Ever since I can remember, my family has used the term “plans” in quotes. Years of painful experience warns us that no matter what we think will happen, something else will actually take place.

Unfortunately, this knowledge rarely helps me to NOT make plans. I come up with a great scheme, start to implement, and then… well… disaster.

Case in point: my website. In the first part of June, I undertook a redesign of my website. I wanted:

• A cleaner look
• To take the blog off the “front” page
• To highlight more of my art

Not too bad, right?

Hysterical laughter

I forgot about “plans”.

The first problem was that I couldn’t find a WordPress theme that I liked and that did all the things I wanted it to do. (For those who are not familiar with tech things, my website uses WordPress as the “program” to run things. There are hundred (if not thousands) of templates you can download to make the pages look a particular way.) If I tried two, I tried 52. Finally, I decided that I was going to have to settle for “good enough” and moved forward.

Then, the beach house happened. And forward progress in my life sort of stopped.

When I would found a moment of inspiration, I created the front page images that you might notice. Then I turned to the painting. Of course, this was the big one. A complete inventory of all my pieces was conducted. And then nothing would do but that I had to reorder almost 15 years of photographs and assorted images.

And during all of this, the depression over the beach house lingers.

This last week I finally “sat down with” myself and made a list of all the things that were making me feel bad. I broke them into steps and started to work on the most pressing items.

Thus, today, I am proud to announce a “mostly” completed website. My paintings, through 2015, are up. The pages are updated. I have a list of things that I am contemplating, but I’m going to move forward. This pausing thing is just making things worse.