January | 2014 | BAReed Writing, Business Writing

Monthly Archives: January 2014

Catching Up, Keeping Up, Staying Ahead of Things

Random thoughts January 8, 2014 Comments: 2

A New Year starts a fresh calendar, but the slate isn’t wiped entirely clean. There is much that gets carried over, all of the open tasks on your lists – wherever you keep them. And snow. We are having a much snowier winter than last year here in the Midwest and perhaps even snowier than average.

Whatever you thought you might do on a given day, show removal gets added in – almost every day of this New Year. This also means adding in longer travel times, altered routes, changes in plans. Instead of ticking something off of the endless lists, snow might mean moving it back days or weeks so that it lurks undone instead of smartly checked off. Harder to catch up, keep up or stay ahead.

In our house this year, it is my son who is taking point on snow removal here and for an older neighbor. He is both happy to help her out and weary that it has been so frequent. Snow and cold make me want to hibernate. I am happy to live in modern times with central heating, wicking fabrics, and the internet.

But home isn’t entirely solace and a cozy den from the cold. I have once again neglected to pour treatments down the drain regularly so that the main drain that is meant to efficiently and silently whisk used water from our house is calling attention to itself. I haven’t ever had this problem with any previous house so I can’t help but wonder if there is a design flaw in this particular drain layout – an awkward spot that narrows too quickly or bends too sharply and allows for difficulties if not given regular attention.

A few years ago, at great expense, I discovered that collusion between the long ago builder and some housing inspector allowed for the brilliant installation of heavy coated cardboard – called Orangeburg pipe, I believe – as the piping which connected all the houses in my neighborhood to the city sewer. Not surprisingly, this pipe fails to stand the test of time. The pipe for my house had lasted amazingly well, the house being in its 40^th decade. Lucky me, I was the lottery winner with a prize to pay out and new pipe to dig and lay out. With the bonus of a messed up front lawn for a year as things settled and grass reestablished itself.

Sometimes I feel like a maintenance person with a push broom. Push this personal thing along, push that household thing along, push this professional thing along. Go back to the beginning and start again. Replace the broom with a shovel and push that snow out of the way.

As thankful as I am for modern conveniences, is it an illusion that life was simpler and therefore easier to keep up with things in past generations?

Getting to ‘Normal’

Random thoughts January 6, 2014 Leave a comment

I usually keep Christmas décor up until on or about January 6^th, so now I am in the process of taking it down. Getting back to ‘normal’. In our house this often means this pile up of Christmas that you see in the picture. Almost every piece tells a story – of the person who gave it to me, or the shopping trip when I found it, or a family member no longer with us. Sometimes I need an interim period before I’m ready to pack everything away until next year.

The rest of the house looks a bit spare and bare now stripped back to its standard decorations. Normal. Not festive.

Outside the snow blows and looks bleak. Normal January. No green except tiny spots of evergreens waiting under snow mounds.

I used to briskly put away Christmas items in one fell swoop, the boys would leave for school a day or two after winter break ended seeing Christmas and come home to regular, every day house. Festive to normal in a few frenzied hours. Now I put out less of our Christmas bounty and take much longer to bring myself to store it.

I think more about what normal means. All of its definitions and connotations. How normal shifts all of the time, even while we think it is safe and steady. Normal is sturdy, utilitarian – without sparkle – background expected to support effectively without attention or effort. Certainly not expected to crack, break or suddenly alter to something unfamiliar.

Here in Illinois, Normal is actually a place on the map that you can visit or live if you choose. For a little while The New Normal was a show that we could all watch on TV, though I don’t think that it lasted. ‘You’re not normal’ probably still shoots around schools as an effective epithet, meant to lance an offender, real or imagined, to the quick.

How do you feel about normal?

Procrastinating Resolution Planning

Personal Growth, Random thoughts, Work Life January 3, 2014 1 Comment

Do you make New Year Resolutions? Do you plan them, or are they usually spur of the moment ideas? Do you make the same one every year? Do you make progress on it? Sorry, I don’t mean to seem like I am grilling – you have someone in your life for that, I have no doubt. I am merely curious, really.

public domain image

I remember in my childhood that we spent plenty of time at the dinner table talking about New Year Resolutions this time of year. My mom would be captured by the idea of renewal and self-improvement on a mass scale for the first few weeks of each year and want to get us involved. I don’t remember any of the actual resolutions that any of us made, of course. The resolutions themselves were rather secondary to the intrigue of so many people embarking on new plans at the same time.

This was of course long before today’s media fascination, or should I say obsession, with Resolutions. Maybe the media has just picked up on mom’s drum beat.

Dad was the list maker, and the head down, plow forward, get your chores done before fun kind of person. He didn’t want to talk about getting things done, he wanted to get to it. I’m pretty sure he mostly just listened to these conversations about resolutions.

I stopped making resolutions when I started to realize the repetitiveness involved and how few resolutions are actually acted upon. I had a friend resolve last year to sparkle – I do hope that she came through on that one. And I have a couple of other friends who have made big changes like healthier lifestyles and I admire their success.

It isn’t that I don’t have any need to improve aspects of my life, just that I don’t use resolutions to create progress on those fronts. I have plenty of room for improvement. I regularly resolve to keep on top of things, particularly finding ways to get myself to do the ones that I don’t like. I just don’t do it around New Year with a capital R.

“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.”

~ Edith Lovejoy Pierce