Archives for May 2018

I have to confess I felt like I was out of energy and had done enough for the day around the time I left for my doctor’s appointment yesterday morning. But I actually went running after breakfast.

And I would have been on time for the appointment if the train had been on time. I was only a little late, though.

My thyroid looks just the same as last time and I’ll continue taking my thyroid medication and come back again in six months.

Then I did the epic health food store run, took a train, and then went to the local health food store because there had been some things I couldn’t get at the first one. Also, I popped over to the pharmacy to get new meds and – of course – they only had one thing there and had to order the second one.

Then I took a break.

Then I helped making lunch.

Yummy asparagus, potatoes and ham. I did leave the dishes unwashed because I wanted to record the podcast and managed to finish that fifteen minutes before my first student was due.

After teaching I was back to the pharmacy for getting my allergy medication.

And then I still wanted to get my writing in and maybe even start listening to the podcast and writing show notes.

I helped the boy with dinner and made pizza dough and did a massive pile of dishes that I hadn’t been able to do after lunch.

And then I just sat there jumping from book to book instead of reading and looking at instagram and twitter.

And then I decided that I was too fried to do anything else. I still felt bad about it.

When telling myself that I have to write every single day from now on I did leave myself a buffer. I get four days off this month. If I take more I need to make up for it to reach my goal.

It feels really bad to take my first day off on day two but then podcasting is always a little draining, and that on top of all the other things I did that day. And by dinnertime I was so cold I was almost shivering, always a sign that I’m out of energy.

So I’m hoping that today will go better in the writing department.

There is a lot to do today as well.

The cleaning and the pizza and the mopping of the floors, and quite a bit of teaching and the getting the podcast ready for publication, loads of stuff.

I better get the writing in early. Otherwise it will be rather hard yet again. 

Phew. That was a day.

I didn’t really sleep well after 4.30 and was awake an hour later. I shouldn’t have said that I am all good with sleep now. I had gone to bed rather early, though, maybe that was the reason.

I read in bed for a while and made breakfast pretty early and then meditated and then actually started writing.

Because I am so fed up with not reaching my goals. And I posted another set of goals on ravelry, and immediately had it pointed out to me that I like aiming high. Which I do. I would like to achieve those high goals once in a while as well.

So I looked at my May goals again. Among other things there is „finish writing current novel“, and „sew dress, t-shirts and yoga pants“, „do taxes“ and „paint balcony“ on there. Which I though was okay but then I realized that my sewing goals alone would mean about twenty hours had to go there. And the writing would take about thirty hours, maybe more. And that along all the exercise, housework, errands, music, appointments and blog-reading (and -writing) and the podcast. And the newsletter.

Now the balcony will be a joint effort of at least the three adults in the house, maybe the boy will help a little as well. But that means if the weather is nice at the end of the month we will spend a whole week on that. It’s brutal. Especially for my husband who is the only one of us who can get on the ladder and work on that balcony from the outside.

And that means one week of this month is completely out for things like sewing. I might get a few words in here and there but that will not be prime productive time for other things for sure.

So I sat down and decided that a) I need to hit a 1,500 word goal for every day until then, b) even if I can’t spend twenty hours on sewing clothes I need to make that a priority and at least commit to moving the needle forward a little each day.

And I didn’t want my regular routine stuff to suffer in any way.

So. Since the day before had been a public holiday I needed to both go for a run and go grocery shopping today, which I usually do on Tuesdays. I also needed to go to the farmer’s market for potatoes and asparagus, and we were about to run out of tea. And I needed interfacing and buttons for the dress, and maybe also elastic for the yoga pants’ waistbands.

Also my husband wanted to get stuff from the nursery and wanted to run as well. Which meant that we both needed the bike trailer. I carry a lot of stuff every week but I won’t carry 17 kilos of potatoes all the way home from the market.

We made a plan.

My husband would ride his bike with the trailer to the nursery while I would go for my run. By the way, I ran a personal best. Less walking than before. When I came back I changed into regular shoes and a different jacket and took the trailer to the market with my bike. Put the potatoes in the house and the trailer and bike back into the garage and walked to the tea shop. Then to the craft store. And then I went to the supermarket, only to find that I had forgotten my grocery list.

I bought everything I remembered and walked home again. Where my husband was frantically cooking lunch. And then I went back out again to get the rest of the things we needed.

Then lunch, then taking a shower, then singing warm-up, then teaching.

Made a call to my father in between students. I’m not usually calling my parents that much but my father has been having a few health issues and my mother is traveling this week so I checked on him.

In the evening I didn’t fell like writing at all. In fact I procrastinated for about an hour.

And then I sat down and did it.

First day done, thirty more to go.

And I still went to bed on time. And managed to get 10,000 steps in. Funny that.

Today will be another crazy busy day. The plan is to go running around eight (which is about 2 1/2 hours earlier than usual) so that I can go to  a doctor’s appointment on time. I will get an ultrasound to see if my thyroid nodules have changed in any way. Then I will go to the health food store next to the doctor’s office and buy all.,the.food. I have already decided that I will get myself a candy bar. I’m trying to abstain from things that have added sugar at the moment because I want to lose weight but I will make an exception tomorrow.

Then I hope to be in time to help with making lunch, then I will record the podcast, then teach, squeeze the music somewhere in between and then I will have all evening to write all.the.words.

I am predicting that I will be pretty fried on the weekend. I also will be much less cranky and a lot happier.

I hope.

Woke up at 6.30 after eight hours of sleep. Seems that sleep is not a problem at the moment which is very good.

As usual when there’s no school I didn’t really get anything done in the morning but I sat and knitted for quite some time. That has to count for something as well.

I could tick off most of my to do-list which is rather satisfying. I am still trying to figure out how to incorporate the things into my life that don’t get done like spinning, and sewing and right now also the writing.

Which is making me really cranky. I just transferred „finish EM1“ from April to May yet again. I should channel that energy into the writing, maybe, instead of wasting it on thinking about how I feel and procrastinating.

I did manage to wash my bras by hand again. After only a week or two. They did sit in the sink all afternoon because I forgot about them but still – progress. And I threw the jersey fabric I had ordered into the washing machine and hung it up. First step in getting new yoga pants and t-shirts. Well, second step already because the first step was ordering the fabric.

Oh, and I wrote the May-newsletter for my patrons on patreon. At the last minute as usual.

Then I watched another webinar last night, this time it was about „business block“. I’m still a little on the fence about these.

Today will be busy, busy, busy.

Because of the public holiday yesterday I wasn’t able to do my usual grocery run which means I will have to do it today. In addition to running and going to the farmer’s market for potatoes and asparagus, as one does.

Then I will teach quite a few students. And maybe press some jersey fabric. And write words. Many, many words. (Yeah, I know I probably won’t.)

Please, don’t hit me.

You know, I’m very big on new beginnings, and changing my life for the better, and every Monday feels like an opportunity to do so,

That doesn’t mean I didn’t start the week all grumpy about what I didn’t get done last week but still.

I knew I only had very few students, and another one canceled at the last minute, and so I decided to make the best of the day.

I only succeeded somewhat but the great thing, that towering victory over procrastination was that I actually cut out the fabric for the dress I want to make:

Oh, and while I was spending about fifteen minutes to get photos into this post I also found the one I took yesterday of my „un-plying project“:

 

I ran, and this time I actually ran most of the way. Which is pretty unusual for me. My husband just told me the other day, „I saw you out running but you were walking more than running,“ and I realized that he was perfectly right. I run less than half of those 5 kilometers. So today I decided to start running the minute I entered the woods and only stop once I came back to the street.

I didn’t succeed as such, but I ran most of the way and got my time down to 8:46 per kilometer. Which is awesome for me. Which also means that there is still quite a bit of room for improvement. 

After cutting out the fabric and finding that I didn’t have enough interfacing to cut out those pieces too I had this great idea for the novel so I wrote that down.

And then it was time to teach my students. And I only did my singing warm-up beforehand, and one of these days I will practice piano and guitar as well again.

Then I forced the boy to practice piano until his fingers bled.

Well, not quite. He has really sensitive skin and he did’t use any hand lotion all winter which means the skin of his hands is cracking right now. I did convince him to try lotion (he hates the feeling on his skin) but it will take some time until everything is healed. And every time he play the piano his fingers protest the movement. He’ll get there eventually. The use of hand lotion is one of our, „Leave me alone!“-topics right now.

It is really fun to be the parent of a teenager at times.

I actually did write all of 500 words after teaching. And then I realized that this could be an evening watching Star Trek because of the holiday tomorrow, so that’s what we did.

And then I had to wait for the boy to take a shower before doing the dishes, and then my husband had to talk to me because something had gone wrong with the new box and speakers he had bought. (Well, new box, vintage speakers. He did wire them in and something must have gone wrong which apparently was very frustrating.) Just as I was trying to get that picture into this blog post and failing.

And then was now and I was writing this post but I’ll post it tomorrow morning because the wifi is down right now. So that the boy and I will go to bed on time.

So when I’ll post this it will be tomorrow. Which will be today.

Which will mean that today I’m planning to mostly do the taxes and some writing and that will be it.

Wish me luck.

I did set up my bullet journal for May and reviewed my goals for April and I can just laugh maniacally about them. Seems the month didn’t quite go as planned.

Funny that.