Since we came home from our holiday in, what April (ack! so long ago!), BabyKitty has slept on our bed every night.
This has been completely glorious and only taken a mere five years to achieve.
My hope now is that in another five years she may deign to occasionally sit on my lap, maybe she’ll even allow pats!
It wasn’t a hugely huge day today, but I arrived home a little later than is usual and was completely knackered for most of the evening.
Did breakfast, ride to work, made lunch – #goalz. Also did eat several craisin and cornflake cookies this evening – #notgoalz
I promised myself I’d add another daily activity to these once they were bedded down. Maybe I need to spend 15-30 min working on something from the 50 list. If I keep it at an achievable time minimum, I might actually make some progress! I’ve still got about 1/2 to do and only 125 days to do them!
xxx
I have embraced the idea of not using the Garmin or tracking physical activity at all (feels so rebellious). The downside of this is that I still need a method of managing walk:run intervals, so I found an app** and holy goodness! it is truly a thing of beauty:
I just want to look at it all the time! So clean! So functional!
Makes me want to go out and use it Right Now – except for that bone-crushing tiredness thing I have going on.
** hiit run app by fiftytwoinc if you are similarly in love with the look and have a need
rocking the post-bed, post-run, pre-shower look
I think I can say I crushed it today: (shortish) bike ride, grocery shopping and a bunch of cooking: chicken stock; bircher muesli (not strictly cooking); craisin and cornflake cookies; 2 roasted chickens (with sourdough stuffing) and accompanying roasted potatoes; and an apple cake. And sat about with my lovely husband and watched A LOT of golf.
What I did not do was sit about for hours getting lost in the InformationSuperhighway.
Definitely need more of this!
Yesterday when I was rather stressed out from conversations about my underperformer, I made myself feel better by buying bags of chocolates (freddo frogs, caramello koalas and mini twirls), filling a giant bowl and walking around my floor handing them around. While I was out getting the chocolates I also bought a pair of long rainbow socks.
I can highly recommend both of these things as mood improving activities.
Run today. No garmin, no ipod shuffle, just the phone. No tracker on the phone either. This was great except that I wanted to do walk-run intervals and lacked an app for same. I did it by feels and this wasn’t entirely successful, and I think I probably did slightly less running than I would have liked. I now have rather tight hamstrings and really need to bust out the foam roller.
And of course there were photos:
Today was just one of those days.
Very Highly Paid team member is not performing and causing a whole lot of annoyance and frustration all over the place. She’s clearly out of her depth entirely and I’m going to have to have a Difficult conversation and step in and help/guide (likely just take over the work).
You might remember that this is the person who reports to me and is paid approximately 1/3 more than I am.
The difficulty is that she is one of the nicest people I’ve met and even gently performance managing her feels rather like punching a puppy. As it is I’ve already had to parachute KingLouis in to take over half of what she was originally employed to do.
Frustrating!
24: psychological stuff
I’ve no idea why, but that chapter title delighted me, rather more than the book** containing it, which despite my adoration for golden age murders, was not entirely as fabulous as it has initially appeared.
Achieved all of my very low key #goalz today (breakfast, ride, lunch). If I can continue this wild success into next week I may add another task.
This regular exercise is making the WORLD of difference to my mental health. Which like, yeah, duh. I think things like making breakfast and lunch have helped too (mostly because I’ve managed to actually action some personal items – which seemed insurmountable obstacles even last week).
It’s so easy to get into a state where everything seems impossible, and it is very hard to drag yourself out of. I’m immensely glad I did! Of course there will be occasional setbacks to my plans, but I need to be mindful to not to let this drag on for months … again.
xxx
such a princess!
Today was the first day in a very long while that I’ve been infuriated by anyone at SML – not just one but two people in separate incidents.
Incident 1. Ditzy-evil-senior-manager has been in charge of a project for 12 months. 12 months where nothing has been delivered, nor have there been plans or milestones forthcoming – there’s mostly been a whole lot of incoherent waffle. We’ve had to bring consultants in to give things a shove along. D-e-s-m is incredibly change averse and is currently using all manner of untruths and misrepresentations to cling desperately to a broken status quo. Unfortunately I am peripherally involved in the project on a number of levels – one of which is kind of in the monitoring / dobbing capacity. It’s quite the challenge.
Incident 2. A relatively new (6 months), relatively junior (junior to me in position, but he’s in his 30s, so not really a junior) employee inserted himself into a conversation between myself and Bobs. The conversation had nothing at all to do with him and he walked half-way across the office to join it. He proceed to mansplain and attempt to school me in an area in which I have quite in-depth knowledge (and of which he knows nothing at all) and then argued with me about it. He’s pretty much universally acknowledged as completely revolting, totally arrogant, uttely lazy and 100% misogynist and the general consensus is that he’ll be on his way out pretty quickly. Fingers crossed!
Ugh! To avoid stress-eating biscuits, I was forced to stress-shop and acquired some new pants which fit me – and a dress. and a shirt. and another pair of pants.
On the upside this made me realise how few ghastly people remain at SML after the various Reckonings and how much more pleasant it is to work there as a result.
Also on the upside I rode to work, made breakfast and lunch and avoided snacking. A+++
I did go for that 3km run this morning and did not take any form of tracker with me. I quite liked not having to wait for the Garmin to find a satellite before starting out, not that this is necessarily horribly inconvenient, but it is another thing to do. Muscle memory wanted to press a button to start and stop/save which was a little weird.
For such a short distance, it was quite a bit challenging, which is discouraging. Possibly challenging because I went out before having coffee. Whatever it is, I’m not a fan of this slow road back to fitness.
No breakfast was made, but I did buy bircher muesli and yoghurt – which I think mighty count as a win.
No lunch was made either. I wasn’t hugely hungry after the giant breakfast, so had some salmon nigiri rather than a huge wrap or salad (or fried chicken). I’m pretty sure this is not a win.
Unfortunately I stress-ate too many work biscuits during a meeting this afternoon with a Difficult Senior Manager (ditzy and full of nice on the surface – steely and evil underneath). I never ever eat work biscuits, so I don’t know where that came from! Possibly I need an intervention.
I’ll try again tomorrow – this new habit thing is not working entirely as planned!
corey, ready to face the day
Another work day, another cycle commute – and another lunch made. #goalz
I’m definitely pleased to get back to riding – the weather has been really perfect for such endeavours, cold and crisp with not too much wind. I took the rather radical step of not tracking my ride this morning or this evening – it was really quite liberating.
I think I’ll continue with the not continuing. This relentless measuring of myself against myself (the sportstracker app and garmin are but the tip of the iceberg);
against others; and a ridiculous quest for some sort of perfection is not entirely great for my psyche and is really quite exhausting. Quitting the apps for a bit is a good way to begin the unravelling.
All The Self Examination!
Plus, I know it’s a bit tinfoil hatty, but all this tracking and monitoring is verging toward the dystopian isn’t it?
More prosaically, I’m not riding into tomorrow, so I might attempt a short (untracked!) run before work AND a breakfast.
First time out on the road bike for a very long while. We took it fairly easy with a favourite (and flat!) ride from Woolooware to Kurnell (about 20km all up).
When we got to the snacking point, I realised that I’d forgotten to turn on my sportstracker app – so no record of my ride. I’m actually pretty comfortable with this (I know, who is this person?). I’m even thinking of not turning it on for my cycle commutes next week, or for my planned mid-week before-work run. Will report back.
view from the snacking and turnaround point: gorgeous day
It doesn’t look it from the photo, but the morning was quite cold and I can’t comfortably squeeze into my winter cycling tights (eeep!), so I improvised some leg warmers:
You might recall these former socks, turned arm-warmers from 8 years ago (8 years!). Yes they had a hole in the back from their time as arm-warmers, but they definitely served their purpose today.
Conveniently they matched my jersey – though definitely not my shoes!
Occasionally I wish I was one of those stylish older ladies who can get away with aggressively clashing patterns or wildly architectural clothing. As it was I looked rather ridiculous, but really I give very few fucks.
I’m enjoying getting back to gentle exercise – it definitely and categorically has an improving effect on my mood. I tend to forget this when I don’t do it.