Drinking coffee while procrastinating

Sums up my Sunday morning – perfectly!

Bright, shiny objects!

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Passion – Revisited

As you recall – in a terrible slump of mid-life wonderings back in June, I turned to my Animal Spirit cards and looked for some kind of guidance.

Which gave me Black Panther – “Passion – Follow It” advice – –

Okey-Dokey

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My passion is taking each day as it feels right – perhaps reading/writing all day – maybe wearing myself out on a landscape/gardening project and laying on the coach re-watching 500 Nations, or Ken Burn’s The West by 2 in the afternoon, because I overdid – – or blissfully thumbing through the 10 Native Plants/Xeriscaping/Perennial Gardening books awaiting reading on my coffee table – –

Please, Please let my chosen Passions pay the bills….

Nope….

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As an experiment – I’ve dutifully shuffled the cards (with the backs to me, so I can’t cheat, thank you very much) numerous times this past month –

(If I were to cheat, you’d be seeing statistically significant amounts of Buffalo showing up – which touts Abundance, but which I choose to see as a sign I’m about to win the lottery, in obscene amounts fashion, even if I haven’t bought a ticket….)

What’s The Score, you ask?

Black Panther dutifully jumps out of the deck due to my clumsy shuffling technique, 13 out of 14 times in a 3 week period  – –

Sigh…

Scientific, Statistician and Behavioral Psychologists will all give you very convincing reasons why this means nothing –

But, really, what do they know?

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These past few months, debt reduction and landscaping/gardening  money has come from building websites.

Whine – – I don’t want to be a Website Designer!  I do this as a way to serve those in my community – – It’s my contribution that gives me some extra and gives small organizations an affordable option….

(Okay, so that’s not entirely true – I hate to see any Average Joe/Jane struggling to do their job with antiquated or poorly designed tools – I want them to be free of mind-numbing, repetitive tasks utilizing a tool built by a Geek that knows everything about code and data integrity and squat about the daily realities of the end-user….Fine! You Got Me!  I am passionate about that….)

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What of the 1 out of 14?

Frog – Declutter/Detoxify –

I cleaned my desk – organized my hundred scribbled Post-It’s –

Just in time for a clean area to be available for the new avalanche of….

Website Work….

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For now, I’ll go with the flow – even if I’m not entirely thrilled with the idea of Website Builder being my moniker for life….

Okay – Universe – I heard and am obeying – – Now, how about getting those raspberry bushes I couldn’t afford to order until too late, back in stock?

Deal?

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I do enjoy doing websites, I just rail against anything being my whole life – – against anything that requires schedules, deadlines, etc.

One of the teller’s at my bank has the following quote on her desk:

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” ~ Douglas Adams

I can relate.

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I still struggle with living up to the expectations of our modern world/culture –

Perhaps, I’m just a rebel at heart – you know the type – goes against the flow just to prove they can – – –

Or maybe, I’m just not focused enough – maybe I have a Fear of Success, that bane of First Born Children, whose name numerology isn’t a good match for their Sun Sign or birth date – –

Or perhaps, I’m just like everyone else and railing against the fact that we have calendars, clocks and expectations – –

But maybe, just maybe, this is simply a block of time/experience that will all be made clear to me later – – when the Universe unfolds, just as it should and I look back and say,

“Ah-Hah!  Of course!  It simply had to happen that way, else I would have missed out on (insert Fantabulous experience)”

Who knows?  I mean really, who the heck knows for sure – no dilly-dallying, no qualifications – just a resounding,

“Yes – It is unfolding exactly and you cannot make a mistake if you follow your gut, the brain full of information, the heart full of faith & hope – but most importantly –  the soul that realizes ’tis better to do that which is placed before you than hunting around for the green grass on the other side of the fence  you mistakenly think ought to be mowed.”

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So now I’ve caught up with the various items I wanted to share with you these past few weeks – – I miss you and can’t wait for reading WordPress blogs to become my new Paying Passion – – 🙂

Not that I’m going to wait for that – but give me till the end of the month to get caught up, -k-?

🙂

Pitter-Patter

My brother, sod-hay-soon-to-be-grape-farmer extraordinaire once told me,

“All the old-timers have it right, Sis.   It always rains about 10 seconds before it’s too late.”

Nothing is lost, here, not really – My irrigation lines from last year still lie in the shed – – the new parts I ordered in April for this year’s expansion area plan still lie on the Ironing Board in the package that was shipped to me – – I finally opened it and made sure I got what I ordered – as if I could remember that far back what the heck parts I thought I needed – –

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Perennials have been watered when their wilted leaves greet me of an afternoon – I walk among them, look at the sky and say, okay – probably not a good idea to wait for Mother Nature to take care of it today – – – I admit, I got spoiled by our wet (for us), cool (for us) June – –

I’ve hand watered a total of 4 times since April – – Mother Nature has blessed us this year and we weren’t into burn bans and yellow prairie by June 2nd – –

Lest you think me lazy or irresponsible, Mother Nature has been informed of my experimental personality – It’s not that I particularly like killing plants on purpose, but I’m trying hard to surround myself with those who like living where I do – who can roll with the punches life delivers and come up fighting – –

If I can blog from the Great Beyond, I’ll let you know if this life choice was understood and deemed okay – or if I was condemned for all eternity by my callous disregard for life.

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Tonight, I realized – one more day and I’ll need to water – -sighing, I berated myself for not taking time to get my micro-irrigation system back online – that snazzy system that allows me to turn on the hydrant, walk around every 30 minutes or so, switching zones, and then – done, for another week – –

A sound lurks – – I turn down the Season 1 episode of Rocky & Bullwinkle that I’m relaxing to, as I drink a glass of wine and contemplate website functionalities, irrigation systems and why I’m such a procrastinator….

Oh – the sound – yes, it wasn’t the fan – – – or the freezer – – – But it must be tracked down, because since the stroke, if I hear a sound I can’t identify, I go quietly insane….

And then, I open the back door – – – and lean against the jamb, watching the gentle washing, cooling, hydrating power of the sky – quietly, I murmur ….

“Thank you, Mother.   You’re always just in Time and I’m so grateful for your Generosity.  As are my plants –  the ones I planted, but  entrust to your wisdom…”

ID 10 TS

I would like to give you pictures of the landscaping projects that are in process – – or have been accomplished….

Or show you how high the Jerusalem Artichokes and Sunflowers are, or how beautiful the fantabulously drought-tolerant Golden and Burgundy Amaranths are –

Alas – despite my best intentions, I had little website work in June and now, 3 sites to get up and out for approval by end of next week – –

An existing customer called a few days ago and asked for some documentation for their funding resource – seems what I previously provided was impressive in it’s low cost, but they’d like to have another meeting and have new pages that are clearly marked as to which phase we are doing when – –

They are dragging their feet – says I – They’ve had this information since April – – You continue to pay out of pocket each month, as they ask for more stats, watermarked estimates, etc…..

This is why any business I launch is paid for by me – – -too much time/trouble convincing investors and the time spent jumping through their hoops could be put to good use actually BUILDING something –

Alas, I always gravitate towards business ideas that rely on my own brain, skill, know-how and existing tool set – – Not everyone is so lucky – there are those grand ideas that need funding for buildings, equipment, R&D, prototypes, etc….

Now that you know the history, my customer advised, part way through the conversation, as I added the required text to each phase estimate and cut/pasted the documents into one long historical document, for their printing convenience, he said,

“Well, you just have to deal with ID 10 TS’s”

And, swear to gawd! I did not get it until I wrote it down – – Sheesh!  I need a vacation – – –

🙂

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I realized I had once more slipped into Dereliction of Duty status here at WordPress when Sue left a comment to check and make sure she wasn’t missing my new posts in her email inbox and to make sure I hadn’t died – – Thank You, Sue!   You make me feel so loved and cared for!

(Want to see amazing art and gardens?  Check out Sue’s slice of cyberspace!)

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And so, dear friends, neighbors and family here at WordPress – I’m once again working my tail off – trying to keep ahead of the curve ball and failing to take pictures of anything as I race from one project to another – –

But I’m doing my meditation and heat lamp treatments religiously – –

I’m only working a max of 14 hour at a time and making sure to get a good night’s sleep – –

And I’m slowly, but surely, implementing lessons learned from the past…

Except for how durn long it takes me to get caught up when I don’t log in and read every day!

🙂

Hope this finds you well and I’ll catch up with your world here soon – feel free to leave a comment, begging me not to leave 23 likes and 8 comments on your blog all at one time, at the end of July, when I can luxuriate in reading all day long once more …..

You ask and I swear, I’ll space them out to one a day – – 🙂