THIS I LEARNED: part #4, 2021 - Looking back is good..it helps us to look forward

I've recently realized that it is important to occasionally look back. When I look back it's often easy to see where I've come from. What I've accomplished and what I don't want to go back to!

I got sick at the beginning of May with a cold that instead of hitting my head with a runny nose, it hit my chest. I had lots of aches along with a rotton cough and the resulting tight chest. I was tested for Covid and the results were negative. Thank Goodness!!!! I ended up spending most of May curled in my chair dozing and coughing!

Now that May is over and I'm feeling better, I'm looking back on the past month and reviewing what I accomplished or didn't accomplish.

• I was able to continue my virtual teaching committments....thank goodness none of them were night classes. I wouldn't have been vertical for any of those! I was even able to prepare and teach 3 virtual classes at the Road@Home event at the end of May. I crashed into bed after these events. I've never slept so much during the day!

• I was able to quilt some customer quilts and am thankful that they asked for simple edge to edge designs either free hand or computerized! I found I was good for about an hour at a time standing in front of my machine.

• In the midst of this I dropped my laptop off my standing desk and had to replace the hard drive! So, everything before my February backup to the cloud was lost!!! I'm slowly recreating some notes and information that was saved only to my laptop hard drive. Programs have been re-downloaded and I think I'm almost back to normal in that regard.

• I was not able to walk the dog. Lady loves her daily excursions outside almost as much as she loves to lay in the window and watch 'doggie tv'....the bunnies and squirrels in our yard. We are back to walking, although I do get a bit tired walking up the hill to our house.

When I look back on May, I see that things weren't as bad as I initially thought they were, but I'd rather not repeat May 2021!

We're into a new month and I'm looking forward to more teaching and quilting. I have made a few decisions

• I'm going to limit my customer quilting for the month of June. I'll continue to take them in, but am not going to guarantee that I will be working on them during the month of June.

• I'm going to focus on a few of my own quilting projects. Quilts that I've started to piece and not finished because other, more important things took precedence (and I got sick).

• I'm going to work more on ideas I have for virtual/on-line quilting classes. Let's face it, virtual is here to stay. It's our new reality. It's easy for students to watch a video in their PJ's at their own convenience.

• I'm going to work on editing and re-publishing some of my quilting patterns. I'll be posting them on my web site for purchase and download as I get them ready.