Dive into the Procrastination Pool

I am a stalwart ADD-brained procrastinator. (That should be with a capital P.)

Don't believe it? How about that it's only now, after blogging for just about two years, that I finally got around to playing with a little design for this blog. Blogger's made it easy to play with the design, so today you see some new colors and a different layout than you've been accustomed to seeing. It's a work in progess, so be forewarned that you might see it change some more.

Lots of ideas have always flitted into my ambitious little pee brain; however, I am one of those folks for whom being overly busy strikes a chord of terror. It feels overwhelming to have too much to do, so things have to be put out of mind, and that doesn't always happen in a way that guarantees things eventually get done.  It's not unusual for me to have hundreds of unmanifested ideas and to-do items lounging around in the pool at the back of my brain for years. That pool is now full, and something has to change.

To stay focused and to get things done, I have developed lots of coping mechanisms over the years. You may remember from previous posts, if you've been following for a while, about the "Put 50 Things Away" game, the "Hire Yourself as Your Own Assistant" game, or the "Focus of the Day" game. The games become less effective over time, and new games have to be developed.

This is my new one: During June I have vowed to drag one or two things a days from out of the procrastination pool, dry them off in the light of day, and get them done.

So far, so good. Things have gone to the goodwill, clothes have been carted off to drycleaners, the hand-weights have come back out of the closet, and some unfinished objects are being completed.

A big item, that has been put off for the past year, is to start the process of getting some patterns completed and listed for sale on Ravelry. It has always felt like an insurmountable task: all that technical writing and geeky stuff about pattern writing, all the unknowns about getting the Ravelry designer status set up, etc.

Two nights ago, after posting the tutorial for the Understatement Necklace on this blog, I contributed it as a free pattern on Ravelry. Last night I was blown away upon discovering that 270 people in Ravelry had marked the necklace as a favorite, it appeared on the site in 112 queues to be made by Ravelers, and my Etsy store had five times the amount of page views as normal yesterday. Whoa, Nelly! That's exciting!

Good golly, this game could be fun. Care to play along? Do you have any unfinished business lurking around?