I started this drawing a few weeks back when I was feeling stressed and at odds with the whole project. I finished today with a few last details and a title. It really does show my route through the project or moving from this mess to the lovely fresh house up the hill.
I shared it on Facebook and got great responses from friends. It was a treat to have a bunch of real comments, not just likes (though it got those, too). Then a friend in California asked if she could included it in a NFS-funded teacher professional learning course in the area of data fluency to show how the path to a goal isn’t always linear. Well, of course.
Art is in the eye of the beholder but I thought I’d add some explanation to each section, so you can match your eye to my brain.
- Start Here is the mess of the current house – mouldy, cluttered & falling apart. It’s probably going to be a mess when we end, too. Later, we will get it all cleaned up.
- We could take the direct route and hire professional movers. But we honestly don’t have that much stuff, and it’s a 3 minute drive between houses. So, nah. We’ll manage it ourselves.
- Plan and Shop. This island has all the boxes to tick. It looks small, but it’s taken up a lot of time.
- Eat is sized proportional to my interest in food. Right now, food is mostly coffee and sweets.
- Overwhelm is where I find myself trying to connect the dots to get everything done, but realising that there are more dots than I think. So I do nothing but spin my wheels and distract myself with Art.
- Eventually, I will coil up my courage, reach out a hand, and Ask for Help. It should be real soon now…
- Having asked for help, I will to do all the packing myself. And then on move day, I can Hostess a party with some light lifting instead of putting friends to work.
- Then we will Move It. Somehow. Probably with many short trips back and forth to the new house. And we’ll manage that Mountain of Unwanted Junk, too.
- The Bridge We Cross When We Get to It is god-knows-what hurdle we are likely to encounter: a typhoon; something breaking en route; gout attack.
- Last Minute Anxieties & Panics is a large part of the map and 99% about the cats. Though it’s supposed to be contained in the last minute, I think anxiety is a persistent background. One of the reasons for leaving the current house is to protect the cats from traffic and until they are away from it, I will be anxious.
- Goal! It’s more beautiful and more prominent that the rest of the map. I’m keeping my eyes on the prize.
