Vicarious Thoughts

Being Summer the garden is a-buzz with insect activity and this year we’ve seen a lot more Monarch Butterflies – this may be due to a recent drive to increase their numbers in our town – it’s certainly nice to see when campaigns pay off. They’re remarkably difficult to capture though as we see them most often tumbling through the garden seldom landing on anything within shot. We have three swan plants in our garden now and it looks like there are some eggs on their leaves.
Anyway, this is a visitor who calmly waited for me to grab the camera and then happily posed for some shots. They’re the only one we’ve seen this summer (so far) and they’re looking a bit tatty round the edges. I’m woefully ignorant on any details since all I know is the name and how to recognise them.

I think these are called Chinese Fishing Lures but whatever they are they’re bright and sparkly and very tangled!

These two are the best of a bad bunch – the photos I thought I’d use turned out to be blurry … something to work on. These were taken in my backyard.

Yesterday I mentioned Brad Issac at Achieve-IT! is running a month-long series on Goal Setting and today we’re on Day Two: Start with a Big List. I found this a bit daunting starting with an empty page and personally could have done with a few starter questions but after a few minutes I wrote down a goal I was already working on and they just flew onto the page from there. Not nearly as many as the 75-100 he was talking about so I might go back and have another stab at it later.

Also, I got something already knocked off my 101 in 1001 list. I was getting some takeaways in Wanganui today and saw a sign right in front of my face (behind the person serving me) and when they asked me whether that was all they moved slightly and I saw it – Deep Fried Moro Bar! Finally! I have tasted one. Really yummy – not something I’d get more than once a year I’d say due to Moro’s being too sweet for me now … but it was well worth having on the list and I’m really happy I’ve tried it now. :) Now – only 100 tasks to go! :P

Four photos today since we went to Virginia Lake in Wanganui.

I couldn’t choose between these two – I really like the lobelia as the blue is very ultra-violet-like but I think the apple tree photo below is probably the better of the two.

Well, how about that – another year has slipped from our grasp and whilst I won’t make any comments on the year that has past, I have a feeling that 2008 will be a really wonderful year.

Earlier in the year I noted somewhere that there are many points in the year when you can reevaluate things. The ones that stick out for me are your birthday, Winter Solstice, New Years, the end of Financial Year – and looking back at this list I can see each having a goal “category”, Solstice for Spiritual, Birthday for Personal, New Years for General, Financial a no-brainer as Financial/Business. Interestingly, one for Family hasn’t made itself apparent to me – is this because we don’t celebrate any particular day in New Zealand as an obviously family day? Christmas seems like a bit of a reach for this to me – and besides who isn’t concentrating on the celebrating part of that event to take the time to contemplate long term goals.

So leading up to today I’ve been contemplating my lack of clear long-term goals and just when I thought to put that on the too hard basket and deal with it next time round I saw that Brad Issac at Achieve-IT! is running a month-long series on Goal Setting which sounds simply serendipitous to me. So here’s the introductory post and here is the post for Day One: Letting go of the fear of dreaming or goal setting.

So what apart from Learning how to Goal Set, do I have organised so far?

• My Diary – a standard A5 one page a day with no appointment times. Whilst I love the GTD way of working out what to do each day, I didn’t kick the habit of writing up a list each day of the tasks I want to achieve and then carrying over anything not completed onto a later day which kinda defeats the purpose of a custom printed planner. Perhaps this is something to work on next year.
• Sam’s Diary – a tiny one page per day diary for recording her daily activities and new words as a way to encourage us about her progress, and conversely to let us know when we’re slacking off in the providing her with useful activities department.
• A Monthly wall chart showing habits I’m working on. This month’s has Read a book to Sam, Put up a Trademe Listing, Blog Post, Daily Photo, and cringing admitting this some better Oral hygiene for both Sam and I. This is a replacement for the A5 page packed with 45+ daily things I should be doing(!) and feels unsurprisingly very freeing despite it still being a challenge.
• Beginning the 101 in 1001 project – something different and along with that starting the Project 365 and Blog 365 project (pretty self-explanatory – a blog post for every day of the year). I might have bitten off more than I can chew but I want to achieve something this year and I’m looking forward to these challenges. I’m also concerned I’m going from the extreme of not doing much each day that is done purely for enjoyment to not enough
  actual work being accomplished. It’s always a struggle working out the ideal work:play ratio but I hold hope that one day (or even, optimistically, for two days) I’ll get it right.

The last few days I’ve also been fluffing around giving this site a bit of a makeover and working on Sam’s private site. We have a passworded blog which we’re updating with photos and a bit of commentary at times for family members. I haven’t been very good at the Baby Book thing so this is a chance to redeem myself :P.
I’m also working on getting my Google Reader Starred list down to manageable proportions. I’ve unsubscribed from a couple of rss feeds as they’re adding to the guilt of incompleteness and not much else. One I will undoubtedly access when I need/want to anyway and the other was mainly a source of longterm feeds to read with the plus of seeing what the community on a whole is interested in. I have a ton of posts saved from the second feed I can go through for the first purpose and I question whether I really care about the second point.

The Mission:
Complete 101 preset tasks in a period of 1001 days.

The Criteria:
Tasks must be specific (ie. no ambiguity in the wording) with a result that is either measurable or clearly defined. Tasks must also be realistic and stretching (ie. represent some amount of work on my part).

Started: 01 Jan 2008
Finish: 28 Sep 2010
Days Left:
Completed: 1/101

1. assemble a comprehensive family tree
2. attend a concert
3. bake something new each month 0/33
4. be able to meditate for half an hour
5. become more proficient at illustrator
6. become more proficient at photoshop
7. build a snowman
8. buy a bike
9. buy a photo printer
10. buy and maintain an established bonsai
11. buy some digital music
12. collect and grow my own seeds
13. create a painting and hang it up
14. crochet an afghan
15. do 26 things
16. do the blog 365
17. do embodiment
18. do nanowrimo
19. do project 365
20. do the blogathon
21. donate $5 to charity for every uncompleted task
22. donate my time to a worthy cause at least once each year
23. eat a deep-fried moro bar
24. enjoy a sunrise
25. fill a journal
26. fill a sketchbook
27. finish all incomplete sewing projects
28. finish cross-stitch and frame it
29. fly a kite
30. frame favourite photos
31. gather together a complete emergency kit
32. get a good haircut
33. get digital photos printed and framed or albumed
34. get full license and become an organ donor
35. get professional family portrait done
36. go camping
37. go hiking
38. go horse riding
39. go indoor rock climbing
40. go kayaking
41. go on a bike ride
42. go on holiday somewhere i’ve never been before
43. go on the train
44. go to a driving range
45. go to a lecture or seminar
46. go to a play
47. go to a pub trivia night
48. go to a street fair or parade
49. go to an amusement park
50. go to an anzac dawn service
51. go to an art gallery
52. go to an orchestra concert
53. go to something on opening or release day
54. go to the beach and build a sandcastle
55. grow some mushrooms
56. have a card night
57. have a professional massage
58. have a traditional picnic under a tree
59. hold a games night
60. host a dinner party
61. knit something
62. learn a new programming language
63. learn how to use a camera properly
64. learn how to use a telescope properly
65. learn to identify native trees and plants 0/33
66. learn to juggle
67. learn to play chess
68. learn to recognise the southern constellations
69. learn to sightread music
70. learn to weave flax
71. make a proper afternoon tea and eat it with friends
72. make a scrapbook
73. make weekly contact with family and friends 0/143
74. memorise a poem
75. memorise origami designs 0/33
76. participate in a book club
77. participate in a crafting challenge
78. participate in postcrossing
79. pay for the person behind me at a fast food drive-thru
80. purchase some art work
81. read 10 works of poetry 0/10
82. read 100 books (romances and rereads not included) 0/100
83. record sam’s daily activities 0/1001
84. relearn calligraphy
85. research and grow a herb a month 0/33
86. research wines and do regular wine tastings
87. save $2 as every task completed
88. see 20 movies i wouldn’t normally have seen 0/20
89. send a package to a friend i’ve been out of touch with
90. send monthly handwritten letters 0/33
91. solve the rubic’s cube
92. sort my photos into albums
93. spend a day at a botanical gardens
94. spend a day going to garage sales
95. spend time by myself in a café
96. take a walk in the rain
97. take care of all dental work
98. take up archery
99. visit an observatory
100. visit the auckland or wellington zoo
101. write 10 letters of thanks or praise 0/10

This is a duplicate list of the sidebar which I intend to update rather than this post (though knowing me a flight of whimsy at a later date will have this list being updated in synch with the sidebar. This post was really just created for the official website where I’ve submitted the website for a bit of community feel :).

There are a few on there that I had difficulty succinctly quantifying and have left them ambiguous for now with the intent of working out the details later.