Organizational Week

The week between Christmas and New Year's Day is the time when I put my life in order.

Today, I am organizing photos, memorabilia and blog entries that I've printed out to make a scrapbook record of 2011. Some years I need one scrapbook to cover events.  Sometimes I need only one for two or three years, but 2011 has been a very busy year so I will have two scrapbooks.  I'll have this job done by New Year's Eve.  While I do this, I review the year. I can announce that though politically, the nation was in a mess in 2011, I enjoyed these "best of times and worst of times" enormously.  

I will be giving a series of talks in libraries about my travels, so I must put together a CD of photographs that I can use for a slide show.  This means reviewing all the digital photos I took.

We're talking about taking the Circle Tour around Lake Superior next summer.  More organization as I send e-mails to libraries in Ontario to find some work that will pay for the cost of gas and the provincial parks.

The end of the year means preparing a tax file, so I'm getting all my storytelling records together. I make out  yearly and monthly budgets.

There are housekeeping jobs.  I go through the filing cabinets and throw out old paper files.  I go through the computer deleting documents. 

Finally, I set my goals.  Each New Year's Eve I update a five year plan.  From that, I will set my goals for 2012.  During the year, I will set monthly and weekly goals.  Do I meet all of them?  Almost never, but by pushing myself this way, I do get a few things accomplished.

This is the busiest week of the year but at its end, I'll be ready for 2012.