Gardening in High Heels

cultivate a beautiful life

Summer Plans

Well this is coming in super late, but late is better than never, right!  Today’s Blogger, May I prompt is Summer Plans.  Man.  There are things I’d like to do this summer, but they aren’t realistic given my PTO schedule and obligations.  Things like “Travel to a beach. Drink on a beach” etc are just not in the cards.

Summer plans

But there are some things I can do at home.  What I would like to do is:

  • Get a crop of plants from my garden enough to make pesto and sauce and eggplant parm and green beans and zucchini bread (all the zucchini recipes) all summer long
  • Run at least 5 miles a week (totally doable)
  • Schedule Levo events for July -September by the middle of June
  • Enjoy the Steers and Beers summer tradition
  • Keep blogging every day (almost every day?)
  • Visit my best friend and see her new apartment
  • Make advances with blogging sponsorships and consulting work
  • Keep a vase full of fresh flowers from the garden

That sounds like a lot of work and not much summer lovin’ vacation stuff.

What’s on your list of summer plans?


How to make a planner with a Moleskine Square Journal

I am a proud organization freak.  I love planners, Post Its (true story: I got a box of Post It How to make a planner with a Moleskine Square JournalNotes for Christmas one year) and just about all things organization.  Pins with pictures of other people’s planners is like..organization excitement.  Imagine my joy when Meghan @ Hayes Days reviewed the Emily Ley Simplified Planner, a piece I’ve had my eye on for about a year!

I haven’t settled on a blog planner that I like (please let me know what your favorite is!) but I do have yearly planners picked out in October (only slight hyperbole).

It’s no surprise that I made my own this year.

I love Moleskine and have used their Weekly Diary/Planner Horizontal for 3 years in a row.  That’s some serious commitment, people.  As with all relationships, I didn’t love everything about it.  I wanted a calendar view and more room to take notes so I didn’t have to carry around a separate notebook.

So when I was in Virginia visiting my mom, I picked up this Moleskine Square Journal.  Even the book itself has a memory attached to it!

I started out by listing month-at-a-glance.  This is where I put all-day events or after work plans – big things I don’t want to forget.  I also have a space to write monthly goals.  After I finish my Stratejoy Holiday Council worksheets (I know, I know, it’s a little late for that), I will have an easy place to write my goals for the month.

Monthly goals and days at a glaceI’ll be able to see them in front of me and more likely meet them or make plans to work towards them.  I can also say, “Hey will this commitment get me towards my BIG IGEA this year?” if I’m on the fence with something.

Then I have a calendar.  Here will go fun plans, dates, appointments, weekend coverage for work, etc so I can see everything easily in a calendar format.

Monthly view of my Moleskine homemade plannerI know, it seems a little redundant, but I really missed not having a calendar view in the past years.  It’s easier for me to visualize what’s happening in the month in this kind of layout.

Next is the week starting on Monday.  I have plenty of room to write to-do lists and actionable goal steps along with weekly plans.  I do the Rapid Logging / Bullet Journal method in a smaller scale.  It really helps to say, “Okay here’s the Big Thing, now what steps need to happen to complete the Big Thing.”  I learned that from Molly (of Stratejoy)!

Stamp dates in a Moleskine journal to make a plannerI just used an office stamp to get the dates in there.  I embraced “imperfectly perfect” and didn’t freak out when some ink bled through or it didn’t get stamped down all the way.  Not being perfect is a first for me.  It’s a daily struggle that affects millions (god, I hope you people get my humor).

I’ve been doing “The Three” aka the three things I must complete today and I write them out here, too.  I heard somewhere that three is the number to list when you’re writing a daily to-do list, so…that’s why I picked three.

Weekly view of my Moleskine homemade plannerAnd finally, I about a third of the book is blank.  I was hoping to have a page-per-day layout and be able to journal a bit more / write out more lists on a day-to-day format, but I didn’t have enough pages…oops.

So I have a notes section instead.  Rapid Logging / Bullet Journaling definitely happens here.  For example, I wrote the big things to focus on for the change to Gardening in High Heels and the small steps under neath that will reach that goal.  It was so overwhelming to think about the tasks I needed to complete for GIHH, but writing it down in bite-size steps made it much easier.

I was also thinking about blog planning in the blank part so everything is all in one place, but everyone talking about blog planners made me want one.  It’s only child syndrome.

I will jazz it up with some washi tape, color-coordinated pens, Project Life cards, etc, but that will come later.  Organically.  I want it to be used and have a record of the great things that happened this year.

Do you use a planner? What’s your favorite way to track your day?

Do you know what you don’t want?

I have had this Clarity Gem from Clarity on Fire saved to write about for such a long time and I haven’t created it.  It’s talking about taking what you don’t want and transitioning it to what you do want.

Go listen to it.  It’ll only take 8 minutes.

Good?  Okay.  I was initially going to follow up Why Getting Fired Was Good For Me, but now it has more meaning in a different form.  Things come back when we most need them.

Like I wrote last week, I’m a little stuck in planning and not focused enough on doing without Knowing what you don't want is better than knowing what you do.making sure everything is perfect first.  Along with that, I’m not sure where I want to go with SynEr and my career and freelance and such.

As Rachel and Kristen say, when we get stuck in the suckitude of what we don’t like, that’s all we can think about sometimes.  We know really quickly what we don’t want and what we don’t like, but it’s harder to come up with what we do enjoy.

“I would do what I loved if I knew what I wanted to do, but all I know is what sucks.”

Makes perfect sense to me.  It’s hard to turn around and say to myself, “Here’s what I’m so excited about.”  Probably just like it’s easier to forget the good and focus on the bad.

When that happens, they recommend to take a second and think about the bad.  What don’t you want?  Then turn it on its head and figure out what the opposite is.  The example Rachel gave is feeling pressure.  The opposite of that for her is ease, relief, simplicity.  Kristen felt stifled, like she was suffocating.  The opposite for her was feeling spacious, like she had room to be creative and wouldn’t have to hide who she is.

This actually came up for me before I listened to the clarity gem all the way through.  I was having a discussion with Marissa and the same feeling came up for her, too.

My advice?  Figure out what you don’t like first.

Then I was trying to figure out what I want to write about for PCBN because Jason, bless his heart, was like, “Write about anything!”  In a total nonsensical paradox, it seems limiting to figure out what to write since there are so many options.

The easiest way for me to narrow it down was to write down what I don’t want to do and what angle I don’t want to take.  It really helped to put it into perspective and figure out, Okay, this isn’t what will work, so I can cross those off the list.

I’m also going through the Holiday Council with Stratejoy, and creating my plan for next year.  I settled on my “word” a while ago, but I want it to have a little more oomph.  “Focus” is a nice word, but it seems more like a command than a directive.  With this method, I know what I don’t like about it, and instead can find a word that has a little more power.

I’m really quite enjoying this opposite thing.  It’s perfect timing with New Year’s; we’re all trying to figure out our grandiose new direction for 2015.  I’m totally employing it to help unstick whatever’s stuck with me writing-wise.

What do you do when you need to figure out the answer to a big “something”?

Let’s Play

           

People Really Dug These

We Belong in the Garden Together