Simple Serpent Steps

It's spring time in Oz and time for Izzie to do sorting, tossing, spring cleaning and generally useful and productive activities before the brain draining, soul sapping, sizzling stinking summer sets in and puts an untimely end to all those good intentions.


The usual ritual of watching the sunset at the beach for the September equinox gave way to attending an evening on the art of creating nutritious 15 minute meals from scratch.
I figured that today would be perfectly fine to do the sunset thing instead. But the weather gods had other plans and it rained most of the afternoon. So instead I spent the time squiggling and reading the papers.

Another ritual for this time of the year is an update of the little green notebook. The green notebook is the current repository of a good 3 year's worth of 3 month, 1 year and 5 year plans. It turned out that this September's "New Year's resolutions" were sufficient to fill the remaining pages.
It is a cheap little A7 number from the supermarket and it is half falling apart from the years of use. A timely reminder to take care and get better quality next time. It's just as well I got that stash of Moleskine 2016 diaries back in June for 50 cents each. I'm keeping one of them for 2022 when it will match the year almost perfectly except that pesky January and February. Leap years are such a pain. The others will do perfectly fine as notebooks and there's even a little pocket to stash lists of books to read for the year and other such trivia.

While it is fun ticking the boxes and writing the dates on items as they graduate from works in progress to completed items, it is not so satisfying to find some items being added again month after month and year after year without even any signs of starting in sight. Either they have got to go or they have got to get done.

Writing menu plans, eating more healthily and not wasting food are just some of those things that constantly get put on the long finger and the appearance of that event at the library seemed just the auspicious sign needed to get something done on the munchies front.

Resorting to rituals and creating new habits is the weapon of choice in this battle.
I've got the bathroom, bedroom and laundry cleaning routines on autopilot for nearly two years now to the extent that it requires less thinking and energy to do them than to think of excuses not to. In some strange way I get more energy and satisfaction from cleaning, sweeping and mopping than procrastinating and I get to listen to lots of interesting radio programs at the same time.

Tonight was the first day of the new routine of wiping all the bench tops in the kitchen as well as the dining room table. It was getting tiring adding this item to the 3 month list for the last year and constantly having to put a cross next to it as not been started. Based on past experience, a month of Table Top Thursday's should be sufficient to put this new habit on auto pilot.

Nanowrimo is also looming larger on the horizon. Such a feast of nostalgia and creativity also serves as a reminder of the power of little baby steps of steady squiggling every day as opposed to a giant sprint at the end.

This time I have departed from the usual ritual of generating story ideas.

If I had been following the usual well trodden path, there would already be a reasonably useful story map made from one or more of a collection of some 50 something tarot decks. Between 70 to 90 cards drawn in random batches of 8 or 9 and little index cards with possible story points linking each card to the next and the preceding card.

So it will be interesting to see what difference it makes to wander off into the unknown without the usual safety net and mud maps.

It will also be interesting to see what other ways I can harness the power of the zombie brain on autopilot for getting stuff done.

Simple Serpent Steps

It's spring time in Oz and time for Izzie to do sorting, tossing, spring cleaning and generally useful and productive activities before the brain draining, soul sapping, sizzling stinking summer sets in and puts an untimely end to all those good intentions.


The usual ritual of watching the sunset at the beach for the September equinox gave way to attending an evening on the art of creating nutritious 15 minute meals from scratch.
I figured that today would be perfectly fine to do the sunset thing instead. But the weather gods had other plans and it rained most of the afternoon. So instead I spent the time squiggling and reading the papers.

Another ritual for this time of the year is an update of the little green notebook. The green notebook is the current repository of a good 3 year's worth of 3 month, 1 year and 5 year plans. It turned out that this September's "New Year's resolutions" were sufficient to fill the remaining pages.
It is a cheap little A7 number from the supermarket and it is half falling apart from the years of use. A timely reminder to take care and get better quality next time. It's just as well I got that stash of Moleskine 2016 diaries back in June for 50 cents each. I'm keeping one of them for 2022 when it will match the year almost perfectly except that pesky January and February. Leap years are such a pain. The others will do perfectly fine as notebooks and there's even a little pocket to stash lists of books to read for the year and other such trivia.

While it is fun ticking the boxes and writing the dates on items as they graduate from works in progress to completed items, it is not so satisfying to find some items being added again month after month and year after year without even any signs of starting in sight. Either they have got to go or they have got to get done.

Writing menu plans, eating more healthily and not wasting food are just some of those things that constantly get put on the long finger and the appearance of that event at the library seemed just the auspicious sign needed to get something done on the munchies front.

Resorting to rituals and creating new habits is the weapon of choice in this battle.
I've got the bathroom, bedroom and laundry cleaning routines on autopilot for nearly two years now to the extent that it requires less thinking and energy to do them than to think of excuses not to. In some strange way I get more energy and satisfaction from cleaning, sweeping and mopping than procrastinating and I get to listen to lots of interesting radio programs at the same time.

Tonight was the first day of the new routine of wiping all the bench tops in the kitchen as well as the dining room table. It was getting tiring adding this item to the 3 month list for the last year and constantly having to put a cross next to it as not been started. Based on past experience, a month of Table Top Thursday's should be sufficient to put this new habit on auto pilot.

Nanowrimo is also looming larger on the horizon. Such a feast of nostalgia and creativity also serves as a reminder of the power of little baby steps of steady squiggling every day as opposed to a giant sprint at the end.

This time I have departed from the usual ritual of generating story ideas.

If I had been following the usual well trodden path, there would already be a reasonably useful story map made from one or more of a collection of some 50 something tarot decks. Between 70 to 90 cards drawn in random batches of 8 or 9 and little index cards with possible story points linking each card to the next and the preceding card.

So it will be interesting to see what difference it makes to wander off into the unknown without the usual safety net and mud maps.

It will also be interesting to see what other ways I can harness the power of the zombie brain on autopilot for getting stuff done.