Top of My Head

Loki is laying on my lap, leg dangling over the edge, as always, purring and kneading the air. It's about the cutest thing ever, especially considering that he was driving me NUTS this morning with pulling things out of the trash.

I've been forcing myself to get ready for the upcoming semester - which is good because it starts next week. I've been thinking about it for the whole of January but not DOING anything. Having a life without much imposed external structure is nice, but damn if I can't get ANYTHING done without more in-your-face deadlines. This self motivation thing is tough.

Especially when there are other things being impressed upon me from other areas. I'm not complaining about it (well, ok, I'm complaining about the whole land use issue, but I think that's reasonable), but when the motivation for everything else I need to do has to come internally I have a hard time prioritizing. It will be easier once things start and I have clear deadlines to work towards.

I'm also way behind in my budget - went on something of a post-holiday spending binge it seems... I think what really happened is that the holiday spending (which I did have a separate budget for) broke my new habit of frugality and I just sort of forgot that I can't just buy things the way I did when I was employed. I mean, I KNOW that but until I sat down and tallied things up I didn't realize how much I was just spending without thinking about it.

I've also been in a panic about the Large Project (tm) - I knew it was going to take a long time, but when a single pattern repeat takes an hour and a half and is only an inch high... getting to 6 feet by a very firm deadline is something of a problem. Particularly as much of my impulse spending was on yarn, and I have several projects I want to work on for myself. With one large exception (photo upcoming, I hope) I am not allowing myself to start them... which makes the knitting, which I am supposed to love, into something of a chore.

None of this is earth shattering, it's just what's in my head. Maybe releasing it into the wild will help me buckle down and get things done. You never know.