First of all, hey oh, this is the end of an entire year of Power 30! The actual group has wound down though I'm still fb friends and actual friends and better friends with a few people from there; but more impressively, Juanna started us off with these weekly spreadsheets that I took to like a duck to water and at this point I have amassed fifty-two of them o.O And also, I'm doing a lot better. Yay.
Secondly, a chart! It's been a while since we've had a chart:
| SUN | MON | TUE | WED | THU | FRI | SAT |
| SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP |
| yoga | walk | yoga | walk | yoga | walk | no yoga |
| HOME cook | WORK | PLAY | WORK | SYSTEMS | WORK | HOME |
| meditate | walk | meditate | walk | meditate | walk | meditate |
| SYSTEMS bills | WORK | PLAY prep | WORK prep | PLAY prep | WORK | SYSTEMS appts |
| walk | walk | walk | walk | walk | walk | walk |
| PASTIME 606 Skate | PASTIME | PLAY train | PLAY train | PLAY train | PASTIME | PASTIME |
| walk | walk | walk | no walk | walk | walk | walk |
| PASTIME read | PASTIME read | PASTIME post | PLAY post | PLAY post | PASTIME read | PASTIME read |
| stretch | stretch | stretch | stretch | stretch | stretch | stretch |
| SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP |
Ha ha, this chart. Is not self-explanatory. Or well, it's self-explanatory to myself. Probably not to yourself. I might write something more to this chart, but I might not. I mean, the one person who cares about this chart already understands it. I suppose a thing that could be said about it is, I walk a lot, all very intentionally. Also I do meditate MWF, after work, but I could choose not to. Whereas I can't choose not to walk, how would I get home. But, I almost always choose to meditate; so that's me meditating seven days a week, how about that.
The part of the chart that's relevant to this review are the blocks in white type; those are my GTD blocks, one for each area as below. Obviously Things Get Done in the other blocks, even things that push my life forward and not just the stuff that keeps my head above water (though there's that, too, certainly) but the white blocks do have a special tone of consummation devoutly to be wished. Spoiler: there's just not a lot of time in life for such things. Conceivably if I really wanted to advance on one of them, I could cut out the other three and maybe I'd get somewhere before I die. What it took for me to cut it down to four, though, was a lot. So here I am.
Kind of pursuant to being a year out from Power 30, I actually have come to a good stopping point on some of my original projects and I started July with a really excellent, restorative trip to Iowa with the supper club girls:
From which I returned with such a strong sense of starting the second half after halftime—good holiday placement, founding fathers—that it seemed like a good time to trim my sails and point my little boat toward the next thing.
July picks:HOME: Cleaning and decorating
1. I think I'm at a stopping and smelling the roses point with the front room. And it has been a year since I started this Whole Apartment Big Clean, the other rooms could probably use some love again by now? Or maybe now I can use a little of this time to get crafty? On my new sewing machine setup?!
Quite right, I used my four available blocks set aside of this as follows: 1) rested like Resty McResterface, 2) brainstormed the shape of things to come, resulting in the above chart, 3) the fridge went on the fritz again, so had to be defrosted again, and 4) giant slip and slide with an aforementioned actual friend:
I honestly don't know how much I'm going to do in my house for the rest of summer. For one, my summer is chock full of plans, and for two, there's other things that seem to urgently need doing. And, my house is clean enough for now. So I've been thinking how I think about HOME and also BODY, below. Have I told you this already? How home, body, and systems are all instruments for living. Sort of concentric instruments, or Russian nesting dolls, or Lt. Barkley interfacing with the ship's computer. And sort of the same as I fit systems into body that is also systems, home really fits into something larger that is also home: my house inside my city inside my state inside my country inside my world, which is a lot to take on. So let's not take it on all at once, let's take one step out of the house and see about this city, shall we? So I'm taking the idea of cleaning and decorating and turning that into an idea of Making a better place. That idea, is what I've done this month.
[ETA: GAH. ANTS.]
BODY: Healing my body
2a. Woosh speaking of cash flow, I have an eye appointment coming up and I need new glasses and new contacts.
Done. Also because of last month's work with my cash flow, I was able to pay for it ::power pose:: well the eye exam part, anyway. I still have to pick out the glasses and order the contacts, I can at least put off contacts for another couple months because my eyes haven't gotten any worse. Woot!
2b. Get new passport, this has been on my list forever. But cash flow :/
Not done. Maybe next month, if I have the money.
Following from the above, I'm turning this area into Sharpening the saw. Shades of Stephen Covey! It could be body, it could be systems, whatever stuff I need to keep tuned up for the revolution.
PLAY: Studying movement and muscles
3. Keep watching Functional Patterns videos.
This block is developing so nicely, I had to use 1 of 4 for catchup after Iowa but then for the 2 of 4 I finally got headphones for me to wear while watching videos:
Obviously they're great for meditating, too. And, podcasts! I'm finally starting to listen to podcasts, I started listening to the PT podcast that Juanna suggested to me last year and it's great. More about podcasts later, maybe. Over-ear headphones are such a gamechanger for me, no earbuds fit me ever; now I can fully listen, instead of always fidgeting to point the sound at my eardrum.
For 3 of 4 I made myself a ruler for drawing my stick figures:
Which I used to draw some stick figure notes about dumbbell and medicine ball exercises for the inner and outer core muscles, the real message of this video is the tiny rotation that we're talking about when we talk about thoracic rotation:
Not least, I optioned out 4 of 4 to write this review.
PASTIME: Writing
4. Keep editing and publishing recipes.
State of the Blog
Yahh, I got the ball rolling on this. I'm sorry and not sorry for starting Nomnomnomicon—sorry because it was a dumb idea, but not sorry because I sort of had to think through that dumb idea to get to the smarter idea, viz., if I feel the need to curate my better recipes, go ahead and do that but do it under the alla Poppy "brand" such as it is, and link it to my Instagram, also allapoppy, via this goodeats tag that I picked up over there, and then call it good. Which is a pretty good measure of how much attention I need: that which might follow from a sufficient trail of breadcrumbs. (Why do people say trail of breadcrumbs: the breadcrumbs don't work, the birds eat them. I suppose it's the trail of breadcrumbs that advances the plot.)
Blah blah blah, I'm working pretty steadily on publishing my goodeats collection, which is also morphing as I go, as could be expected; but the idea is to do the work of getting the broad strokes down now, and then I get to play around with short strokes... for the rest of my life? Idk. I have ideas for other things to write about besides food, you know? That's the other thing that's happening now, sooo many ideas. Finish this first, then start that. I know, I'm so strict. I won't feel right otherwise, though.
Going out
Like I said, Iowa, and the slip and slide. Also we watched UFC 200 at Minerva's house, and there were a bunch of 606 skates.
And also!
Staying in
Another season of Criminal Minds came to Netflix, so there was a teeny bit of watching that while sleeping, for the most part no bueno. (I mean, sleep was mostly bueno this month. It was no bueno when Criminal Minds was involved.) Though it's fine for enforcing a little rest before, say, going out to train folks. Though I finished it and now I've started Limitless, which I sort of love. I dooon't want to watch TV before I sleep.
Watching TV
This month we watched Pound of Flesh (JCVD!), Tim's Vermeer, Welcome to the Jungle (JCVD!), Big Trouble in Little China, Gone Girl, Veronica Mars, Zach and Miri Make A Porno, and the Sunday that we didn't skate because there was a monsoon I watched The Fundamentals of Caring, a Netflix Original starring Paul Rudd. It's weird, you know? I feel like there used to be little movies, and I guess nobody goes to see little movies in theaters and now it's all Big Movies out there. But also now there's Netflix, maybe Netflix is going to make little movies now. That would be great, I like little movies and home's a better place to watch little movies anyway. We're finishing the month watching Stranger Things, which I feel like is like watching movies set in Chicago as a person who actually lives in Chicago, except set in the eighties. Boy you know in the eighties we always played being from the fifties, I guess we're up to that point when eighties are the new fifties.
August picks:
I'm writing down one thing in each area that I want to get done next month, but also I will report back what else I did in these blocks.
HOME: Make a better place
1. Learn more about the Chicago Progressive Caucus.
SYSTEMS: Sharpen the saw
2. Order new glasses.
PLAY: Study movement and muscles
3. Keep watching Functional Patterns videos.
PASTIME: Write alla Poppy
4. Keep editing and publishing recipes.
