focus friday. choose a battle.

...for september, ali's prompt is about taking action. choosing a battle to fight and one to surrender.

I've been thinking for months about my blog and about how it fits into what matters to me. I realized when I did  june's exercise that my blog was about connecting, and about telling my story. and I'd like to do it better. so my battle to fight is about my blog. about making sure it tells my story - complete with photos! - the best way I can. I'd like to post better photos. I'd like to write better (most days I'd like to get back to proper grammar and punctuation and some days I even think about capitalization :-) I'd like to learn more about html.

the first step I'm going to take is to find - and sign-up for - an online class about photography, or blogging, or writing. the september handout included a story by andrea scher, who just happens to run a six-week photography class. the next session starts monday. I'm going to start by checking that out.

the battle to surrender was harder. my first thoughts went to knitting. not finishing those hibernating projects perhaps? or not working to reduce my stash? or letting myself go crazy starting whatever I wanted? yeah, no. that's too much the opposite of focus!

instead, I'm going to surrender the self-imposed - often completely unrealistic - deadlines I set for finishing my projects. those unrealistic deadlines have started to detract from my enjoyment of knitting. I do still need to get the samples for my lace shawl classes done in advance. and I do still intend to give finished objects as birthday and christmas gifts. but that's it. that's a matter of planning ahead, not about having unrealistic expectations or losing sleep the two weeks before christmas because it really does take many hours to knit a sweater or feeling guilty because I spent my knitting time on wednesday working on the sweater I won't likely wear til november when I have two sweaters on the needles that I could wear now.

funny, I have a feeling the surrender is going to be harder than the fight.