Work Expands to Fill the Time

Amy Dingmann did a podcast on Tuesday that has been stuck in my brain for days. In it, she talked about Parkinson’s Law, or the axiom that “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” If you have two hours to make a canvas grocery bag, you get it done in two hours. If you have two days to make a canvas grocery bag, somehow that task takes two days.

I like to be busy. I don’t like to sit. However, after two solid months of putting pedal to the metal on a fire department auction, seed starting/plant babysitting, a trip to Ohio and Tennessee, preparing for a pie social, running a fundraising plant sale, and getting the garden in, I looked at my calendar for the first three weeks of June and saw an opportunity to slow down (finally!) and take a breath. Also, I had a new sewing machine waiting for me.

So, I slowed down. I said to the husband last night that it’s almost like I’ve been on vacation.

[Let’s just ponder for a moment the fact that me finally having a chance to focus on my stuff for a couple of weeks feels like a vacation to me.]

This vacation, though, is wearing out its welcome. I am not getting things done. I have been puttering a lot. I am procrastinating on simple tasks, which is not like me at all. My brain still thinks it takes an entire day to cut the grass. (It did when I used the push mower.) It takes 90 minutes on the riding mower.

My assignment for this week is to find a happy medium between being so overscheduled that it wears me out—even if I am super productive under deadlines—and being underscheduled to the point that I become lazy. Notably, though, that does not mean allowing my calendar to be filled with tasks and deadlines assigned to me by others. I will sit this afternoon with some paper and my favorite pen and make some lists. I will assign arbitrary, binding deadlines for myself if necessary. And I will get things done this week. I’d like to start quilting that log cabin top and that means sewing the rest of the blocks together.

Speaking of bags, I am trying, without success, to find fabric for something like this:

This is a bag I picked up at a Waitrose grocery store in London in 2019. It folds up into that little drawstring bag at the bottom. I’d like to make a few more because it is so handy. I have a pattern for something similar, but it’s the fabric that has me stymied. This is about the weight of ripstop nylon—maybe a bit lighter—but without the ripstop gridding. I could use ripstop, but I’d like to find the same fabric as what was used in this bag. None of my Google searches have yielded anything except a list of places selling ripstop nylon. I searched on “nylon taffeta,” as well, but that brings up mostly garment lining fabric and I think that will be too light.

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My sister and her fiancé flew to Seattle last week and met my mother there, who flew in from Cleveland. On Friday, the three of them, along with DD#2, flew to Ketchikan to visit DD#1 and DSIL for the weekend. DD#2 texted me a picture yesterday of her and my sister in DSIL’s fishing boat:

I am glad they are having nice weather.

We are supposed to be back to cool, showery weather by the middle of this week. (“Cool” is mid- to high-60s, which is just lovely.) I am so happy with how the garden looks this year.