What Do You Do All Day?
(or "Stop Me Before I Volunteer Again")

Friday, March 04, 2011

 

Duh!

Sometimes great, should-have-been-so-obvious-but-wasn't ideas just reach out and smack you in the head when you least expect it. I LOVE when that happens -- it's exactly the kind of re-energizing thing that keeps me going, especially when progress on so many other things has been sluggish for a long time.

The inconvenient thing about such brainstorms is they tend to hit when you really need to be doing something else, and it's really hard to steal time from the thing you should be working on to follow the energy flow of the new idea. Also, because you now want nothing more than to jump on the new idea, it's also hard to focus and concentrate on the same-old-same-old thing you really do need to be working on at that moment.

Which is exactly my struggle today. While doing our regular 7:30 Friday morning gardening at the neighborhood school I suddenly realized that a short garden update item in the school newsletter each week could help both staff and parents understand what the garden is all about (something we've been struggling with since we started the project). So of course I ran home and, instead of digging into the Neighborhood Council agenda that needs to be written by about noon today (and isn't started yet), I sat down and banged out the first sample garden story.

Now I'll be fighting that distraction all day.

Also, to make it worse, my partner in the new sort-of-business project had a brainstorm of her own this morning, called me to talk about it, and wants me to help implement it...which I'd love to do since it, too, is a great, why-didn't-we-think-of-this-before, "duh!" idea.

Despite the "Duh!" Distraction

- Pulled weeds for an hour in the neighborhood school garden (with our new volunteer - yay!)

- Wrote up sample garden story (which I'm hoping to turn into a weekly feature) for the neighborhood school newsletter

- Edited NC Land Use Committee meeting minutes that will be needed in preparing the board meeting agenda that's due today

- Talked to business partner about her big idea, which she wants me to help with (and with which I'd love to help)

- Caught up on several e-mails, invitations and contacts that affect the board meeting agenda that's due today

- Wrote board meeting agenda (including summaries of Land Use issues covered)

- Posted the agenda to the NC's website, Facebook page, Twitter feed, e-mail list and also e-mailed it to our local libraries

- Did weekly RE updates for church website

- Formatted and posted two months' worth of sermons to the church website

- Took Alex to a family movie night ("Finding Nemo"...in German) at his school

- Weathered several tantrums on the way to getting an over-tired Alex to bed late after the movie night

- Found a cool tool for testing website architecture and spent an hour and a half entering a proposed organization for the new church site

- Quit finally at 11 p.m.

posted by Elizabeth 9:19 AM

All material © 2002-2004 by Elizabeth Fuller. Please do not reproduce anything you find here without the author's permission.

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