD about my life, it’s just that it all gets a bit boring. A bit repetitive. And then I get down about it, and start looking for ways to make it more interesting, and then I start a list! Of all the things I’m going to do! And then I start one, do like 85% of it, and then get distracted. Then another thing is the thing! That I’m going to do! And then I finish like half of it and get distracted. And then the next! And the next!

Nate explained that I am unhappy because I am denying myself the satisfaction of completing a task from start to finish. Which was a good start, but then he tried to go into an analogy about how it was as if I was eating a slice of pizza but leaving the tip of the slice on the plate. Except that’s a TERRIBLE analogy for him to use, because everyone knows that the tip of the slice is the first (and best) bite, and so that analogy actually sort of supported my position, in that it’s the STARTING of a new project that is the exciting and satisfying and delicious part. He just wants me to eat my crusts.

Weak analogies aside, the man has a point. And as much as I hate to admit it, he’s right. I have a real problem with follow-through. After a lengthy discussion, we decided the best course of action was for me to list all the half-finished projects I currently have hanging over my head, and then I can start chipping away at them. Set a deadline and do things one by one and all that. So away I went to get my little notebook that I use for just such list-making-type tasks. I flipped past the page titled “Goals for 2007”. Flipped past “Goals for 2010”. Past wedding prep to-do lists (it’s an old notebook), meal plans and shopping lists, Scrabble score sheets and descriptions of potential apartments we’d looked at. Came to a page titled “Life Overhaul” which sounds like a list started on a bad but determined-to-make-it-better day. The list looked like this-

Which I think pretty well sums up all my previous efforts to overhaul my life- make plans with the best of intentions, only to be overtaken by a small child holding something with which to scribble.

But I finally did find a blank page, and easily jotted down nearly a dozen projects that I have started and not finished in just the last few months. And the next thing I was supposed to do was blog about all of this so that I have some sort of accountability, I guess? Some sort of public display of “I’m gonna get my shit together this time, yes I am, just you wait and see.”

Nate says once I start finishing some projects, the feeling of accomplishment will become addicting and I will just start being better at seeing things through. I know that I have trouble finishing a cup of coffee while it’s still hot, so I have my doubts, but appaaaaaaaaaarently I’m not supposed to make defeatist excuses like that because that sort of negativity is what got me here in the first place.

Man, I hate it when he has a good point.

So on we go! Lists! Projects! Completing them!