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Product Proposal: Google Life-Maps

It’s kinda funny. I have been so inconsistent with keeping any kind of journal/blog/etc. that in the ~24 hours since I decided I’m going to do this, I’ve had a half-dozen posts I’ve wanted to make. Besides not having the opportunity to sit down & write them out, I haven’t posted them all because, well, I’m rationing them. I know I’m prone to writer’s block, so having a few good starters later will hopefully keep me from abandoning this when the words don’t flow so readily later.

No matter what the project is — Christmas cards (that I flat-out just didn’t get to this year), cleaning out the office, laying out the most recent issue of SMR — my biggest hurdle to overcome is figuring out a plan of action. Don’t get me wrong — I am a pro at making lists. However, sometimes it seems I get lost in deciding where to start. Or where to take the project once I’ve started. I have goal-ADD. Each new idea is shinier than the last, distracting me from the projects on the table. And should I do something as unheard of as temporarily shelving the new idea to finish an existing project, I just get antsy and don’t get anything done.

This is where my product proposal comes in: Google Life-Maps. It would work on the same basis as Google Maps, but it’d be like an automated life-coach. Just type in where you’re at and where you want to be, and Google provides a step-by-step list of instructions on how to get there. And if something comes up — anything from a bad day at work to a pregnancy — just drag the line to allow the detour and follow the new set of directions.

I can follow specific instructions. I swear I can.

Heck, I’d even pay for the service.

It would likely be especially popular this time of year with all the new year’s resolutions being made. But it’d also be pretty darn popular with new graduates (“Start: BS in Business, End: Dream job on Wall St…”), brides-to-be (“…detour: the dress was hemmed too short!”), and expectant parents (“Start: DINKs, End: family of 3 on a paycheck of one”). If anyone could do this, it’d be Google.

Hmm… maybe I should talk to my cousin-in-law on the inside…

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Resolve: more than a carpet cleaner!


It’s no secret (to anyone who actually knows me) that I’m a procrastinator through perfection. In high school, I got a C in Physics because of missing lab reports. It’s not that I didn’t do the labs. Or the write-ups. Rather, I was such an anal perfectionist that rather than turn in a less than perfect report, I didn’t turn in one at all. Stupid.

But my illness goes back even further: the first manifestation I can remember was in first grade. I can remember having stacks of unfinished assignments in my desk. Most were coloring sheets & cut & paste things. In hindsight, I know they were things Mrs. M gave the class to keep the us busy between reading and math, but at the time, I remember being pretty distressed about it. It was my dirty secret. Quiet little, neat-working little, little little Julie who always did so well in school had piles of unfinished work in her little (unkempt) desk. (Most unfortunately, my perfectionism has never really overflowed into my workspace.) I remember having nightmares about it.

Since school, my perfectionsitic procrastination has continued. And usually that means that I start a lot of projects with genuinely good intentions but I fail to see them through to completion… or simply see them through.

THIS blog is no exception. Almost a year ago I established, and no sooner had I registered it than it became one of the more recent in my string of defunct online journals. And the big reason why: because I didn’t have the formatting quite to my liking.

Well to hell with that.

Today, on the eve of 2008, it’s about time I do something despite it being humanly imperfect. It’s time I do something — THIS — because it is (& I am) humanly imperfect.

I resolve to do this.

I will post no less than once a week. I will post even if I can’t add the pictures I want to at the moment. I will post even if I don’t have time to spellcheck or proofread. Likewise, I won’t apologize or feel guilty for not posting enough or for posting about the mundane. I will, however, write with a purpose each and every time.

I resolve to do this. Consistently.

Won’t you join me for the ride?

Stuff

finetik deth trets

Julie
September 6, 2007
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(Originally posted on Shakespearesmonkeys.com) Another reason to keep an eye on who your kids hang out with. Yesterday, we’d gotten threatening notes in little kid writing slid through our back door yesterday. We’ve been catching neighbor kids playing in our yard and on our deck while we weren’t out or…

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