My busy, hectic, messy life

I've had a Filofax day planner for ages, but this year, upon discovering that I couldn't buy the refill pages I wanted, I went and purchased a passion planner. And I love it!

It has a monthly section so you can have a high-level view of your month, as well as a week-on-a-page. It also has a whole section for planning out how you're going to achieve your goals for the year, monthly check-ins so you can reflect on what you've accomplished so far, and extra sheets for making notes, doodling, or whatever you need them for. And there's a pocket in the back for holding lose papers (or in my case stickers!). 

I was curious as to how other people were using their passion planner, so I looked at pictures on their website, Instagram, Facebook, and twitter. And the vast majority of the pictures I found appeared to be more marketing-related--perfect handwriting, lots of happy things, clear tasks for each day...not the crowded, scribbled mess that my weeks become (which is understandable for advertising purposes--there are times I look at my week and think hell, no!). And then I found Xandra, and I discovered she was using a passion planner, too! She introduced me to the idea of highlighting completed tasks instead of crossing them off, which makes my passion planner look so much prettier!

But still, I thought, does anyone out there who uses a passion planner have a real job, and a crazy life? There were so many pictures of people who seemed to only have four things to do a day. And I wanted to shout IF YOU ONLY HAVE FOUR THINGS TO DO A DAY, YOU DON'T NEED A PASSION PLANNER. YOU JUST NEED TO GET UP!

I'm a financial analyst for a software company (one you've actually heard of). I'm training to run a marathon. I'm writing a novel. I have various other projects I'm working on, I'm in a bookclub, and oh, yeah, I also want to spend time with my husband, my family, and my friends. I have a very full life, and my passion planner helps me keep it organized. 

So I thought I'd publish some photos of what my passion planner looks like, in case there was anyone else out there who wondered how people who have multiple goals manage their schedule.

This is what this week looks like. Note: this does not even contain all of the meetings, etc. I have for work. This is just my life outside of work.

This is what next week looks like!

This is the following week--not busy...YET!

This is my monthly view of March. 

These are the chocolate chocolate chip cookies I made today. Because I'm an over-achiever like that!

This is why I get nothing done at work, even when I don't spend the day in meetings.

I show up at work this morning and immediately attend a meditation session (yes, I work for one of those kinds of companies).

Then I get back to my desk and I sit down to finish listening to the Excel training I started yesterday (by Jeff Lenning--he's crazy enthusiastic about excel. I'm crazy enthusiastic about anything that automates my job and therefore makes my life easier. Or at least allows me to spend less time at work. Unlike writing this blog post.)

Except, I have a friend who's looking for a Conservation Biologist to talk to a high-schooler with leukemia about what her job is like. And I know a Conservation Biologist. So then I spend some time connecting the two of them. The C.B. is currently driving across the country, and may or may not be headed through Spokane, WA, where Cody makes Disney-themed drinks. (I can't make this stuff up. As far as I'm concerned, this might be the only reason to go to Spokane, and I haven't even had one of his drinks.) So, of course, it is basically my civic duty to inform the C.B. of this.

But my new manager wants me to look into getting a company-issued phone, so I start to research that, and I reach out to the woman I'll be shadowing to see if she actually has a company-issued phone, and we get into a whole conversation on when I'll be moving to my new location so I can actually be of some use to my new team.

At the same time, I coordinated a women's group lunch to make sure all of the attendees understand that we have two lunches this week--one with our group and one with another group. Then I had to remove an attendee who TOLD ME LAST MONTH that she wanted to be part of the group, so I added her to everything, and then TOLD ME TODAY that she is too busy. She's an administrative assistant. You'd think she'd have a better understanding of scheduling.

Meanwhile, I'm also taking a Facebook class or something on becoming a Beach Body Coach--which I am killing, by the way--today we are supposed to 1) Make a healthy choice. Meditation it is; 2) Reach out to a friend--nailed it! I've reached out to, and connected, two of them FOR PHILANTHROPIC REASONS, and it's not even lunch; and 3) do something to grow yourself. I guess I could count mediation for this one and then do something else healthy, like not eat out of the snack drawer. If only I could get paid to be this awesome! But, tragically, this isn't really my day job. It's only what I've been doing at my day job.

On Obsessing

I have an obsessive personality. I'm not actually sure if that's a medical condition or not, but if it is, I've just self-diagnosed. No doctor has ever told me this. It's not always a bad thing. For example, when baking, I always wash my hands after cracking the eggs, before moving on to the next ingredient. And it enables me to stick to the point in arguments (Captain America, long before he married me, learned that the "sleep on it"   philosophy of dispute resolution didn't work for us--he'd wake up just fine and I'd wake up exactly where we left off).

Okay, technically, hes's not beating anyone up with his shirt
here, and it really makes no sense that he'd be fighting
someone without his shirt on, but look at all those muscles!

On the other hand, it's not so good when, for example, I really like one Jason Statham movie, and then go ahead and get every B movie he's ever been in from the library. For the record, I've always LOVED action movies. Don't judge me. The Transporter ones are awesome, if only because he beats people up with his dress shirt (and, consequently, you get to see him sans shirt), but the Crank ones where his heart is removed and replaced by some sort of battery thing that runs off adrenaline or something and so he has to have sex in public to keep it charged...yup, they're just as terrible as my synopsis made it sound.

My latest obsession is post-apocalypse/zombie/vampire survival, which is just really silly. But I am wondering if I can turn my nerd-ocalypse novel into an apoca-romance. Is that a genre, or did I just invent one?

Psychologically speaking, it's the pits

When I was in middle school-ish, I had this How To Host a Murder party called Archaeologically Speaking, it's the Pits, which has nothing to do with this blog post at all except for the title of the post. I feel better having cleared that up.

For the past week, I have been waking up with terrible panic attacks. What happens is, I wake up and my heart starts racing, and I say to myself, just get up and get going, and my blood turns to lead and I can't get out of bed (and I realize that if my heart's racing, you'd think my blood would be moving a lot faster than lead in my veins, but that's just not how panic attacks work), and then I think I don't have time for this, and if you get up, you can get the shit you need to get done done, and then there'll be nothing to panic about, but I still can't get up. And then, because I'm neurotic, I think, great, you're probably giving yourself ulcers and gray hairs, and stress causes zits, and all this adrenalin that you're pumping into your body for NO REASON WHATSOEVER is just going to cause you more problems, and then you'll really have something to worry about. Because that's productive.

For the past week, Captain America has been in New Mexico learning how to drive like a movie stuntman. Okay, not really. He's been learning offensive driving, and no, that's not what happens when you take driver's ed in New Jersey and learn to drive with your knees so you can flip someone off with your right hand while you lean out your window shaking your left fist at someone else, all while swearing, preferably in Yiddish. That's also not what he was learning how to do.

Last night, we went to my company's holiday party. So of course Captain America's flight was delayed. Conveniently the party was running on California time, so it didn't really matter at all that we were late. And of course, because we haven't seen each other all week, there was an immediate need to have an argument in the car on the way to the party. Captain America was grumpy because he had just flown and his flight was delayed and he was hungry and this party fell in the middle of a 10 day work week for him and finally I just blurted out, I can't do this right now. I've been waking up with panic attacks all week and I really need you to be charming and delightful like you usually are at these things because I work with really nice people and they all want to meet you and I want them to like me. (As an aside, my official start date with the company is tomorrow.)

And Captain America said, thank you for telling me you've been having panic attacks.

He didn't ask me why I was having panic attacks. He didn't suggest I go to the doctor, or make any suggestions at all, or pry for details or anything.

Yup, I'm married to a super hero.

Who needs angels when you have Captain America?

Yeah, I'm that cool!