Entries tagged with pruning

Entry tags:

A 101 List

This may or may not be the 101 list. It's possible that there are still a few impostors in there. Having done a fair bit of pruning, as previously described, I counted up the articles remaining, and found a nice neat total of 111. At this point it just seemed easier to knock off ten, and see what the result looked like.

It looks like this:

( Potential 101 in 1001 list )

Then I counted it, and now I make it only 100. I'm not going to count it again tonight; I'm too tired. Is anything going to be reprieved? Stay tuned!

Entry tags:

planning,
pruning

Still Pruning: Following the Flock

The list is shrinking. Here are a few of the things I've dropped:

- do something once a month that pleases my inner child
- comment on x blogs
- do NaBloPoMo
- leave guerrilla art
- make a list of simple things that make me happy
- save £1001
- transcribe more of the family tree
- make a file of nice letters

They're good goals. They're worthwhile, and would probably improve my life in one way or another at least in the short term. They're specific, measurable, achievable, and realistic. If I did them as part of 101 in 1001 they would also be time-bound. I might well do some or all of them, before, after, or alongside my list.

They're not going on the list, though, because they're not my goals. I saw all but one of those on other people's lists (the last is from a book of useful techniques), and, while I'd quite like to do them, I'm not going to lose any sleep over not doing them. They're things I probably wouldn't have thought of by myself, and, let us be honest, I don't want to do them all that much.

This is not to say that anything that appears on anybody else's list is automatically a non-starter. Here are some things that I'm pretty sure you'll find on at least two other lists than mine, and that have a fair-to-middling chance of staying where they are:

- eat at a restaurant six times, two being new-to-me
- learn how to play a song on the guitar
- go on the London Eye
- do three things to help others reach their 101
- write 30 longhand letters (not counting Christmas/birthday thank yous)
- do project 365
- be able to identify twelve constellations
- record 101 dreams

And here are some that are (I believe - I may be wrong) more or less unique to me:

- collect a set of photos of the Royal Arms, and be able to blazon and date by heraldic features
- squirrel-proof birdfeeders and birdboxes
- make ornaments for the three Christmas trees (ours, my mother's and my father's)
- fix up a device to siphon off bath/shower water. Use at least ten times.
- make a finger labyrinth
- buy a monocle
- listen to/watch 30 proms
- become a Mystery Worshipper

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Picking and Choosing: Four Things

Whittling down the longlist to a shortlist is a little difficult to document on this blog. I might take a photograph of the physical copy of the longlist and show you its multi-coloured amendments. A magenta star means it's something that I really, really want to do. An orange star means worthy and boring, but possibly still a candidate for the list because otherwise it won't get done. A blue crossing-out means that it's something that is important and should be done, but may not get done this time round, or is perhaps something that is not appropriate to talk about in any detail on the internet. A green crossing-out means that it's a really bad idea and I shouldn't do it ever. Yellow highlighter means that I would probably end up doing it whether or not it went on the list, or indeed whether or not I did the list at all. Red annotations are amended goals - conflating goals, replacing xs with actual numbers in 'do y thing x times'. A maroon crossing-out means that I can't really be bothered with that one. And so on.

Here's a sample:

Magenta star - 'Take a flight in a hot air balloon'. Yes, I know

freddiefraggles said

ephrael said that it can be rather dull. But I've loved hot air balloons ever since I was tiny and witnessed a whole field of them taking off. I had a scrapbook full of pictures, and everything. I really, really want to do it. So it gets a magenta star, and it's staying on the list.

Green crossing-out - 'Argue with an evangelist'. I wrote this down when I was annoyed, having been given a leaflet by a leafletting man, to find that it was all creationist bunkum, which I'd have handed straight back had I read it on the spot. I don't want to deliberately set out to argue with someone, though, and I don't want anything so negative on my list.

Yellow highlighter - 'Finish the

queerlit50 challenge'. I've already read 28 books for this; at the current rate I'd probably only have about ten to go by the time I started working on 101 in 1001.

Blue crossing-out - 'Walk the Camino del Norte'. Yes, I do want to do this. Yes, walking the Camino Francès was probably the greatest achievement of my life to date. Yes, this is still a very important goal. Realistically, though, I'm not going to have two straight months to do it in, the way I did in 2007. And, equally important in a completely different way, I don't want to do it without my best friend, who came with me last time. If it would be difficult for me to manage it, it would be impossible for her. I'm not going to lose sight of this goal, but I'm happy for it to wait.