A goal without a plan is just a wish.

Goal setting.  I personally find that I can't do it early in January - no serious New Year's resolutions for me - I'm too busy holidaying.  But then, within a week or two, my mind naturally turns to what I want to achieve in the coming months.

I've been doing lots of work towards getting myself sorted, and then all of a sudden it's February!

This year I've gone back to a paper planner in a serious way.  I've dallied with digital, love the idea, but it's just not as tangible as paper, not as flickable through.  I still use my digital calendar because it goes across all my devices and it's quick to refer to.  But for planning out my days and weeks and months, my goals and progress, it's me and my planner.

When you flick through it, this is how it's organised:

• A whole year-on-one-page calendar.
• A master to-do list.
• Months, each one having a month-on-one-page calendar, then a monthly overview planner, a monthly habit checker page and then a page-per-day daily plan.
• After the months I have a tab for goals, with each major goal having a page where it's broken down into steps and dates etc.
• I have a tab for midwifery work, with pages for booked locum dates, mileage, visit schedules etc.
• Next is my quilts section.  In there I have a year over two pages with dates of speaking engagements, travel, quilt show deadlines etc.  I have also decided to list my WIP's and the steps I need to do to complete them (22 of them at this stage, and that's after doing a Marie Kondo on my pile and discarding a heap that 'didn't spark joy'!)
• And lastly, notes pages, which are mainly blank pages for jotting down inspiration when it strikes.

I've used printables from Printed Pineapple, Elena's Papers, and Evy Draws, all found on Etsy.

I've also inserted a few inspirational quotes here and there to make it prettier and hopefully become part of my positive inner talk that I'm trying to nurture.  The quote you can almost make out in the picture above says,

"We become what we want to be by consistently being what we want to become each day."  

-Richard G. Scott

And I want to be an organised person that has a handle on what's happening today and also what's happening in two months time.

What organisational tools do you use?

Christmas Crazies

December is always my yearly speed bump, or judder bar as we call them in New Zealand.  It comes up with a rush, makes you sit up and take notice, and can do some real damage if you aren't prepared.

It's that crazy month of school finishing for the year and all that entails.  Christmas parties and work functions.  We go away camping or in the boat (or both) over Christmas so there is preparation for that.  Christmas presents to make and organise, decorations to sort.  And then this year we added in settlement on our house sale and some illness to boot.  Both my husband and I have had the kind of colds that make you couch bound for three days and now my daughter has a sniffle but she's just grateful that she's stopped upchucking after a tummy bug.  

And if that wasn't enough to send sanity packing, it's that time of year when I start questioning my goals, my achievements....my life.  Why does the end of the year make me wonder if I'm doing what I should be doing, if I'm achieving all I could achieve, if I'm a good and worthy person (just kidding on the last one....mostly).

I need to apologise to all those people who commented on my last couple of posts and who I haven't answered.  I'm using all the above as an excuse.  

This is day 94 from my 100 Days Project.  It's a little bit how I'm feeling at the moment.  

So what am I doing to help myself?  

Forgiving myself for things undone.  

Setting my timer and working on things for 10 mins at the time then setting the timer again for 3 mins to get up and walk and do a tiny bit of tidying up.  

Writing a schedule out for the week and to-do lists and paying close attention to my calendar.

Doing kind things for myself.

Doing a round of 'what we are grateful for' at the dinner table.

What do you do when it all gets a little crazy?

 

Tentative steps.

Last night I read Julie's (from Towards Sustainability) parting post.  It made an impact.  She talked about how she loses readers every time she blogs about the hard issues - peak oil and the like.  She is saddened by it and wonders why.

I think I know a little bit of why.  Because I'm one of the guilty ones.  I'm guilty of ignoring those hard issues and hoping they will go away.  Also, blogging is a little bit of escapism for me.  In the evening, when the kids are in bed, I can zoom around the world learning interesting and useful things, looking at beautiful work and peeking into other's lives.  After a hard day's work, the last thing I want to do is be scared, depressed and overwhelmed by reading about global warming and the oil crisis.  But can I really afford to be so ostrich-like?

From Julie's blog, I jumped to Causabon's Book and I watched this clip.  Go watch it for a little humorous but serious de-ostriching.

One big reason I know I've been ignoring the issues lately is quilting....

Quilting.  My obsession, my love, my sanity, my work (maybe one day).  Quilting is not generally an environmentally friendly hobby.  It has it's roots in thrift and recycling, but not any more.  The vast majority of quilters, me included, buy new fabric to add to our stashes whenever we can.  And our preferred fabric is cotton. 

Cotton growers traditionally use a hideous amount of synthetic fertilisers, insecticides and herbicides to grow their crop.  And when it is grown in a developing country, like India, safety practices with these chemicals can be severely lacking, leading to human poisoning.  Then, of course, is the genetic modification issue - another thorny one.  If you want to read some more scary facts, click here for Organic Trade Association's Summary of Cotton and the Environment.  Shall we talk about dyes?  Let's not, we might all end up naked for fear of poisoning ourselves.

If I acknowledge that we have a real environmental crisis on our hands and that I really need to keep making changes in my life, then I can't go on blissfully ignoring my quilting and fabric addiction.  My conscience just won't let me.

So where does that leave me?  I've had a little look around in the past and organic fabric is not readily available and is very expensive in New Zealand.  I could source only thrift store fabrics fabrics and cut up old clothes etc, but that limits me with colours and patterns.  I could try dying my own colours with vegetable dyes, but I know they are not that stable.  All my immediate options that spring to mind all have drawbacks that makes me want to dismiss them.

Maybe this issue was a subconscious factor in my recent vow not to buy any more fabric this year.  I don't know.  But I do know that I can't really ignore the elephant in the room anymore.

I have made plenty of other steps in my life to live a little lighter on the land.  I compost.  I grow my own veges.  I raise my own meat and have chooks for scrap disposal and egg production.  I'm mindful of food miles and try and buy local and organic when I can.  I reduce, reuse and recycle.  I combine outings to save gas....the list goes on.

But fabric is what is niggling in the back of my mind every time I quilt.  And I don't want to feel guilty and sad about my most favourite past time. 

So it is with some trepidation and some excitement that I'm going to take some steps  in what I hope will be a journey towards more sustainable quilting.  I am going to seriously investigate organic fabric supplies and eco-dying.  I am going to add fabric to my shopping list when I visit thrift stores and I am going to restrain myself from buying new fabrics 'just because'.  And I'm going to regularly post about what I've learnt and where I'm going on my little journey.

I'm going to stick to my pledge not to buy any new fabric this year, however I'm not going to turn my back entirely on commercial fabrics.  Quilting is my art as well and I don't want to stifle myself so much that I begrudge the whole journey.

What a challenge!  Environmentally friendly, sustainable and, hopefully, beautiful quilts!

Wish me luck!

My Lofty Aspirations.

A little while ago I found myself reading backwards through my blog like a diary - interesting to see what we've been up to and what we've achieved over the past few months since I started writing. And now it's that time of year when we typically feel the need to redirect ourselves, make sweeping resolutions about our waistlines and exercise regimes, how we are going to achieve straight A grades, become the CEO of the company etc, etc.




So here I am, thinking about this next year in the progression of my life. What do I want from it? What will it demand of me?


In 2002 I wrote a basic 10 - 15 year plan or list of goals:

• Completed Herbalism studies.
• Working as an Independent Midwife, perhaps homebirths only, along with some consultations as a herbalist.
  Be living in a house with 5-10 acres of land that I own jointly with M.
• Have an earning rental property.
• Have a large herbal and vege garden, an orchard and chooks.
• Have a couple of children.

So eight years later, it's that time of year for an evaluation.

• I have not completed my Herbalism studies! I started and almost finished the first year by correspondence and then had to cut it short when my first child arrived. It is still something I am interested in. Now that the children are a little older, perhaps it is something I could look into again?


• I have worked for a few years as an Independent Midwife and worked out the best way to fit it into and around life. But for now I have given up (paid!) work completely.


• We found the right bit of land and we are finally living on it!
  
• We do have an earning rental property. Although I personally don't own it, I do benefit from the income. And it's fully renovated, which took a long time in coming.


• As for the garden etc. I have started establishing one this last year and the chooks have been around for a while. I have my eyes on an orchard next.



• And the kids....well, they arrived earlier than planned, but they say the best gifts are surprises!

So in 2007 I wrote another 10-15 year plan.

• Two happy, healthy kids with no major social, educational, personal problems etc. (lofty aspirations!)


• Living out on our land, house finished, garden giving us most fruit and veges, chooks, cows and ?pig, herbal garden.
  
• Completed Herbalism studies.


• Happy in whatever part-time employment I'm doing, ?midwifery.


• Have enough time to quilt as I wish.


• Freehold with savings and investment property.

Not too much has changed. Quilting made an appearance after I discovered the joy of creating! And I guess I'm refining the type of lifestyle I want to lead. Really, if I wrote another 10-15 year plan today, I wouldn't alter much from the 2007 one.


The nitty gritty then: what are my plans for this year? What specific goals do I want to achieve this year to help me live the life I want for my family and I?

ORCHARD. This is my big one for this year. I want to plan, prepare and plant an orchard. And it's the planning and preparing bit that I really want to do properly.

RABBITS. I've been interested in rabbits for meat for a little while. Then I found some more information on it and it has really motivated me to try and incorporate rabbits into my growing systems out here. By the end of the year, I want to be eating my own bunnies (apologies to all who find this idea a little hard but this is what sustainable agriculture is all about).



LAND AND HOUSE. We own our block of land as tenants-in-common with another woman. We always had the intention of formalising a subdivision into two titles and this year we want to have some concrete progress towards that goal. Also we will shortly be constructing another shed and a large veranda on the front of this shed, so to have that completed and functional this year will be great.

WATER SUPPLY. We are officially in a drought. In this area we haven't had any significant rain for about three months. One rainwater tank is not cutting the mustard. So this year we need to investigate our options and establish a more consistent water supply in case we have the same weather pattern next summer.

HAPPINESS. And then a not-so-concrete, but probably most important goal: To make our family situation what we envisaged it when I made the decision to give up work. That is to have the kids in a routine, have time together as a family and time to spend doing the things we enjoy, and for me to have the time to provide my family with wholesome, homegrown and homecooked food.

Goals.

I’ve spent this afternoon thinking. In an abstract, distracted kinda way. Whilst aimlessly wandering around doing a little tidying, a little cooking, a little rejoicing that my daughter seems to be coming right after the last few days of vomiting.

How did I sleep through this?

It’s probably been brought on by the massive earthmoving endeavors of yesterday. They represented a major step forward in the development of this piece of land. It got me reflecting on what I actually want, where I want to head with my life, which, of course, has a lot to do with what I want to do with this block of land.

My husband owns one business and ½ owns another. The first business he bought as a one-man band operation and has built it up over the last six years to the point where he has put in a manager and stepped away. He now works in the other business and they are slowly building that one up. He periodically contemplates selling the first business, but vacillates because it gives him a decent drawing every week though it still causes him stress (admittedly a whole lot less now he has a manager). Now he is thinking about selling it again and using the profit towards a property of some description.

Stainless steel work my husband has done.

I am hesitant because it is the drawing that really has allowed me to resign from work myself. And I resigned in part to spend time on THIS property, planting an orchard, tending a large vege garden, raising animals and homemaking. Yet his plans for another block of land could either mean uprooting us from here, renting it out and starting again somewhere else, or running some sort of stock raising system that would see our weekends taken up with visiting and overseeing the other block.

However, new challenges always excite me. I think I’m very good at starting things, getting enthusiastic about things, but not necessarily following them through to the nitty gritty end. And I guess I’m a bit at that stage here. I have big plans for this place but the next few steps are hard work and I won’t really start to see rewards from here for a while. So it would be easy (in a way, because uprooting is never very easy) to be diverted by starting a new project.

I think just writing this is making me see it a whole lot clearer. I need to convince my husband that whether or not he sells his business, we need to get this place up and running before we move on or consider more challenges.

They're gorgeous when they're happy.

I was just having a little run back through some of my early posts when I began this blog. It seems like forever but I have only been blogging for seven months. And back then when I started, we weren’t even living out here. In seven months we have:

Converted a dirt-floored shed into a three bedroom house,
Finished renovating our old house and rented it out,
Moved 4 people, 2 dogs and 11 chooks from one house to the other,
Got used to using a long-drop for a loo,
Built a very large chicken run and figured out new systems of managing the chooks,
Built the fence foundations for a large vegetable garden,
Designed and organised for the building of a large shed extension and verandah,
Built a retaining wall for said shed foundation,
Bought 5 milk-fed calves and learned how to managed them (still learning!)
Sent a little boy off to school,
Planted trees, mowed paddocks, battled gorse, lugged horse poop around,
Made the decision for me to resign from paid work,
Had major earthworks done for the shed, vege garden and had a dam dug,
And all the while, done the other things that you do, like work, sleep, quilt, plan birthday parties, cook, nurse sick kids, walk dogs etc.

Hamilton Botanic Gardens. One day my place might look like this...

I guess what I’m trying to say to myself is, hey! Go easy, you’ve actually done quite a bit and even though you spend a bit of time wandering round aimlessly, you are still achieving things. Whilst you still have plenty to do to get this place to ‘dream lifestyle’ stage, packing it in and starting somewhere else is just going to put you back at square one, don’t give up now!

With that sorted out, I guess I need to look more closely at what I (or we!) want to achieve out here in the next wee while and do some step-by-step goal setting to help us get there. But I think I’ll save that for another post…..

Back again.

Little quilt for the hospital I finished with all my internet-free time.

Thanks everyone for your supportive comments in the trialling broad-band-free time that I've been through ;)

I rang the 'really-cheap-but-lacking-in-customer-service' internet provider this morning and they said,"Your broadband has been active for almost two weeks, did you not receive a phone call to help you access it?" Well, no, actually I didn't. Perhaps that's why I'm ringing you?

Actually I wasn't quite so sarcastic, but I sure felt like being witchy. Anyway, water under the bridge, I have internet again.

I knew I liked the web, but it took this enforced break to realise how much I actually USE the net (as opposed to just passing time on it). There were recipes I couldn't look up, gardening sites I couldn't access for advice, people I couldn't keep in touch with and vice versa, phone numbers I couldn't find, questions my son asked me that I couldn't answer, and I felt quite isolated as I couldn't access blogs of like-minded people and people who I feel I'm learning a lot from at the moment.

It made me a little concerned. What if the world does all turn pear shaped and we all suddenly have to be a lot more self-sufficient? What if, for whatever reason, I lose the internet for good? There is so much knowledge to be had on the web, it amazes me. I don't really buy 'knowledge' type books anymore as I feel that I can find anything I need on-line. But if it all went bust, where would that knowledge be?

My recent Op shop finds: a jersey that felted fantastically and a book of soft toy patterns

In conclusion, I've started thinking about a few things. Like wondering if I should do some formal sort of learning around gardening and sustainability, like these workshops here. I've also decided to do some thinking about goals - what do I want to achieve, where do I want to be in 2, 5 ,10 years time, and what do I need to get there? (Very deep and meaningful, I know).

And I'm going to start being a little more organised with my interests. This means getting some folders with labels on the outside and writing or printing out the tidbits I find and keeping them in hard copy. I will endeavour to write recipes down when I find them instead of trying to find them again later, or worse, forgetting about them completely. I'm going to start using the local library's online service to request books I want instead of writing them down and then losing my list!

Simple lemon cake - I recipe I DID write down.

And last, but not least, I'm going to try and meet more local people, interested in the things I'm interested in, by making the effort to get along to local meetings. For example, I'm a member of Forest and Bird, yet I have NEVER been to a local meeting, not once!