If You Give a Page a Picture

            I really don’t know where the time goes. I feel as though I lose track of it so easily. I wanted to be more proactive with my blog posts this year, but I did not have a solid plan in place so it has fallen by the wayside yet again. I think of the quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin: “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” I mean to make amends to this, so I have spent the majority of my blogging absence analyzing my goals, schedule, and time usage. I even bought a Life Planner, which has encouraged a lot of journal writing. Elsewhere in writing, I started a couple short stories. My main problem is that I have a lot of starts and few finishes.

One reason for these infrequent finishes (and loss of time) is that I tend to make things too difficult for myself. I spend too much time on tasks that should be simple. For example, a few weeks ago, I wanted to start putting up a weekly quote on my Facebook page and I found one I liked. I was about to schedule it to be posted on a Monday, but then I thought it needed a picture. So, I searched through some internet memes and couldn’t quite find the right picture and quote combination. I have been wanting to start using more of my own photography and less from the internet, so I decided I’d put the quote on my own picture, and I opened up the rarely used GIMP program that my brother downloaded on my computer. GIMP has so many functions, too many, and I don’t understand most of it (it’s one of those programs that you need to watch video tutorials in order for it to be beneficial). After changing the font size ten times and endlessly shifting the position of my quote, I saw a shadow in my picture and thought, “I could probably edit that out.” After multiple attempts at finding a function that removes shadows, I gave up and my Facebook page still lacks this new update. I don’t even want to know how long this useless process took me, and in order to gain closure on it, I am sharing that photo (with unwanted car shadow) today.

The font still looks too small...

 

Sadly, this example is how many blog posts, writings, and other projects go for me. My life plays out like a never-ending If You Give a Mouse a Cookie story. I need to add this to the goal list in my planner: Simplify things! I think I will start that weekly quote on Facebook and I'll use a less-complex program, or just share the quote and photo separately. Watch for it on my page, Monday!

Anyone else guilty of overthinking/overdoing simple things?