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Honestly, I want to do too much. That’s been a continuous thread weaved through my life. As a child, I didn’t go to the library to get one Babysitter’s Club book. I went to get ten. In high school, instead of being active in one or two clubs, I was active in about 10 and was on the swim team. I was a double major and double minor in college who worked a thirty hour per week professional job. I started graduate school working a full-time job and a part-time job. I kept that part-time job for 3/4th of the time I was at school, only leaving it during my final semester so I could focus on my thesis. Apparently though, that wasn’t enough for me, so Linsey Jayne and I founded Spry Literary Journal.

Honestly, I like to be so involved. Yes, at times, it does feel overwhelming. At others times, being overly involved keeps me motivated.

My only goal for this month was to create a to-do list and start accomplishing some of the items on the list. Simple, right? Well, I don’t have the complete to-do list right now, I only have scraps of paper that have tiny lists on them. Which is okay. It’s movement in the right direction, and I’m considering that a mid-month victory. I’m going to take all my tiny lists and create a bigger list. If I have too many lists, I’ll feel frazzled. A very long time ago, Kyla wrote a post about being overwhelmed and taking a step back to create an organized to-do list (this was so long ago, that I would honestly have no clue where to link back to). Basically, what she did was take some time to write down every possible little thing she wanted to accomplish, and then she organized that list. When I first read the post, I was intrigued, and thought an approach like that would really help me. So at the time, when I organized my lists, the categories were something like “work, school, home, gifts, finances” etc. So I then went through every item on my master list, and anything that related to school went on my new school list. After it was organized (it took some time!), I felt- for the first time in a long time- prepared. I consistently checked items off of my lists, and knew exactly where to add an item when something came up. It was my most successful attempt at list making/life management.

So, I think I’m going to approach the rest of the month in that fashion. I’m going to really concentrate this week on list making. I’ll spend the first few days coming up with a master list and the following few days organizing it. If all goes well, I’ll have a week and a half left to the month to accomplish as many items as I can.

Now, this might sound like a crazy idea to many of you folks with great memories and organized brains. Oh, well. I’m just a person who wants too much. Let’s see how much I can do.