A Lesson in Procrastination (Plus the New Blog Design!)

I’m a huge procrastinator. It’s probably one of my trademark characteristics. Usually, it doesn’t have that much of an effect in the long run, but sometimes procrastination leads to severe anxiety, or letting someone down, or in today’s case, missing out on a concert that I really would have liked to attend. 

Anyone recognize this lovely woman?

Ani DiFranco, one of my favorite live musicians ever (I’ve seen her over ten times), is performing in Albany on Friday night. I found out about the concert back in November. And did I purchase a ticket? Of course not! January was ages away! It was something fun to think about and look forward to, but why would I buy the ticket so early? Psh. How silly.

I thought about the concert at random moments in December. I talked about it with friends. Should we go even though the seats will be so far back? La la la, so cool that she’ll be so close, la la la. No ticket buying.

And somehow, today rolls around. Three days before the show,  I decide I would love to go, and check out the venue’s website during my extremely slow day at work. SOLD OUT. Had a customer been standing at the counter, I’m sure they would’ve seen my face fall, cartoon-like, and my shoulders slowly slump down to the floor. How could I have waited so long? Why on earth didn’t I buy a ticket when I first read her touring schedule?

So, lesson learned. I miss out on seeing Ani an hour away because I procrastinated. Perhaps I’ll take a field trip over to Northampton, Massachusetts and see her there in March (bonus: meeting Tamara, of course!).

Behold, a shot of a sign from the one time I visited Northampton (pre-blogging):

Another thing I’ve procrastinated on? My blog redesign! I first thought of redesigning a year ago, and I put it off because it seemed like such a daunting task. Intimidating. Frustrating. Annoying. Too many decisions. Well, it’s all of those things, but the whole process was a lot more painless than I thought it would be (thank you Andy the IT guy!).

What’s different: I got rid of the awful red that I grew to hate. I no longer have a narrow column within which to squeeze in my photos. Now, they’re large and I love it! I changed my fonts, got personalized social media buttons, and put more things in the footer as opposed to on the sidebar, where they can distract the reader from the content. We created a few categories to access in the header, so you can click ‘Mental Health’ for example, and find all of my depression and anxiety posts, in an easy to navigate grid format.

The old look:

The new Sweet and Savoring:

Most of all, I love the new theme, Hemlock. It’s more minimalist and completely responsive. Plus, the clean design puts the text and photos front and center where they belong.

We’ve still got some tweaks to make, of course. Andy is taking care of all the technical stuff like coding, and I’m engaged in my hobby of procrastination when it comes to redoing the About page. But the major work is done! And I’m so happy to share it with all of you.

Thank you, and see you all back here on Friday for a long-awaited Gratitude post!

If you’re new to Sweet and Savoring, please follow me on Bloglovin, subscribe via email at the bottom of the page, and see what I’m up to on Twitter and Instagram (where I just started doing travel theme weeks, showcasing two photos a day, for one week, of one destination I’ve been to Right now I’m featuring Costa Rica).