Change

My brother and my photographer for today’s post, Joshua, and I ran over to a local park by our house around twilight to shoot this post. It was one of those days when time went t0o fast, and I could not keep up, but I decided that it was important for me to try. We made it to the park and beat the sinking sun, as well as the dying battery pack on the poor little SLR.

I’ve been a little M.I.A. on Ways of Vesture lately because life seems to be getting a little ahead of me. My whole job right now is replete with detail-oriented time management skills. I am currently a server at a restaurant. As a server, I’m always seeking new ways to do the smallest elements of my job more efficiently. Filling two drinks up at once while preparing a desert, counting change, refilling ice bins, and gathering the minutia that my guests have requested (more napkins, salad dressing, etc.). I organize these multiple-point to-do lists on the fly and execute them under tight deadlines—often in under two minutes’ time. I’ve noticed that minutes saved piles up to hours earned. Furthermore, the more I increase my efficiency, the more I can accomplish in a single work day, and the more successful I have become in my current job.

The trick is learning how to do a job of excellence—never sacrificing quality for a deadline. This was a struggle for me when I worked for newspapers in college. We always had deadlines looming over our head like a cloud. Deadlines don’t take into account the interviewee’s availability or a writer’s block or a cold lead on a story. I usually am a perfectionist when it comes to a craft I love. However, the show must go on. The story must be written with skill and accuracy and viable human interest. It’s tricky. I never want to sacrifice quality for efficiency, but I also have learned that I cannot sacrifice efficiency in the pursuit of perfectionism. It’s a delicate lesson to learn.

I want to apply that lesson in this blog. Also, I am also open to new challenges that this blog has presented to me. It’s true: I need to do a job of excellence in an efficient manner, but I need to be self-disciplined in my goals and practices. Because I am the editor-in-chief of this blog, the general manager, the boss, I set the deadlines, and I have not really done a very good job of setting those deadlines. So, my current goal with this blog is to set more challenging posting deadlines for myself, not allowing Time to be a an excuse. Another personal style blogger recently told me that frequent consistency is important in fashion blogging, both for the blogger as an artist, and the blog’s audience. I believe she is right. In further support of my battle to manage my personal time better, I agree with Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said,