Not actually meaning to be self-pitying.

What? It's December?
What? I haven't posted since NOVEMBER 7TH? 
I'm actually startled and maybe even shocked. Ideally, I post more than once a week. At a minimum, I like to post once a week. When times are rough, or I'm on vacation, maybe I skip a week.
Three and a half weeks?

This isn't an apology. What it is, is curiosity. How did the time squirrel itself away?
That's really what happens once in a while with things I haven't worked on. I know I want to get to it, and I know that rule that the longer I don't do it, the harder it is to get started again. What I hadn't noticed is how the time seems to really squish itself into a corner of my mind, compacting further and further, disappearing, so I can't tell if I've been away from a project for one week or more than three. If I were a good writer I could describe what this feels like to some satisfaction; the pack-ratting of time in a corner of my mind's closet.

I know there are some things that help when I'm faced with this kind of surprise. Just like I recommend people look at calendars and holidays to get some grounding in time, when I don't know where the time went it helps to unravel the pile of events just a little bit.
 So, say, since November 7, let's see, what have I been doing?

-I had thanksgiving

-the week before thanksgiving, we went away to visit family for an early thanksgiving. It was only a long weekend, but between that trip and the actual thanksgiving, I only had one coaching/work day.

-and any remaining time with the babysitter went to packing and unpacking

-Oh yeah! before we went away the baby had an ear infection, too.

-and Oh yeah! Thanksgiving weekend, when I was thinking of writing a blog post (I know that's only a couple of days ago), the whole family got a stomach bug.

So that unravels us back to about 11/19,when I hired the sitter specifically so I could pack for our trip the next day. I see in my calendar that the day before that was unusually packed with clients, it was one of those client-only priority days on a short workweek. AND that same day I presented at the ACO's Expert Speaker Series, so I must have been preparing for that the same day and a bit the week before.

This leaves me with one week of mysterious lack-of-blog-posting. Though I do have a note about a proposal I was writing that week. That's the only week I'm not so satisfied with my "excuse," and now I know where I stand in time again.

Woo hoo! I had a couple weeks of mostly holiday! Way to reframe, folks!

Now you try it.