Thursday, April 15, 2010

Motivation by Public Humiliation

There are a million things I want or need to get done this weekend, but, if history is any guide, there's an 83% chance I'll spend most of the weekend napping on the back porch. So, in the grand tradition of using a fear of humiliation as motivator, I'm posting my to-do list publicly.

1. Send sample edits and cost estimates to two grad students who want their dissertations edited, like, yesterday. (Extra charge for rush!)
2. Mow yard.
3. Put down grass fertilizer and dandelion murderer. (How do those two function together?!)
4. Pull up dead flowers in front yard flower bed.
5. Start turning earth in backyard garden for my first ever fully functional vegetable garden!
6. Put up faux "privacy fence" made of trellis (to disguise the vegetable garden when I go 6 weeks without weeding it).
7. Write multiple blog posts on knitting, book review, why I think Christopher Hitchens is not very good at his job.
8. Make significant progress on current knitting project.
9. Learn to knit a sock.
10. Take Brewster on AT LEAST one walk, if not two.
11. Clean every single floor in this house, including the basement.
12. Balance checkbook, pay bills.

That's it. Not all of these will happen and some of them have to happen. And the sock one is actually a class that's already paid for, so that will definitely happen. I'd say if I get six to eight tasks checked off this list, I can call myself successful, and might still have time for a really satisfying nap.