Day 111

While trying to decide what made me happy today, I kept circling back to one thing.

Yes, you guessed it. 

A list.

This is a new list for me. I've always enjoyed gardening to some degree, and have gotten a little more serious and in-depth each year that I have been a home owner. This year, with interests in improving my yard in the areas of landscape, hard scape, annuals, perennials, and vegetables- I started to get a little overwhelmed thinking about everything I wanted/needed to do.

So I turned to my never-failing coping mechanism. I started with what I wanted to do with the front yard. Once I had written everything down that I thought could be accomplished this year, I triaged and numbered them in order of importance and overall timing. Then, I assigned a weekend day to each task. The process was repeated for 3 out of 4 sides of the house. I also made a list of things that needed done regularly, such as weeding, watering, etc. , and  those went on a subset list in the corner of the page.

In the end, I technically wound up with about 5 different lists all rolled into one page. I also decreased my anxiety level by more than half, now having an actual plan instead of just a bunch of things in my head that I want to get done.

Why do lists make me so happy?! Who knows. Sometimes I think it's not that they make me happy, but rather they keep me from absolutely freaking out. I consider myself to be a reasonably roll-with-the-punches type of person. But when I am overwhelmed with things that need to be done, I actually have a hard time focusing and digging in until I take the time to lay out how to accomplish everything. 

I have worked on this list several times yesterday and today. And next I am transferring the tasks to an actual calendar that I made by hand on graph paper. 

Yeah, you read that right. I made my own calendar on graph paper.

I know, I know! What can I say? I have issues...

But today's picture celebrates the fact that warmer weather is here to the point I can really focus on outside work, and the anxiety-reducing power that resides in a simple pad of paper and a pencil.