One of my son's favorite activites is drawing "chalk streets" on his little portable blackboard. He creates intersections, lines down the middle of the streets, trees, and buildings. He then asks me to label the buildings (since he's only in 3K and can't spell all the words yet). Fire and police stations are first, of course, because he's a boy. We fill in the rest of the blanks with things like stores, banks, gas stations, churches, and schools. We draw little houses, too.It's so much fun to imagine and build a little town! The point of it all, of course, is that he puts Matchbox cars down on the streets and drives them hither and yon. "This one has to go to the bank," he will say, and add "bbbbbbrrrrrrrooooommmmm" as he drives the car over to the bank. "The fire truck has to get to this house, because it's on fire!" is heard almost every time. Traffic jams sometimes ensue, with honking, beeping or shouting about being in a hurry. There's an occasional crash.
As grown-ups, we have to map out our courses every day, don't we? At least we should. When I realized it had been nearly a month since I last blogged, I knew that was the result of a lack of mapping. Sure, I see the big dot on the opposite coast where I would like to go, but I have to see what roads are in front of me first. Whether I turn right or left may affect how long it takes me to get to that big dot, and I don't want the wind to just blow me any old way it pleases. Lately, I have been doing lots of spring cleaning and taking care of all the "other stuff" that comes up. But in buckling back down on writing, I have to draw some chalk streets of my own. Where will I be able to stop for fuel? How far will I make it today? I need an alternate route in case I hit a traffic jam.
I'm going to start setting some new weekly goals and boundaries for how much time I spend doing various tasks, like marketing, working on my novel, blogging, yoga, laundry, mopping, etc. Don't get me wrong . . . I'm glad I did all that spring cleaning, and I'm not even finished with it yet. But life marches on, right?
Since organization and time management have never been my forte, I'm open to any and all suggestions and advice. What do your chalk streets look like?
