Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Getting Things Done



I've been procrastinating. It's one of the things I do best.

Some things, though, won't wait.

It reached up to the bare edge of 80 degrees this afternoon. I came home from school, and had a choice: read and write papers, or swap out the winter clothes for the summer ones. You know I was standing there in my jeans and hoodie, sweating bullets, so the clothing swap seemed more important. A half hour later, I was even more sweaty, but I was wearing capris (yes, I can still fit into last year's lightweight capris, thank goodness) and the job was done.

I felt very proud of myself, doing something household-ish, since I've done so little of that over the past several weeks.

Then I remembered I'm leading Morning Prayer in our Small Group on Friday...off to the the various and sundry liturgical resources on my "liturgy shelf" to put that together. Another thing done. Yessss!!!

I started the reading for Ethics tomorrow, but the possibility that I might wrap up the final Systematics project tonight was nibbling around the edges of my brain, so I put down the book and started writing. The project is a women's weekend retreat related to the doctrine of sanctification; it's called "How to Be a Saint (or at Least Try) in Five Easy Lessons." That's what I've been working on for the last two hours, and I think it's done. I'll look at it afresh tomorrow and see if it still reads like a finished product. I sure hope so.

The laundry list of things I need to do is still somewhat daunting:


  • final rewrite of my sermon for Saturday night and Sunday morning and the finding of visuals for the Saturday night PowerPoint

  • reading for ethics class tomorrow (not a biggie in the grand scheme of things)

  • two study guides for my study group in Systematics (Augustine on Providence and Barth on Evil)

  • gathering up and shipping off the last of the voluminous paperwork for my candidacy interview with the Commission on Ministry

  • a major ethics paper on world hunger and debt relief, for which I've only just begun the reading

  • conversations with the two profs who may be my co-advisors for my honors thesis.

The question is this: having dived in to this afternoon of hard work, will I continue to chug along and get things done, or will this list of accomplishments for today be my excuse to become sloth-like again (see picture above)? Given that there are only three weeks until the end of the semester, I don't have that luxury, I guess.

2 comments:

jadedjabber said...

Oh you are such an inspiration to me. I am such a procrastinator. Way to go!!!

Anonymous said...

May I join you, sloth-like, on that branch? sigh... We had our huge Systematics exam last week (not exactly a "final" exam, more like an "almost-final"...covered just as much info, in my opinion) -- anyway, after that trauma getting motivated to finish everything else is really hard. I have a project (four-part class in Reformed Theology for new church members), a huge paper, a regular paper, an end-of-internship reflection, a self-evaluation of my internship, a sermon, and the liturgy for the worship service when I'll be preaching that sermon. aaaaaaaaaack........