Today has been time to tidy up some loose ends! Having spent some time retreating from the world, planned or not, I’ve been transferring my blogs to my website. Being out of the range of wifi has given me an opportunity I don’t often use. I’ve been re-reading the blogs of the last week as I’ve been tidying them up, tagging & adding photos. The process of tidying up those loose ends (especially as I use Yoast SEO to help get my blogs noticed on t’internet thingy) has been a great chance to read my writing from a different point of view. Not just to edit and finally post. But to see if they make any sense at all, lol. In fact I’ve been rereading a lot of my blogs in the last week because I’m in the midst of writing a book to potentially tie up more loose ends.

I mentioned my SEO plug in as I also attract a lot of spam posts on my website. I’m sure most people do. There seems to be a whole group of people generating nonsense comments offering to improve my search engine optimisation (regular posting of stuff is the only way to do that), supply me with viagra (!!!) or who really appreciate the post I made six months ago & have a porn site address tucked into their comment. There must be a huge (no pun intended) waste of time and effort going on somewhere to create lots of loose ends on the internet. It can be very off-putting when you actually start your own blog or website. However, there are ways in which all these waste of space comments can be tied up so no loose ends make it onto your posts.

Similarly, in ‘real’ life as opposed to cyberspace, we accumulate loose ends everywhere. I have a To Do List as long as my arm with some things that have never actually got to the top. What is it that drives us to finish absolutely everything off? Why do we favour those who can complete everything over those of us who like to have a few loose ends floating along behind us? Before I went away I spent a hectic week trying to get through all of my To Do List. I really did need a holiday after that! And some things still didn’t get done. Do we automatically take on too much? Or are we wildly optimistic about how much time everything will take? I know that I will shuffle things around if I feel that someone really needs my time and attention right there and then. Sometimes that means dropping what I had planned and leaving a few loose ends. Then I can feel guilty for what has been left even when I feel happy to have helped someone. Why is that?

We are great at giving ourselves impossible-ish targets, not quite achieving them and then feeling rubbish. It can be a hard habit to break. Have a think about your To Do List. How many items are on it? How many really, really important things are on it? How many things are there to help others, please others or really don’t matter in the greater scheme of things? Often we forget to add in things like eat, sleep, have fun. Are there lots of loose ends to tie up? From how long ago? Let’s be real. If it hasn’t been done by now and it’s over a week old then it’s probably never going to get done. The world has moved on and so have you. One of the best freedoms you can have is to leave the loose ends exactly as they are. If they need sorting they will most likely come onto your To Do List at some point in the (near) future. If they don’t they can’t have been all that important. So step away from the list, stop trying to tie up the loose ends and spend time doing what matters. I’m back to eat, sleep, have fun but feel free to add a few more items if you wish. Your list can be complicated or simple. The choice is yours.

Day 196 of my blogging challenge.