For me, right now: May 2019

It’s been a really mild Autumn and we’ve been trying to make the most of it

Some of you may have picked up that I’ve been a bit absent around here lately. I decided to take a bit of a rest.

We had some very sad times as our dear wee kitten Lenny passed away. He was a very special young cat who became a big part of our family so quickly. For a few weeks, the only post I could have written was a whole page of “I miss Lenny”.

At the same time, I took on a big piece of work in a new subject area. My brain hurt. With the new work came a new, more demanding schedule and I needed to recalibrate my usual routines. I just didn’t have the bandwidth for blogging.

I took a different approach than I would of a couple of years ago. Rather than letting the words “do blog” languish unchecked on my to-do list and feel guilty about it, I got real. I looked at the time and energy I had available and made a choice to hit pause. Instead of feeling bad about not blogging for six weeks, I’ve been looking forward to getting back to it for six weeks. Big difference.

Since I last posted, the term one school holidays have been and gone. I was a bit bummed as we were constrained by my new work load. Not that we’d likely have done any more, just that we didn’t have the option. Of course, I needn’t have worried. Simply dispensing with the usual routines provided plenty of highlights. Not having anywhere to be in the morning (particularly appreciated by the adults) and the start of a new tradition (inherited from my husband’s childhood) – stay-up-as-late-as-you-want night!

What I’ve been:

• Reading – a lot of work-related things, but also Normal People by Sally Rooney. Miserable, but compulsive.
• Listening to – spilling milk on my headphones limited by listening for a while. Two highlights were the discussion about “enough” (my word of 2019) in this episode of Hurry Slowly and this episode about busyness and limiting your gurus on The Simple Show.
• Making – a crochet string bag for my son – we now have a family set.
• Thinking about – a winter break in the sun and how it will thoroughly erase all my environmental efforts for the year, if not several years.

How have you been? Let me know what you’ve been up to lately.