I've had a big overall epiphany this month—I'm doing a little better, by the way, sleeping more and crying less—that despite paring my life down to just (!) four (!) projects, that's still too much for me, and a related little epiphany that this is my repeating pattern, that when I find myself in the dumps, I can usually look up at the molehill that I've turned into a mountain and tumbled down. Probably having this epiphany is part of the pattern. And either I accept that this is my pattern, that I pile whatever fool shit up to make a mountain to climb, climb it, tumble down, cry, lay in the dirt listening to the loons, pick myself up and brush myself off, and then get interested in some new shit and start a new pile, and that's just how it goes, OR POSSIBLY I change. The fucking. Pattern and stop piling up shit for the love of god. Or at least pile it less high. Or you know some of this stuff underfoot I've been thinking is ground level, maybe actually I've been four feet up for some time and could stand to shovel some out. Like if I can't make the sky overhead higher, I can maybe give myself some headroom by making the ground under my feet lower.
Like, maybe this blog. Definitely maybe the other blog.
That's where I am right now, thinking about that.
April picks:
HOME: Cleaning and decorating
1. DO ONE THING for front room big clean >:|
YASSS. I've been stuck thinking that I should go through and trash a lot of my stuff before moving my furniture around, and then not feeling like going through my stuff, and finally I put the cart right in front of the horse and went ahead with moving my furniture around.
Which displaced a lot of my stuff, which I now have to deal with—all of that is just off camera. But, it was absolutely the right thing to do. It has improved the flow of the front room SO MUCH, I feel like it might have energized me enough to deal with all this stuff. Which I have begun dealing with, a little bit.
BODY: Healing my body
2a. Continue bodywork, see dentist, see Biggie for hair, and also schedule doctor.
In progress, done, done, and done. Did you know, you can book a doctor's appointment online now, in bed, at like 11:00PM, after completely forgetting to call the doctor's office all day because you were so busy at work. It also eliminates that little roulette when the receptionist asks you when you would like your appointment and I'm not saying this is high suspense, but it's a little suspense before she says, Would you like to come in at 8:20? And you organize yourself to not say, "God no," and blandly ask, "Do you have something closer to noon?" On the internet, nobody knows that you're a dog. Well obviously, I post pretty regularly to the internet about being a dog. I'm just saying, online booking is faster. You can see all the choices. Wow.
2b. Draft a plan for doing taxes better.
Not done. This was overscheduled.
PLAY: Studying muscles
3. Start studying muscles.
Done! By which I mean, started! I did open the book of muscles and looked at a few of them, but I feel like I need some sort of study structure to feel really underway with this. Otherwise though I actually have done quite a bit in this area, even that which could be called studying—just more client-focused studying, questions that came up with my clients that I had to research further.
And also, I renewed my personal trainer certification.
Also also, I attended a yoga teacher training class that Box taught! I am not a yoga teacher of course, but I was proud to be able to hang with that class on the strength of my DIY yoga of the past nine months and grateful to take away a couple good seeds for thought. I feel like this might be an okay way for me to proceed: grow out a good amount of work on my own, and then pop into a class now and again for a little shave and a haircut.
PASTIME: Writing for my two blogs
4. HERE'S THE PLAN: April OFF, minimal writing only; May, return to Shark Week; June, start Nom :|
April OFF, done? All I did was post my plank workouts this month. Though each of those took a whole morning to video, upload, and write up, so like four mornings this month. I think that's about the level of engagement I want for this blog, so what to do with the rest of this to do list.
State of the Blog
Should I just cancel Nom? Ugh idk, it just needs one little push to be at a stopping point, then maybe I could just leave it at that? What is Nom anyway, well, it would be a more curated collection of recipes that I could cook from; I was hoping to use it as my personal cookbook. How much work actually is "one little push," Munt. ATTEMPT TO BE ACCURATE. I don't know! It's more work than I was doing for those plank workouts and that felt like more than enough to me. If I'm going to work on Nom to finish, I think I'm going to have to not work on alla Poppy until Nom is finished. Which means, death to Shark Week, but even more it means, death to "oh I'm just going to post this little video about planks." Is it not possible that you could ...do a little more? I am giving this serious thought, and I don't think so. Doing a little more is what always gets me into this mess. Doing a little more is my go to, and how's that working out for me.
Try. The Other. Thing.
You know what I want? I want Nom to be done, and then to leave it alone. And then I just want to post burning desires to alla Poppy, however often I have those. But in order for Nom to be done, nobody else is going to do it. I have to do it, and I don't really have a burning desire. So maybe I should just let it go, but I don't know about that either. I want it to be done! I believe that I can eventually make this decision, I did finally let go of the idea of being fluent in French. I am finally going through and organizing all the payroll taxes and insurance files at work, and it's much better now. Courage or serenity, courage or serenity, which of these...
Going out, seeing people
Pretty fun month: we went to the WCR vs BCB bout at the Armory, then to cheer on Box at her jiu-jitsu match...
She are the champion, my friends...
...and then Trouble's birthday/wine party, and also Nina organized a special Whole Animal Service supper club at Frontier and we ate a whole wild boar o.O
Staying in, Netflix and chill
Yes I know, that's not what Netflix and chill means. But language, ever evolving! You can't stop the signal, Mal.
Sleeping TV
I finally started to sleep okay around the second week of April, lost it for a couple nights, then the third week of April was GREAT, and then I lost it again for another couple nights, finishing out the month back on track. Throughout all this, it hasn't seemed to matter if I'm watching TV at bedtime or what I'm watching, but for the record it's been Midsomer Murders so back on the police procedural kick. But it seems like if I'm going to sleep, I sleep right through it; if I'm not going to sleep, I'm watching it all night. Or really what happens is, I do sleep but not deeply and wake up between episodes just enough to click to the next episode. I did find where I could turn off autoplay on Netflix; that seemed to help a bit, until it didn't.
Lately though I've been thinking that temperature has a lot more to do with whether I sleep through the night and have been removing blankets and putting an ice pack under my head; but the weather's been so changeable, I haven't been able to run a consistent enough experiment to draw conclusions from.
The self-soothing is working though: if not to get me back to sleep when I wake up in the middle of the night, at least to keep me from snowballing and taking out the whole next day.
Working TV
Weirdly, working TV has mostly gone away. If I'm watching Midsomer Murders during the day, I'm just out for the count and not even trying at all. If I am working though, I haven't been able to have TV in the background. That's good, I think?
Watching TV
We watched a few good movies this month: Legend, where Tom Hardy plays twins (truthfully, I fell dead asleep in the middle of that), Kung-Fu Panda 3, and Selfless, which has Ryan Reynolds, with DC Legends of Tomorrow and Lucifer filling in around them.
May picks:
1. DO ONE MORE THING for front room big clean!
2a. Continue bodywork, see doctor.
2b. Draft a plan for doing taxes better.
3. Continue studying muscles, either client-focused or set up a study structure.
4. Let's try May OFF too, see how that feels...
