Holy crap on a cracker, there’s a blog here? Something I can write in every day if I’d like? Pffft, who knew? Apparently not me since it’s been close to a month and a half since my last update. I feel like this is confession …

Bless me Father, for I have sinned.  It’s been <too many to count> days since I have blogged …

(Look at me trying to act like I’m Catholic.  The closest I come is that I was baptized.  I tried to ask Steve because he did all of that good Catholic child stuff up until high school and then he quit.  Which, apparently it’s like a job that you can just stop.  They even have a colloquial name for it … lapsed Catholic, which basically means you don’t give enough of a shit to care about the rituals and traditions anymore.)  But I digress, because I didn’t disappear for a month and a half to talk about religion.  I would just look like an idiot (and probably offend what little readers I have left) if I tried.

But no seriously, I know, I’m bad, I’m awful at this.  I just can’t force myself to give up on it.  Actually, these past few months, there has been more I wanted to write about than in the past few years.  My problem is that I’m such a damn perfectionist that I’m not good at snippets and I haven’t figured out how to let go of the ideal of a complete and concise blog entry, one that has a beginning, middle and end and tells a story and makes a point.  Or something like that.  So instead of trying, I just don’t do it and then it gets daunting when I do try it because there is JUST.SO.MUCH and I’m writing four or five pages worth of crap that makes no sense because it’s all thrown together and one long rambling mess of I did this and went here and tried this and etcetera and so on.

And the days, they just disappear.  I keep telling people the older I get, the faster time seems to go.  One minute its January and then I turn around and the holidays are staring me in the face.  I’m closer to thirty than I like, all my siblings and cousins are growing up, all my parents and and grandparents are getting older.  Time moves so fast that it’s hard to get a grasp on it.  Even these past few weeks, we’ve been making plans for the holidays and other stuff and it’s like oh, we have three weeks, no, wait, two weeks, holy shit, it’s just days away.

And of course, it flies when you’re having fun!

One thing has changed that has consumed a lot of my time these past few months: me.  In a sense that I stopped being so lazy and started making a point to give myself a routine that worked.  One that allowed me to be more organized and to effectively accomplish the tasks that needed to get done in a timely manner.  I don’t know how it started or what forced the change but basically, at some point a few weeks ago, I realized we had A LOT of things coming up this holiday season and I need to budget them into my finances as well as my time.

I made up cleaning lists, ones that allowed me to do one area of the house in about half-an-hour each day during the week (my weekly list) and ones that forced me to take care of daily chores that made the weekly ones easier (my daily list).

That change alone really revamped how I spent my time.  No longer would I come home and mindlessly veg out on the couch, playing pointless games on the laptop or watching TV (it could be argued that I never posted or did tasks during that time either and that’s correct because even when I was “vegging” out, I was so exhausted that I didn’t do anything on the computer that required me to think).  Instead, I started coming home, cooking (or finishing) dinner, doing my daily chores and whatever room that needed to be cleaned that evening, watching whatever shows came on that night, then bed.

Of course, this freed up time on the weekends and I spent that free time, plus whatever I had during the week, doing productive things, things that needed to be taken care of.  Paying bills, returning emails from family and friends, working on some business related stuff.  We also spent more time with friends and I didn’t have to feel guilty about it.

Because we’ve been trying to cut down on expenses here, I spend a lot of time “managing” the house to be more efficient financially.  Budgeting in events and meals so that we can buy only groceries that we need and will use.

I’ve just been more organized and more active and more productive and unfortunately, that means some of my hobbies have suffered more than ever.  But I’m working towards a balance and have been doing quite a few things in my Internet life on the back end.  So eventually, I think this is going to get me to a place where I can have life in order, both online and off!

Coming soon are the monthly love posts for September and October, because I am that behind!