Friday, January 27, 2006

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" --Mary Oliver

I am a procrastinator. I excel at it, and am proud of it--well, not really. It means tasks take twice as long as they should, because it takes up so much time putting them off. So, in an attempt to improve myself, I read a book on procrastination, and one of the suggested exercises was to wrote down 101 things you wanted to get done, from "the laundry" to "repainting the family room" to "getting that advanced degree" to "finding a new job." The idea was that you could start with the smaller, shorter term things, succeed at those, break the larger projects into parts (look at decorating magazines to get ideas, visit the paint store to get some colour chips, choose a weekend, etc.). Then one day I saw the above quote on a friend's email. Taking it as my guide, I sat down and wrote up those 101 things that I wanted to do, but that I didn't want to lose in the busy-ness of living. Actually, I didn't quite get to 101, but I'm almost there.

Here, then, is an edited list:
Plan worship for the rest of the year
Plan ministry for next year
Organize attic, especially books
Organize books on shelves
Read books on To Be Read shelf
Get 1 women’s clergy shirt (I need one more to have a decent wardrobe of them)
Hang pictures (yes, we've been here more than a year and do not have all our pictures up yet)
Get floor lamp for living room
Musings on sermons for rest of year
Repaint stairs and hallways
Start walking program
Use library for books (instead of bookstore...)
Clean office bulletin board
Detailed outline of body theology book
Replace living room blinds
Clean out closet
Read books on list
Put out church newsletter every other month (it's chronically late)
Visit Toronto
Write history of River City's GLBT community
Create Coming-out Guide for River City youth
Write a devotional for each day and publish on church website
Post sermons on website
Visit Mom regularly
Earn PhD

As you see, they range from the sublime (write theological book, earn PhD) to the ridiculous (lamp for the living room? So head down to Post One and buy one, RP!).

So, what's on your list?

If you play, let me know!

1 comment:

LutheranChik said...

Hi. I'm LutheranChik, and I'm a procrastinator.

("Hi, LutheranChik!")

I'll have to play later in the week to come. Actually, my one BIG to-do item is...finish my Ordinary Time devotionals...YIPES!!!!!!

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