I woke up this morning and vowed that today was the day. I lay there, making mental to-do lists before coming downstairs to face literal reams of them, and I wondered what it is that I keep doing two things:

1. Making to-do lists that are at best, completely defeatist and unrealistic about how many hours are in a day, and at worst, lunatic.

2. Believing that the only thing standing between me and having that list completed is a decision.  

A decision? Yeah. Here I am, day after day, with excellent and awesome evidence that there are only 24 hours in a day (and that I must sleep for at least six of them, or I want to alternately kick the cat and sob about laundry) and that I can only work for about 12 of them or my life isn’t worth 10 cents of happiness – and still, most mornings I wake up and think "Today I’m getting it together."

Getting it together means that in my mind I’m going to get up, work like a demon all day, get more done than I ever have before, really put my nose to the grindstone, have not one minute of the day that is less than efficient or completely applied, and also clean out the linen closet and re-wash everything in it, because the cat got in there and lay on the towels, and now whenever anyone dries off after a bath, they look like they need an electrolysis appointment. 

I’ll lie there, take a deep breath, and decide that today (and really, every day for the rest of my life) this is who I am going to be.  I am not going to be distracted by my knitting,  I’m not going to throw in the towel when my sister calls, I’m not going to watch a movie in the evening. I am going to work.  All day.  Without cease or regret until I am caught up.  

Then I get up, and despite having made a really unreasonable decision to be a completely different kind of person than I have ever been before, I have the same kind of day I always do, which means I work plenty hard and get a lot done, but still spend an hour googling pickled beets in the afternoon because I’m suddenly gripped by the idea of making them.  Then night comes, some things on the to-do list remain, and I go to bed and lie there… staring at the ceiling (damn, that really, really needs repainting) and flagellate myself with regret, and swear that tomorrow will be better and I will be a whole different sort of person than I was today.  Again.

Anyway, I know this was silly, and circular, and it’s just a way of saying that I didn’t get the blanket started yesterday, but I did do a chunk of a sock while I was on hold, and that really, I wonder how old I’m going to be when I stop trying to change who I am every morning, and start making realistic to-do lists that don’t have things on them like "fix life" and "get organized" because really, those are super huge jobs that are really unlikely to ever be finished, and it’s only that part of me that lies on that bed disappointed that thinks it’s not going well.  The rest of me realized today that if you dry yourself off with a cat-hair towel, every bit of it falls off your body in about 20 minutes, and where this lady comes from, that’s a problem that doesn’t need solving.