wellness

Busy

/ annamurray / Leave a comment

I have been busy. Things I have wanted to maintain have slipped a little. I have five or six posts begun but not continued. Sometimes they are begun and then I don’t get to the checking it stage before it really is too late to post it. Sometimes they are begun and I just don’t get to continue.

There has been a lot more work. This is good. This is also maybe slightly less good. Good because it reduces the financial stress considerably. Pay for me is dependent on how many words I type, so this work is not necessarily necessary but it definitely helps a lot. Pay rate for me is also assessed and reevaluated every four months, and word count is a part of that. As I only work four days, the extra work I’m getting kind of equates to an almost extra day and so bumps up my ranking. 

Extra work is maybe slightly less good, though, because I am now working a lot. C taking foorrrreeevvvvvveerrrrr to go to bed at night makes it harder, and I don’t want to keep saying “I have work to do” for her to be convinced to go to bed. Not that what I want or need makes any difference to her willingness to go to bed, of course, but language is important, and I don’t want the soundtrack of her childhood to be “I have to work”. I’m not keen for “We can’t afford that”, either, but I’ll work on phrases. More work also means less time to think and to write for this blog and to sew and to crochet. Right now the balance is in favour of work in order to relieve the financial stress but it is on the cusp.

Another big factor in reduction of my writing is children. Yes. Children. I wake at 5 for this (or work). S has been waking often just after 4 and insisting I sleep on the floor in their room which is fine but then I wake just before 5 and want to be in my bed for a bit and then I sleep right through the 5am alarm and then there’s the 5.30 alarm and E is then wanting me to hold her hand and then we’re kind of at 6am and I might have made my cup of tea by then but now E is up and wanting to either be on me and help or wanting to watch something which is lovely but distracting and often S is needing something around this time too so I am left with a full cold cup of tea and needing to go on a walk but it now has to be a short walk and should I even bother or should I try for a kettlebell workout later on. If work is due or if I have a lot of it to do, then that will win over any writing or exercise. 

Still, there is always hope. The last two weeks I have not really done any work Thursday night or Friday or Saturday and then Sunday night has been the first for some extra work and then I have slogged it out until Thursday morning. This week will be different. Small portions creates more balance. I plan on having some time not working – Thursday night was free, and Friday morning and most likely Friday night. The weekend, though, will have just a little bit in the mornings and evenings in order to keep this as a bit instead of taking over my life for four days. That’s the hope. 

Right. Where’s that kettlebell.

How to do this

/ annamurray / Leave a comment

Thinking I’ll get back to the blog this year is all very well, but how? How can I find time in my life to get my thoughts out and write about all the stuff of our life? I had thought that after children were asleep would be the go, but no. That is turning into grownup conversation time – you know, the chance to talk about the little things of our day or that we’ve come across while scrolling and not have small people wanting our attention or needing our help or screaming about whatever it is that they are screaming about now.  (It seems at least once a week I come across something on Instagram demonstrating how hard it is to talk with another adult when you have children around. It’s like watching a movie of our family). Plus, I’m often now falling asleep on the floor in the girls’ room so that they can all feel safe when they go to sleep. Amazing, sure, but it really cuts into Me Time.

So, how? Recently I have started to make changes in my life. I have been just a little bit overweight since just before becoming pregnant with E and nothing I was doing seemed to help. I started a course that is helping me lose weight but also helping with life. It is all about small habits that can stick and become just what you do. My big block to losing weight was exercise. I couldn’t exercise the way I wanted when I wanted because children were around and Glenn works random hours so I couldn’t get into an exercise habit. But I made myself work out how I could find time to exercise every day and realised that, actually, getting up at 5.30 and going for a walk is totally my thing so that’s what I do now. An extra habit to help this is to put my walking clothes in the bathroom the night before. The girls know now that if I’m not there, I’m walking, and they are fine with daddy and jigsaw puzzles and books and Bluey.

Over the weekend I thought of what I was wanting to write about next and felt stymied when I just couldn’t do it. So I had a think. How was this going to work? When am I going to find time to write? Well, before the exercise. I can definitely wake at 5 and make myself a cup of tea and enjoy a bit more Me Time before going for a walk. It has the same drawback as trying to do a home workout, in that in the last 15 minutes, for example, I have investigated E whimpering (needed the quilt back over her) and thought that S was waking up and would therefore need me and then be all delightful and excited to be up and going for a walk with me but I think her random cry of ‘I GET UUPPPP’ was actually the flipping around in the cot sound and she might be back asleep. I will check in a moment.

So there it is. New year, new habit. Will this last? I hope so. Do I feel excited about this? Definitely for real life sure as sure. Will I manage to go to bed earlier in order to counter the earlier wake? We’ll see.

Update: S was fast asleep. Plus, I was much more energetic on my walk because I had been awake for a bit already instead of stepping out, bleary-eyed, trying to wake up while I exercised. Winning.