Coffee and Conversation: 33 Round Tuits

Grab a cuppa and a comfy seat, and let’s chat a while. It’s time for Coffee and Conversation.

When I was six, my family was driving on a highway late at night. Streaks of headlights and taillights painted the dark. For the first time, I realized that each car held people living lives as important to them as mine was to me.

I wanted to know what those lives were, and to share my own..

So, how many times have you said, “I’ll do that when I get around to it?”

Personally, I’ve lost count of all the things I’m planning to get around to, and that’s gotten me to thinking that it’s time that I stop waiting to get around to all those things floating and swirling and circling in my mind, and decide that – well, I’m going to get around to them.

Then I remembered something from my childhood. As a young teen, I was part of a church youth group, and, at one meeting, once we were all seated, our group leader instructed to us to look under our chairs. Taped to the underside of my folding chair was a token, with printing around the edge that read “I’ll read my Bible when I get a round tuit.” In the center, on both sides, it declared itself to be “A ROUND TUIT”.

“RoundTuit”. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Somewhere between the ages of 13 and 45, and cross-country moves, the Round Tuit has left me, but now I’m seeing it in a new way. Why am I waiting to get “a round tuit”? Why am I resisting even the act of listing some of these things that leap about in my mind like little fleas, biting and sucking off some of my energy?

I’ve had a round tuit. I looked online, and it’s not hard to find another. Round Tuits are apparently kind of a thing.

But I’m going to take a different approach.

All those things I’ve been putting off, waiting for “round tuits”, sap my life in small ways. I have a beautiful life, but, with all the unfinished business, it feels a little like this:

Lovely… but a little lacklustre…

So, today, I’m going to do something about it. I’m going to make the first step. I’m going to list 33 Tuits.

Why 33? Simple. I like the number. Love it, actually.

So, here are my 33 Tuits, in no particular order:

• Delete files from old computer (Sweet L’il Lenovo), reset to factory default, and give to Declan, a young friend looking for an XP machine for gaming.

• Write a blogpost about my long-lost friend, Barbara Leonard, whom I would LOVE to reconnect with.

• Scan all old photos, organize files, and begin sharing them digitally.

There’s the first three. See, that was pretty easy! =)

• Reread and organize all my old story notebooks.

• Watch all of Star Trek in chronological order.

• Blog about it.

• Go get a professional massage.

• Buy an Irish cloak.

• Buy a new pair of workout sneakers.

• Read all nine books currently in my bedroom To Be Read stack.

• Learn how to thread my sewing machine.

• Complete all the items in my Play Jar.

• Buy wireless television headphones.

There’s 13 of my 33. I’m getting into the swing of it, now!

• Finish resetting the family room, playroom, and kitchen.

• Rehome wandering game pieces.

• Contact Kristen Lamb and collect my WANACon Social Media Prize.

• Update my bio and my blog sidebar – it’s outdated and jumbled.

• Finish organizing my study.

• Buy a wheeled storage footstool.

• Buy a set of Corelle dishes.

• Create a visual timeline for my Trueborn series.

• Create rough outlines for the Kifo Island Chonicles novella series.

• Read all old writing practice notebooks and mine for usable materials.

23 Tuits down; only ten more to list. I want to make these last few count. Hmmn, let’s see….

• Begin submitting Trek fan fiction to a fan fiction site (this will require a bit of experimentation to find the right “home”.

• Complete rough drafts of all novels in the Trueborn series (I think there are between 3-5 waiting to be developed and drafted.

• Go as a family to the Museum of the Adirondacks W!ld Center.

• Go to The Cloisters, perhaps all by myself.

• Complete the first revision pass of Chameleon’s Dish.

And now I’m down to the final five….

• Contact the high school teacher who changed my life.

• Reclaim the flower beds, and begin growing cutting flowers, herbs and vegetables.

• Complete revisions of 3 short stories: “Morning Coffee”, “A Splash of Red”, and “Peach Liqueur Love”; submit to L.S. Engler‘s World Unknown Review.

• Write 31 new poems for OctPoWriMo; revise the ones written in 2012.

• Return embarrassingly overdue library books.

Okay! There we have it – 33 Tuits, made public on my blog! I already feel more accomplished, with them written out in a list I can look at – not when I “get a round tuit” , but as a part of the fabric of my life. It didn’t take that long to write them, and I’m already working on several.

Whenever I get one of these tuits done, I’ll post an update here on the blog; and I’ll be doing monthly check-ins. Hopefully, as I move through my Tuits, learning and growing, my life will look more and more like this…

THIS is more like it! =D

How about you? Do you have Tuits in your life, too? Have you ever attempted to actually “get around tuit,” and get them off your mental list? I’d love to chat with you – and I’m gonna want a cuppa to energize me for the getting around tuit to come…won’t you join me?