2015 Plans

I tried very hard for Green Snowman to be my last finish of 2014, but it was indeed the first finish of 2015. I have never been able to capture the color of the fabric which is a bright olivish green. This is my fourth of these Shepherd's Bush  snowmen; Green joins Red, Blue, and Black.

As we embark on the new year, I always like to set small (or extraordinarily large, either way) goals for myself.

• Start 31 projects in Debbie's Ultimate Crazy January Challenge--All projects are prepped and ready but one. I swore I bought Turkey Sausages, but I can't find it anywhere. No worries, I need to pick up an order at the LNS anyway. You can see the projects I plan to stitch on the DUCJC page above.
• Stitch every day.
• Complete stitching twelve pieces (in addition to the smalls)--I know that seems ridiculous given my miserable outing last year, but it's actually much closer to the number I usually complete.
• Stitch more smalls--I've signed up again for the Smalls SAL,

• Finish-finish 12 stitched pieces--I still have a rather large container of unfinished pieces.

• Craft Month with a new twist--You'll just have to tune in! 
• Hire a new cleaner.

As last year, I am doing the workbook "Create Your Shining Year." I know it doesn't seem like me--and in a lot of ways it is not--but the way it helped me land a job in 2013? I'm converted.

I was thinking about what my word for this year might be. I started thinking about how I would like to tackle my problem with procrastination. I don't think that everything a person starts needs to be completed right now or tomorrow or even the year after that; I'm a cross-stitcher after all! However, at the end of this year I did let some (life, not craft) projects slide that really needed to be worked on. And it just ends up creating an oppressive feeling that leads to more procrastination. I needed my word for the year to be something like "anti-procrastination," but more elegant. Do you know there is no real antonym for procrastination? "Proactive" (besides being a terrible social-science-y word) sort of. "Persistence" means you stick with it to the end, but not that you start in a timely way. "Enthusiasm" seems to imply a fake cheerfulness. "Advance" is really the opposite of retreat. And "expedite" is so rushed, which isn't necessarily the problem. "Just do it" starts to get at the heart of it, but the idea of using an advertising slogan makes me throw up in my mouth a little. The dude came up with "alacrity," which is a delightful and underused word, but lacks a certain sticktoitiveness. I thought "motivate," which would be ungrammatical. (It would be self-motivate, which is as clunky as antiprocrastination.) Friends suggested "engage" and "momentum." Not terrible but I wasn't feeling it. Then I was reading an interview with Jody Rice of Satsuma Street. And I was poking around in her shop and saw the design "Good things come to those who hustle." 

Hustle! That was it. I felt it. It has the momentum, it has the movement, it has the energy and the force. Hustle uses raw talent and a burst of extra effort together to get someplace (for some reason basketball comes to mind). It can be aggressive when it needs to be. And it even has sleazy overtones of illicit behavior. (Not that I would but it does add a certain verve!) And, there's even a theme song; sing it with me: "dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun, dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun, do the hustle." So the word for 2015 is Hustle. Let's see where that leads me.

Gotta hustle and start my January Challenge!