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Saturday, January 29, 2011

Action Returns: Candy Buffet Bags

A lot has been going on in my life over the past month or two aside from the wedding planning piece.  I had a family member pass away, another get very close, I am *thisclose* to being finished with my dissertation, and I have been managing my internship application extravaganza.
This last piece is the most stressful because the quality, location, and type of internship I get for next year will make a very big impact on my future career as well as Chris' and my lives.  It's too complicated to try and explain here, really, but suffice to say, if things go the best they can (from what's possible now) either (1) we will be moving across the country to Miami OR (2) we won't be living together because I'll move to either Fresno or Merced for the duration of the internship year.  Plus, the nature of this stage of my program leave me feeling worthless, powerless, and downtrodden.

I have been having an extraordinary amount of feelings lately.

This has also resulted in my not-quite-panic-mode response: sluggishness. I'm also used to having so much more of a "to-do" list on my plate with exams and papers and applications and what-have-you that I got into the habit of only attacking things on that list that were emergencies. Notice that my blogging has been sporadic - that, too, is part and parcel.

Pour this all in a blender and you get the version of me who has been feeling crappy and stressed out but without the benefit of getting nearly as much done as I could or as I would like to.

But, in a positive development, today my motivational and action-oriented bone returned to me.
Now, that's not to say that I got tons done, but I got a respectably reasonable amount done.

Case in point, I did this today:



These are the bags that will be placed out for use in conjunction with the candy buffet at our wedding, which will be our favors.  I bought the small glassine bags quite a while ago (after much internal debate about size and color).  After their arrival, I began experimenting with how I wanted to personalize them.  I decided on stamping them, and then played around. Chris offered his preference that we use white ink (he thinks it looks classier than the other color options).
So, about two months ago (or not, I don't remember these things anymore), I stamped the fronts of the bags in waves with this stamp:

Then, just a week or so ago, I took them back out from their temporary storage placement (but were always in the front of my mind since it's such a simple, easily-completed task) and started stamping the back with our custom logo stamp. I did the first few dozen in waves.
This morning I decided that I would finish it,finish them all.
I did.

The sense of pride in completing this simple task was alarming.  All I did was finish stamping 250-ish bags, going back and forth with my hands in repetitive motions for something like an hour, maybe two, while watching television.

Placing those bags in Ziplocks and pressing the air out while sealing the containing bags, I had a rare sense of progress.  It gives me hope that, instead of just obsessing about everything left to do, I will actually do them and ultimately spend less time on each task.

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