But first, I have to do this

Sometimes I feel like my day is one giant game of “for the want of a shoe, the war was lost” combined with… what’s that term… choice fatigue? Decision! Decision fatigue! Or, no, wait, I think it’s more like analysis paralysis, because the choices aren’t necessarily all literally in front of me, and it’s not just choosing between, say, three types of shampoo – it’s thinking about all the ramifications of what I might choose, mentally going down that path to its conclusion, and then coming back up the path and choosing another “if this, then this” and following that down to its conclusion, and so on.

For instance, last week I was trying to clear off my “clean” table because I’m going to need to wrap soap, and I have a customer who wants some stitch markers – both those things are done on the same table, and ever since the Open House a few weeks ago I’ve had some ceramics piled on it. Ceramics that I didn’t have time to enter into the shop between when I made them for Big Bang Bazaar and Fiber-In and when the Open House was. I was out of places I could put them “out of the way” so I knew I was going to have to photograph and list them.

One of the last things I came to when doing photos was a bowl of buttons. I was both happy and sad about that, because I would like to have the buttons listed, but it’s a lot of work to take all those individual photos and for some reason I hadn’t already done that.

The reason I hadn’t soon became apparent — in between making some, and making others, I had (inadvertently?) switched paint brands. So in the four different designs, six different colors per design, there were two colors that had different shades in each one.

So do I continue photographing? I’ve set everything up to take pictures, and that’s a chore. But then what do I do about the different colors? Do I list them as different colors? Then do I have to always stock the different colors once they sell out? What if they never sell out and I’m stuck with them? Or do I opt for over-glazing the “wrong” colors with the “right” ones, and hope for the best? If I reglaze, when do I do that? How soon can I get them in the kiln? Because I was halfway into photographing before I noticed it, and I’m ready to get these buttons online, but I want to list everything at once (plus then I need to take photos of the reglazed ones) so can I get that done before I put these other, fine ones, in a bowl to get them out of my way and then accidentally forget about them for two months? POP QUIZ – WHAT DO YOU DO? WHAT! DO! YOU! DO! (Dennis Hopper? Speed? Anyone?)

And this happens to me a lot, the “I have to do this thing but before I do that thing I have to move all these other things, which means I have to clear off this space over there to put them” and before I know it half the day is gone and really, what do I have to show for myself? Does that happen to anyone else? It seems like more days last week were like that for me than not, and I’m really hoping that with a new week, and the start of a new month tomorrow, maybe there will be some new (productive) energy all up in this place and I’ll feel more accomplished, less whirling-dervish, this week.

I was listening to a pottery podcast a couple of months ago and one of the questions the guy who runs the podcast asked the potter was “if you could have any super power, what would it be?” and she said that her mother had an amazing ability to look at a color, and pick that color out somewhere else without bringing the color with her – as an example, she said something like looking at the paint color of a wall, and then going to the craft store and picking out matching material to make cushions and the color would be spot-on. That got me thinking a lot about… every-day super powers. Sure, flying would be awesome. Being invisible would have its perks (unless your clothes did not become invisible, and in that case, brrrr)… but I think if I could choose any superpower it might be a toss-up between “not getting easily sidetracked” and “not suffering from analysis paralysis.” Because those two things happen to me so often, and they seem to travel together like conjoined twins… it would be nice to be able to scoff in the face of one of them.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go refill my coffee. But first I have to get the cat off my lap. She’s old and creaky, I should put her somewhere soft, like maybe move that blanket over there and put it on the ………………