It took a bit of preparation, but I feel so much better for having my day off to play videogames yesterday. I’m going to do that at least once a month from now on.
It’s a busier week ahead for me now, but I’m excited to get on with some game creation (finally). It’s been getting away from me all summer and I need to make it more of a priority.
Hopefully I’ll squeeze in a few dribs and drabs of videogaming too!
A while ago, I came across the concept of ‘Shouldless Sunday’ – a scheduled day where there’s nothing on the to-do list at all. This post at Apartment Therapy explains the idea, though most of the things it suggests (crafting, cooking etc.) would not be things I would choose to do with such a day – those are most definitely things that go on the to-do list in my world!
My first reaction was that such a thing would be impossible for my life as it is now. I manage the things that are important to me (running, blogging, cleaning etc.) by doing a tiny bit of work on them every day – I find that if I break a daily habit or streak, the whole thing falls by the wayside (for instance, in the form of the six-week winter running slumps I used to have every winter before I started my daily run streak). While these important things are enjoyable hobbies, they require a fair amount of productivity, and so there’s always an extent to which they will feel like a chore sometimes. Nevertheless, I keep up my habits, because it’s the end result (being able to run a marathon, having a solid portfolio of blog posts, keeping a clean house etc.) that makes it all worth it.
However, I’ve not been able to get the idea of a completely free day out of my head. I have very nostalgic memories of being twenty, on summer break from university with no commitments whatsoever, and just rolling out of bed whenever I woke up, playing videogames all day long, and going back to bed when I was finally too tired to keep playing my game (i.e. usually about 5am). I dream of a day like that again – just one day (though I don’t think I’d be awake till 5am nowadays). As such, I’ve been having a think about how I could fit it in and still maintain my streaks. The weekend after the London Marathon seemed like a perfect time to try it out, given that I wanted a quiet weekend anyway!
The plan is this: first, minimise my daily list down to the absolute essentials – which, if pre-prepared, will take less than an hour, including a short streak saver mile run. I already do this on days that are very busy with work, big races (like last Sunday) or social commitments. Next step: on the Saturday night, stay up a little later than I typically do, and get this short list completed between midnight and 1am (the short run will be on the treadmill). Final step: off to bed, good night’s sleep, and wake up with absolutely nothing on the to-do list for the day. Living the dream!
Other than the midnight hour, I also won’t be turning on my laptop (which is something that I’ve done every day for years and years) or looking at my phone all day on Sunday, because if I do, I will just disappear down a social media rabbithole, which will waste time and cause stress. I’m instead going to disconnect from the world and stick with my videogame consoles. This makes me a bit nervous, because I always make sure to answer work emails promptly, even at the weekend – but it will just have to wait till Monday morning this time round.
This post is going out in the first hour of Sunday morning. I’ll be back online on Monday! Until then, I will be in a different (digital) world somewhere else…
I’ve been back at the physio the last couple of weeks, due to a stiff neck caused by my less-than-optimal desk setup during my busy work period. Ellie, my physio, has been using a heat pack on my neck, and suggested that I do the same in the evenings to help reduce the stiffness.
What this meant was that tonight I had to go digging through the Christmas decorations, ’cause the only heat pack I own is this wee guy:
I am pretty sure that the only other time I’ve actually microwaved the wheat bag inside and used him as a heat pack was also not at Christmas. When it is Christmas, he’s just an extra decoration.
He does feel nice on my neck though.
It’s been a great week and a half seeing family, and I’m thrilled with all the new shelves we now have in the house courtesy of my dad (more pictures to come tomorrow!) but it’s meant I’ve not had much time to catch up on all my usual things like reading and TV and music, so I’ve spent most of today doing that kind of thing, which has been nice.
Back to running tomorrow morning, some more house stuff, and a bit more catching up. It’s shaping up to be another productive week!
I’ve been buying a lot of stuff the last few weeks. At first it was all house stuff, but lately it’s been mostly treats for me. New clothes for my almost-at-target figure! New makeup for my new makeup storage unit! New shoes (quite a lot of new shoes) for…uh, they’re not for anything in particular, I just love shoes.
I mentioned before that I always feel a bit guilty if I go on a spending spree, but I’ve found it difficult to resist these last few weeks. It’s mainly because I’ve been carrying out a ruthless cull of my entire wardrobe and so the state of this particular collection is always on my mind at the moment. Post-cull, the gaps in my wardrobe are far more apparent, and there are a few areas (underwear, jeans, skirts) where I genuinely do need to buy new things.
I’m not delusional enough to think that’s the case with the shoes, obviously. But I did get rid of an awful lot in the cull, and shoes are pretty, and shoe shopping makes me feel better at the end of a difficult day. I’m very aware that I’ll need to replace this habit with something less expensive soon. Seeing as I can’t go back to binge-drinking now that I’m (sort of) healthy and slim, I imagine it’ll be baths, especially as the bath in our new house is so awesome. I just have to hope I don’t develop a ‘luxury bathing products’ obsession instead, although in fairness it would be cheaper than shoes. We’ll see what happens over the next few weeks.
After a stressful few weeks where Geth and I were anxiously waiting to find out when we could complete the purchase of our new house, we finally got a completion date on Thursday, and after a tough week at work, I thought it’d be nice to spend today relaxing before the chaos of the next week, which is going to involve packing up the rest of our stuff prior to moving day next weekend. As such, I skipped parkrun this morning and had a nice lie-in and a bath instead (I had asked Geth to get me some bubble bath specially – the best that Sainsbury’s had to offer was Radox, but that’s still so much better than the hotel freebies I’d been using before!), then spent the afternoon chilling out with my favourite blogs and my Duran Duran playlist. I feel so much better for it, too. Back to the grind tomorrow…