Size doesn’t matt— oh, shit, that’s huge

In a normal year, about now is when I’d start planning for next year. Work-wise, I mean… my personal life doesn’t really have a plan. Do I even have a personal life? HAH. Anyway, long-time readers will find the drill familiar. September is Fiber-In and applying for December’s GLAM and starting to think about next year and voicing some thoughts about plans. October is my birthday and the start of holiday business and finalizing those plans I thought about in September, at least for the first quarter of the next year. November is thinking about the second quarter, making things for GLAM, and trying to restock things online as fast as I sell out of them. December is straight up being exhausted, recovering from GLAM, giving up on trying to get the shop restocked, and trying to figure out if I have enough energy to make Chex Mix.

I usually start my plan with a large wall calendar. On that, I put the things I know I want to have done at a specific date – yarn club, or product releases, or whatever. Then from that I decide what weeks I should most be focused on yarn, or soap, or ceramics. Lists of things to do during the week or daily to-do lists get put in the planner. But I always start with the wide view of the yearly calendar.

This last year…..???? HAHAHAHA. January and February were full. March had some things crossed off. Then the rest of the wall calendar was pretty much empty except for things like days I wanted to release new yarn colorways, or days the HaldeCrate was supposed to come out. And about half of that I haven’t been able to stick to, because of kiln issues and things that take longer and/or have to be done multiple times to get it right.

So last week I was like… do I really even want to buy a 2021 wall calendar this year? I mean, I like having the wide view of the year. I like being able to see months in advance or in the past. But I hardly really – used – last year’s, except for looking at it. I mean, it’s not super expensive, but … it’s still $25 that … did I get $25 worth of use out of it, just looking at dates and not really using it to plan out anything?

But then! In looking online, I found one that’s a year view, but also a wipe-off. So I would have to write in the dates, but then I could also erase them and write in the dates for the NEXT year… making it multi-use. It was about the same price as the ones I’d been getting, but how did I feel about having to write in all the dates? Not too bad, after evaluating. Worth it. So I bought it. Then it was delivered, and, whoa. It was, uh, much bigger than I was expecting.

I wound up having to move the top half of those shelves to get it to fit. I can barely reach the top couple of lines, and I have to really lean over to reach the bottom. Oh well….? For comparison, here’s the size I usually get (this is from a few years ago, but I usually get the same one).

So you can see, the new one is a good three times larger. I sure hope that I have something, anything, I can plan for next year, or I’m going to feel really silly with that thing looming over me every day, staring over my shoulder.

I mean, believe me, I’d love to have a plan for next year. As previously stated, I love me a routine and a plan. Part of me says “no! stop! don’t! you don’t even know what’s going to happen after the election! don’t make any plans past November 3rd!” and part of me says “wouldn’t it be great to think that life next year will be some semblance of normal? that I could at least pretend that yarn will come out on these dates, and the HaldeCrate will come out on these?”

So I think where I’m going with this is… I’m going to plan on having a plan. I don’t want to write too much down before November, because, I mean, we could have peaceful transfer of power or we could have armed revolution or all of my rights could be stripped away and it might become illegal for me to even own my own business. ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN. For right now, all I have written down on the big wall calendar are quarterly taxes, three Seasonal HaldeCrate dates, and chapters due over on Patreon.

But when I do feel comfortable writing more things down? Putting many things on the calendar? I will have so much room in which to do it! That bitch is huuuuuuuuuge!