WTS Day XXXVI

You would think I was used to the heat by now but it is officially baking today. I didn't do any exercise today or yesterday. This is partly tomorrow logic as I am booked in for a gym class tomorrow. I know that gym classes aren't enough though, and I need to be doing some at home as well. That is a thing to watch. 

My first day of Habit No 2. is going well, as in it's actually going. I got up this morning and wrote at the laptop. Nothing too startling or anything. It's also twenty to five now and I already have my five o'clock writing done. I'm not sure if bringing it forward is a good idea or not, but couldn't think of an advantage of waiting until five o'clock. I'm working on an essay. I doubt this essay will ever be published but the best writing advice (have heard this from Kevin Barry and elsewhere from Neil Gaiman) is to be a finisher. To finish things and not leave scraps lying around the place. The computer makes this kind of thing even more dangerous. I would like to be writing fiction rather than essays, but feel not writing on the basis that I can't think of something fictional would be a case of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. I read as well this morning that Joseph O'Neill gets an idea for a novel only once every ten years. This makes my one-short-story-a-year output seem less pathetic. 

In other news I am going out tonight, just to language-exchange, but that is something. I have become something of a hermit. But that is outside circumstances, to an extent. Things will pick up again. Have been doing a lot of reading and finally finished "The War that Ended Peace". I love reading, really reading. What do we mean when we say "reading for pleasure"? Why do we assume reading for pleasure means reading easy books, or frothy books that don't challenge us to think about issues? For me that is half the pleasure of reading. I hate the phrase "reading for pleasure", and I'm not the only one, although I know I'm in a minority. For most English teacher, this is heresy and unspeakable on forums like TESEO. 

If I had to sum up in one word my current status, I'd say it is "bored". Not that there is anything wrong with that. There are so many days. I wish we were going back early, the way some schools do, so as to get days off during the term. How welcome those days would be! I didn't vote, but think anyway there was little point in voting. In the words of Joseph Stalin: "It's not those who cast the votes who have the power, it's those who count the votes." 

WTS Day XXXV

Kicking myself this morning for not going out last night, but trying to remind myself of how tired I really did feel. This was, I think, from lack of planning and also from the unseasonably warm weather. There was no-one at the MeetUp that I wanted to see in particular. I didn't cancel, just didn't show up, which strikes me as mean-spirited and I resolve not to do so again, even if it is just drinks. 

It is #26habits day again today. My last habit was to stay out of TKMaxx. How did I do? I went there twice, once this day last week, and the second time yesterday. I bought one item: a foot cream. Once a week might seem plenty and not like I have succeeded, but what is important is that quite a few times I went into town or to the shopping centre and didn't go in there. This is the test, it had become an automatic thing that if I were in town for any reason I would "check" TKMaxx, in a hunter-gatherer kind of way. That is hopefully a thing of the past, and I will endeavour to keep out of there as much as possible for the rest of the summer. (What am I saying? It's quite possible for me never to darken their doors again. Better to say I will keep my visits to withing reasonable limits and not buy things of which I have several already). 

Time now for Habit No 2. I have toyed with a few over the past fortnight. A serious contender was to stay away from Youtube, but I am postponing this to the next time because I don't want this to be some kind of Lenten omnibus of giving up this and giving up that. I have decided that every second habit, at the least, will be adding an activity rather than taking it away. The frontrunner than became to develop an evening routine...a kind of bookend to Elrod's SAVERS. This I have come up with in the form of FLOAT. I did think first of JOLT. Journal-Organise-List-Tidy, but that sounded too much like a morning routine. The letters of FLOAT stand for 

-Five-minute journal.

-List

-Organise

-and

-Tidy

I am good at filling out the morning section of the FMJ, which I do as the A component of SAVERS, but lots of the pages are either blank at the bottom or have the headings but nothing filled in under them. I just forget, but making this part of a definite routine helps. The list is the right-hand side of my Moleskine diary, which functions as a bullet-journal to-do list (yes, I did try full-on bullet journaling and while I can see it is very clever, it just didn't work for me). In the evening I check off what I've done with an X through the box, and add in items that have arisen during the day so I have some kind of window into the future and this also minimises having to get out of bed because I've forgotten something. Then I organise anything I need for the morning/pack if I'm going anywhere. This isn't usually necessary this time of year, but will be a crucial step in September. Then T is for setting a ten-minute timer on my phone and tidying up, mostly in the kitchen. 

Life-enhancing as this routine is, it hasn't made the cut for this fortnight's habit because as soon I as conceived it, it's been extremely easy to stick to. Maybe when the enthusiasm wears off and I need a re-boot it could become one of the 26 habits at that stage. When it came to picking the habit, I decided to think about my priorities. Going out more is one of them. Another is writing, and this is where I finally settled. Drumroll....

Habit No. 2 of the #26habits is to use Dorothea Brande's two strategies to get more writing one. The first strategy is to write first thing in the morning. The second is to commit to another specific time of day to write. I plan to follow this five days a week. Five is enough, and I will pick the time five o'clock, or as close to five o'clock as I can manage. We will see how this will go. 

WTS Day XXVIII

Slept in a bit late this morning. Tomorrow will start on the Dorothea Brande schedule, such as it is. Today is the first day of July, so therefor the first day of Plastic-Free July. I won't be going Plastic Free, but am going to take the following actions:

-use my Thinx and purchase more of them.

-I already use bar soap rather than liquid hand soap, but will extend this to showering as well. I thought about switching to solid shampoo but this is hard water area. That is my excuse anyway. Although I suppose an experiment would do no harm. 

-I already use real butter rather than the gunk in the plastic tubs. This is a good example of how eco-switches almost always result in a better-quality experience. 

-cooking my own food and eschewing ready-meals in plastic containers.

-buying cheese in Iago's, where they wrap it in waxed paper. 

-bringing bags to the market to buy vegetables. Seeing if I can find a string bag. 

-eating more things like eggs, that are minimally packaged.

-not buying soft drinks multi-packs that are covered in plastic. This will incur a cost as it is cheaper to buy the multi-packs with the plastic. At least Diet Coke can now be bought in 24-pack cardboard boxes. 

-switching to powder for biological detergent.

-at some point during the month refilling my non-biological detergent bottles. I really need to do this only once a year and think I still have plenty of last year's to go. 

-giving up single-use small water bottles. I know giving up bottled water is the low-hanging fruit of using less plastic, but I got a letter from Irish Water telling me there is lead in the tap water. Things I can do include buying bigger bottles of water and using the filter in the gym. Of course, I could buy a filter. Or not take any notice of Irish Water and their scare-mongering. 

-stop buying synthetic clothes. 

-go to the Quay Co-op and see if there's anything there that could help.

-switch to non-plastic cotton buds. I don't use a whole load of these anyway, but sometimes nothing else will do to fix wonky eye-make-up. 

-bringing reusable containers to the fish counter. 

None of this is too hard during the summer,  when I have time to shop in the market and the inclination to cook. I have no excuses really during the winter either. Of course, not having a baby represents the greatest plastic-saving of all. Other people are using my quota of course. And it wouldn't stop me. It'd be better to have a baby and donate to organisations tackling over-population. I do think over-population is a thing. I think people who decide not to have children for this reason are being responsible, on the condition that it's a unanimous decision between a couple. I doubt it is. I mean, I think it's unreasonable to expect your partner of whichever sex to deny themselves offspring and parenthood for no other reason than altruistic environmentalism. 

All really posh people are environmentally-friendly because there are rewards from that way of living. What about flying? I have to laugh at the zero-wasters on Youtube who are flying here and there and packing their bamboo toothbrushes in their carry-on. LOL. 

WTS Day XXVII

I hope I'm still doing the Roman numerals correctly. Last night I made a list of my top nine self-help books. I had intended to go for ten but couldn't think of a tenth. I'd say I will, and then post I was surprised that's as far as I could go. I think it was partly because I allowed only one book per author. 

My copy of Dorothea Brande's "Becoming a Writer" came yesterday. Tomorrow I will start the writing as soon as I wake up. I did do one exercise and was very pleased with what came out of it. I think I will do it again. 

So far, her programme involves two parts:

1. Writing on waking. This conflicts with "The Miracle Morning". I see however, that there a "Miracle Morning for Writers" book, that I could consult. On the other hand, if I stick to writing in a bedside notebook, then there is no reason why I couldn't slot this in before Silence. 

2. Writing by appointment. As well as first thing in the morning, Brande recommends a definite time to write. I have been sticking to my twenty-minute a day minmum, but suspect this would also be a good idea. When though? The morning is the obvious time. We will say 9 am, from Monday, and start with 20 minutes, increasing every week by five minutes. This will allow for finishing the miracle morning. 

Shouldn't I prioritise writing over the miracle morning? I mean I could be doing real writing right now instead of this this typing. I don't know. I think of this as a kind of mental house-keeping. Perhaps the five-minute journal would suffice. I have started in a different notebook as my yellow still has not arrived from the hotel and I suspect it won't at this stage. 

This weekend is tough as there is nothing on. There was a lot I could have done last weekend but I was away at the Christening, or recovering on the Sunday. This is how things happen. You pick yourself up and you move on. I could have signed up to a Meetup or something. There is always something, and if there isn't you can arrange something or just go off into the country somewhere. 

I am going to go into town once this is written. I have a couple of things to pick up. Just a couple, mind you. Staying our of You Know Where. There is very little I need food-wise (onions, bread). There is a hair-care product I want to buy in Boots (Bumble and Bumble stuff that means you don't have to blow-dry your hair, will buy the travel size to experiment).

I am thinking about going back to ordering books. There is a book I want and it is much cheaper on the bookdepository. If I didn't know the book depository are owned by Amazon then I would have bought it there already. It is more expensive to order books in a bookshop, and compared to Amazon they take longer to come. They're more predictable than bookdepository though. 

My scruples were there already but have been strengthened by reading this review from Quillette. It'd be wrong altogether to order "The War on Normal People" online wouldn't it? It echoes what I've thought for a while: our obsession with e-commerce and automation is a form of economic cannibalism. I already rarely use the self-service checkouts in the supermarket and deplore their introduction to our libraries. I say "rarely" but I do use them. 

WTS Day XXIII

Will have to become more disciplined with this. It's twenty-five to eleven already and I have been up since half-seven. That is more than three hours to meditate, walk up to the shop, have breakfast, read ten minutes' worth of Joseph O'Neill's "Neverland", call the person I'm not supposed to be calling (call lasted ten minutes which is much shorter than normal) and turn on the computer. All that except the phone call could have been done in under an hour. I still have not exercised yet. That is supposed to slot in before reading time, but I have been excusing myself on the grounds of stiffness and saying I'll fit it in later but of course that doesn't happen. 

It is good to get up early these mornings as once the heat sets in it's impossible to get anything done. I have ordered Dorothea Brande's book from amazon, even though giving up amazon/bookdepository is supposed to be one of my goals. I am determined to do some actual writing today. Yesterday all I did was enter the Moth Prize, and send a story to The Stinging Fly. That's important too though. I end up entering the same competitions every year and missing the same competitions every year because the deadlines pass me by during the year. This is purely a case of failure to prioritise. 

My latest discovery is the Emma Guns Podcast. In particular her series on 26Habits. She has a lovely speaking voice and covers topics I am interested in. I have decided to start my own 26Habits series, to run concurrently with WTS (which is soon to run concurrently with Plastic-Free July). My first habit challenge is going to be staying out of all TKMaxx shops for two solid weeks. I am a TKMaxx whore and spend far too much time and money in there. Yes, it is often very good value and I have bought good things there like my winter coat that I wear all the time, but I have developed a checking habit. It is the vestiges of my evolutionary hunter-gatherer past. Here was a good shrub for berries. It's not 100% reliable but that only adds to the urge to check, unpredictable reward schedules being the key to reinforcing behaviour and all that. My most frequent purchases from there are beauty products, and I do not need Another Cleanser or Lovely Shower-gel. I say this partly because there was excellent value in the Heathrow Duty-Free and I held back thinking of all my stash I still have to get through and the bulk of the beauty fatberg is product purchased in TKMaxx. 

I have only one more big event to go in my Win the Summer schedule and that is a three-day writing course. The week before I have been invited to join my brother and his wife at her parents' holiday home. I am tempted but the last thing I want is to be spending hours on the beach or going on enforced marches (sorry, walks) on long, low-hedged country roads. If I could go and just hole up in my room. One way it would be good is that I could bring the laptop but there is, AFAIK, no wifi down there. Will see.