What-I-want-to-work-on Wednesday

Song of the day: Safari Disco Club - Yelle

Currently reading: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – Robert Persig

For one, I’m going to have to work on keeping this blog more regularly updated if I want to make the title of this post into a thing.

Despite it being a lovely day this afternoon, perfect for settling down with a book – not too hot (the sun having finally gone behind the caravan, leaving nothing but clear blue sky and lovely shade), fairly quiet as the Tour de France passed by a couple of hours earlier and people have actually left the campsite already in the aftermath, and me with nothing pressing to do – I just couldn’t settle. Despite being only 29% of the way through it, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a book that’s got me thinking about life. Specifically, my life, and all the things I want to do with it.

Not a cloud to be seen! Gorgeous day

The line that set me off on this trail of thought was actually something I read the day before yesterday. It was along the lines of… the “I” character woke up early, and decided to try and get back to sleep for a bit before hearing a rooster crow. He then thinks why would he want to sleep in? He’s on holiday!

It struck me because as you’re aware, I’m currently on a holiday that is fast coming to an end. Tomorrow is our last full day before we pack up and make the two day journey back home. It’s also only the second truly sunny day where the world really does seem our oyster and the possibilities endless (despite the unbearable heat for most of the day). We’ve not had the rain trapping us indoors and limiting what we can do.

But going back to the line about waking up early. One thing that has happened on this holiday, despite my attempts at the start to resist it, has been our getting up later and later every day. The whole family ended up averaging about 10:45. By that point, your morning is completely gone and you're not going to get a whole lot done in the day. The argument given by us and most people who do the exact same thing whilst vacationing is that they don't get to sleep as much as they want during the work week, so they're going to take the opportunity to do as little as possible whilst they have the chance.

The book points out another option: why would we want to sleep in and do nothing on the rare occasions we do not have to go to work? We have very limited free time to do what we wish, why waste it? I'm quite lucky with my job in that despite being at entry-level still (I've only had the role since February), I get 30 days off per year. That's a full six weeks. My mother doesn't get that much time off. But it's still a really short amount of time that you get to spend anyway you like. A two week holiday, such as the one I'm on now, takes up a third of those days. Why would I want to spend them asleep?

So to bring this back around to my original topic, I started thinking about the way I want to spend my free time. Or rather, my life. I want to use my free time to do the things I want to do in my life, as obvious a sentence as that sounds. I started browsing a couple of websites that pertain to things like health and fitness, finances, travel etc... and came up with a couple more things to add to my Epic Quest of Awesome (idea courtesy of NerdFitness), a list that I'm sure will be posted here at some point.

Whilst most of the items on the list were larger things, a number could be broken down and involved just making life better/easier for myself. It's those that I wanted to touch upon here.

What-I-want-to-work-on Wednesday is a showcase/itemisation of a couple of the more immediate things I want to work on (see what I did there?) to get myself a little closer to some of these goals/aspirations (I'm not sure whether that's more tautology than I wanted to use there, but I couldn't think of the word I wanted so we're just all going to have to suffer).

So without further ado...

Finances - Check my bank balance every week.

I'm not really in any danger of spending over my means at the moment, but I am living pay-cheque to pay-cheque. As I always have. Doesn't matter the size of the pay-cheque, I'll manage to make my expenses meet that pretty much spot-on. This has to stop. I want to be able to save money. But I can't change something unless I know what my habits are, and at the moment I'm doing the tried-and-tested method of burying my head in the sand and pretending it doesn't exist. This comes from my years as a student in constant debt and always in my overdraft. If I just ignored it everything would work out in the end because I'd get more student loan that would take me back to zero. It wasn't the most sensible coping mechanism in the world, but it got me through. Right now, however, there's no benefit to doing that. There wasn't then. The less I know about my finances and my spending habits, the scarier they become and the less in control I feel. So whilst I do have bigger financial goals, for the moment I just want to work on becoming more aware of what I'm doing.

Me when I check my bank account having ignored it for a couple of months.

Health - Daily yoga and meditation practice.

This would have several benefits. If we take the most obvious ones to start with, doing more yoga would be good for my physically. I used to do at least 5 minutes of it (once through a sun salutation) every day, often longer, and I felt so much better for it. I used to sleep better, I was in less pain, I was just generally more comfortable and more flexible and I felt good. Whilst I still do yoga occasionally, it's much more sporadic nowadays and starting up again would do me the world of good. Adding meditation to this as well - even just 5 minutes per day - will be good for peace of mind, encourage gratitude, and help ease anxiety, as will yoga. The other benefit the two of these will have is helping me get up earlier. I want to start swimming in the morning before work, but whilst I've got plenty of time I've started sleeping in as much as I can before I absolutely "must" get up. No matter what I tell myself the night before, I hit snooze several times when my alarm goes off in the morning. I want to make the mornings mine. If it only takes me 5 minutes to get to work from the hotel and I need to be in by 9, I could potentially have an hour and a half to myself in the morning. There's no need for me to rush, but sometimes I don't even manage to grab breakfast before I leave! Introducing 5-10 minutes of yoga and 5 minutes of meditation to my mornings will be a gentle way to ease myself into getting up earlier, so that I do manage to get into a routine of swimming and/or spending the mornings in a way that's best for me.

I'll probably think of more once I've finished writing this post, but for now I think these things are enough to be getting on with. Of course there are loads more things I want to do, but for the immediate future it's best if I don't overload myself. The more I try to say I will definitely do, the less I'm likely to manage. 10-15 minutes per day is probably going to be hard enough to do to start with, even if it eventually (hopefully) becomes second nature.

And that's why I'd like to make "What-I-want-to-work-on Wednesday" a sort-of thing. I can't promise that I'll be posting every Wednesday, but it'd be nice to have something to remind me to think about the little improvements I can make to make my life easier over time. In a world full of big ideas and so much to do, we often forget that the little things are just as important.