Sound-Off: It's Time for the Percolator

It never, ever fails — if I’m in the car or doing housecleaning, or maybe more appropriately, at a club, and I hear that familiar voice and that infectious beat drop, I start dancing on command. It’s instantaneous. You might know it, too.

It’s time for the percolator.

It’s time for the percolator.

It’s time for the percolator.

Even writing it makes me hear it in my head, and that makes me bebop in my chair a little as I type. I love classic house music but that is hands-down my favorite in the genre. I’ve been known to do the dance through the whole song, too — and sweat my hair out and burn my thigh muscles down to nubs in the process. It’s always been my official hype song, but now it’s my personal mantra too, especially since we’re down to the fourth quarter of 2011.

The next few weeks will facilitate that last-minute bumrush to act on all the things I swore up and down I’d get checked off my must-do list this year. Every New Year’s Eve, I pull out my little markers and my little white poster board and draw up a very big game plan of what I want my next 364 days to look like; goals I want to achieve, milestones I want to reach, aspirations I want to realize. I post it where I can look at it every day, be confronted with my own vision and ask myself, “This is what you say you want. So what are you gonna do about getting it?”

And for a while, I’m hot on the heels of proactivity. I’m an emailing, phone-calling, Google-researching, mission-accomplishing mamma jamma. Then, somewhere along the line, I fizzle. I can’t even pinpoint when I lose my fire to get ‘er done. Is it in the spring when the weather starts getting warm? Is it in the summer when I’m distracted by barbecues and cute sandal shopping? It doesn’t really matter when it happens. It just does, and I end up carrying over the same ideas and same plans I had the year before into the next year and the next year and the next year — undone, unfinished, unsatisfied.

But not this go-round, baby. I’m not even talking about 2012 yet because we’ve still got plenty of 2011 left for me to get my butt — and all my other parts — in gear and make big things happen, even with T-minus six weeks and counting. We don’t need a fresh set of 365 calendar days to act on something we’ve been wanting to do for about 1,460. I know I have business ideas I’ve been sitting on that aren’t going to launch themselves and dreams of finally, finally finishing a master’s degree I started back when the sniper was wrecking havoc over the District. It’s time to act on those goals, especially since I know I will be good and irked at myself on December 31, 2012 if I’m still singing the sad song of sorrow because I kept dragging my feet.

So each week, I’ve assigned myself a specific task that contributes to an end goal. It doesn’t have to be glamorous or earth-shattering. But in six weeks, that’ll be six things that wouldn’t have been finished had I kept piddling around. We don’t have to do it big in the new year. We can do it big starting right now. I know I’ve officially spent too much time, this year and every other one for quite some time, percolating. The new mojo for the end of 2011 is think, pray, do something. If it works, great. If it didn’t, regroup and try another thing. Just start. Move toward the goal. And then take that into 2012, already revved up, already progressing, already focused instead of waiting for a ball to drop to make you rededicated to your vision. It’s yours. You can act on it any time you want. Why not now? There’s a time to percolate and a time to start.

So start.