Avoidance Advent Calendar

our first week of tasks : starting slowly, as one only can

Hello and welcome to our second year of ending the year well, and doing a small thing each day of December as a little gift to 2025 us. These will each be small tasks, based on TRUE LIFE (*ahem … mine), but will likely be generalizable enough that you can apply them to your own.

I'll be rolling out 6 ideas week, with the idea being that we complete 25 of them before 2025. If one week for some reason an idea doesn’t work, or an idea needs 2 days instead of one, feel free to get creative. The point of this is not to be perfect, or to try and get ourselves ready with rigid goal setting for the new year. I think of this like when you were a little kid, and you’d fall asleep as a nap on the couch, and wake up with a blanket around you, the lights dimmed, and maybe a nice cup of cocoa on a cold winter’s afternoon. We are slowly tending to ourselves during this bright, chaotic, time of year.

ON THE FIRST WEEK OF (AVOIDANCE) ADVENT, The tasks I have are THESE…

1. Start slow. Today is a prep day, where you lay the foundation. Clean your sink, make your bed, and put a place to mark each task completed. Bonus points if you get creative with this, and make it something you will enjoy marking off or coloring in each day.

2. I know it was oddly specific, but I really do need to make an eye doctor’s appointment. You may need to, too, or you may have another appointment like me that has been in the back of your mind to schedule. Set a timer for 20 minutes, and try to schedule the appointment. If you have extra time, think if there is another one that maybe it would be GOOD for you to get on the books. Yes, I agree the dentist is not fun but neither is gingivitis, unfortunately.

3. Google is starting to threaten me about how full my email inbox is, and that they are going to make me PAY if I don’t clear it out. I will be doing my usual method, which is writing in “unsubscribe” in search, and then going over the last month of emails, unsubscribing, deleting, and seeing if there is any other junk that needs to be blocked. I refuse to pay for email storage. Perhaps, for you, this isn’t your email, but that your computer storage has been yelling at you for 3 years, or your phone. Either way, set a timer for 30 minutes, and see what you can clear out.

4. Deep clean your fridge and double check your expiry dates in your fridge and cabinet. Yes, it might be Gen Z and Millenials’ favorite thing to go check these at home and make fun of their parents for having a dijon mustard from 2018, but those things SNEAK up on you. Timer for 45 minutes. Scrub the crud off your fridge shelves. Also, wipe down and disinfect the shelf your spices live on.

5. There is a task for work or school or in your email that is not completable in 10 minutes, is not *technically urgent, but that every time you think about it, you feel like you will be sick. Set a 45 minute timer, and do what you can on it. Pretend you are in school during a test, and you don’t have more than 45 minutes. See where this takes you. I’ve got a case report that has been pinned to the top of my inbox for a rude amount of weeks, taunting me.

6. Physical paper day—it’s time to resort out that shelf or cabinet or drawer that has random, “important?” papers in them from recent months. Set the timer for 45 minutes. Sort into trash, personal info trash that must be shredded, memories, and formal need to keep for the future paperwork. See what order you can bring about.

Now, as I’ve said on Tik Tok, at the end of each day, take a moment to thank yourself for the gift future you will get of not having this on their back. If you, like me, are following a treat or normal, non-avoidance advent calendar, this would be the time to open the little door or box and get your treat. It’s well earned, and well…tis the season.

I’m so happy to have so many new faces, and I shall see you on Tik Tok this week as we settle into the last month of the year together.

Take care + have merriment,

Margaret of Bad Art Every Day