New Week, New Month

Well, here we are- into the first week of November. I feel slightly shocked because I don't know where the heck October went. There was so much that I didn't get done last month, it isn't even funny. But that's water under the bridge and now we're onto a new month and working on getting things done so we wind up the year on an upswing. I was working on our event next month with the Hello Stiletto Shoe Club- Santa and Stilettos (isn't that a great name?). It is a holiday themed party at Felt, the Boston nightclub. It is a lot smaller than our two big events, but it should be a nice fundraiser. Hello Stiletto is an awesome womens social organization based on women and their love of shoes. I've been going to their events for a couple of years and always have such a fun time. They are the reason that Sofft was on board as our date auction sponsor as well. We're working together for the holiday party. Melissa (shoe club founder) already arranged the venue and date. Today, I got a DJ on board and I'm still working on finding some fun, attractive men who would like to dress up as Santa Claus and greet the ladies and judge the shoe contest. The event itself will be fun and simple- most of the shoe club events are like that and that's one of the things that I've always liked about it. I also want to do a holiday ornament swap, but I'm trying to figure out the logistics of doing an ornament swap with a large crowd. I've only ever done it with 20 people or so. I also want to do small silent auction as well. It was kind of funny working on event related things today. I haven't done any event work in a month, so I actually enjoyed doing it today. Sometimes, I'm not sure how I feel about event planning- in a lot of ways I love it, but in many other ways it is very stressful and frustrating.

Anyways, other interesting news- it looks like we will be offering Project Smile credit cards for our supporters. Capital One just introduced a new program where people can get credit cards and 1% of their purchases will be donated to Project Smile. How cool is that? I applied on Friday to be in the program- it takes a couple of weeks to be approved. Of course, the big thing is to get people to actually sign up for the credit card, but it's an awesome program.

I was also working briefly on calendar sales- we still have a lot of calendars left to sell and only about 8 weeks left. I didn't get to contact any new departments today which was annoying- I got wrapped up in other things.

I am struggling with my new email plan and I'm starting to think that maybe it isn't the right plan for me. The goal was to respond to each email as it comes in. However, I can't seem to do that. A lot of times, I will read and email then come back to it later. The problem is that sometimes I never come back to it- very bad. so, I've been trying to take care of it immediately as was recommended, but I can't get myself to do that consistently. I think maybe that plan doesn't work with the way my brain functions. I usually need time to make a decision- I like to think about things before taking an action. I've been that way most of my life, so maybe that's part of the reason I'm struggling to respond to email immediately- my brain just needs more time. So instead of trying to fight myself, my new plan is to dedicate time at the end of the day to respond to the emails that came in. That way, I've already read them and had time to think. Obviously, if something urgent comes in earlier, I'm not going to wait hours to respond. It's important to come up with a plan that works for you- the original email plan sounds awesome, but it doesn't seem like it is awesome for my brain. It's kind of like how I'm a night person and really don't function well in the morning. I used to fight that and would force myself to start work earlier, even though I accomplished practically nothing. I stopped doing that and my productivity increased. The fact is that I can't think well in the morning- I can think great in late morning, afternoon and late night. It is dreadful if I have to do anything productive in the morning.

I have to go to sleep- I think I'm fighting off a bug because I've been amazingly tired for the last couple of days. I didn't blog last night because I was too tired. Hopefully, I can keep getting a lot of sleep and I won't be sick. It is only 12:35, but my eyes are hurting and I'm about ready to roll over and conk out. Until tomorrow friends...