Do It for Future You

Hi all, I'm still trying to get to bed earlier, and still running into obstacles. Last night I stayed up late to sort through toys and find things to add to our donation boxes - a charity truck came this morning to pick them up. Tonight I might stay up late working at my seasonal editing job. One of those things could have been done ahead of time (I set up the donation pick-up a couple weeks ago). The other, I can only do when the kids are otherwise occupied, and I don't have any control over when work is available. So, I'm not going to feel any sense of failure about staying up late to work - there isn't any other good option in that situation. But I really should have gotten the donations gathered up ahead of time so I didn't have to stay up late to do it. 

When I was in law school, I saw an episode of "How I Met Your Mother" that had a great lesson in it. Yes, I just typed that. In it, the two guys thought about trying to decide who would get their shared apartment someday in the future when they wanted to live with girlfriends instead of each other. They decided to leave the decision to Future Ted and Future Marshall, and then when the future arrived, they ended up in a huge fight. The lesson is: take care of it now, so Future You doesn't have to deal with the problem. I started to do a little extra work for school every chance I got so Future Tonya would have it a little easier. And it worked! I appreciated my previous efforts a ton. I only spent a little extra time each day, or some days none, but it added up to make a noticeable improvement in my life at the end of the semester. I kept doing it for years, in various aspects of my life.

When I was pregnant and had babies, I was so sick and exhausted, the idea of doing extra was comical. But now my littlest baby is 2.5 years old and I can revive the habit and do a little extra work for Future Tonya again. I'm going to try to remember that every time I think, "I really should get ready for tomorrow now... but I want to just sit around for a little bit first." Just get it done now! Then I can relax without worrying about it. And tomorrow I'll be so happy that I'm already ahead of schedule. 

And I won't have to stay up late doing something that I could have done ahead of time. 

And now for some outfits:

Flannel dress and ankle boots. What!? I'm sewing pretty regularly this fall, and it's awesome! I made this dress last week and am excited to have a cozy flannel dress to wear this fall and winter. 

Striped t-shirt, black jeans and camel boots. I'm so glad I got used to mixing black and brown. How did it used to look so wrong?

Green sweater, flared jeans and ankle boots. Yep, I've worn this sweater with these jeans before and only changed up the boots. Some outfits are worth repeating.

Green and white striped tunic, skinny jeans and moccasins. Wearing a big t-shirt over stretchy jeans is pretty awesome. If this shirt had pockets, I might become one of those people who wear exactly the same outfit every day. Like, they have 7 identical shirts, 7 identical pants, and 1 pair of shoes and they just grab a clean set each day and never think about what to wear. Nah, I'd miss my shoes too much.