Word of the Year and 2020 Goals

Last year my word of the year was FOCUS. 

I am afraid I was anything but focused last year. I did get 20 cross stitch finishes and read 431 books (okay, listened to 431 books, same thing) in 2019. In some ways I was very focused. I have never read that many books in a year in my life. But in May I lost my stitchy bug and had a stitching drought that lasted until sometime in September.

I keep looking at all the shiny and new patterns and wanted to keep starting things and it is mighty hard to just keep working on my current WIP pile. They seem old and dusty and well… old. I wanted something new. 

Some projects are so close to a finish I can taste it but there is this little part of me that doesn’t want to finish them. I am going to get over that this year. That is why my word of the year is COMPLETION. 

To me completion means to finish things. Not just stitching them in the normal sense but going that extra mile to fully finish them. Frame them or make them into a pillow or something else  more exciting. I have never been the greatest at doing that. That is why I have a huge box of finishes that are just sitting there waiting to be displayed in my home. 

Completion is not just for my stitching. I want to get rid of many paperback books in my house and to do that, I need to read them. Most all of the books I read this last year were on my Kindle. Now I need to shift my focus a bit. I do read a lot for publishers and this year I will be a lot more discerning about the books I choose. I have a huge backlist of titles I said I would read and haven’t yet. I have like 461 ARCs to read in my collection. Plenty to keep me busy while still tackling my paperback problem. I plan to read at least half of the ARCs I have. My new Goodreads goal for 2020 will be 290 books. That may be a stretch but I plan to keep reading at the pace I have been and even if I drop back a bit, I should be able to easily reach that particular goal.

My stitching goal is to get from 34 WIPs (works in progress) to 12 WIPs. Eventually I want to have only 3 or 4 WIPs going at a time so the finishing of them will be even easier. Currently, I want to work on the WIPs that are closest to completion and move out from there.

Here are the WIPs I most want to focus on:

1. Tiger Wildlife

2. Morning Lake kit

3. Oranges by DMC

4 Flag Girl (aka Liberty Angel) by Leisure Arts

5. Patriotic Angel by Joan Elliott

6. Mama Christmas by Joan Elliott

7. On the Beach klt

8. Life kit

9 Folk Art Angel by Lesley Teare

10. Four Seasons Chairs (the winter chair)

11. Black Capped Chickadee

These projects are some of the oldest in my collection and getting them done and dusted will go a great way to give me some peace of mind. Basically, I am going to feng shui my life in a big way and make room for a whole bunch of newness to come in and flood me with great feelings of bliss and accomplishment.

What is your word for 2020? Have you even thought about it? What do you want to accomplish in 2020? The beginning of the year is a great time to rethink things and make plans. Let me know what you are thinking about accomplishing next year and what your word for 2020 will be. I look forward to your answers.

Blessings.

DIY Book Sleeve

The Journey of a Joy-Filled Book Sleeve Creator

I have seen these book sleeves all over Instagram. They looked pretty nifty but I never thought of using one myself before today. I was watching a new to me Flosstuber (a cross-stitcher who posts videos on YouTube) and she spoke about how she used these cool and very trendy book sleeves to hold her cross-stitch projects, especially the smaller ones.

I thought that was genius!

The Flosstuber's name was Joy.Filled Stitcher. Thank you for introducing me to that. Much appreciation to you.

There was another YouTuber whom I can't remember the name of who used small zipper pouches that her friend designed on Etsy. Those were cool too. They had the gal's artwork of animals on them. Super cool and ultra cute!

So, last night I thought I would try and make one of these myself. I searched YouTube, as you do when you want to do something yourself and I watched a few videos about the process.

It seemed easy enough. I am not much of a sewist but I do have an ancient sewing machine that does a pretty good job when I need it to. After watching I got to work. Mind you, I only have the fabric I needed, but the foam wasn't something I normally keep in my stash. I substituted sticky backed craft foam. The type I had wasn't the right size, obviously, so I put two together to get the job done.

Instead of fabric on the front I used a cute, Thanksgiving themed hand towel from Dollar General. They are out now in the DG's near me. I can't believe Thanksgiving stuff is out already. Heck, what am I saying? Christmas stuff is out too!

I hacked the towel apart and cut up my fabric for my lining and got to work. I think my end product turned out pretty good. Since that was my experiment version, I want to try and create a real one with all the right ingredients. I might even try to whip up a quilted version and see how that turns out.

All that matters is that I had fun and I now have a cool book sleeve to keep my books in.

If you are into crafty things, try making one for yourself.

-- Toni

What is the point of voting?

We voted for the ability too burn leaves in the city... and it passed.

Then the City Council, Mayor or whomever was responsible said, "No, you can't do that. It's too dangerous." 

Why was it on the ballot then a few years ago? Shouldn't our vote count for something? We the People, and all that. Isn't the voice of the people what really counts in America?

Now we vote in a new Mayor by a literal landslide and the City Council is there again voicing their opinions that he is not qualified due to a technicality. They want to assign their own flunkie to be in power until 2021. Really?

What is the point of voting if the City Council can do whatever the heck they want to do after the fact?

Ramey has been supposedly resigning since 2017 and Ashby is out in August. Jones doesn't want to be interim . Looks like the classic rats fleeing a sinking ship. And if that is the case, what was the point of this whole charade?

You let them get away with overturning the burning leaves issue, they go for bigger things and take the Mayor-elect out of the picture. What is next? Where will this madness end?

The Life Decluttering Begins...

My 2019 word of the year is FOCUS and my theme is the YEAR OF WOW! 

Here is what I want to succeed at in 2019:

• I want a joyful job that delights and fulfills me and allows me to make a great income while still keeping my stress level low and my happiness quotient high.

• I want to be able to sing with joy and project how great it is to love my Lord to everyone that hears me.

• I want to feel like I am doing a great job and know I am succeeding at maintaining my parent’s health and keeping them happy and worry-free in their later years.

• I want to maintain a balance between my hobbies and not obsess over one craft or another

• I want 2019 to be the year I declutter everything that is not serving me in life and then organize everything else in a way that supports my new healthy, happy lifestyle.

• I want 2019 to be the year I focus on me and my own health. I want to exercise more and feel better in my own skin.

If I want to live up to these things I am prescribing for myself at the beginning of the year, I have a lot of decluttering to do in my life. Currently, I am not succeeding at any of the above bullet points. I am not happy. I am overwhelmed. I am tired. And I really have no patience for most things that are stressors in my life. And that has to change.

My backstory...

I am currently trying to take better care of my parents... I am watching out for their needs, cooking most days and doing a lot of things I haven’t done before. This weighs heavy on my mind… especially this past year when many things came to a head late in October. My mom went into the hospital for a week (ICU for three days) with low oxygen levels. I am learning all about how to deal with the equipment for oxygen management and how to maintain all the various things that have invaded our house due to this new diagnosis. This also includes making sure Mom keeps the oxygen hose on her nose, has the unit turned on and has adequate water to keep her airways hydrated.

The overwhelm continues with my job which seems to get more stressful as time goes on. And that may be due to inadequate staffing as well as my ability to deal with BS the newspaper industry offers. My ability to handle BS has nearly reached its limit, I’m afraid, but I must soldier on. I know a lot of that is my own mental health issues and ability to handle stress. I am dealing with that by taking my evening hours to craft, cross stitch and crochet.

This leads me to my involvement with the worship team at church. I have not been happy there for a long time. And I have been thinking about quitting even before we got our current director. I do my best to deal with a leader who seems to try and verbally knock me down whenever he gets the chance and I have tried to learn how to deal with him, but he is a very closed off individual and I feel, not open emotionally at all to most people. This is my own opinion and experience and maybe not an opinion held by others but I haven’t done a poll.

I try my best to follow the lead the director takes each week but he is very inconsistent with singing songs the same way from one time to the next. I try to roll with the punches and yet stand up for myself and my co-singers when he tries to bully us into submission on how he wants to sing a song. 

At a recent worship team meeting, there was mention of how we all didn’t follow the lead of the director and sing a specific part the way he did. Even if we point out that we didn't learn it that way, we still do it like he wants. So I am not sure why it keeps getting pointed out to us that we need to submit to how he does things. Currently we practice a song once. And if we don’t get it perfect I feel we are looked down upon... Even though we probably haven’t sang that particular song in five weeks or more. 

I do my best every week. I try and roll with the punches but singing on the team does not make me happy. I do not feel joy when I do it. All I feel is the massive stress and assumptions of everyone as to why I am not doing better, singing better or being better.  I really don’t feel appreciated for my contribution; even when I try my best, I am found lacking, I struggle just like everyone else. Life happens and I don’t have time to practice, have an off note or whatever. But I feel like the hammer comes down on me when I am less than stellar even when others are constantly off key and get no corrective notes.

I am not sure what to do at this point. Where does the rubber meet the road and when will my patience run out completely. Only time will tell. I just know that I want to live a more happy life and live that life on purpose. And this is telling me that a happy life for me does not include the worship team.

So, where do I go from here?

The life decluttering begins. 

I will work on me and my 2019 aims bulleted above. I want to strive to be more happy and fulfilled in all I do and if I cannot find that feeling, remove that thing from my life until I can find a way to make it delight me in the future.

It is all a process. We stumble, we fall and we pick ourselves up again.

I pray 2019 is the year that I can take back my life and live it to its fullest. I hope you can too.

Blessings.