All happening with the offspring:

+ Joan has applied for her working holiday visa (or whatever it’s called) to the UK and is planning to depart in June. This has been a long held dream and she’s just scraped in before the age cut-off.

+ Bessie wrapped up 4 years of Uni last month (so grown up!) and just got a full-time job in her field! The field is very competitive and we’d often joked that an Honours degree in Design would likely equip her for office admin work, so this is stellar!

+ Joe/Frank turned 24! Wut? Good lord! Back for second year of Uni. I think I mentioned his application for NDIS funding was approved (very exciting) – our goal for March/April is to get all the necessary supports in place and working towards getting him part-time work that is not in the hospitality industry!

And in other famille:

+ Phil (father-in-law) arrives on Saturday morning to spend a month with us.

While I’ve been away I’ve:
+ achieved 60 days of no chocolate!

+ continued with pilates on Saturday morning

+ commenced yoga on Tuesday morning (with Don)

+ recommenced 5:2 – heavily modified. To be honest it’s like 4:3 – I’m basically fasting during the day for three days and having a “normal” dinner – thankfully seeing results

+ read and listened to a goodly number of not-terribly-great books

+ cut down the blogs to 20 (from probably 10x more) – definitely better for the mental health

+ been mostly more peaceful and contented. This has weirdly manifested itself in weekend cooking – which has improved quite a lot (likely because of more focus and attention).

What I’ve not done:
– miraculously completed dozens of projects with my freed-up time

Clearly AI is not quite ready to take over the world if Amazon is recommending this book to me:

xxx

My internet break was somewhat surprising. I thought I’d be mildly productive (while hoping for insanely productive), but spent most of the time with my head in various books. This is no bad thing.

I have a lot of thoughts on the break.

Even after a week I’m definitely more focussed and less flighty – and dare I say more content. I attend to things more. The change noticeable to others, I’ve had unsolicited comments about how relaxed, calm and centred I appear. Yes really – after just a week.

And I’ve been able to deal calmly with a whole lot of SML stuff which would previously have sent me into a spiral (amongst other things – 3 of my small team leaving within a week of each other!)

I returned to my RSS reader yesterday and boggled at how I have been spending the majority of my free time for the past few years. More than half the blogs in there are not worth my time and only serve to make me feel utterly inadequate and discontent (of course this is not your blog, dear reader!).

It’s quite embarrassing to admit how much of what I do or buy is driven by what I’ve seen or read. I like to think that I’m immune to such influences, but apparently really very much not!

So what does this mean? Well I’m not entirely sure. I think at least I am going to ruthlessly strip that blog list bare and try to only spend time at the computer or on the devices when I have a defined purpose for doing so.

revolt | anarchist revolution | for a world without borders, bosses or bureaucrats

Honestly – you can barely move for anarchist posters around the ‘hood.

xxx

Amazingly, the internet-free exercise was a lot less challenging than I’d anticipated. I suspect this was mostly because I had my head shoved in a book, which was probably not entirely in the spirit of the endeavour, but which enjoyed nonetheless.

Interestingly, each time I passed my desk I had the urge to sit down and put hands to keyboard. Of course I resisted because of the project, but wow – I do actually do this all the time – and must lose hours and hours to it!

And I felt, well, relaxed. Really relaxed. And the day felt long and luxuriant – even though I’d slept in until 7:15am (thanks kitties!) and so had an hour less than usual to play with.

So, I’m planning to extend this – give myself an internet-free week. Obviously there will be internet at SML, but for home I’m going to attempt to stay away off Monday 12/02. It will break the daily blog posting chain, but I’m keen to see how this works and what I do with my time.

Will of course report back!

xxx

Good thing today: Managed my second 2 day of 5:2. Getting back into it wasn’t as difficult as I expected, as is the way of most things.

Even though I’m having an internet-free day, I couldn’t break the chain of daily posting, so I queued up a BabyKitty.

babykitty on the bed

She’ll be visiting the vet tomorrow for vaccinations, I suspect she will not be quite as peaceful then.

My second pilates class this morning at the new studio (last week being cancelled). Small class and definitely a very different crowd to Glebe – all chatter of back to (primary) school and various teachers and children’s difficulties with long division. While they weren’t exactly a young group, I was definitely the oldest there. I was feeling rather nostalgic for my occasional Friday pilates at my old studio – which was a mix of older semi-retired ladies, a couple of women my age and uni students.

I will persist of course – I have #goalz.

xxx

I’m planning to make this my last weekend of self-improvement books before I embark on #13 on the 60before60 list: Read no self-help books for a year. I really love the genre (mostly), but maybe, just maybe the over-consumption is not all that great for my mental health – also it’s an awful lot of time spent reading and less time on improving.

This also includes self-improvement audiobooks – lest I attempt to get around it by switch the consumption to another format.

Fiction here I come!

xxx

And I’m attempting my first internet free day tomorrow. I’m aiming for no computer too – but this might be a bridge too far!

Of all the challenges I’ve set myself recently, I suspect this is going to be one of the more difficult.

Will report back – though obviously not tomorrow!

I’d resolved not to post on a phone / tablet screen at night**, but windows has decided to update and is doing so at a very glacial pace.

I’m pleased we’re into the weekend – I suspect next week will be another Trial. I have someone leaving (voluntarily) who will be a Big Loss.

Small goals for the weekend (in addition to the ever-present house cleaning | shopping | chores):

+ Pilates (hopefully it won’t be cancelled per last week)

+ read Joe/Frank’s NDIS information. His plan has been approved, which is super exciting! Now we have to work out how to implement it (reams to read)

+ try for my first monthly internet-free day (aiming for Sunday). Still to be established whether I can use the computer – or whether I should be completely tech-free.

+ complete small two house improvement projects (to be determined)

+ very small run

xxx

**But hey, at least I’m doing it from my desk and not the bed – so we’ll call it kind of achieved.

xxx

Good thing today: delicious tiny biscuits that came with my coffee this week (road testing a new cafe)

Finally came to a couple of ideas for the year – I suspect my ideas had been largely tapped out by compiling the 60before60 list!

I’ll reflect on 2017 in another post (possibly in July at this rate), but I’d like to achieve the following things this year – no pressure if I don’t**:

1. Complete a minimum of 10 items from the 60before60 list
2. Get back to 5:2. I’ve put on about 10kg in the last year which I am not at all jazzed by. Exception given for holidays.
3. 1x day per month internet-free. Stretch goal of 2x per month (crazy!)
4. Exercise – on the regular. Weekly pilates/yoga + 3x cardio at a minimum
5. Don’t buy anything unnecessary. Try to repair, repurpose, reuse as much as possible
6. Commence a decent skincare routine. I’m looking all raggedy.
7. Take the time to comment on blogs. I’ll often have an excellent post open in a tab for days, meaning to comment and then feel like the moment has passed, so I close it.
8. Make a Giant list of household maintenance tasks and accomplish them – painting, gap filling – that sort of thing.

xxx

** Who am I kidding, of course there will be pressure.

xxx

Good thing today: survived first day back on 5:2 – feeling like an Achiever!

I really don’t much care for advising anyone that we’ve restructured them out of the organisation. Alas this was my primary task today. The victim of the discussion was the equivalent of my 2IC and PA, and my daily coffee buddy for almost two years.

Fortunately he took the news pretty well – though didn’t see it coming. Also fortunately, he’ll have absolutely no issues finding a new (higher-paying) gig quite quickly.

I’m glad that is behind me – such an unpleasant and stressful task which weighs heavily on everyone.

While walking to grab the car from Don this afternoon I was forced from the sidewalk onto a flower-lined path:

Unexpected and really very nice.

(ZOMG – I wrote sidewalk rather than footpath – my americanisation continues, or rather americanization?)

xxx

Good thing today: unexpected floral borders

Hearts on coffee

This one from the grounds – celebratory brunch just after the all clear from the breast screen callback earlier this month.

xxx

* possibly first in an intermittent series

xxx

And oops – completely forgot I was trying to do this … Good thing today: delighted in reading the clever guts diet – who knew innards were so extremely interesting?