Shufflin into the new year

My first day "off," as I jokingly call those days when both kids are in school, and I spent the morning on the phone with Apple support getting iTunes to recognize the selections I'd put on my mom's new shuffle. I have the music she wanted, but no podcasts, not sure what's up with that...I've wasted enough time today and perhaps I'll wait a few days before dealing with it again. Yesterday, partially out of frustration and partially to get something else done, I never turned on my laptop. Shocker! There is an off button.

While I am waiting for my January Studio Calico kit (and the one add-on I'll probably ever order, given the state of my craft budget as I go into 2010), I played with the December kit I received early last week. I think I joined the right kit club...there is some seriously fun stuff in that kit, and I worked on a 2-page year end wrap-up layout that is still sitting on my scrap desk. It requires that I go through each month in last year's diaries, take notes on the highlights, and stop to edit those before I write them down. I got through March yesterday and hope to work on the next three months today. That's one of my new year's goals...to always have something to work on out on my scrap desk. So far so good.

It was refreshing to see that we did, as a family, have some interesting winter activities last year. Lots of playdates for Tess. An outing to the Hands on Museum for both kids with their dad. A visit to the Bounce Zone. Pom-pom and cheerleading at the basketball games (Ben really enjoyed watching basketball...made the whole experience more fun for me, since he was fascinated and I didn't have to chase after him in our high school's very high bleachers...)

This year, so far, I am trying to write in my diary about halfway through each day (still have to do that today...) and read an entry each day from Simple Abundance...yes, about 15 years behind the trend, but it has a message I need right now, namely, what should I do with the rest of my life? As Ben starts school and plays well on his own, I have more and more time to myself, and I need to find a way to fill it.

I'm not sure we'll do MOPS next year...and I'm Publicity chair (this is my last term). I have no successor picked out (our numbers dropped by half this year, two of my best contenders left the group). Church is begging for Sunday school teachers, I already turned them down once, acted as a sub once, HATED it (more power to teachers...I have no patience for it), now they are asking again and I know I must firmly turn them down (again).

I thought this might be the year I finally make a habit of writing fiction daily, but so far that hasn't materialized. I'm waiting until Ben is in school at least half a day every day. A cop-out, but that's all I have energy for.

The job market is so poor, so bare, who knows what I'll find to do when it's time to go back to work. I will have been out of the biz -- any biz -- for 8 years by then. So I feel I need to start thinking about what I love to do (NOT teaching, sorry) and what I might do that would bring in a paycheck. At least I have the luxury of time, for now. Perhaps that it just an illusion. Something could happen tomorrow that forces me into the job market, and that luxury will be gone. Hopefully Borders is hiring.

Wow, this is not where I expected this entry to go today. I guess I really am shuffling into not only the new year, but the rest of my life. Now I have to keep up my committment of writing halfway through the day, and finishing up that knitted/felted bag I was talking about earlier...I have to gift it on Friday!