Managing my Time... and my Life

As part of my new job, I have been enrolled in a "Leadership Academy" which is attended by a lot of the Village's management and supervisory staff. The group I am going through it with includes people from all departments and provides a pretty interesting cross section of our employees. The program lasts about 9 months, and we meet every 2 weeks for 2 hours on a Tuesday morning. So far, I've had two classes, both of which I have found supremely interesting.
This week, the section was entitled "Managing my Time". When I saw the title, I thought, mange my time!? - I don't get to have that luxury in life, I work in local government, but ok humor me.

First she asked us to complete the following statement... Time is.....

My answers: precious, always getting away from me, structure, and hard to manage.

Then, she presented the following, life changing model.

THOUGHTS

impact our

FEELINGS

which impact our

BEHAVIORS

which create our

RESULTS

Now, maybe without the explanation this doesn't seem earth shattering or maybe because it was 7 am and my brain was still waking up, I was easily impressionable, but for me this is providing me a whole new way to view my life and my control over it.

Here is her example, and to me it makes a lot of sense. If my THOUGHT about time is something like "it is always getting away from me" this will created FEELINGS of a lack of control and a rushed "I better get this done quick" vibe, then my BEHAVIORS will exhibit a rushed attitude, which may or in my case, may not, provide the RESULTS I want.

The stinker is, often our THOUGHTS about things (Time, love, money, etc.) are long standing, often parentally infused, ideas that we don't even really "think" about. They are things that may have been put there by the actions and ideas of others, long before we really cared to worry about any of them. The great thing is, if we don't like the RESULTS we are getting, we can work backwards and figure out what core belief we have that might be causing this chain reaction, and work to reprogram our brains for different results. Now this is my kind of self-help.

For me, the time example rings 100% true. I have about a million things on my desk and in my head that require my attention. I often find myself rushing through things I enjoy, and I constantly worry about the next thing on the list and whether or not "there will be time". This isn't only in my work life, this is at home, on vacation and everywhere in between. I wake up on vacation thinking, "Oh my gosh, it is already 10:00 am! We are going to miss something, we are wasting our vacation!" In the same vain, I often find myself so overwhelmed with things I want to do at home, that I end up vegetating on the couch doing almost none of the things I want to do. I feel NO control over my time, or at least I didn't until I started thinking about it differently.
This week, I have decided to reprogram my brain to see Time as a commodity that I control and can choose to spend in a variety of different ways, kind of like money. I will no longer allow myself to think about time as something abstract that I have no control over. At home, this means that when I get home, I take the Rigby out for a walk and enjoy the outdoors (it is still nice out afterall, and I should enjoy it while I still can!) and I bring him home, get him dinner and play with him and the cat. Last night, after all the doggy fun, I sat down to watch TV and thought, is this really something I enjoy? Is this a VALUABLE use of my time? Of course the answer to this is a big NO, so I went upstairs and worked on my Gocco swap project until there was something on TV that I actually was looking forward to watching.

I know this might not sound all that exciting to anyone but me, but to think about this model for all the things in my life that I might be less than thrilled with really has made for an interesting week. I find myself feeling a sense of control over my life and the way I am spending it, which is pretty new for me. It has enabled me to live in the moment in a way I have been striving to do for a long long time.

Puppy update..

Wow, I have a blog for a few weeks and already I have fully neglected it! Sorry for the delay, the addition of Rigby (Named in honor of the Beatles' Eleanor Rigby), the puppy mentioned in the last post, has turned my life a little upside down...

Rigby the great.

Don't get my wrong, Rigby is a wonderful puppy by all accounts. Sure, he still hasn't fully gotten the going potty outside thing down....but I can't really complain since he is doing remarkable well for a puppy who I don't think had EVER gone outside before. In fact, I think at his "shelter" he did his business in his little cage. Considering that, I think he is doing quite wonderfully! He really only has occasional accidents, mostly because we aren't watching close enough or are being lazy about taking him out in the AM.

Max and Rigby during their first meeting. If you look VERY closely you will see that Rigby has one of Max's favorite toys in his mouth, and Max is actually mid-jump in swating him. Their battle royals will be caught on video soon and hopefully posted here. They are pretty entertaining.

My brother, sister-in-law and niece (who is only almost 6 months old!) were visiting this past weekend and Rigby was pretty good with the baby around. He wanted to play with her (and her toys!) but he was pretty decent all things considered. My brother and sister-in-law were really impressed by his attitude and his relatively calm demenor. Just one of the many great things about Bostons!!

The strangest thing about the puppy, is that my mother, Zach's mother and Zach's father are pretty much obsessed with him. Zach's dad actually called me last night, when Zach wasn't even home, to check up on his "grand-dog". Now, I understand that Zach's parents don't currently have any real grandchildren yet, but their obsession with my dog makes me wonder what their reaction to real live children will be like. I appreciate their enthusiasm about the pup though, especially my mom, who isn't really a dog person. She even agreed that he could come along to Wisconsin the next time if we would like! I don't know how her cat will feel about that, but I guess we will find out...

Other than the puppy, life has been moving along as normal. I signed up to do a Gocco postcard exchange being put on by Lisa over at www.thebunnylog.com/journal. A big HI!! to any of you who are reading this because you are fellow participants!! I have been stressing about what to do for the design, and I am honestly a little bit nervous about what I will come up with. There are some seriously talented artists involved, and it makes me worry that they will get my cards and be really disappointed. I am planning to spend much of this weekend plotting for the postcards so I can hopefully print next weekend when my paper gets in.

We officially have our first child...

A Puppy!!!!

Our beautiful new edition!

This Sunday Zach and I did what may very well be the most spontaneous thing we have done... we drove 5 hours to St. Louis to procure the ADORABLE puppy you see above. We actually filled out the on-line application for this little guy sometime late Saturday afternoon while sitting at our friend's house, and the time we got home late that night the e-mail oking our adoption was in my inbox and taunting me to come collect him. We made a tentative decision to maybe go get him the next morning... and by 8:00 am I was up and waking up Zach to help me make the decision of a lifetime (or at least the next 12 years).


Zach, in what can only be described as puppy fever, hopped up and started getting himself ready. By 9:30 we were on the road to St. Louis and both a little amazed at what we were actually doing. Zach's puppy fever, which unbeknownst to us actually translates into "lead foot", got us to St. Louis in record time.


The puppy was every bit as sweet as he looked in his pictures, and within the hour we had paid for our little man and were on our way. The place we got the puppy was ok... they rescue dogs that the "puppy mills" couldn't get rid of otherwise, and there were a LOT of small dogs there... I worry a little about any lingering health problems that might pop up with him, but he will be getting a full work-up tomorrow at my vet, so hopefully he will get a clean bill of health.

So far, we are one night down. He sat in Zach or my lap the whole way home (all 5 hours of it!) and was happy as a clam. He did his business outside as he should and has been generally well behaved. He even made it through the night, all crated up, and didn't keep us up all night. What more could we ask for?!


Max and his meeting was pretty amusing, but I'll post more on that later. The photographic evidence is truly priceless!


He hasn't quite been named yet... he was Billy at the shelter, but we aren't really sold on that. Any suggestions?

My High School is stalking me...

Earlier this week, I got a postcard from my high school asking me to update my personal information with them for some alumni directory they are attempting to assemble. My first thought was, how on EARTH did they find me? I have lived in at least four different places since my high school days, and two of those have been out of state. My last move was over a year ago, and I have had actual important mail that had a difficult time finding me at my new address. How exactly did my high school, who usually sends mail to me at my Dad's house (he still lives at one of my past addresses) find me all the way in Illinois? Now, to make matters even more creepy, they also have my e-mail address and sent me an additional request through that.

I can't say I miss this place.

Thinking back, this is actually the third such request I have received from an old school of mine. Both Carroll College and NIU have sent me the same types of postcards and e-mails in the past year. Looking a little further down the line, it looks like this is the work of "Harris Connect". Clearly this company has some contacts at the Pentagon that help them track down alumni information. Then again, I don't think that even the government is this good at keeping track of me.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't really have any opposition to the idea of my previous schools having my contact information. I just find the following portion of all of these communications odd:

"CALL TODAY - TOLL FREE 1-800-864-6208
(Central Time)

Mon. - Fri. 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.
Sat. 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Sun. 11:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m."

You can only call to update your information. With all the work you have done to track me down, you couldn't have developed some type of easy to fill out on-line form? Not to mention, with such a form they could have contacted me ONCE, I could have filled it out, and they could have just shared my information with all three schools! Clearly these people should hire me to do some of their development work.

I have absolutely no desire to call these people. I feel like the conversation is going to go like this, "So what have you been doing since you graduated from high school?" "Well, I went to college at Carroll College in Waukesha, WI...then..." "Um... can you spell that college for me?" I don't want to spend half an hour trying to update some operator about my life and trying to literally spell it all out for them.

Strangely though, I fully have a desire to share my life and accomplishments with people, especially the people I have graduated from high school with. If there was a form I could fill out, I would 100% participate, but to call, that is just too much work. Does this prove that I am seriously lazy? Yep.

Not to mention, if I call, then these crazy information miners will have my phone number too and that is just too much. Give Carroll and NIU my phone number so that they can harrass me to donate money? Not a chance.

Gocco madness!

Earlier this year, I purchased a Gocco. The Gocco is a small Japanese screen printing machine which has been in and out of production by it's Japanese manufacturer for some time. (For the record, it is currently out of production).

The magical Gocco.

I am in LOVE with this thing!! Although I can honestly say that I didn't NEED the Gocco, it has been a wonderful addition to my crafting addiction. Below is an examples of my most recent Gocco work:

Aaron Williams Limited Edition CD.

The CD above was created for Aaron Williams' Limited Edition CD The Everwinding Road. We did 100 copies, and it turned out really great. As you can see in the picture below, sometimes the layers were a little off, but that is part of the charm right?

The front cover. (I can't for the life of me figure out how to turn this image, if you know, please let me know!)

I do really love the way this one turned out. I was a little paranoid half way through that it was going to be a DISASTER, but in the end it panned out nicely!!