Planting seeds

A few weeks ago I let my colleagues know that I won't be returning to the school next year as a staff member.  I've known since August that this was the right choice for me and my family, but it's...   To call it bittersweet doesn't do it justice.  The last three years have been among the most intense and most meaningful experiences of my life. I love my colleagues like family, love the school, love the kids, love the entire community.  But after devoting the majority of my time and energy, these last few years, to the work of building and sustaining the school, I'm feeling the need to spend some time focusing those same resources on my family.

One of the sweetest bits of the bittersweetness is the anticipation of finally getting to all the projects that've been shunted to my Someday/Eventually list, over the course of these last years.  I've been whiling away some of these dreary winter afternoons by dreaming of what the warmer weather will bring.

I use a combination of GTD organizational approaches and Flylady's habit-building when it comes to my work life.  I've been enjoying -- to a truly ridiculous extent -- turning that approach to the rest of my life (I've done it to some extent for years, but this is a more focused effort).

Here you can see my GTD-inspired collection of priorities and associated projects:

And here you can see the space where, over the next months, I'm going to be spiraling out into a really solid foundation for our home life and my own life out in the world.  Starting tonight, of course, with a Shiny Sink!

And here, of course, are all the literal seeds I'll be planting this Spring: