fred_mouse

I think today marks two weeks of unemployment. Time has become meaningless, and I'm so tired, and I can't even tell you why. I'm almost always making it to bed before midnight (there was one nearly 1am, but other than that, a minute or five past has happened a few times) but never before 11pm. I'm sleeping late -- the alarm was set for 8am, but that hasn't been working, because I've just turned over and slept two more hours, so today it was set for 9am, and I did manage to stay awake.

The attempt at giving up coffee has entirely stalled. I've scaled it back to 'not every day' and 'not buying it at cafes more than 50% of the time'. I'm managing the former, but I'm not actually tracking well enough to be sure of the latter. I have been making coffee, and some of the time it is decaf, so at least there is that. I've declared it to be something I'm not going to revisit until I'm back from travelling, because I will need the coffee to cope while travelling, that is just something I need to accept. Yesterday, I had an espresso doppio at about 6:30pm, which was absolutely the right call, because I was able to get through skate training without either my lungs or my cope giving out. I did have to get out of the line and practice alongside, but that was mostly okay -- right ankle is being a brat about having the laces on my skate loosened so my toes stop going numb. BUT, I have to accept that I cannot go to the session immediately before training. I skated for half an hour, but it was more than was sensible.

Dropping sugar is going better. I've mostly shifted to eating bananas or apples when the cravings hit, and that is more satisfying than previous attempts. I am eating biscuits and other high sugar foods as a stress response some of the time, and there is also the 'I have no idea what to eat, have a biscuit' response that needs breaking. But 'I am at home and will eat something sweet' has mostly been broken.

Yes, I'm back on the good habit forming/bad habit extinguishing bandwagon again. The slightly longer break between sessions has been interesting - recorder has kind of petered off to every three days or so, I'm still intermittently going in the garage (and really, that is a weekly kind of thing, and I bring in a handful of stuff to deal with, rather than one a time), I'm not really playing viola, email is getting read. 

This time though, I've been sort of implementing things, without thinking about it much. Two (three?) weeks ago, I decided to tidy my room each day. With the exception of this morning, I've done that, even if it requires grabbing a pile of things and chucking them on the 'later' pile. So, dirty clothes the the laundry, empty coathangers likewise, any other 'new' mess. I've also been dumping my bags in the bedroom, rather than the front hall, which is good in a tidy the front hall manner, but does complicate the bedroom. I've also added in 'clear the sink' to the list - we have a dish bucket, and if there is any reason that things can't go in the dishwasher they go there. If it is full/the item is too large, it goes in the left sink. Then I wipe the drainer and surrounds, and call it done. For a little while, this was leading to the rest of the kitchen getting tidier, but it seems to have collapsed again. So - housework? Slowly improving. If I can get a week with bedroom, front hall, and kitchen sink under control, I'll add something else to the mix. But for the moment, this is my limit.

Food wise - I've decided to cut coffee down. Initially, I went for 'every two days', but then decided that was too complicated, so no coffee T/T/Sat. Today I over did it though - might have to pull the coffee days to 'one large *or* two small but not any more than that'. Sleeping - might be better? Not startling away as often, even on nights immediately following the day of coffee intake. So, a plus. But I am finding that I miss the comfort of coffee. But I have decaf in the freezer, so I might portion that out for home and work, and then I have the smell at the very least. 

And semester has started again. I've started off with high hopes - I'm working through the first module, and and hope to have most of it covered in terms of reading this week, so that next week (two week module) I can spend doing All. The. Questions. This is on top of another two reading projects, one of which is overdue, so I'm a bit antsy about that. 

Oh, and I've started piano lessons again. This time with someone who comes to me, so maybe I'll be more reliable about remembering....and maybe this time I won't have the catastrophic email meltdown that left me unable to contact the teacher, given that I'm using my work email to contact them. So, 15 mins per day on the list of things to practice. With time, this needs to go up to at least 30, but Right Now, I'm going for doing at least the list of things every day (not quite managing it, but at least every second day). 

edit to add - oh, and I did a triage of *everything* in the work email inbox, dumped lots of it to 'come back to' and am now getting the inbox to zero *every day*. Plus dealing with at least one email out of the 'come back to' for work, and aiming to deal with three out of the 'at home' folder (this latter not so good). Plus dealing with DW comments within 24 hours (even if that is 'decide to delete out of DW inbox/not reply - given that there are two places that I work on comments, this doesn't preclude me coming back to them later via email). I would like to up the habit to *leaving* a comment on at least one post a day, but I haven't got there yet. I am commenting on something every couple of days though, and really enjoying the snippets of conversation that are resulting (when I can keep it together to continue the conversation). 

 Today/tomorrow is, I think, the end of the six weeks of habit forming that I had set up for myself. The six habits were to (daily)

1. work on the current recorder piece (I want to be able to play all four movements by the end of the year)
2. play a scale on the viola
3. go into the garage and find something to deal with (1 piece of paper or bringing food in from the freezer *totally counted*)
4. deal with 1 (or more) emaills on the desktop machine
5. deal with 1 (or more) historical DW comments (deleting them out of either inbox without reply *totally counted*)
6. sort at least one book in the 'reshelving' pile. 

The first three weeks were easy - I missed one day in the 'any one' week, and none in the 'any two' and 'any three' weeks. Week four was a disaster. I made notes M-Th, of which two were happy faces, one was 'sick' and one was 'argh, assignment' (as in, nothing got done until it was submitted). And then I stopped taking note. I do not think that there was a single day that I managed all six, but there was at least one where I did five. Getting back on the bike Wednesday helped, because I was already in the garage, so didn't have to remember to do so. 

Going forward - I think I've got the recorder playing habit fairly well set. I need to get some of the mess in front of the music stand dealt with so that I am more motivated to pick up the viola, but I spent enough time on it that reading music is nearly effortless for simple pieces - I need to find the duets that I found for playing with youngest, and work on those. I'm not going to aim to go in the garage every day, because I'm typically finding more than one thing to deal with, and the pattern seems to be bring stuff in to the house one day, deal with it over the next two, so going in each day was overwhelming. Comments and email - I'm logging in to the computer most days, and I think I'll just leave it at that. Most days that I do I'm dealing with more than one email, and when I look at the comments I try and do three (not always the oldest, but getting there). This was thus a win. I'm going to take a week or two, and then think about doing another one. I'll probably keep books and viola on the list, maybe add in piano (>5 mins) because this is about finding time to do things that I value/will make life better. I might keep garage on the list, or I might swap it out for the spare room. The other two might be weeding in the front yard (which I've been doing intermittently - I'm not on top of it yet, but the season has only just started, so I need to be a bit more active) and going into the back garden, which I realised the other day I'm doing at most once a week, and sometimes not even that. Or I'll put something on about craft, or writing, or....