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 XXII

Already on to Day 22 of WTS. I think I'll do it for the whole summer and then possibly afterwards but will give up blogging about it at the end of August. The builders are back at the neighbours' house. It's the other side of my semi-detached, so when they drill (which they've been doing a lot this morning) I hear the noise and feel the vibration. This is even though I am in the one room of my house that does not share the party-wall, and I have my prescription ear-plugs in.
If I had to make a list of five life-changing products, what would they be?
1. Prescription ear-plugs
2. Blackout blind
3. Neostrata spf 50
4. Moleskine diary.
5 Disposable contact lenses.
There was a fight there for the fifth spot. It was nearly taken by Thinx underwear, which I am trying right this moment. I do actually love them, but they're more of a sustainability win than genuinely life-changing. I think I will purchase more of them. I started with two pairs, just to see, and they are eye-wateringly expensive, including having to pay the tax to the postman. I could have put the iPhone in there but that's after changing everyone's life, even if you own a different brand. And there are times when I'm not sure it has changed my life for the better. The disposable lenses are an eco-crime that I have trouble justifying. I manage though.
I'm in good form because I am just back from Spin and Abs, having not been at the gym since April. That was between going away and being sick and going away while sick. I chose spinning as my first class back because it's easy to differentiate for oneself. I kept well-back on the gears and was nowhere as fast as most of the other women, but I still felt like I had done proper exercise. Maybe I needed the break; it was feeling like a real chore to go there for a while. In other good news, the hotel found my notebook and are posting it down to me. I got the feeling they thought I was cheeky asking for such a scrap of nonsense to be sent in the post, but the alternative was to ask my brother/his wife to collect it. I paid the hotel enough money for them to put it in an envelope and stick a stamp on it. Am looking forward to getting it back, and it is good of them. They could easily - on seeing what it is - binned it and told me they hadn't been able to find it.
It's twelve o'clock. This is the real holidays now; hot weather, nothing to do. Well, I'm supposed to have writing to do. And I have a couple of things to get in town so might go in later. I am enjoying being able to stay inside out of the sun, in a perverse way. This room I am in is nice and cool, as it's west-facing and the sun has yet to come around this side. It will soon though, in around an hour or so. I feel the luxury now of having almost nothing to do and nowhere to go. There were a number of events that I wanted to go at the weekend that I missed; Cork Sceptics talk on Friday (in hotel), Crosstown Drift on Saturday (at Christening) and Fiction at the Friary yesterday(in bed with exhaustion). That's what happens. These things happen. Life happens and it is better to be out living it than filling up the time with going to things. The week stretches ahead of me. Now is when it will tell. Now is when I do work or do no work.