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This blog is still on

Aug 102009

You know how you always think you’ll have more time once summer break starts? That summer break that’s 10 days old today? Yeah. Me, too.

I have been doing things but posting here hasn’t been one of them. I’ve been playing computer games on my ipod, I’ve been ordering and receiving a new spinning wheel, a couple of weeks ago I found out that I probably have ADD, we’ve been making the most of every single non-raining day that we had so far, I found out that not only am I weighing as much again as just after I had the baby (I never was heavier, btw), I’m also completely unfit so that a hike that seemed like a breeze last year left me panting and with sore muscles for days this year (well, I wasn’t panting for days).

I’ve been reading books, watching Torchwood all through for the second time, and Farscape, finished two pair of socks, started two other pairs of socks, frogged back a quarter of an intricate lace shawl only to start something new with the same yarn, decided to also rip back a turtleneck sweater that I’m making (half-finished), decided not to order any books, CDs, DVDs, computer games, yarn, or spinning fiber ’til the end of summer break, only to buy four comics, and another game (it was only 4 Euros I swear).

I have a long list of things I want to do until the middle of September:

work out again (see above)
design and knit a lace shawl for a class I’ll be teaching next fall
install a new version of WordPress on my blog and that of my husband
sew some pillow cases and coasters
write a story about summer in the next ten days
ply the Corriedale I spun up, and spin up some lovely hand-dyed BFL I bought (that’s a sheep breed for those who don’t know, Blue Faced Leicester -I doubt that they really have blue faces, though)
write at least one blog post about “How to be idle” and “Idle Parenting” – for the record, these books are marvelous and eye opening, and very helpful. Now I feel like a revolutionary instead of a lazy person
tidy and maybe clean the house so that some flat surfaces will be visible again
pick up the guitar and play once or twice
ditto with singing and piano
have my piano repaired (which means that there won’t be any piano-playing for a week, since parts of it need to be removed)
go on at least two more hikes
go swimming with my son often so that maybe he will be able to swim at the end of summer
go to a party in Bamberg in two weeks
attend the first German raveler meeting in the middle of September and before that to prepare my class there
use the hammock and enjoy the garden as often as I can

Right now it’s raining, I have to answer a gazillion e-mails, and phone a handful of people but my son is upstairs with his grandma and my husband is recording bass lines. Oh, I’ll do some singing for him soon, too.

You know why I love vacationing at home? If I were somewhere else right now I’d have to sit in a tiny ugly hotel room with both my husband and son, sitting on uncomfortable beds with nothing to do but wait until it stops raining.

the posts I haven’t written and the pictures I haven’t taken

lists 5 Responses »

May 272009

First of all, here’s the last of my Projekt “Farbe bekennen“-pictures. I had hoped to be able to take a picture of me in the dress and the cardigan but my days didn’t work out that way. At least it is colorful indeed. Especially with the rack of drying laundry in the background:

It’s the dress that I bought the pattern and the fabric for in 2007, that I cut out last September, and that I put away because the top and the skirt didn’t fit together. This year I decided to just finish it any which way, and now I have a dress that I’m really happy with, except for the fact that it would fit me better if my boobs were smaller.

The cardigan is one that has been in the making for more than year too. And the yarn even was supposed to be a sweater in 1994 or so. The sweater spent the next years in the attic, almost done except for one sleeve. I ran out of yarn and suddenly realized that I don’t like bobbles. The pattern for this is Something Red, and I love it. It’s a bit short for wearing with pants because I got impatient (also it’s heavy cotton and if I wear it long enough it won’t be too short anymore) but it’s perfect with a dress or skirt.

As with these two garments (and the picture that should have been something else), I now have to be content to do a blog post, regardless of whether I like it or not since today will probably be the only day I have any time to post until the week after next. I’m busy as usual, and also packing for a trip to my parents next week. I’m happy to leave the house for once, and also woefully unprepared. Also, the weather is changing from day to day so I don’t know what clothes to bring. My experience tells me, though, that regardless of what I pack it will be wrong. If I pack for summer weather it will be cold enough for woolen sweaters and vice versa. (No, I won’t pack both, I’m a woman traveling by train with a single backpack. And I need to bring knitting with me.)

So, the posts I wanted to write but haven’t (you know how I love lists, don’t you):

Around the world in 80 clicks: the lovely Beck had tagged me, I thought about this post with reasons why I love being a mother and a list of other mothers to tag for weeks.

Treats that aren’t: how a lot of things that I treat myself to aren’t really treats but things that make me feel worse in the long run.

Explaining my life to strangers: how I end up explaining my life on a daily basis so that I even have to discuss it with random people I meet at the grocery store. And how I should make this into the new tagline for my blog

Gold: a picture of my wedding ring that is the only piece of golden jewelry that I wear, with a sappy post about why I cherish it even though it’s not that beautiful and how I haven’t taken it off since 1995 (except for x-rays and such)

Gardening: a post about an interview I heard on Craftsanity with Jenna Woginrich who wrote the book “Made from Scratch”” together with my feelings towards gardening and how I realized I know more about it than I thought (I’m still not gardening as such, in case you wondered.)

Nostalgic Liesl: a post about a purple sweater that I knit in September out of yarn that I bought in 1988, the memories of the vacation where I bought it, and the people I went with

Parts 2 to 4 of the beach-story: the parts have been written but need minor adjustments before posting

Be calm: the only song I wrote last year, it still isn’t recorded though, and I’m without voice again since hay fever season is in full swing

Idle parenting: a post about the book “The Idle Parent”“, why I love it and why it helped me to see that my parenting is rooted in ideas I believe in instead of mere laziness as I had suspected

Life or Death: a story about a girl backpacking through Europe who encounters terrorists at a mall (I still have to write this one)

Why fashion is important to me: stemming from an ongoing conversation between my husband and me (he doesn’t get why somebody can be that interested in clothes; what I don’t get is: if I’m that interested in fashion why don’t I dress better?)

So, to answer a question my sister asked me in the last post: Yes, one can be too busy to play around with a new camera. I’m not quite sure why I suddenly am that busy but one thing is that these days I opt for having quiet evenings instead of sitting in front of the computer until midnight. And for long conversations with my husband. And I have about five more students which is great but leaves me no spare time in the afternoons. For example I wrote the first part of this post just after lunch, and this part between students. And Thursdays are the only days when there is a “between students” otherwise it’s all students all the time. And my husband is crazily busy with gardening on top of working on his music and doing housework. And my head is full of things to and places to go, and people to call, and all the busy, busy little details.

At least there won’t be as many busy little details next week when we spend the week with my parents near Holland. I probably won’t be able to spend much time on the computer there.

Again I’m very sorry for not reading or commenting on your blogs, or twittering much but then – as we have often told each other – this should be for fun, not an obligation. See you later.

What I’m doing these days – stream of consciousness

life, lists 3 Responses »

Mar 232009

spinning brown wensleydale on my drop spindle, knitting socks and lace, yelling at my family, dreaming, sleeping intermittedly, eating too much, thinking about my life, playing “coin-operated boy” on the piano, singing my heart out with “my alcoholic friends”, teaching new adult beginners, figuring out how to bring my wheel to a meeting next weekend, reading about “drawing with children”, talking with my husband, talking with my son, picking things up, putting things away, feeling despair looking at dust bunnies, deciding to lose weight again, starting now, not eating jelly beans, drinking too much beer instead, not going to improvisation workshop, seeing pictures everywhere, wanting to take my camera outside, smiling at other people to avoid talking with them, attending parties and leaving early, preferring an episode of “how I met your mother”, a beer, and talking with my husband over a fabulous party with 150 people, buying presents for my son’s friends, avoiding playdates, rejoicing at my son starting to read, telling him about Battlestar Galactica, looking up the capital of Rumania in the encyclopedia, neglecting my blog-duties both passive and active, going for walks almost daily, making dates with internet friends to exchange books, talk about “Farscape”, and drop spindeling, reading comics, writing book reviews in my head, turning to self-help blogs only to find that I already tried all their tips and have reached a new level of problems, watching youtube videos, buying music on-line, listening to my husband teaching jazz-improvisation in the next room, watering plants, carrying groceries home, helping my husband with cooking lunch because he’s tired of being cook in charge every single day, trying to make space for my husband’s music, not going to the hairdresser even though my hair looks terrible, buying train tickets for June, planning a workshop in September, easing my way into a new story, feeling disconnected with my own music, meditating, talking to my bloggy friends in my head, listening to incubus, to amanda palmer, twittering

I know it’s been since Friday

life, lists, parenting 3 Responses »

Feb 032009

or so, and it’s already Tuesday or something, but, well, it has been one of those weeks (yes, all two days of it, and it feels like it should be over already):

I spent the whole weekend dreading the dolphin costume (you know, the one I’m making for my son for carnival), and then cutting and sewing. The good news is that the body of the costume is done, and it looks great so far (after I had erringly sewn the dolphin’s back fin to the inside). The bad news: I still don’t know how I will make the head, I’ll figure that out next weekend.
just when I had the feeling of almost recovered health my son has a cold – again – with fever and everything.
my son having a fever equals him sleeping next to me, or rather him tossing and turning, and rousing me about every fifteen minutes (no kidding) by tickling my nose and asking, “Can we get up now?”
after the second night of this I was a bit, um, irritated today; also I can’t seem to stop eating
the Finanzamt send me a letter claiming that I hadn’t paid my tax for December, and it turns out that I indeed did pay it but I, myself, was stupid enough to label it “January 09″; argh. Of course something like this has to come up now of all times, not last week or the week before – and of course they can’t just think about it for a bit like “Why is she sending this in when a) she hasn’t paid for the month before, and b) the month she is paying for isn’t over yet?”; I know there aren’t many people who get paid to think on their job
for once I wanted to get grip on my monthly story deadline, so I had planned to write my monthly story – which is due next Thursday – today; then all of a sudden I was on 24/7 mommy duty (on the other hand I get to write this because my mother-in-law is having my son right now)
while having a sick child is bad for things like blogging, writing, and making music it’s really good for knitting; I’m finishing things right and left
at least I’m really happy that I had the brilliant idea that I can watch DVDs on my laptop in the evenings while I’m waiting for my son to fall asleep; he falls asleep earlier because he knows I’ll be there for a while, and I don’t have the feeling of being on the job forever; also I can watch two episodes of Farscape at night instead of just one
now I have to sign off because I have an unexpected feverish kindergartener sitting on my lap.

See you in a few days, I hope. How are you?

My Yarn Stash

crafts, creativity, knitting, lists 6 Responses »

Jan 262009

Just the other day I was telling somebody on ravelry that I don’t have much stash, also I’m running out of sock yarn. When I have finished the two pairs of socks currently on my needles there is no more new sock yarn.

On the other hand I can barely close my yarn drawer, and there are projects, patterns, yarn and needles everywhere in the house. How can those two things be true at the same time?

So I decided to a) think about it, and b) pull out the wool and have a look at it. I haven’t gotten as far as actually looking at it right now but thinking about it helped a little. I think I might start to understand what’s going on here.

I usually put my leftover yarn in the attic. Sadly the “leftover yarn boxes” are full. More knitting means more leftovers. This is one of the reasons why there is a lot of yarn in my yarn drawer.
When I ordered the yarn for my last two sweaters online I, of course, ordered a bit more than I thought I’d need. Since the shop isn’t nearby I can’t just go and get more. Actually, with the last sweater I ordered the exact amount of yarn needed and I have about 2 1/2 skeins left over. I know, it’s a mystery. That accounts for 400 g of yarn between the two sweaters. The leftover yarn would make great mittens or hats (I don’t knit scarfs, hate making them). Only the colors don’t match anyone’s coats.
Even though I thought I don’t have any more sock yarn there is in my yarn drawer: a) an almost finished pair of summer socks, b) leftovers of two pairs of socks, enough yarn two knit another pair out of the same yarn, c) between 40 and 60 grams of each skein of Wollmeise sock yarn that I’ve ever owned (which might become either striped or fair isle socks at one point).
There is leftover Wollmeise lace yarn, enough for a lace scarf, or if combined with the two other colorways of Wollmeise lace that I have (that accounts for two of my currently active projects), there might be enough for yet another stole,
There is yarn I bought in order to make yet another lace stole, this one will be for a friend.
There is leftover yarn from making a scarf and hat that will eventually become a pair of fair isle mittens for me. (
And it would be nice if I finished those before August. So that I can actually wear them.
There are three balls of cotton sock yarn that I wanted to design socks for. They have been sitting in the drawer, untouched since July. I had an epiphany last week, and have declared that I will just make socks following a pattern. Designing should be fun, not a chore. The pattern is sitting on my piano at the moment, the yarn is in the yarn drawer. And I won’t start them soon, since it’s not summer yet.
There is enough cotton from 1994 to make yet another preemie blanket. Only I hate working with cotton.

I think that’s all, apart from the hat that needs seaming that sits on top of the fridge, the lace shawl and pirate scarf that need blocking that sit on top of the dresser, the two pairs of socks, and two lace shawls in progress that sit on the kitchen bench, the unfinished cotton sweater that sits in the knitting basket in the living room (it only needs another sleeve and a button band to be finished), and a ziploc bag with the cast-on for the aforementioned baby blanket that probably will never happen.

So, you can easily see why I have the feeling that I’m in desperate need of wool, can’t you? O already ordered yarn for another sweater (one that I really need), a knitted doll, and a pair of socks. I’m desperately waiting for them to arrive. Before I run out of yarn and things to knit.

I feel quite virtuous, though, because only half of the drawer is full of wool. The other one is occupied by my fabric stash. That somehow overflows into the rest of the bedroom too…

P.S.: I just remembered the spinning stash, and the handspun. And the yarn that was a hat that was too big for me until half an hour ago when I wound it on the niddy-noddy to re-knit the hat. Ouch.

2008 recap in first sentences

lists, meme 1 Response »

Jan 052009

I have seen this on quite a few blogs these past days, you take the first sentence of the first blog post of every month. The problem is that I tend to see my headline as the first sentence, so I try to make the headline exciting, and then follow it up with a very, very boring line. See for yourself:

January: As you probably have noticed I didn’t feel much like blogging these past, ahem, weeks.

Well, same old, same old. But I will get around to it someday.

February: It’s time for the just posts again.

Which means that I didn’t post anything for the first nine days of February, oops.

March: I think it was Terry Pratchett who said that if you read enough books you’ll eventually start writing because all the words filling up your brain will start seeping out.

That’s a good one, don’t you think?

April: Time for the Just Post Roundtables again!

See February.

May: The writer’s group I’m in has gone from writing really short pieces once a month to writing a story before each meeting.

This was an introduction to the first story I posted on my blog. The “Story of the Month”-category did not make a monthly appearance, though. I’m still trying, though. (I have to write another story until Thursday, stay tuned.)

June: First, thank you very much for your comments on my post about feeling fat.

Nice one, that.

July: I just spent fifteen minutes on my computer, changing the color scheme of my blog.

Changing my blog’s theme has been on my to-do-list for quite a long time because this one takes ages to load. Sorry about that.

August: Welcome again to the Just Posts.

See February, and April.

September: As I told you I ordered it the day that I sold my congas.

To understand this one you have to know that the headline was “I got my spinning wheel”. I’m still happy I traded the congas for it.

October: and I missed them both.

Again, this doesn’t make sense without the headline which read: “So, yesterday was Blog Action Day and Love Your Body Day”.

November: Again it’s the time of the month where we meet at our virtual round table and share what we found about social justice.

Just Posts again. That’s the fifth time in one year that I did the first post of the month on the tenth.

December: Sorry to let you hang for so long but just in the next 2 1/2 hours I should: take a shower, exercise, go grocery shopping, do taxes, write a real blog post, write a story for tonight’s writing group meeting, cook, and eat lunch.

This about sums up a) my life at the moment, and b) my enormous tendency to procrastinate and do things at the last minute. Needless to say that I didn’t accomplish all of this. I think I did taxes, took a shower, went grocery shopping, and ate lunch which my husband had cooked while almost keeling over because he was so unwell.

I really have high hopes for 2009. Who knows, maybe I’ll even get around to dusting the house once a week again. Or exercising. Or writing. I did quite well for the first few days this year, exercising, playing music, and doing housework but yesterday I hit a wall, and spent a lot of the day sitting around doing nothing. As I did today. when after a few hours of this I realized that, wham, it’s PMS-time again! Knocking me out for half the month. So I better get out of the house and get me some Vitamin B, and hope that will get me moving again.

6 random things about me

life, lists, meme 8 Responses »

Dec 032008

I have been so slow to do this meme that I have been tagged twice for it. First by Holly, and then by Katinka. Apparently there are rules. I’m all for rules, so here they are (I’m lifting them from Holly’s blog which is called “Cold Spaghetti”, an awesome blog title):

1. Link to the person who tagged you.

2. Post the rules on your blog.

3. Write six random things about yourself.

4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.

5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.

6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

So, I’ve followed rule 1 and 2 already. So far so good. (Ha! I’ve managed to use the word “so” three times in two sentences without making it extremely awkward!) I had a feeling that I already have done some “random things about me”-posts, and a quick search tells me there seems to be a “random things about me”-inflation going on because it was 8 random things about me in August 2007, and 7 random things about me in December 2007. Now it’s only six. And I always love reading what people are writing about themselves, randomly.

Just today I did find out why I’m blogging less and have the feeling that I don’t accomplish anything. Today I spent two hours getting my son to go to bed (and stay there), and I also talked to my husband for three hours. Three hours! No wonder we both have the feeling that somehow we don’t have enough time. On the other hand the time we spend talking is well spent. We have been feeling closer, and happier. We have been taking the time to look at the things we have in common instead of looking at how different we are.
For the last weeks I have spent much more time and energy thinking about the fact that I feel too fat than I feel comfortable admitting even to myself. This has not led to weight loss, I have gained another pound. I’m a bit sick of the whole thing (which I might have mentioned before). I’m hoping for my renewed enthusiasm for exercise. Maybe I can exercise while talking to my husband.
I will be meeting a handful of local bloggers on Thursday. Immediately after leaving a comment saying that I will attend (after a lengthy conference with my mother-in-law detailing the logistics of her day and my son’s day, and everybody in the family), I started panicking and wondering what to wear. Which is really pathetic because in the end I’ll wear the same thing I always wear. Only I do have a new turtleneck. (Which is funny because in my random things post from last December I lamented the lack of a “very classy and elegant turtleneck sweater” made of thick wool. Guess what I finished two days ago? A classy, elegant, thick, woolen turtleneck in red.
Leaving a comment on Frau Kaltmamsell’s blog regarding the meeting led to an immediate spike in blog traffic on my own blog. While that’s nice it’s always a bit weird when people coming from a very witty German blog reach my blog only to be greeted by a post called “Hail the gauge swatch!”. My guess is that most of them won’t come back, and that even people who might have been both interested in the content, and willing to read something in English, nevertheless will have felt the strong need for a personal translator. (When I told my husband about that particular post, the only word he could understand without an explanation at first sight was “the”.)
While I love knitting, and haven’t been doing much else these past, ahem, months or so, I have the feeling that I’m using it to retreat into my very own fiber cocoon. And while sitting quiet, and doing something meditative with my hands that helps keeping me and my family warm is really appropriate for the season, it might be time to do other things as well.
It’s only December 2nd but already I feel as if my head is spinning. I have to make three batches of muffins, and at least one batch of cookies for the kindergarten Christmas party, my son’s birthday party in kindergarten, and his birthday party at home. I have to buy a scooter, a satchel, and several other assorted birthday, and Christmas gifts for my son. (My son not so conveniently chose to be born exactly one week before Christmas, just like most of my husband’s family whose birthdays fall between December 13th and January 20th.) I don’t have anything for my parents yet, and just today I realized that the universe doesn’t end with my son’s presents, there are other people to consider as well. Also this year I will have to attend then kindergarten Christmas party alone because my husband found that re-scheduling those particular four students that he teaches on Wednesday afternoons was impossible. I, on the other hand, managed to find a way to move four students elsewhere and will be rushing from teaching to Christmas party in festive attire (cross your fingers for me that I can wear the new sweater with the red skirt, otherwise I will have to wear jeans), with guitar, sheet music, two dozen muffins, and a music stand in tow.

Now I’ll have to tag six people. Um. It’s not that I don’t know six bloggers, it isn’t even that I’m not interested in reading six random things about them, but please, it’s almost midnight, and I’ll have to get up at seven. How about everyone who wants to do a six things about me post just does it and says so in the comments? Please? And anybody who doesn’t have a blog like “luzilla” can leave six random things in the comments. That would be cool.

How I did with my goals

changing habits, life, lists 4 Responses »

Nov 152008

Two weeks ago I wrote about some fancy new goals that I had set for myself. I thought I’d try this “public accountability” everybody is talking about these days. Of course I thought I’d be back to report a week later but I wasn’t. Mostly because I had this really annoying persistent cough that made me want to do nothing but stay in bed all day. My goals were:

only eat at mealtimes. That is: breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack, and dinner.
exercise at least three times a week for at least 30 minutes. Walking while doing errands doesn’t count.
play guitar or piano for at least ten minutes a day.
post on my blog 3 times a week.
write at least 100 words of fiction every day.
meditate every day for at least 10 minutes, and write morning pages.

I did quite well for about five days by the way. I went walking almost every day, I played guitar and piano, I wrote my words, and I was quite consistent with the meditation and morning pages. Meditation and morning pages has been something I have been doing for years, and so it wasn’t that hard to get back into that. Playing music and writing fiction was a bit harder because I found I never got around to it until late in the evening, and so I really only played for ten minutes, and I stopped writing after 120 words or so. But even when I felt like I was much too tired for writing or playing I enjoyed it nonetheless. And a 100 words isn’t much. It takes me less than 10 minutes. Also I never got the feeling that the story was making much progress at that rate. But then I wrote about 700 words on it in five days.

And then I felt terrible because of the coughing, and then, and then, and so I let everything slide. I’m still doing quite well with points 2 and 6. You can see for yourselves that the blog-posting three times a week did not happen. I may have to resign myself to the fact that these days it’s more about twice a week if that.

You might have noticed that I didn’t write about the first goal on my list. Ahem. This is the goal that I didn’t reach once in the past two weeks. Not once. I definitely won’t be making any rules around food and eating for the moment. I don’t stick to them anyway. Which is extremely frustrating. But it doesn’t help if I pretend that it’s different.

So, I’m suspending the setting of goals again. What I did find out about myself was that I can only concentrate on one thing at a time. Before setting my new goals I was on the way to get a better grip on housework again, but the minute I concentrated on my new list, I got lax about housework again.

And then I got sick, and then I started knitting a sweater that I want to have right this minute, and that meant I have been doing nothing but knitting for the past week. I started it last Sunday, and if I can go on like I did last week it will be finished by next weekend. And while I really would like to accomplish other things too, there is something very, very nice about sitting around and knitting a warm ruby-red sweater while reading Miss Marple novels. So I’ll just do that for the rest of the weekend.

So for me, obviously, public accountability doesn’t work.

In response to my post about goals PiaPessoa said she wanted to work on exercising two times a week. I’d like to hear how that went. And Anne said that I should strive to reach the point where a new habit is like brushing your teeth. She is totally right with this, of course, and when I strive to form new habits it always helps me to remember how long it took me to brush my teeth twice a day without fail. You know, as a child I was taught to brush my teeth in the mornings only. And I did so for years. Then it occurred to me that brushing them in the mornings and evenings might be a good course of action. I think I tried to bring myself to brush my teeth in the evenings too when I was about eight years old. I never succeeded until I was about twenty. And then I lost the habit again, and had to re-install it when I was about ten years older. These days I never would go to bed without brushing my teeth first. So I finally reached that stage of forming a new habit where I do it every day without fail. But it took me about 22 years to reach that stage. 22 years!

There must be a way to speed that up. Really.

Things which I wanted to write about but didn’t

life, lists 4 Responses »

Nov 072008

how to learn to love exercise
how becoming a musician has changed the way I hear music
how giddy I felt because my husband has borrowed a drum set
how proud I then felt when my son played the drums
how much my son has grown in the past few months and how sweet he is looking with his blonde curls, blue eyes, and almost skater-like clothes
how happy the beret I made from my handspun makes me, and how happy I was knitting it
how I made a sweater out of yarn that I bought more than twenty years ago, and how much sentimental value that wool holds
how I still long to be cool, and how much I associate coolness with a certain kind of clothes
how I often feel that there are many different persons inside of me, and that I should dress accordingly
how I realized again today that the things that are most ordinary to me are quite extra-ordinary to others, when a friend of my son – who wanted to look at the borrowed drum-set – exclaimed, “Wow! You have a lot of guitars!”, and my son said, “These are my father’s guitars. That’s his favorite one, it’s a Jaguar. Shall I show you my mother’s guitars? I have a guitar too.” And we didn’t even tell him about the two that live on the wardrobe in the bedroom because we don’t use them. And the violin.
how I’m doing with my Christmas knitting
how I’m doing with reaching the goals I set for myself last Saturday (mostly good, totally bad on one account; I’ll keep you posted)
how pleased I am with what I’m currently spinning, and how I hope to make the yarn into a sweater someday (there are still about 400 grams left to spin, and – as I mentioned before – that particular sweater will make me look about as sombre as a parrot covered in tropical flowers)
how Germans celebrate Christmas, New Years Eve, Carnival, or Easter. Or the first day of school.
how much I’d be pleased if you sent me your links for the October Just Posts roundtable (You can send me links to any post about social justice written in the parenting blogosphere that you wrote or read.

Setting goals – again

changing habits, lists 5 Responses »

Nov 012008

I’ve been thinking a lot about losing weight and changing habits these past days. I even read one personal weight loss story book (“Der Kilo-Killer: Ein Jahr im Schlankheitswahn), and one book about self-motivation (“So zähmen Sie Ihren inneren Schweinehund!”). Since Thursday.

That’s a very common pattern with me, I feel lost, I want to change something, I buy a book. Only this time I’m quite proud of myself because I didn’t buy the books but got them from the library. And I’m glad that I did because while they did help me with the thinking I don’t need to have them here to look things up or anything.

Anyways, I decided to set some goals for November, and so I made another list. For the next week (maybe longer) I will:

only eat at mealtimes. That is: breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack, and dinner.
exercise at least three times a week for at least 30 minutes. Walking while doing errands doesn’t count.
play guitar or piano for at least ten minutes a day.
post on my blog 3 times a week.
write at least 100 words of fiction every day.
meditate every day for at least 10 minutes, and write morning pages.

I’m very tired of thinking about food and being fat all the time. And I’m not even sure if I want to do something to lose weight. So the first goal is my attempt at minimizing the energy I’m spending on thinking about eating. Also it’ll minimize mindless stuffing of food into my mouth.
I know that 30 minutes of exercise three times a week doesn’t sound much. But it’s doable. And by not specifying what I will do I leave room to just go for a nice walk if I’m not motivated to do “real” exercise. By the way, since setting that goal two days ago I already have been going on walks twice.

Playing guitar or piano for ten minutes a day likewise really isn’t much. But I know from experience that I do much better with setting small goals so that I don’t feel like a failure. Often when I sit down to play I will play longer than ten minutes. Actually, once I have started I often enjoy myself very much. Getting myself to sit down and start playing, on the other hand, is quite hard.

I have been struggling with writing on my blog. I feel that three times a week is about the perfect frequency for me both as a blogger and as a reader.But often I spend so much time on the net reading that I don’t sit down to actually write down the blog posts that are floating around in my head.

It’s time for NaNoWriMo again, and it does make me kind of sad to not participate this year. On the other hand I’m also really relieved that I’m not doing it this year. So this is like my “Ersatz-NaNo”. I’m using the same kind of energy to get some writing done.

The last point is something I have been doing for years but I found myself slipping, and skipping more often. So I’m re-installing this habit.
Of course I’m writing this to make myself accountable. You, my dear readers, are the ones who will be helping to keep me on track. I’m doing this because next week will be fall break (yeah, I know there are a lot of breaks around here) which will give me about two additional hours in the day to do what I want.
I’ll tell you how it went at the end of next week. Anything you want to accomplish? You can post your goals in the comments, or on your blogs and I’ll link to them.

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