I did spend quite some time on that but am still not done.
The whole day confirmed (again) that I’m not functioning well on only six hours of sleep. I had a slow start into the day and while I managed morning pages, yoga and meditation there was no writing. I did finish another 30-day yoga challenge, though I did not start that challenge in August. I don’t have to be perfect, I just need to get back to it. Over and over and over again.
Husband didn’t look all that good, he hadn’t been sleeping well because the guitar mod was weighing on him. He also didn’t want to talk about it first thing because it was too complicated so I started talking about my ongoing problem with getting out of the chair in the evening, feeling paralyzed and unable to get ready for bed.
Thinking through it with someone else listening did make me realize that the problem was actually both that I had an idea in my head what I still wanted to do but didn’t have enough time, and that I had to decide what I still wanted to do despite the late hour and what to drop or push to the next day.
And getting out of the chair and ready for bed involves quite a few steps. Moving the TV back to the side, clearing up the table and putting my knitting, tablet and empty bottle away, then tidying the kitchen, checking if there is enough bread for breakfast, flossing, brushing my teeth, foot exercises, taking meds, washing my face, changing into pajamas, and then the ones that are optional if I’m late, Duolingo, making a list for the next day and starting the blog post.
I mean, get me right, it’s not super complicated and I can definitely do all these things. But when I’m super tired and exhausted? It gets trickier.
So, throughout the day, and through talking about it with a friend over text and my husband I realized that I needed a) a post-it note that says „brush teeth first“ on the remote, and b) a shortened version of my evening routine in list form. (I use the Home Routines app (unfortunately only for iOS) for all kinds of things from my morning routine to doing taxes.
Unfortunately, me talking about this problem lead to my husband and me having one of those pesky misunderstandings again (he was trying to help me and I got angry because I felt attacked) which threw off the rest of the morning. I did call my mother as usual, though, and then started setting up my bullet journal for September.
And left the September goals part empty because I didn’t know what to do about that.
Meanwhile lunch was almost ready and it was delicious:
The boy even showed up and joined us which was very nice.
I took a long break, then did the dishes and when I went to hang the laundry up I had started in the morning my husband had already done so.
We finally had a look on his guitar, the poor thing all gutted, and watched part of a video about how put all new potentiometers and cables in, and talked about having to decide between doing a relatively shoddy and quick job, or taking the long route and doin it properly which would mean it would fill the rest of summer break for sure.
Then I told my husband about the issue I have with my piano, one or two tones make a weird metallic buzzing sound. It has been driving me crazy but the piano tuner didn’t find anything, and the sound wasn’t there when he came in. I think it might change with the humidity. We took parts of the piano off and tightened some screws and at one point it was clear that my husband is older than me because he could only hear the buzzing sound very faintly and not all the time. It seems to be one of those frequencies that older people can’t hear.
The tightening of the screws didn’t really help so I guess I have something to tell the piano tuner the next time he comes around. I have determined the notes that produce the sound, so that’s helpful.
Then I played the piano for half an hour, ate dinner, tried figuring out my goals and prepping for coaching, thought about not setting goals but only writing down things I did get done instead, and so on.
Micro-coaching was nicer and more helpful than expected and it was great seeing familiar faces. (It’s group coaching with four to five people, and I’ve gotten to know a lot of them over the years.) Talking with the coach about my goal-setting issue I also realized that in my mind a few goals had already set themselves (that always happens), and we talked through all kinds of ways to think about goals and learning things and how to make it work for me. I guess I need a long walk and some writing about the whole thing to decide.
After that I started writing this post, took my meds and brushed my teeth first for the first time (I mean, this round, I have used this tactic before) to make going to bed easier.
And now we are in a fresh, new month with goals and intentions that are not quite as new and fresh. But that’s okay because if you want to finish big projects you need to have your eyes on finishing those for more than a month or two.
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