Time Management

Time management is always an issue. But late February is the time it starts the springtime ramp-up. The challenge? is to avoid chaos and be constructive, creative, and productive. For the most part, it’s all hands-on activity. Maple syrup starts things off, but I’ve also started seeds for the garden, and the workshop is starting to wake from a January and early February snooze.
The other day, I set the first taps and buckets for sap. It’ll start slow and then take off in March, only to die down and end in April. You have to be a bit passionate about making syrup. Otherwise, you’ll find excuses not to trudge through mud or snow to get the buckets in the evening. Or you’ll despise the evenings of boiling sap. Remember, leave it unattended; it’ll burn, fill the house with maple-scented smoke, and ruin a pot. There is no privacy at nine PM as you run out of the house with a smoking pot, screaming, looking for a convenient snowbank to hurl it into. Don’t bother asking me how I know this. Just take it on faith.

The kittens are curious about the sprouting seeds. Because they go everywhere, it isn’t easy to contain their curiosity. But the new sprouts are important. I’m trying to grow almost all the vegetables from seed this year. I want to save money and avoid running out for a six-pack of this or two of those at the local garden center. So the seedlings are high up, and I stretch to water them.

Now, the workshop is an issue in itself. Over the past week, I’ve organized the incomplete projects and started moving them toward completion. The goal is to have enough products available to, at long last, launch an online shop. After a lot of debate, I finally decided to go with eclectic. I plan on stocking what I have on hand or have in the works. The factory plan doesn’t work for the sort of carving I do. Want that particular boat portrait? Better buy it – I don’t have a dozen in stock. Interested in that birch bowl? Well, it’s one of a kind.
So, the shop will be more of a gallery than an Etsy sort of thing.

It gets more interesting as spring progresses because the garden beds need prep, early crops go into cold frames, and I get urges to wander seaport towns on weekends.
Then, too, there is a TV station to manage, video to edit, and dinners to cook. It’s busy. But ask me if I prefer the idle of winter or the havoc of spring, and I’ll always take spring. I have no difficulty getting all the exercise my body needs. I have a real feeling of driving forward on goals. And I feel excited about my prospects.

I have fewer things to do in winter, but I have to struggle to manage them.

I don’t like stillness – I like to be doing.