If Projects ...

I have a list of projects. It's a long list. It's a list of every project I want to do at my house in the foreseeable future. Things like:

paint bedroom floor
buy new bed
make beadboard backsplash (I need TDC to finish for more proof)
get new couch
find pile of money
get sprinkler system
patio furniture
and on and on.
{Please tell me you have a list. I can't bear to be alone in this.}

The problem with my list is one thing.
One word.
If.
Or maybe, the real issue is the word "then".

I somehow got it in my head that "if" I wait until I rip out the carpet, "then" I'll order the bed (and somehow it will be a better bed???) or "if" that slipcover looks ok, "then" I'll sell the couch and get new furniture. It's weird how that works. What's especially weird, is that there are projects I can most certainly do right away (like rearranging the bedroom furniture) that I refuse to do until I do something else -- often unrelated -- first (like rip out the carpet and paint the floors). And that is so silly!

Why should I wait to do something I can do until I do something else that might not happen for a long time (like the floors ... been waiting on that for over six months!)? Why do we place these weird limits and expectations on ourselves? Using my same example, I can definitely rearrange the furniture and even buy a new bed before the floor is painted. The bed doesn't change the color of paint or the ability to paint it or anything like that. I don't understand myself sometimes!

I was hoping this would come out all Oscar Wilde-ish in that "I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word I am saying" sort of way, but instead it comes out, "I am so paralyzed by indecision and fear and laziness that I never get anything done". And that, my friends, doesn't make for a good tagline, so I'm off to work on that.