I don't have a calendar.
I toyed with the idea of getting one when I started Getting Things Done, but decided no. After all, I have a refrigerator. Why would I need a calendar? I write what I need to do, along with day & date & time, on a pink, heart-shaped sticky note & put it on the front of the fridge. My cell phone & my computer tell me what day it is, if I choose to notice. Most of what I do is not very time specific, so I don't have to notice all that often. But if I have an appointment for acupuncture (& if you live in or near Asheville, North Carolina, & want to try it out, I cannot recommend Eli at Mystic Journeys highly enough!) or a haircut (ditto with Casey at Dang Salon) there's my little heartfelt (& shaped) reminder.
It's a good system, fairly recently adopted. I was reminded of this yesterday, when I had my replacement haircut. I lost the little card that told me when my haircut was scheduled, & missed it & had to reschedule. With the new system in place, I was there at Dang, with the dashing cape around my shoulders, ready to be shampooed, when another woman came in, thinking she had Thursday at 11. She'd miswritten her appointment & had actually just missed her 10 o'clock. Casey asked if she could come back at 7 & she regretfully said no, she couldn't. So I offered to give her my time & come back later myself. (Ah, the benefits of a flexible schedule, that you can offer this largesse occasionally.) She was extremely grateful.
I'll see her again before the end of the weekend, because she goes to Florida & buys clothing at the thrift stores that the rich folk utilize & sells it from her home here in Asheville. Everything $10. Except one item for $5, for me, for gifting her with my haircut time....
So I went back to Casey at 7 & got my haircut. Scheduled the next one & wrote it down in a notebook. As soon as I'm done posting this, I'll transpose it to a pink sticky-heart & put it on the fridge. I told Casey about my calendarless-system & she said she used a planner that she never had with her when she needed it. I told her I always knew where my refrigerator was, & if somehow I misplaced it I'd have bigger problems than missing out on a few scheduled items. She said, yeah, she did know where her fridge was.
I've just started a new fun--& exceedingly valuable--thing: cutting pictures & words out of magazines & such & gluing them in my new journal. I'm pasting things in from the back & writing things in from the front & I've marked the middle with (I know, I'm predictable) pink heart-shaped sticky notes. The visual collage of things I like--home-wise, nature, arts&creativity, stuff (new digital camera, for example)--has already stirred up my heart. (Again with the heart, you say!)
Recently finished book: The Mind & the Brain (Schwartz & Begley) (Go, Nerd Book Club, Go!)
Really interesting & well-written, even though they go into pretty excruciating detail on lots of psychology experiments. Neurophysiology & psychology & philosophy & Buddhism & quantum physics--all the good stuff. Now I have at least some understanding of quantum superposition & the physics behind why thoughts become things & the power of deliberate intention.
Blog alternative:
82: Thumb through a magazine or catalog & cut out a couple things that attract you. Glue them into a notebook or on a poster or at least stick them on the fridge with a magnet. (One man's calendar is another man's dream journal.)
