a whole lot o' system goin' on

As a kid, I would sometimes sneak-watch I Love Lucy, hoping I didn't get caught.  That show was verboten by the parentals.  

I know I'll be corrected by email any minute now for saying this, but we weren't allowed to watch the show.  My mother found the Ricky Ricardo character stereotypical and offensive.  She's right.  And sure, "start 'splainin'" is most definitely making fun of someone's accent, but damn it, that show used to crack me up, made all the funnier because it was forbidden.

I bet most people can't imagine forbidding a kid to watch I Love Lucy.  Maybe you think that's crazy, the equivalent of banning "Miracle on 34th Street."  But guess what? That was verboten also.  My mother had a thing with Nathalie Wood.  She's about to let me know, so I'll pass it on. 

Anyway, my point is that I don't know all that much about Lucille Ball or I Love Lucy.  I bet I could watch tons of episodes and they'd be brand-new to me, since I never saw them when they were actually on, kind of like when we three -- Joe, The Kid and I -- watched the show Friends on video years after it had been popular.  Suddenly we understood all these references everyone had been making for so long.

The only reason I'm even talking about Lucille Ball is because she purportedly said some awesome things off-camera, including this particular gem that rules my world right now:

If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it.  The more things you do, the more you can do.

Dude, that's so true for me right now.

If you know me or read me, you know that I'm cray-crazy for Moleskines and calendars and paper-based systems.  Lately I've added not one but TWO tabs to my Levenger Circa notebook (love you, Levenger), started in January to track my projects for the year.  A week and a half ago, buoyed by the fun of my first Honey Sale, I added a Blissbug tab -- using, with my genius sister's permish, the name she came up with in 2008 when we were working on a yoga app together, and which really suits honey. In that section, I'm keeping all my notes about teaching beekeeping and how to become a certified Master Beekeeper, super-fun.  Then, last weekend, I added a Studio tab, for all of my notes and sketches and visioning about the possibility (so real) of acquiring a small yoga studio and giving Blissbug a physical home, not just honey but a yoga hive.  

I'm so full of ideas right now, loving the busy and only wishing that I could have back the 8 hours a day I give to the execution of someone else's idea in the world.  I think about how much more I could do if I had that time back, and it makes me a little nuts but also even more driven in the time I do have.

Keeping all this going -- my aspirations for my writing and for this blog, the development of a beekeeping business (selling honey, teaching classes), the launch of Mr Burns's business (because oh yeah, he has ideas to but can't hold a pencil), the implementation of this year's theme of shri, of beautifying my surroundings and life in every possible way, and now the addition of Blissbug Yoga -- um yeah, keeping that going requires, for me anyway, a lot of system.  It means I carry with me everywhere I go my Levenger Circa, my 2012 Moleskine notebook, my 2012 Moleskine soft-cover calendar, a fistful of writing implements. And a head full of ideas.

I give thanks for the system because without it I couldn't track all this, I couldn't spin out the ideas to see where they lead, what they build, if I didn't have all these bits of tree to scribble in and give it all form.

So big thank you to Levenger and Moleskine.  Without you, I'd be a bit screwed.  Without you, I couldn't do all this 'splainin', and what fun would that be?

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