Notes on the Reinvention of Jaime

It’s September 1, and I’m sitting on my porch at sunset eating dark chocolate and pepitas.

Technically, I would prefer to have finished eating before sunset, but here we are.

I realized I hadn’t eaten enough today, and I also wanted to get outside for the last bit of evening light, so I’m accomplishing two things at once. Which feels appropriate, because I have approximately an hour and twenty minutes until bedtime and I still have things I want to do.

Welcome to Stop Settling September.

I’ve been thinking about this as the Reinvention of Jaime, which sounds rather dramatic. But I’m actually not trying to become an entirely different person.

I think I’m tired of settling for things I keep saying I want to change. Every year I write some version of the same things on my goals lists. I want to actually do the things I keep saying I’m going to do.

And then another year rolls around and some of those same things get recycled to the current year list.

At some point I have to ask: How many more times am I willing to write this down instead of changing it?

Right now, the house is the thing making me the craziest. It is a constant hot mess, and I can’t figure out which systems work for me even though I keep trying different ones.

You know what I need?

CLEAR FLOORS. Clear surfaces. I am an unapologetic maximalist, but what I need to figure out is how everything can be elevated. I love stacks of books on the floor, but they’re way annoying to actually clean around. 

So one of my commitments for September is:

A house task every day.

I’m not looking to clean the entire house in a day or become a naturally tidy person (I’m more like a crow or a squirrel, hiding my treasures away. Or a monkey. Maybe.)

The idea is to just do SOMETHING. A ten-minute task or a 60-minute one, depending on how much time I have. Just a step in the direction of my bigger goal.

I originally thought the Reinvention of Jaime was going to be mostly about health. And health is certainly part of it. I’ve been thinking a lot about food and light and sleep and getting outside and taking care of this body I live in.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I don’t want to isolate one little piece of my life and try to perfect it.

I want to stop settling. To stop seeing past all the little niggling things that bother me but that haven’t been a big enough pain point to change. House, health, business, etc.

With all the things I keep saying matter to me and then somehow not making room for.

I can also start with what I have. What is in my hand. I can sit on the porch at sunset. 

I can go upstairs and tackle one little annoyance in my house.

I can do the Etsy work that I know has made me money before.

I can write this Substack post.

I can stop waiting for some future, shinier version of Jaime to arrive with better circumstances and take care of everything. 

Maybe reinvention looks less like becoming someone new and more like finally keeping some promises to the person I already am.

So that’s September.

Thirty days.

One house task.

One Etsy task.

One little Substack dispatch documenting what I’m doing, thinking, trying, loving, learning, or finding ridiculous.

No grand transformation required by tomorrow morning.

But I would like October 1 Jaime to have some evidence that September 1 Jaime finally decided to stop writing the same goals down and start living them.

And now I need to go work on my house.

Because it’s honestly bedtime and I have a tracker to color in.