2025 Weekly Challenge, Week 23: Busier and Busier

I feel like Alice in Wonderland, except instead of "curiouser and curiouser," the theme is busier and busier.  The rabbit hole analogy is about right, though!

Last week was — as advertised — a little freer, with more time at home.  I struggled with motivation for a few days when the weather was gloomy, but ended in a rush of productivity over the weekend!  (When the weather was nice — go figure.)  Looking back, it was a more successful week than I thought at the time, despite the rainy day blues.

Writing

Once again, I got four days of writing in last week, Monday through Thursday.  It's been a little tougher to maintain on the weekends because we've been working so hard on our garden and patio projects.  I also wrote two blog posts and posted twice on my author Instagram.  So all in all, I did pretty well at achieving my writing goals for the week.

Decluttering & Organization

The flower bed is mostly finished and I'm very happy with it!  The patio is also mostly finished; I just have a little general cleanup and junk removal to do, but it's in a usable state right now, which is everything.  Gardening and working on the patio is almost all we did over the weekend.

This coming week, I need to get to work on organizing and going through my doll stuff, partly because I've been wanting to work on my doll room next and partly because I need to get together what I want to sell at the pop-up doll shop coming up in two weeks (*gasp*).

Dolls

I thought I would make more progress on doll projects last week, but I didn't.  A great deal of it was because of my struggles with the weather and motivation.  If I had gotten more done those days, I likely would have gotten around to working on the dolls.

Taxes

I succeeded in working on my taxes catchup three days last week — just a little each time, but I feel good about starting to make a habit of it.

Lessons Learned

If there's any lesson here, it's probably that I need to not be so hard on myself when things don't go as planned.  Midweek I thought I was doing terrible at everything.  I had no motivation and felt so sluggish.  But as it turned out, I actually didn't do so badly last week.  I wrote four days, worked on taxes three, and got a whole lot done on my current "organization" project over the weekend.

This week I need to ramp up my time spent on doll projects.  I have a sale in just under two weeks and not a lot of time left to prepare!  I also need to do some social media marketing for the sale so that people need to come.  Sharing photos of current projects should help with that.

Other than that, I hope to keep up my habits of writing and working on taxes a little every day (ish), and also to keep working on decluttering and organizing around the house, especially with stuff that will help prepare me for the pop-up doll shop.

Gray Day Procrasti-nay-tion

Is there any particular circumstances, any sort of day where you just know you’re not going to get anything done?

For me, it’s the gray day™.

I woke up yesterday morning to a damp, overcast day.  It had poured overnight and threatened to rain more most of the afternoon.

And I struggled with motivation.  All. Day. Long.

It was not a surprise to me.  I’ve realized as an adult how much my mood is tied to the weather — or, probably more accurately, the sun.

My dad has a story about me in high school, probably about eight years after we moved to the Denver area.  He says (I don’t remember this) that he was driving me to school one winter morning, and I was looking out the window and said mournfully, “I haven’t seen the sun in three days.”  And he realized then that I’d become as heliotropic (dependent on the sun for my mood) as a native.

Living in Denver, where we get 300 days of sunshine a year*, we become really accustomed to enjoying sunshine year-round.  Even in the winter, our snowstorms alternate with bright, sunny days that melt snow and make the temperature feel much warmer than it actually is.

As a young teenager, I had been in Colorado long enough — and during formative years of my childhood — that I was starting to feel that connection to the sun.  And now, after nearly four decades in the state, I have realized how entirely dependent I have become.  I have never been an early riser, but I have noticed I get up earlier in the summer fairly naturally, and just in general tend to be more motivated and engaged when the days are longer.

Of course, not every day is bright and sunny, and on overcast days like yesterday I definitely feel the energy has been sucked out of me.

Ultimately, I did get a little writing done, but only about 60 words of my novel and two-thirds of this blog post.  I’m glad I tried, but I hope today will be better!  I was worried today would be a repeat of yesterday when I woke up to another overcast sky, but thankfully by midday the sun had come out.  We’re not out of the woods yet, as we have rain forecasted for later today and, honestly, for a lot of the days coming up — but I’ll take advantage of the sunshine motivation while I can!

*Note: The “300 days of sunshine a year” claim has been theoretically debunked by defining a “sunny day” as a “mostly clear or clear day,” that is, cloud cover over 25% or less of the sky.  I thoroughly disagree with this definition, because even on days that have, say, 50% cloud cover, it still feels like a “sunny day” because of how rapidly clouds tend to move across the sky in Denver due to air currents coming off the mountains.

2025 Weekly Challenge, Week 22: Writing Starts NOW

Last week was a busy week, as advertised.  Between the shortened week, two trips out to the barn so my leaser’s daughter could ride, and a day of puppy sitting, there was a lot I didn’t get done.  I had expected it, but it’s still hard sometimes not to focus on everything I didn’t do.

Writing

I wrote four days out of seven, same as the previous week, which I’m pleased about.  I did not achieve my perhaps overly optimistic goal of 2,000 words per day.  I had a couple days of 400-600 words, and a couple days of 20-30 words, so while I did manage to keep up the habit (for the most part) I could stand to devote a little more time to it this week.

I also got a couple of blog posts finished, and a couple of social media posts on my author Instagram to go with them.

Decluttering and Organization

I knew I wasn’t going to have a lot of time to finish up the work on the garden, but between my busy week and the weather, I didn’t end up working on it at all.  I did, however, start some organization in the doll room, which I’m pleased about.  The toughest thing right now will be managing my impulse to abandon the garden half-finished so I can focus on the doll room.  I do hope to finish the major work on the garden this week, but it’s going to take some effort not to jump ship without finishing it.

Dolls

As expected, I didn’t have time to work on any doll projects last week.  I do need to get back to work on that this week, though, since I have the doll pop-up shop coming up at the museum in (gulp) just under three weeks.

Taxes

This category saw a surprising and dramatic increase this past week, and is probably part of the reason why I didn’t get to work on the garden.  On Saturday I started working on downloading records from PayPal, and ended up working on tax records for several hours.  It was satisfying to get a bunch of work done on that.  I still have a ways to go, but hopefully spending about four hours on it on Saturday will help to jumpstart momentum for the future.

Lessons Learned

Last week was a challenging week because it was so busy, but I think I did surprisingly well at managing it, all things considered.  This week should be much easier, thankfully, with fewer demands on me away from the house (but still a couple).  I want to take advantage of the chance to establish a good routine for working on both my novel and taxes catchup, and also hopefully use the opportunity (weather permitting) to finish up the garden.  And later in the week I hope to get going on doll projects, so that I have more dolls rehabbed in time for the pop-up shop on the 21st.

With that in mind, writing starts NOW!