This week has been pretty nuts, there’s lots of stuff going on at SML which I’m very heavily embedded in.

Today involved waking up at 4:45am when Don went to golf, not being able to get back to sleep, early to work with one four hour vendor presentation, a lively debrief, brief lunch and one three hour presentation, much longer lively debrief and a handover with Bobs who is off for a two week holiday (I’m minding a bunch of stuff while he is gone).

It has been great fun, but I’m still all hopped up on caffeine and sugar and adrenaline.

I haven’t even begun to think about what I’ll be doing on the weekend – there will be much relaxing, pottering and not thinking about SML much at all.

I’d been putting the 100 day challenge off, waiting for the perfect time to start – but that is a sure way of never starting anything!

I’ve had a horrible headache for the last few days and work has been very intense, so it’s been quite a difficult thing to keep up with for the first week. They’re less than magical – but that is kind of what I was feeling, which I suppose is entirely the point!

These are my first seven days, with instagram captions included.

100 days of happiness: day one – hungry ladies. #catsofinstagram #100happydays #dayone #kitties #catsoftheinnerwest #100daysofhappiness

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100 days of happiness: day two – crunchy peanut butter + butter on lightly toasted white bead. #100happydays #daytwo #100daysofhappiness #comfortfood #peanutbutter #toast #hardenedarteries

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100 days of happiness: day three – awesome new retro 70s runners. #brooksrunning #shoes #runners #100daysofhappiness #sale #vanguard #100happydays #daythree

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100 days of happiness: day four – new notebooks from #daiso !! 1. My note: happy enjoy everyday. 2. It’s mine: it’s my favorite note. 3. Boîte de papeterie: learn as much by writing as by reading. #100daysofhappiness #100happydays #stationery #notebooks #blackandwhite #dayfour

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100 days of happiness: day five – cold shower before bed after a very hot day. #cold #hot #100daysofhappiness #100happydays #dayfive #tap #brokenairconditioner

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100 days of happiness: day six – choosing the next book to read on my beloved kindle. #100happydays #daysix #kindle #100daysofhappiness #besttechever

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100 days of happiness: day seven – self-seeded tomato! Tomato plants magically started growing from the worm farm compost, this is one of the only tomatoes that made it to maturity. #100happydays #100daysofhappiness #dayseven #tomato #garden #dayseven

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I’m fairly confident that I’m unlikely to update this weekly, but hey let’s aim for that.

Remember the recent hike and my complaints about my too tight hiking boots?

Two weeks later and my toes look like this:

Yes, I am in desperate need of a pedicure.

The bruises didn’t even begin to appear until several days later and are currently in the process of becoming increasingly more purple.

This is what they looked like a week ago:

I hope the falling off of my toenail is not the next step in the journey.

This is one of those projects where the perfect is definitely the enemy of the good AND where I try to do dazzling things that don’t really align with me or my values.

Back in March I chose easy as pie scarf for my complicated shawl or scarf knitting project and it was going along swimmingly (well, mostly).

Then in June for reasons I can’t even fathom, I decided that no – let’s try something much, much harder and more dazzling and selected uncia from Kate Davies book of haps – grabbed some yarn and … did absolutely nothing for months.

Tonight I started properly with the uncia and … I actually kind of hate it.

I don’t much care for the pattern, the yarn I selected is splitty and awful and if I am really honest with myself, I would never, ever wear such a thing. It is very pretty, but really is not me at all.

What I do like knitting however is my original scarf choice – despite having unravelled about 50cm of it.

So I’m doing the sensible thing and going back to making something I want to make – which is sufficiently challenging (see aforementioned unravelling) to be very enjoyable and which I will actually get a lot of use from.

Honestly! My brain sometimes!

I need to apply this ruthlessness to other areas of my life!

(Hopefully I can use the splitty yarn for this crazy herringbone scarf – at some point – after the easy as pie is done).

And finally … Joan! She gets a pass for being late because she is living it up South America. Okay, she’s living it up when not struck down with an awful cold.

2016 review

1. Work towards learning to drive and getting my Ps by 30, making sure I don’t let my neighbourhood’s narrow streets and traffic congestion issues put me off achieving this goal!
   NOT ACHIEVED I don’t think I got behind the wheel once last year.

2. Eat better food, be more physically active and generally improve my health with a view to being less sickly and in better shape.

   PARTIALLY ACHIEVED I made some progress, I think living at home helped with eating better and I’ve lost a bit of weight.

3. Resolve my post-travel unemployment situation by figuring out what it is I want to do for work and making it happen.
   ACHIEVED I did get a job but it ended up not being what I wanted.

4. Continue travelling. Japan and Christmas in Europe are my ideas at the moment.
   ACHIEVED I’ve definitely done this with a spontaneous US trip in April and I’m currently travelling around South America.

5. Stop letting fear hold me back from doing things I want in my life.
   ACHIEVED This is quite vague but I suppose I didn’t let fear hold me back from quitting my nightmare job and go travelling again.

2017

1. Go to China and North Korea.
2. Get some career direction by deciding if I want to go work overseas, change industries or do more study.
3. My travels through South America have made me realise how sickly and unfit I am, so work on those things by being more physically active.
4. Start cooking more and expand my repertoire.
5. Be more direct with how I feel about things and stop being so indecisive.

xxx

Previous years:
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011

Selecting an audiobook was a rather harder decision than I’d imagined. I’ve been listening to a bunch of samples, so many samples that I probably could have finished a complete book by now.

Some appear like they’d be excellent, but after listening to the sample, I know I could not bear to listen to the narrator for hours and hours and hours (and hours). And there are some books that I don’t want to ruin by listening to them .

This really is one of those occasions where perfect is the enemy of good. I feel like I want something epic, impressive and challenging for this item, but maybe I should just be easing into it?

Audiobooks I’ve been considering the following (in no particular order):

Haruki Murakami: 1Q84 46 hrs and 50 mins

David Foster Wallace: Infinite Jest 56 hrs and 19 mins (!)

Elena Ferrante: My Brilliant Friend 12 hrs and 39 mins 

Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall 24 hrs and 15 mins

Hilary Mantel: Beyond Black 17 hrs and 12 mins

J G Ballard: High Rise 6 hrs and 34 mins

Anthony Powell: A Dance to the Music of Time: First Movement 21 hrs and 3 mins

Tim Winton: Dirt Music 11 hrs and 44 mins

Donna Tartt: The Goldfinch 32 hrs and 30 mins

Donna Tartt: The Secret History 22 hrs and 3 mins

J.K. Rowling: The Casual Vacancy 17 hrs and 49 mins

Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin 6 hrs and 6 mins

Lionel Shriver: We Need to Talk About Kevin 6 hrs and 23 mins

Christos Tsiolkas: The Slap 15 hrs and 42 mins

At the moment, based on how much I can tolerate the narration, I’m leaning toward 1Q84, Blind Assassin (the shortest!), We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Slap, Beyond Black or The Casual Vacancy.

Argh! That’s still too many choices! This is the epitome of analysis paralysis – all this effort expended and I haven’t made a decision yet. You see why I want to make an effort to change this in 2017.

Maybe I should just pick one of these from a hat?

And while on the audiobook topic – I’m kind of perplexed, what on earth do you do with your eyes while listening to a book? How does one concentrate? I’m sure the answers to these mysteries will be revealed if I can actually make that decision to pull the trigger on something!

First, a review of the 2016 projects. I wanted to primarily focus on the 50before50 list in 2016, so I kept my wider project list to a minimum.

Spoiler – this approach didn’t actually work very well at all!

2016 projects

1. complete 50% of the 50before50 list (see what I mean about ambitious)
   PARTIALLY ACHIEVED I completed about 1/5 (so 10) in 2016 and have made progress on another 5. This doesn’t bode well for getting through the whole list by the end of November. Need to up my game, put less pressure on myself or abandon the exercise entirely!

2. each morning list 3 things I’m grateful for/feeling positive about and 3 small things I’d like to achieve.
   PARTIALLY ACHIEVED I stopped this in May and recommenced in October. I found it to be a pretty worthwhile exercise. Early on I added 3 things I was worried/stressed about – this was mostly to get obsessive thoughts out of my head and worked pretty well. I was also keeping a bit of a journal for a while where I was logging what I wore and ate and general observations. I’ve combined both of these things into one big journal for 2017.

3. eat a wider range of healthy food – more diversity with veg and salads
   NOT ACHIEVED In winter we were doing pretty well with this – it’s quite easy to shove a tray of various veg in the oven for roasting for dinner. We do eat a bit of salad, but it is very retro old school with like 3 ingredients. My ongoing frustration is that fruit and veg does not keep at all well – this makes the worms in the worm farm happy, but is not really too great for us.

4. comment more on the blogs I love (using an RSS reader has made me terrible about this)
   NOT ACHIEVED I did a small bit, not at all regularly. I’ll keep this one for 2017 I think.

5. drink alcohol a maximum of 5 times during the year
   NOT ACHIEVED Oh my word, no! This was a total fail. BUT I did give up completely in November and made it through the festive season!

6. complete Palace-ly chores (and grocery shopping) during the week to free-up weekends for fun/projects
   NOT ACHIEVED This is really hard, generally exhausted after work and the last thing we want to do is chores. Again, I really want to make this one work.

Holy Goodness! That’s really kind of depressing! To be fair, I forgot about a few of them. Ooops.

So for 2017:
I’m going to have a crack at an over-arching theme for the year and that theme is: perfect is the enemy of good.

I don’t think it is a surprise to anyone that I am really hard on myself about all manner of things and I am a bit (okay, a lot) of a perfectionist. I’ll often put stuff off because I know it won’t be produced to a high standard or I don’t try new things because I know I’ll never be good at them. I have overcome this a bit with running and biking – I’ll never be great, but I find both really fun. I need to get it fixed in my head that sometimes getting things done to an okay standard is fine! Really! Sometimes I’m not going to be good at stuff and that’s okay! Really!

On with the actual list:

1. complete the 50before50 list
   (yikes!) I’ll really need to embrace the 2017 theme for to achieve this!

2. stop reading rubbish on the InformationSuperHighway.
   I’ve stopped reading all news entirely (really) since November 2016. I realise this is somewhat controversial, and I am quite conflicted about the head in the sand approach, but my mental health and sanity are significantly improved as a result.

3. comment more on the blogs I love. support the creators I love.
   I’m already supporting the real talk radio podcast, the virtual memories podcast and the mcmansion hell blog via patreon and kottke on whatever the thing is he uses. And I generally kick wikipedia a couple of $ when they’re having a supporter drive. I want to do more of this in 2017.

4. complete Palace-ly chores (and grocery shopping) during the week to free-up weekends for fun/projects
   I am convinced this can be done. Surely I just need to apply my m4d scheduling sk1llz to the task?

5. exercise daily – can be anything as long as it is something
   Already I’m a little behind with this because of my cold. Taking a pass when unwell is totally acceptable.

6. journal daily
   As above. Continuing this for 2017.

7. stop comparing myself to others
   Because that way madness lies. Yeah – this is a pretty big one.

There are probably another 60 things I could add, but I think the sub theme for the year should really be don’t try to do All The Things.

xxx

Previous years:
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011

And after that brief interlude, after only the tiniest smidge of nagging, my lovely husband’s not resolutions.

Comments are mine.

2016 review:
1. Get Handicap to 16 or under and keep it there for at least 6 months
ACHIEVED Yes, I am what you would officially term a golf widow.

2. Eat more veg
NOT ACHIEVED We tried, we did not sustain it. We’re having more salad on the regular – it’s just that it is really boring salad with like, three ingredients.

3. Complete the implementation of the workplace wiki (carried over from last year)
NOT ACHIEVED this was one of those projects that seem to exist in all organisations: it is inadequately resourced, so it is never completed because BAU (naturally) always takes priority.

4. Keep on track with the mortgage reduction plan
ACHIEVED Yay! for sticking to a plan!

5. Regular dates and outings with baby
PARTIALLY ACHIEVED Mostly. Could do better. We occasionally get distracted by other things.

2017
1. Get GA Handicap down to 10 or lower
2. Learn map and compass land navigation
3. At least two rides and/or hikes per month

Don says that these three are so huge in their scope that he couldn’t possibly come up with five.

THOSE ARE NOT THE RULES, BABY!

(Okay, maybe he can handle only three – he starts an amazing new job in February, with that and attempting to get the handicap down to 10, he’ll have rather a bit on his plate).

xxx

Previous years:
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011

In early December we saw the STC production of Speed the Plow – which took us to play number four and two thirds. Another item on the list to cross-off! I may yet make half of these 50 yet by the time the project is up!

Because I wasn’t drinking, and there was track work scheduled, we decided to drive in. This was actually very convenient and much cheaper than taking a taxi – yet another benefit to not drinking!

It was a glorious evening and we grabbed a quick pre-theatre dinner at the Bar at the end of the Wharf and admired the harbour.

This wasn’t my favourite play, nor was it my least favourite. A little hit and miss for me – there were some excellent bits and some quite mediocre bits. There’s something about some (most?) Australian actors doing American accents a little well, lame? tragic? unconvincing? and it takes me a bit to get past that.

On the upside – act 2 had an excellent and very sparse modernist set which I gazed upon admiringly.

This was the first play I’ve seen where I didn’t enjoy a pre-theatre glass of champagne, which I thought would be one of those drinking occasions that I would really miss. I didn’t really.

xxx

The other three and two thirds plays, in order, were:

King Lear in December 2015 blogged sparingly here
The Blind Giant is Dancing in February 2016 blogged sparingly here (lasted through 2/3)
All My Sons in July 2016 blogged sparingly here
The Hanging in July 2016 blogged sparingly here

In order of favourite: All My Sons, The Hanging, Lear, Speed the Plow, Blind Giant is Dancing.

xxx

Note: this item was see two plays per year (four in total), but I’ve tweaked it slightly because we’ve hit the four plays mark. Theatre is crazy expensive and we’re on that ExtremeFrugality kick. The lovely Bess bought us vouchers to the Belvoir for Xmas, so we will be getting another play in at some point!

ZOMGWTFBBQ! I rode my bike to and from work today!

Realistically this was the only week that I could ride to work with any simplicity – loads of people are still on holidays and traffic is pretty light. I wanted my first attempt at this to be not too terrifying – and Sydney traffic can be pretty terrifying.

As I’m having an annual leave day tomorrow, it was pretty much today or never. So I sucked it, quelled the extreme nerves and just got out there. And by myself! I’m very accustomed to having Don along as a security blanket on most rides.

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So many clothes, so much equipment and preparation required!

I guess though it is not dissimilar to carting a gym bag about, but that is something I haven’t done for a very long time!

Despite the prep, I forgot my cold and flu tablets and my riding gloves and only remembered to grab the bike lock at the last minute.

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Geared up with my motivational shirt and ready to go!

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The route to work. Turned out to be almost quicker than the usual drive / walk combination.

Since I decided to ride in, I’d been really nervous about how I would manage in the city and what route I’d take. Turns out I’d forgotten that there’s an excellent separated cycle path from Darling Harbour pretty much straight to SML. This was wonderful!

I felt very brave riding on a couple of usually very busy roads (including a brief stint on Parramatta Road). And by myself! Go me!

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As soon as I left ThePalace(OfLove) it started drizzling, which pretty soon turned into very heavy rain. I was briefly tempted to turn around and ride in with Don in the toasty car, but I’d committed and really wanted to see this through.

that turquoise patch should totally be red

Riding in the rain was a bit of a challenge and it was very slippery, but I took it carefully and sensibly and all was okay. It was quite dark too and fortunately my front light was charged, but the back light wasn’t and I should have checked both before I set out (bad rider!).

Every single bit of me was saturated when I arrived at SML. I was very thankful that past me had stored my work clothes in a waterproof bag inside the backpack.

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Bike cage at SML. This has been recently refurbished, previously it really was just a cage, a pretty badly secured cage.

Thankfully building management have refurbed the showers too! Previously there was a small shared ladies / gents shower room with bad lighting, chipped tiles, poor maintenance, badly functioning doors – all this completely open and unsecured in an underground car park, far, far away from anything.

The new showers are excellent – and there are separate rooms for ladies and gents which are accessed via our swipe cards. When I went down to check everything out yesterday, the changes really made the decision to ride a lot easier.

And I was REALLY REALLY thankful of the hot shower after the soaking.

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My very soaked clothes and towel drying next to my desk. Unfortunately there was not a lot I could do with my very wet bra!

Clothes were dry by the end of the day – shoes (and bra) were still quite damp. This is the price you pay for improved health and fitness.

xxx

And home again! The weather was much better, though a little humid. I took a different route over ANZAC bridge and I probably shouldn’t have – that was a lot of hill that I didn’t really need and a little further too.

The route home is mostly uphill, so I was completely knackered when I got home. I don’t think it helped that it was a 2 day of 5:2, so I hadn’t really eaten and I am fighting that cold.

xxx

Would I do this again? YES! Totally I would. And I’m thinking about doing it once a week until daylight savings ends. That’s probably just residual endorphins talking.

But I’ll make sure I prep a little better and have a bag ready to go. I’ll also refine my route, I think it could be improved quite a bit.