Life, the Universe, and Everything
Jan. 5th, 2021 09:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mousmeHey hey, I have successfully been on this earth for 42 of its rotations around the sun! For this year I can claim to be the answer to life, the universe, and everything. And yes, I know where my towel is.
I am starting this post much later than I intended due to a slightly late day at work followed by a Skype call with my parents (for my birthday, of course), so I don't know how much detail I'll get into. Maybe the post will get away from me, the way they are sometimes wont to do.
In my mind I'm sort of splitting things up into projects, goals, and habits. They're all going to be kind of intertwined anyway, because building habits allows you to work on projects and attain goals, but whatever. It's all still a bit of an amorphous mess. I often do a lot of my "processing" by either talking or writing things out, because things are always clearer outside my head than in, so don't be surprised if that's what ends up happening here.
Creative/Feed Your Soul Stuff
1- I am going to try writing again. I have set myself a modest goal of writing or working on writing (outlining, editing, whatever) for 10 days a month, and with a secondary and very tiny goal of 2,000 words a month. At my peak I could write 2,000 words in 30 minutes, so 2,000 words in more or less 30 days is very doable. I want to rediscover the joyof creating stories, because I miss that part of it.
2- I want to read more. Right now I can take advantage of the fact that I'm not horrifically sleep-deprived and running on fumes, and set aside time to read purely for enjoyment. I'm not in university, so there's no reading I "have" to do. I can go back to fiction and just roll around in it for pleasure. Since I'm less exhausted and I have meds that seem to be working (Concerta), I am cautiously optimistic that I can start with reading a few hours a week here and there, and gradually build back up to my old habit of reading every day. I miss reading, but for a while there whenever I tried to read a book I'd have to read each paragraph three times for it to make sense, and whenever I put the book down, the next time I picked it up I'd have no memory whatsoever of what I'd read and would have to start over.
3- I am going to discover new-to-me music this year. Not necessarily new chronologically. Just go exploring stuff I haven't listened to before that might not necessarily be a style or a genre I'd normally listen to. I don't have a real plan for this, nor do I feel like I need one. I can just dive down some internet rabbit holes and go from there.
Personal Responsibility Stuff
1- I am going to continue and even double down on my efforts to fix my finances. I'm in much better shape than I used to be, but there is still a lot of work to be done. I want to eliminate the remainder of my consumer debt, so that the only thing that remains is the student loan I ended up taking out last year, which I am luckily able to pay in the agreed-upon instalments with no issue. I need to pay more attention to my budget and save (more) money for the short and long term.
2- The house needs to be thoroughly de-cluttered and then deep-cleaned. KK is going to be moving in in the spring, so this should serve as an excellent external motivator. I think I will start with a decluttering challenge of getting rid of 1 thing on Day 1, then 2 things on Day 2, then 3 things on Day 3, etc. That should add up to 496 items by the end of January supposing I started on January 1st. (It's early enough that I can "catch up" the first few days of the month, I think) If that challenge is too tough to maintain at first I will ease up and make sure I de-clutter at least 1-5 items a day so I don't totally lose momentum.
3- Apart from the "major" de-cluttering, I am also declaring that this is the year I'm going to figure out how to actually keep my house clean and tidy. I've always wailed about how I don't understand how "normal" people seem to manage it so effortlessly, and the other day it occurred to me that I am NOT normal and never will be. The ADHD guarantees that "normal" person strategies will. not. work. no matter how much I want them to. So I am going to experiment until I figure my shit out and keep the house looking acceptable. The trick will be to keep trying even when one strategy fails, because my brain really loves to just give up when I don't succeed on the very first try.
4- I need to do a fair bit of repairs/maintenance on my car. I have a guy (his name is Steve), and he got very busy last year and didn't have time to do the needed work, but this year I will reach out to him again to see if he can fit me into his schedule. I have been trying to take better care of my car, because it's 10 years old and has 200k km on it and I want to make sure it keeps living. I have enjoyed four years of not having to make payments on it, and I'd like to continue that trend. I also want to give the inside a good cleaning and replace the poor abused floor mats with rubber ones.
Physical/Mental/Spiritual Well-Being
1- After over a year of being a bad Quaker, as it were, I have started attending Meeting for Worship again. I want to pay more attention to my spirit, which I neglected sorely since long before the pandemic started. I am going to look for books and other texts on Quaker theology, too, and be more intentional about my religious life. I will start with regular attendance at Meeting, and work my way up to more. Baby steps.
2- I'm continuing therapy. I knew I was in a bad headspace before, and November/December were especially bad, and suddenly this week I've had a lift in mood and energy, and it's like someone shone a light on all the dark places and revealed their existence to me. My therapist got a little busy and had some conflicts last year, so even though it was no one's fault I ended up not doing therapy regularly, skipped all of August and December, and only got one session a month in the fall, and it wasn't enough. I like having my therapist to challenge me and to remind me not to beat myself up (because I am really good at that), and we've set up appointments for every Friday every two weeks like clockwork until such time as I have to go back on shift at work. So that's sorted, and I am pretty pleased about it.
3- I want to keep better track of what's going on in my life, so I'm going to use DW/LJ to write about it again. A few years ago I made a resolution to post every day for a year, and I managed that really nicely. So this is the plan this year. I will post every day, even if it's just a three-sentence post to mark the day.
3- I need to figure out a way to motivate myself to get outside for physical exercise more. I was doing pretty well before the weather got really cold, because I was taking Peggy for long rambles in the early morning on her trainer's private property. The problem is that now it's too dark at those times to go (I can't see a damned thing), and the cold has been a deterrent. I have cold weather gear, but it takes a LOT longer to get ready to go out, and it's time I just don't have in the mornings. The property is a 30 minute drive from my house, so adding 20-30 minutes of prepare-to-go-out time means a significant chunk out of my day. Still, these are all excuses. There's definitely a way for me to get the both of us out of the house for exercise, I just have to figure out how to make it work. Ideally I'd like to be able to start running again by the time spring gets here (I won't run in the winter because snow and ice are bad for someone like me with shitty balance), so that I can take Peggy running. She is a wonderful dog who deserves an owner who will take her running. I'm not considering any kind of weight goal even though I'm still a fat lady, because the minute I start trying to change my body shape and/or the numbers on the scale I fall into really disordered patterns of eating and exercise, as opposed to the only slightly disordered patterns I have now. It's better for my mental health to not actively buy into fatphobia. I have body image issues, yes, but I know enough to not actively throw gasoline on that particular fire.
4- I'm going to continue my attempts to do things that are better for my health. Get sufficient sleep, go to sleep at a reasonable hour (*pointedly ignores the clock while writing this post*), and eat foods with high(er) nutritional value. All of these things I find difficult to do on a regular basis. I always seem to run out of hours in the day to get things done, and invariably what seems to get sacrificed are diet, exercise, and sleep. Diet in the sense of "things I eat" not "detailed food plan designed for a specific physical outcome," that is. I like cooking from scratch, but between not being able to keep the kitchen tidy and the aforementioned "lack" of time (it's not really a lack, but more like a consistent inability to manage my time like a normal person, probably due to the ADHD), I don't do much of it these days. Or I do it in fits and starts.
Work
1- I want to have a new job by the time I have to leave my current acting position. Whether that's within my unit or elsewhere in the government, I know I don't want to go back to my shift work job. I don't want to work directly under my manager, because it will destroy my mental health, and the shift work has been slowly destroying my physical health. So the goal is to line up a new job by July of 2021. I am going to try to leverage the fact that my current boss thinks I am pretty amazing in order to get people in higher places to pull strings for me.
2- I want to learn new work skills before the end of July of 2021. I won't make a list here, but I may write one up and post it up somewhere in my (temporary) office.
3- I want to leave my temporary position significantly better than I got it. I talked about this in a previous entry. I want to do legacy planning and create the kind of documentation that will be useful to people in the unit for years to come. I want everyone to lament my departure because I was so awesome, but also be able to carry on seamlessly because my work was so great.
And that's it! There's a lot there, but I'm not planning an overnight 100% overhaul of myself. My therapist likes to tell me that it's important to approach things with the mentality of a scientist and treat everything like an experiment. Hypothesis, test, conclusion. Lather, rinse, repeat until you find what works. It's a process, and I am excited to get started.
I am starting this post much later than I intended due to a slightly late day at work followed by a Skype call with my parents (for my birthday, of course), so I don't know how much detail I'll get into. Maybe the post will get away from me, the way they are sometimes wont to do.
In my mind I'm sort of splitting things up into projects, goals, and habits. They're all going to be kind of intertwined anyway, because building habits allows you to work on projects and attain goals, but whatever. It's all still a bit of an amorphous mess. I often do a lot of my "processing" by either talking or writing things out, because things are always clearer outside my head than in, so don't be surprised if that's what ends up happening here.
Creative/Feed Your Soul Stuff
1- I am going to try writing again. I have set myself a modest goal of writing or working on writing (outlining, editing, whatever) for 10 days a month, and with a secondary and very tiny goal of 2,000 words a month. At my peak I could write 2,000 words in 30 minutes, so 2,000 words in more or less 30 days is very doable. I want to rediscover the joyof creating stories, because I miss that part of it.
2- I want to read more. Right now I can take advantage of the fact that I'm not horrifically sleep-deprived and running on fumes, and set aside time to read purely for enjoyment. I'm not in university, so there's no reading I "have" to do. I can go back to fiction and just roll around in it for pleasure. Since I'm less exhausted and I have meds that seem to be working (Concerta), I am cautiously optimistic that I can start with reading a few hours a week here and there, and gradually build back up to my old habit of reading every day. I miss reading, but for a while there whenever I tried to read a book I'd have to read each paragraph three times for it to make sense, and whenever I put the book down, the next time I picked it up I'd have no memory whatsoever of what I'd read and would have to start over.
3- I am going to discover new-to-me music this year. Not necessarily new chronologically. Just go exploring stuff I haven't listened to before that might not necessarily be a style or a genre I'd normally listen to. I don't have a real plan for this, nor do I feel like I need one. I can just dive down some internet rabbit holes and go from there.
Personal Responsibility Stuff
1- I am going to continue and even double down on my efforts to fix my finances. I'm in much better shape than I used to be, but there is still a lot of work to be done. I want to eliminate the remainder of my consumer debt, so that the only thing that remains is the student loan I ended up taking out last year, which I am luckily able to pay in the agreed-upon instalments with no issue. I need to pay more attention to my budget and save (more) money for the short and long term.
2- The house needs to be thoroughly de-cluttered and then deep-cleaned. KK is going to be moving in in the spring, so this should serve as an excellent external motivator. I think I will start with a decluttering challenge of getting rid of 1 thing on Day 1, then 2 things on Day 2, then 3 things on Day 3, etc. That should add up to 496 items by the end of January supposing I started on January 1st. (It's early enough that I can "catch up" the first few days of the month, I think) If that challenge is too tough to maintain at first I will ease up and make sure I de-clutter at least 1-5 items a day so I don't totally lose momentum.
3- Apart from the "major" de-cluttering, I am also declaring that this is the year I'm going to figure out how to actually keep my house clean and tidy. I've always wailed about how I don't understand how "normal" people seem to manage it so effortlessly, and the other day it occurred to me that I am NOT normal and never will be. The ADHD guarantees that "normal" person strategies will. not. work. no matter how much I want them to. So I am going to experiment until I figure my shit out and keep the house looking acceptable. The trick will be to keep trying even when one strategy fails, because my brain really loves to just give up when I don't succeed on the very first try.
4- I need to do a fair bit of repairs/maintenance on my car. I have a guy (his name is Steve), and he got very busy last year and didn't have time to do the needed work, but this year I will reach out to him again to see if he can fit me into his schedule. I have been trying to take better care of my car, because it's 10 years old and has 200k km on it and I want to make sure it keeps living. I have enjoyed four years of not having to make payments on it, and I'd like to continue that trend. I also want to give the inside a good cleaning and replace the poor abused floor mats with rubber ones.
Physical/Mental/Spiritual Well-Being
1- After over a year of being a bad Quaker, as it were, I have started attending Meeting for Worship again. I want to pay more attention to my spirit, which I neglected sorely since long before the pandemic started. I am going to look for books and other texts on Quaker theology, too, and be more intentional about my religious life. I will start with regular attendance at Meeting, and work my way up to more. Baby steps.
2- I'm continuing therapy. I knew I was in a bad headspace before, and November/December were especially bad, and suddenly this week I've had a lift in mood and energy, and it's like someone shone a light on all the dark places and revealed their existence to me. My therapist got a little busy and had some conflicts last year, so even though it was no one's fault I ended up not doing therapy regularly, skipped all of August and December, and only got one session a month in the fall, and it wasn't enough. I like having my therapist to challenge me and to remind me not to beat myself up (because I am really good at that), and we've set up appointments for every Friday every two weeks like clockwork until such time as I have to go back on shift at work. So that's sorted, and I am pretty pleased about it.
3- I want to keep better track of what's going on in my life, so I'm going to use DW/LJ to write about it again. A few years ago I made a resolution to post every day for a year, and I managed that really nicely. So this is the plan this year. I will post every day, even if it's just a three-sentence post to mark the day.
3- I need to figure out a way to motivate myself to get outside for physical exercise more. I was doing pretty well before the weather got really cold, because I was taking Peggy for long rambles in the early morning on her trainer's private property. The problem is that now it's too dark at those times to go (I can't see a damned thing), and the cold has been a deterrent. I have cold weather gear, but it takes a LOT longer to get ready to go out, and it's time I just don't have in the mornings. The property is a 30 minute drive from my house, so adding 20-30 minutes of prepare-to-go-out time means a significant chunk out of my day. Still, these are all excuses. There's definitely a way for me to get the both of us out of the house for exercise, I just have to figure out how to make it work. Ideally I'd like to be able to start running again by the time spring gets here (I won't run in the winter because snow and ice are bad for someone like me with shitty balance), so that I can take Peggy running. She is a wonderful dog who deserves an owner who will take her running. I'm not considering any kind of weight goal even though I'm still a fat lady, because the minute I start trying to change my body shape and/or the numbers on the scale I fall into really disordered patterns of eating and exercise, as opposed to the only slightly disordered patterns I have now. It's better for my mental health to not actively buy into fatphobia. I have body image issues, yes, but I know enough to not actively throw gasoline on that particular fire.
4- I'm going to continue my attempts to do things that are better for my health. Get sufficient sleep, go to sleep at a reasonable hour (*pointedly ignores the clock while writing this post*), and eat foods with high(er) nutritional value. All of these things I find difficult to do on a regular basis. I always seem to run out of hours in the day to get things done, and invariably what seems to get sacrificed are diet, exercise, and sleep. Diet in the sense of "things I eat" not "detailed food plan designed for a specific physical outcome," that is. I like cooking from scratch, but between not being able to keep the kitchen tidy and the aforementioned "lack" of time (it's not really a lack, but more like a consistent inability to manage my time like a normal person, probably due to the ADHD), I don't do much of it these days. Or I do it in fits and starts.
Work
1- I want to have a new job by the time I have to leave my current acting position. Whether that's within my unit or elsewhere in the government, I know I don't want to go back to my shift work job. I don't want to work directly under my manager, because it will destroy my mental health, and the shift work has been slowly destroying my physical health. So the goal is to line up a new job by July of 2021. I am going to try to leverage the fact that my current boss thinks I am pretty amazing in order to get people in higher places to pull strings for me.
2- I want to learn new work skills before the end of July of 2021. I won't make a list here, but I may write one up and post it up somewhere in my (temporary) office.
3- I want to leave my temporary position significantly better than I got it. I talked about this in a previous entry. I want to do legacy planning and create the kind of documentation that will be useful to people in the unit for years to come. I want everyone to lament my departure because I was so awesome, but also be able to carry on seamlessly because my work was so great.
And that's it! There's a lot there, but I'm not planning an overnight 100% overhaul of myself. My therapist likes to tell me that it's important to approach things with the mentality of a scientist and treat everything like an experiment. Hypothesis, test, conclusion. Lather, rinse, repeat until you find what works. It's a process, and I am excited to get started.
