First off, I never did pick a word, but now I need to go read my older post and see what I was considering and maybe refocus myself now that we’re on the downslope of 2020.
Around April I took some time to itemize my most active or recent works in progress and assigned them all numbers (I made a list on my desk blotter – I didn’t number the bags or anything). Then I took a piece of paper and listed the next 30 days, used a random number generator, and assigned each project to a day. This worked surprisingly well in helping me get some things finished that I’d be ignoring. Some days I ignored the “assigned” project because I didn’t have the mental bandwidth for that particular one.
I kept that up thru much of June and then it fell away. I think it’s an element of my “pandemic fatigue.” I’m tired of this state of the world. I’m annoyed I didn’t have my usual trip to NY and to “my” camp to recharge in the woods. I’m annoyed that some people aren’t doing what is in the best interest of society as a whole. I’m annoyed I put on 15 pounds because “while we’re in isolation, we’ll eat what we want.”
Since August has arrived I’m trying to regroup. I spent some time going thru some containers that needed to be processed. It was stuff my mom brought to us when I was living in North Carolina (so, 2+ years ago. Yes, we moved it to AZ with us). It was stuff from my childhood bedroom and largely things from high school and college. Most of it was thrown out either because it was just unnecessary (why did I save these specific stuffed animals? i don’t know, so they’re clearly not important), or dirty and not worth saving (like a massive plastic mug that had the names of everyone in my high school graduating class on it).
There were a lot of letters from my spouse from when I was working at summer camp and he was working for his grandparents, from friends, from my grandparents; pictures from high school and college that I want to look at more closely; and things that deserve more thoughtful handling. Those were consolidated into one container and I can deal with those this month. There were Girl Scouting things like my cadette tie (I think?). I considered repurposing the material for a face mask and then got annoyed at having to still deal with masks (I agreeably wear one everywhere outside our house, but I’m annoyed that it’s August and things are worsening).
Maybe it’s watching Hoarders that has me in the mood to tidy more stuff. Who knows. Don’t look in my kitchen, though, because it’s not motivating me to constantly have a clean sink.