What-I-Want-To-Work-On....Thursday?

Song of the day: Interlude 1 (The Ripe and Ruin) - alt-J
Currently reading: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig (still - about 70% through now)

Accurate naming of posts, for one.

It doesn't have quite the same ring to it, I'll admit. The original plan was for me to have this up last week, and then last Thursday, then last Friday, and then yesterday , but despite having a fair amount of time to myself on several of those days last week, I completely forgot about it. And yesterday I was just too tired. [And then yesterday, the day I wrote this entire post, I just forgot to upload it, so we're pretending it's still Thursday.]

So how am I doing on the topics I brought up last week?

1. Do more yoga
2. Do more meditation
3. Get up earlier (combination of the above)
4. Check finances more

I have been doing more yoga. Not quite every morning, but I have been doing more stretching in general. At the moment it's really only for 5-10 minutes at a time, but it's a start. It can't be doing me anything but good and I should probably be doing even more. I've been doing a mix between neck stretches and sun salutations, but I should probably focus on my back a bit more. The neck has been a target because I just do not have any luck with pillows. My body seems to be really picky about what it can lie on without waking up in pain the next day, and most pillows do not fall into the "safe" category.  Having a desk job however, and probably an ill-fitted bra because I like many women have not yet plucked up the courage to be fitted by a professional, is starting to be noticed by my back again, and it's really starting to get quite painful. I know a couple of yoga routines for the back that I really enjoy, so it's just a matter of putting it into practice. Whilst in my hotel room on Tuesday (I worked from there due to a terrible cold) I did a 25 minute lower body routine that was extremely tough but I felt great afterwards, which has inspired me to continue.

I haven't really done any more meditation. In fact, I think I did 4 minutes of it Wednesday before last when I decided I needed to do more and then absolutely none since. My phone reminds me of the need to do it every day, but I just swipe it away.

It's not all doom and gloom though. Both of the two above targets, whilst incredibly useful in their own right, were partly about me trying to get up earlier of a morning. Well, as it happens, that's been happening anyway. It's primarily due to the hotel I've been staying in the last two weeks, but I'm hoping that by the time I'm back in the other one I'll have made early rising a habit. I discovered last week that not only is breakfast included in the price of the room (which I knew already), but that it's included even if you order it to your room (so long as you order a specific one) for nothing more than the tray charge. I've indulged all week. You pick a quarter of an hour slot for it to arrive in, and therefore have to be awake before it comes. I've ordered it for 7:45-8:00 twice and 7:30-7:45 once. Therefore I've been getting up by 7:30 all week, much earlier than I had been in the weeks prior to my holiday (or indeed, during).

Even last Friday, when I had the chance to lie in - I'm visiting my parents in Liverpool at the moment and was told they'd wake me up at 8:40 if I wanted to have a lie-in - I got up just after 8 am. It was nice having a full hour to myself before having to be "at work" (logged on to the computer and online on the company chat programme). The same happened again today - working from home means I just have to be online from 9am. I woke up at 8, but given how tired I'd been last night thought that I'd put my alarm back half an hour and have a bit of a lie-in. It only took two minutes for me to decide that it wasn't going to work, and I got up. No lie-in at the weekend either - I've got a gym session at 9am on Saturday!

Who goes the gym at 9am on a Saturday? Seriously!

I have been doing a little better with being aware of my finances, even if I've not done any better with spending less (but baby steps!). I've checked my bank balance a couple of times in the last two weeks, and also done some calculations about money due in and out in the next month to see whether I could afford a couple of things I wanted to buy, rather than buying them and panicking afterwards. It's been useful, and I'm hoping that as I continue this will make me more confident financially.

For the following week(s) I want to work on:

1. Reading more
2. Being more aware of diet
3. Going to bed earlier

I've been reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for weeks now, mainly because I just don't do any reading on most days. I need to make it more of a routine, even if only for 30 minutes per day. I just don't read like I used to, and it's a shame. There's so many benefits to being well-read.

Being more aware of diet is something I actually started to do last week, paying more attention to what I was ordering from the hotel. It'll be tough from next week as the hotel I'm in from then doesn't really have any healthy options, but I'm making the most of being at home for an extra day - had a banana and strawberry smoothie for breakfast (homemade, w/ oats and flaxseed and chia seed in), planning on making some pulled pork and making lettuce+pork tacos once my new slow cooker arrives, and I'm also planning a couple of healthy omelettes, some sweet potato, mackerel and broccoli, etc...

Finally, going to bed earlier. I'm actually not doing too badly at this when at the hotel, but I need to keep it up the rest of the week. And even at the hotel, I could do a lot better. I get up shortly after 7 and I don't do well with lack of sleep, so I really shouldn't start getting ready for bed after 11:30, given that it usually takes me about 30 minutes to fall asleep. I should be aiming to get into bed around 11, make absolutely sure I am not on the computer (as I often am), and maybe read in bed for a bit. That sounds like a nice plan. Now let's put it into action!

Since this post was due up last week, there is already another post underway that may go up today. But it may go up tomorrow, who knows?

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.

The devil’s in the details and he’s taking his toll

Song of the day: Dance in the Graveyards - Delta Rae 
Currently reading: A Feast for Crows - George R. R. Martin

June. It's June. Where on earth has all that time gone?

This afternoon that wonderful companion of ours called anxiety reared its ugly little head and I was lucky to experience paralysing fear for a short while. Because what else would we want to do on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, hey? This is only read as diary-ish for a very short time before I get to my point for today.

This weekend a Teen Wolf convention is happening in Austria. I saw pictures of it on tumblr. There's people I admire there, everyone looks like they're having a wonderful time and it's extremely sunny. They're also, you know, in Austria. I initially became aware of all this around 10:30 yesterday morning, when I was in London, watching torrential rain pour outside knowing I had to go and walk in it soon to get to a physiotherapy appointment to find out why I've been in agonising pain all week. So you know, I wasn't overly happy, and I had a nice little moan about how I wish I was there rather than here, but then I moved on. I went to physio, discovered I haven't done anything particularly serious, and watched a fair bit of TV in the afternoon. Tidied my room, skyped both Harriet and J, practised the viola and generally had an ok day. I mean, I was in pain, I couldn't do much more than take it easy.

Today I'm thankfully in a lot less pain. I woke up late. I had my viola lesson at 12:30. I had a late lunch. And I've been on tumblr, unavoidably seeing pictures of the convention because whilst I follow over 300 blogs of a variety of different subjects, that seems to be all anyone currently online is talking about. I realised that it was 3pm. It's a lovely day outside, and I was inside doing absolutely nothing. And that's when the fear hit.

Because I want to be like this:

But I don't know where to start.

Living in London, and particularly in an area where I'm high up enough to see all of central London from my bedroom window, even as far as the other side of the river, I'm constantly aware that the world is at my fingertips. Possibilities are endless. I can do whatever I want, all I need to do is reach out and grasp it. I'm a very blessed person - I'm white, middle-class, living in a first-world country, intelligent, financially stable, went to a good university and got a good degree, get on extremely well with my family and haven't had anything particularly bad happen to me other than occasional brushes with anxiety and depression. The only way I would be even luckier regarding doing what I want in the world is if I were male. And yet, despite knowing the world is mine for the taking, I feel paralysed, like my arms are stuck to my sides.

In part, there's too much choice. I know that I'm not doing what I want to be doing just at the moment. I have ideas about what I would like to do, and even some notions on what I can start to do in order to get there. But then I feel that if I'm spending my time doing x, I'm not doing y or z. So if I decide to spend a couple of hours reading a book - which I really need to do more of - then that's wasting time that I could be writing, or going and finding people to socialise with, or attending an acting class, or doing exercise etc. In the end, I don't do anything. I have similar problems with choice when deciding what to watch or what to eat. In the end I just don't make a decision and have wasted several hours of my day.

Then there's the lack of feeling connected. When I'm online looking at things related to people I admire and wish I could be like/ work with, it's very easy to feel connected to your dreams. You're learning loads of information about your ideal hobbies, careers, people you'd like to meet one day. But this feeling is a lie. You're not getting any closer to being a successful actor by looking up pictures of your favourite actors all day. You're not getting any closer to being a published author by researching various publishing houses that you're going to send your book to 'when it's written'. Looking at fitspiration won't make you any fitter.

You have to switch the internet off and do something. And it's not a good feeling. For me personally, when I turn the internet off, I no longer feel connected to the wider world of people in film, theatre and television, and I feel further away than ever from my goals. But that's not the case. If I used the time I spend daydreaming online actually doing something constructive towards my goals, I'd be so much closer. In fact, I've wasted so much time over the last few years that I could probably have written several novels, learnt a few languages and mastered a couple of instruments. Saying "omg Chris Colfer has published three novels, written and starred in his own movie and written an episode of Glee on top of performing in all the episodes and doing press etc and he's only 23" won't do anything other than make you feel bad. Yes, it shows that some people are successful when they're your age. But a) they're anomalies, and b) they're not spending all their time going "it's not fair so-and-so is my age and yet they're so much more productive than me". It is fair. They're actually working their asses off for what they want. What are you doing? Absolutely nothing, other than thinking you should get on with something.

Yeah, I'm going to say no to that.

I was always a very confident child when I was a lot younger, who believed that she could do whatever she put her mind to. But I wasn't very driven. I didn't need to be. I just stumbled into opportunities, and I was fortunate enough to find a lot of things easy. I didn't need to revise for tests, I didn't need to work hard to make people like me, I didn't get stage fright before performing (in fact I loved the attention and sought it out), I didn't really need to practice any of the instruments I tried to play. But now I do.

Buried somewhere deep, deep down inside me lives that confident child. She's just extremely hidden. Or, clutching to her last breaths, I don't know. But I still believe that I can do whatever I want to if I just put my mind to it. And when I dream about my goals, I dream that I'm successful. Not necessarily famous, but well known and respected by those I know and respect in the same field. I'm also constantly told that most people don't ever achieve the levels of success that I dream about. I know this, and I also know that I won't get anywhere near that if I don't even try, but there's the difficulty. I get scared to try, because I don't want to fail. I've not really ever failed before - I've always landed on my feet. I've also never had to really rely on being driven and working hard to do anything before. I haven't flexed those muscles in a very long time. I don't know that they won't fail me.

But unless I move on from worrying about this all the time, I will definitely fail me.

I need to move on with my life. I need to stop letting this fear of failure paralyse me. Easier said than done, but acknowledging it is at least a step in the right direction. I need to start doing. And I also need to think about what it is I want to do and why I want to do it, because achieving my goals might not even be the way to achieve what I want.

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Things I'm improving on: Keeping my room tidy.
Things I've still got a long way to go with: Updating this blog.