Early start today as our mortgage meeting was brought forward, so I’ve got a good chunk of time for the rest of the day to get on with work and admin. The to-do list is a bit lengthy this week so hopefully I’ll get that hacked down today!
Quiet evening incoming. Geth is poorly and needs to doze, and I’m fairly tired having not slept well. I sometimes feel like we’ve become a bit elderly in outlook (going out? what’s that?) but in all honesty I’m much happier this way.
It was a nice change of pace to be out for a concert last night. I was in my favourite row at the Sage Gateshead (the raised row behind the mixing desk where you can still see the stage properly when sat down, even if everybody in front of you is standing up) and I enjoyed the show. These things will remain few and far between for me, though, as I still have quite a lot of post-pandemic anxiety about going out in the evenings. I’ll review the gig eventually when I’ve caught up with my backlog.
Nice quiet day today – mainly dozing on the sofa.
This week I sort of remembered that fashion exists, largely as a result of starting to listen to music again. Music and fun clothes are sort of intrinsically linked for me because I like ’80s music videos, and ’80s music videos are full of fun clothes.
Like a lot of people, I have not really thought about clothes in a non-functional way for a couple of years now. I didn’t really go out much in 2019 because I was newly sober and trying to avoid bar situations, I’ve always worked from home anyway, and during the pandemic I have settled down into a comfortable routine of going for a run in the morning and staying in the house the rest of the day. I’ve also put on a bit of weight (also like a lot of people). As such, I only wear running gear and loungewear now and haven’t given much consideration to the way they look. Comfort is king! I even spent most of last summer merrily wandering about outside in pyjama-esque loungewear because it was marginally more comfortable and breathable than leggings.
I expect this will continue, because I expect my life will continue to provide very few reasons to dress up. I like being a hermit and would still far rather be in my own home than anywhere else in pretty much all situations. Nevertheless, I find myself itching to put together impractical outfits again (and remind myself about all the clothes I actually have in my long-unopened wardrobes – I could probably do with a bit of a de-hoarding session anyway).
No photo today as I haven’t been brave enough to dig anything out yet. Maybe soon!
This summer and beyond is starting to come together in terms of ‘gradually poking my nose back out into the outside world’. I’ve got six real races booked for the remainder of the year, with hopefully a seventh to be added when entries open, and it looks like there’s absolutely no problems with them going ahead. The restart of parkrun has been delayed from the 5th to the 26th of June (which selfishly I’m pleased about because it means the first one back doesn’t clash with a race for me), and hopefully they’ll be able to confirm enough events in the interim that the new date will go ahead. I’m excited to get back to group running again!
Geth and I will also be seeing family a few times over the next few months, but we’re adamant that that’s the only thing we’re doing that involves travel (apart from the London Marathon in October, which has been booked for a long time). Travel is very difficult for both of us – I have mental health issues about being out of routine that have become ever more obvious over the last two and a half years since I quit drinking, and Geth’s constant travelling contributed to his seizure and subsequent hospitalisation in March 2020. As such, it’s something that we know we have to minimise in the future, and so we won’t be doing nearly as many things away from home as we used to do pre-pandemic.
Finding a balance is going to be quite tough.
This week’s earworm playlists:
Saturday
Murray Gold – ‘Doomsday’
Michael Land – ‘The Swamp’
Duran Duran – ‘Five Years’
Sunday
Michael Land and Clint Bajakian – ‘Opening Credits Part #1’
Fisherman’s Friends – ‘Bully In The Alley’
Monday
Fisherman’s Friends – ‘Bully In The Alley’
Blink-182 – ‘All The Small Things’
The Offspring – ‘Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)’
Patti Smith – ‘Because The Night’
Tuesday
The Running Channel – ‘Run With Me’
Wednesday
Duran Duran – ‘Invisible’
Carter USM – ‘And God Created Brixton’
Thursday
Duran Duran – ‘Invisible’
And a bonus track Geth was humming that day:
Lisa Lougheed – ‘Run With Us’
Friday
Mark Knopfler – ‘Local Hero’
Duran Duran – ‘Invisible’
My week has been very busy, in the way that a lot of my weeks have been very busy during lockdown. Lots of day job work, lots of working on my own creative projects (writing and coding), a bit of running but not as much as is ideal due to a bad hip, quite a lot of strength training to try and fix said hip, and a lot of playtesting and competition-judging other people’s text adventures (the most fun part of my day and a good way to give back to a community that is giving me so much joy at the moment).
I’ve been working really hard recently and it’s been paying off. There have been a few developments in my editing business that I’ll talk about later in the year, I’m starting to get bits and bobs of writing published, and my text adventures are doing well and getting a good reception. I hit RED day 500 this morning – my 500th day running in a row – which is enabling me to feel like I’m still achieving things with my running even though I’m having a bad time of it with my hip and a general lack of energy at the moment.
All of this has been made possible by the pandemic allowing me to sit on my sofa all day long and get things done. I am one of the people for whom lockdown has, on the whole, been beneficial – of course I’ve had my anxious moments like everyone else, as I really don’t deal well with uncertainty, but in general I have been really, really happy having an excuse to stay home. I’ve realised more than ever that I don’t actually like leaving my house, and that it’s okay not to like leaving your house. The real anxiety I have now is adapting to the world going back to normal again. I’ve said for probably a year now that I won’t just be able to jump back into my life as it was pre-pandemic; there were a lot of things I used to do that, I have realised, caused a lot of unnecessary stress. Constantly going out to group activities and classes, gigs and races every week, travelling every other weekend… I can’t go back to all that. My personal return to normality is going to have to be very gradual, and there are a lot of things I probably never will do again.
Learning to say ‘no’, to myself as much as to anyone else, is probably going to be my biggest challenge this year. I’ve found out how important it is to feel in control of my own time. It’s a precious thing, and I’m not going to give it up.
This week’s earworm playlists:
Saturday
Michael Land and Clint Bajakian – ‘Opening Credits Part #1’
Whitesnake – ‘Here I Go Again ’87’*
Sunday
Patti Smith – ‘Because The Night’
Dee Cooke – ‘Control Room’
Monday
Dee Cooke – ‘Outside Building’
Fisherman’s Friends – ‘Sailor Ain’t A Sailor’
Tuesday
Whitesnake – ‘Here I Go Again ’87’
Wednesday
Fisherman’s Friends – ‘Haul Away Joe’
Thursday
Pet Shop Boys – ‘Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots Of Money)’
Duran Duran – ‘Tel Aviv’
Friday
Michael Land and Clint Bajakian – ‘Crete’
Duran Duran – ‘Save A Prayer’
Talking Heads – ‘Once In A Lifetime’
Ed Sheeran – ‘Lego House’
*RIP Tawny Kitaen.
I do not lead the kind of life where I should be short of free time. My work is part-time, I set my own hours, I don’t have kids, and as an introvert I don’t do much socialising even when there’s no pandemic on. I do run and blog and do a vague series of tasks (mostly accounting and logging) that I call ‘admin’ every day, but none by themselves have ever felt like they take up too much time. So where has it all been going?
In order to answer this question, last week I did what the TOMM website’s TOTT (The Organised Time Technique) book calls a ‘bootcamp’ and logged what I was doing every minute of every day for the whole week. I was expecting to find lots of periods of time lost to aimless social media scrolling and web browsing. However, while the latter did indeed account for an alarming amount of my time, I was surprised to find that I was already fairly strict about limiting the former to once a day. Although that ‘once a day’ was still taking up too much time!
In response to my findings, this week I’ve instigated a daily schedule that tells me what I need to be doing at all times. For the first half of the day, it’s very strict – this enables me to get all my daily stuff done and out of the way. Most of the afternoon is a bit freer, allowing me to work on the projects I choose (or day job work that comes in), and then I have the evenings free to relax. The main problem for me in recent years is that my to-do list takes up the whole day including the evening, and so I’m not getting any downtime. This is a good way of guarding against that – it does mean that my day is a lot less flexible, but I think I’ll get used to that. It does also feel a bit like ‘scheduled fun’, but scheduled fun is better than no fun at all because I’ve let the to-do list take over my whole day!
My new schedule also halves my social media time and eliminates random browsing from the ‘work’ part of the day. These things are huge time sinks, and I know a lot of people struggle with them these days. Social media in particular is very prone to making me feel worse about my own life (and guilty about not adding three hundred additional things per day to my already-crowded to-do list), so I really am better off minimising my time spent there.
I’ve only been doing the new schedule for a few days but I already feel so much better and more relaxed and in control!
So, what have I been using my newfound free evenings for? Well, at the moment it’s videogames (of course), but the important thing is having them free so I can unwind. In the future I might listen to music or watch favourite TV series… the world is my oyster!
Not much in the way of home improvement going on this week, but I’ve really settled into the groove of daily cleaning, especially now I’ve got the new schedule to keep it manageable.
Now for a lot of strictly-scheduled-in downtime over the weekend!
This week’s earworm playlists:
Saturday
Traditional – ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’
Duran Duran – ‘Save A Prayer’
Lindisfarne – ‘Lady Eleanor’
Men Without Hats – ‘Safety Dance’
Sunday
Audrey Hepburn – ‘Moon River’
Monday
Nintendo 3DS eShop – ‘Main Theme’
George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin – ‘I Got Rhythm’
Audrey Hepburn – ‘Moon River’
Peter Hames – ‘Ordinary Man’
The Boomtown Rats – ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’
Tuesday
Joe Hisaishi – ‘Kokoro No Kakera’
LunchMoney Lewis – ‘Bills’
Peter Hames – ‘Ordinary Man’
Wednesday
Audrey Hepburn – ‘Moon River’
Christina Aguilera and Redman – ‘Dirrty’
Thursday
The Marcels – ‘Blue Moon’
Mark Ronson and Lykke Li – ‘Late Night Feelings’
Spandau Ballet – ‘Gold’
Duran Duran – ‘Five Years’
Plus a bonus track that Geth was humming that day:
3 Daft Monkeys – ‘Paranoid Big Brother’
Friday
Duran Duran – ‘Five Years’
Nintendo 3DS eShop – ‘Main Theme’
Abba – ‘One Of Us’
Rest day mile today…
…which will hopefully set me up for the two longer weekend runs I’ll be doing over the next couple of days. Currently planning them out in order to avoid the wet weather!
I would say I’m looking forward to a ‘quiet weekend’ (I am) but in all honesty it’s been a pretty quiet week. I keep reading about things starting up again in a COVID-secure way and getting the urge to go, but I know it’ll be a big adjustment when it comes time to start leaving the house for stuff again and so I need to take it slowly.
Running vlogs as usual over the weekend, and I’ll be back to update on Monday.
Today’s earworm playlist:
Sacre – ‘The London Marathon [Theme From The Trap]’
WG Snuffy Walden – ‘The West Wing (Main Theme)’
Just a mile today…
…because I managed a fairly long run (well, long in terms of my recent efforts!) yesterday, which I was quite pleased with.
The weekend was really good. I spent most of it curled up on the sofa working on my latest game, with Geth playing Xenoblade Chronicles in the background. Today was more weekday-like though – I had a bit of day job work to do, and quite a lot of admin to catch up with. I’ve been neglecting the ‘coronawall’, which is basically a giant display of multicoloured lists pinned up on the living room wall, keeping track of all the stuff we were meant to be doing this year that got cancelled, and what’s happening with rescheduled dates and refunds and so on. After a bit of work this afternoon, it’s now up to date as far as the Great North Run, which was announced as cancelled this morning.
I still find it strange that back in early March I was still living my busy normal life, with races and parkruns and social running groups and family visits and gigs and boardgame meetups with friends and ukulele classes, and wondering why I never had time to get anything done, and then suddenly it all just… stopped. I find it even stranger that I still feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day!
I don’t really see my own life going back to the way it was, either, even if the world does eventually. The occasional event will be nice, but this year has proven to me that I need to spend the vast majority of my time at home, just me and Geth. The improvement in my mental health over the last three months has been absolutely immeasurable, despite the situational anxiety of COVID and everything else that’s happening.
Another nice productive day tomorrow, I hope.
Today’s earworm playlist:
Yoko Shimomura – ‘Colony 9’
Pet Shop Boys – ‘On Social Media’
Just a mile again today…
…as I wanted a relaxed bank holiday Friday after a busy week. Longer runs planned for tomorrow and Sunday.
There are a few synthwave livestreams to which I’m looking forward tonight, so I’ve spent the afternoon with my favourite synthwave playlist on in the background in order to get in the mood. Watching and listening to DJ livestreams from my sofa is the kind of clubbing I appreciate in my older sober hermit days! It’s a beautiful day, so Geth has gone out for a walk to Sainsbury’s to get us some more liquid supplies (that bottle of alcohol-free fizzy went down a treat last night, so I’m looking forward to having another one).
The lovely weather has also meant that Geth has been able to go out and do his regular garden maintenance. I have meanwhile spread out the new gravel to try and cover the exposed areas of the webbing in the back garden. It seems we could do with another couple of bags, so I reckon a return trip to B&Q is in our near future.
I’ll be doing my usual review posts and running vlogs over the weekend, so the next life update will be Monday. I’m fairly sure nothing out of the ordinary will have happened by then, but you never know 🙂
Today’s earworm playlist:
Peter Cetera – ‘Glory Of Love’
Nobuo Uematsu – ‘Zanarkand’
Vera Lynn – ‘We’ll Meet Again’
Sesame Street – ‘Sesame Street Theme’
A slight diversion on a usual running route today…
…which made it a three-mile-plus run. Always good to get the extra distance in.
I’ve been feeling like my personal fashion style has changed again recently. When I reached my target weight in 2018 and had to buy a whole new wardrobe as a result, I went for a mixture of timeless investment pieces, which I knew would last me for life if I took care of them, and fun vintage finds, which satisfied my obsession with ’80s fashion.
I have not worn any of that stuff in months. My lifestyle, even before the lockdown, has shifted to that of a sort of active homebody – I get up in the morning and change into running gear, and after my run I go for my shower and then throw on a comfy leggings/t-shirt/jumper combo, because I know I’m going to be spending the rest of the day either on the sofa, doing housework, or doing a bit of yoga or Pilates. The numerous pairs of good quality jeans I bought two years ago are not comfy or casual enough for a spontaneous yoga session. My vintage ’80s stuff, other than my well-loved collection of cosy winter jumpers, is too fancy for lounging around the house. I have not worn shoes other than running shoes for over a month: I have two pairs in rotation for actual running, and one ancient pair that I use for going out to the garage or garden.
Even pre-lockdown, I rarely had anything to go to that required dressing up – nobody minds what you wear to Slimming World or ukulele class, and even poetry night is far from a formal affair. This year, I have only been out of leggings a handful of times – New Year’s Day, the LeBrock gig, a couple of family meals in February… and I think that’s about it. Most of my leggings cost £2 from Primark, but they’re getting a LOT more wear than the £50 jeans hanging in my wardrobe.
I’m not about to get rid of what I bought in 2018 – there may come a time when I’m interacting with the world on a regular enough basis that I might make the effort to wear something with actual fastenings again, although I expect it will be a slow road out of lockdown for me personally seeing as I’m appreciating the peace and quiet so much – but I don’t see myself buying any more investment pieces or filling up my bag at vintage fairs again for a good couple of years at least.
I may start spending slightly more than £2 on leggings though, seeing as they’ve been so good to me recently.
Today’s earworm playlist:
Hiroki Morishita – ‘Just Across This Mountain And We’ll Arrive Soon’
Nina Nesbitt – ‘Stay Out’
Nobuo Uematsu – ‘On Our Way’
Cast of The Muppet Christmas Carol – ‘It Feels Like Christmas’
Red Hot Chili Peppers – ‘Road Trippin”
Duran Duran – ‘A View To A Kill’
Gordon Duncan – ‘Sleeping Tune’*
*This has been an earworm today because Dad recorded a nyckelharpa version and put it on YouTube. Well recommended for the Scottish scenery pictures.