juliebarkley

Also, looking at my very first post on this battle log, at some point I need to review the wider plan, general-sense-of-direction planning. But now is not that time. Soon. But not yet.

https://rebellion.nerdfitness.com/index.php?/topic/122512-juliebarkleys-tentative-next-steps/

Last challenge I did a bunch of thinking about where I am at right now in life, how I am spending my time, and what I would like to change and stay the same in future. It was rather a lot, and I am not going to rehash it, but it is here for reference for anyone who would like to catch up. There are four things that I'd like to work on for this challenge period. 1. A few challenges back, I made a list of places that I could go to meet people. I haven't really followed up on that. Now, it is the depths of winter so some people are hibernating, but indoor activities are shelters from the cold. So I'm going to drag out that list, make sure it's up to date, and get myself out to clubs and events and things. I would like to attend four in-person things that are not my regular D&D group, but this may depend on the schedule. It is okay to not click with the people, or to find that it's not my thing. What matters is to try. 2. One of the things that negatively affects me but that I can control is the piles of stuff I have around. Not physical stuff (mostly), but informational stuff. It makes me feel like I'm always behind - very FOMOish. I am going to try using the Konmari method that has worked so well for me for physical stuff on my informational stuff. I've made a list of all of the different "baskets" where things have piled up, and I'm going to set aside time every day (more or less, depending on the day) to go through the pieces one by one and think about whether this email list/podcast subscription/etc. adds value to my life and makes me happy. Do I look forward to it or consume it out of duty? Do I need and use the information? Are there individual episodes of this that I can get rid of, even if the list itself is valuable? And so on. Hopefully I will be able to remove a lot of stuff I no longer want and leave myself with things I really value. I will not finish this in this challenge, but a start is always good. 3. I've fallen into a negative mindset, where I have lost faith in my own inner strength and resilience. I need to find ways to build my self-esteem and self-confidence, to feel like I matter, and to just help myself be more emotionally stable and in control. I'm not 100% sure what this will look like, but I'm kind of hoping that #1 and #2 will help with this. I may try meditation or gratitude journalling or just mindfully highlighting beautiful moments. I may work on prayer on another more spiritual angle. I may just try finding things to counter the negative thoughts that tear me apart. I really haven't decided yet. But there's still a few days before the challenge starts to figure it out. 4. As a step towards #3 and also a nod towards exercise, I'm going to take a walk every day. It can be short or long, alone or with someone else. But a walk. Every day. Even to the end of the driveway and back if I really cannot force myself to do more than that. Happy challenge all!

I hope so. The prospect of facing life alone is daunting. But things like eating alone at restaurants? Yeah, I can handle that. Raising a child still isn't cheap. We have reached the higher education stage. 😂 But it will be fine. I see that the heading has ticked over from "current" to "previous" challenge, so I shall get on with the planning stage.

New thoughts here, for this time of life transition:

All right, last day of challenge. Time to sum up my findings. This is going to be long. This challenge has been an interesting journey. Where I ended up was not exactly where I thought I would be when I began, nor was the way that I got here. But it has been good. I have learned some things, and I have more to learn. I started out gathering data on how I spend my time outside of work. This has been useful, and I will come back to it, but the first and most critical thing I learned for this journey forward came from elsewhere. So, my first assumption was that since my transition involves my child leaving home, that maybe things written for "empty nesters" might have some good ideas to learn from. I didn't get too far here, because what I read was not in the least bit relevant to me, but that in itself was revealing. The stuff I found was written almost exclusively for women (which I am; this might be the only relevant point 😄) who are pivoting from defining themselves and giving their lives to the role of "mother" at the expense of their own hobbies and interests, and who need to find themselves again. There is an assumption that you are entering or reentering the work force, that you have a husband that you can devote your time and energy to to "rekindle the relationship". They advise that you also devote more time to your friends (which assumes that your friends are at the same life stage and have this time to devote to you!) and that if you don't have friends, just go out and make some! 🙄 I am sure there are people for whom this stuff is relevant, but those people are not me. I never abandoned my hobbies or my work, never defined my life so heavily by motherhood that I feel lost without it, and don't have a husband or local friends to devote myself to. My transition feelings are very different, but I was having trouble articulating exactly what they were. I figured it out when I stumbled across a Facebook post by an acquaintance. Her husband is dying, and she has been his caretaker for almost a year now. She is preparing herself for life after he is gone by researching travelling alone. This does not on the face of it sound at all like my situation, but it is actually exactly the emotional problem I am facing. My son is leaving home, but it's not the typical empty nester situation, and this post made me realize why. I have lost my bravery and comfort in being alone. I was comfortable in my youth travelling and doing stuff by myself; didn't think much of it. And it was great. Then, I met my ex-husband, and by the time I divorced, I had a young son. So from that age, I wasn't alone anymore. I had my husband or son living with me for companionship, and to go out and enjoy things with. Experience the world with. THAT is what I am losing in this transition, and that comfort and bravery in being alone is what I need to regain. I believe that I can - I truly was quite happy doing my own thing in my youth, and I am not so different that I don't think it can be revived. It's just been easier to do things with someone else. (And sometimes more fun, but it really depends on the thing. Some things are not better with someone else there, just different. And some things are more fun alone.) I need practice, that's all. I need to get out and do things that I will enjoy by myself, and ENJOY THEM BY MYSELF. However, there is something that I want to do differently from how I did it in my youth. Back then, I did a poor job of maintaining the friendships I made in high school, and also a poor job of making new ones in university. I had no support network. This I would like to change. The chances of me ever having a "significant other" are quite low (you know the odds are bad when you have to do math. 😆) I plan to make some attempts just to see, but I am keeping my expectations low. But that may not be what's best for me anyway. I think my ideal is to have significant otherS - a group of friends who are like family to me, where we love and support each other. Like the Golden Girls, except they probably don't all know each other and don't all live in the same house. (Though wouldn't that be AWESOME???) I would like for at least some of these people to be local, because while distance friendships are truly wonderful, certain important practical forms of support, like helping each other when sick or feeding cats to allow travel, are not possible, and as I age alone those things are going to be increasingly important. My internal pressure to get out and make friends has been driven by both a genuine desire for a connection and the practical knowledge that I am going to need a support network that I do not presently have. I definitely do need to give this more priority than I have in terms of my actions. Okay, now circling back to my time diary, where I figured out how I was spending my time and how I was not. My goal here was not only to figure out where my hours were going, but what was making me feel happy and fulfilled and what was not. Repeatedly, the things that I noted as taking a long time but where I didn't regret it were when I was doing something with my son or other people. Social things. (Especially talking, like where my son and I are taking walks or I am just listening to him tell about his day. That's what really builds relationships, imo.) Plays into the previous paragraph. As long as I don't overschedule myself, this is all good. I also noted in my notes that I was lacking in community connection/volunteering type things lately, and giving back brings purpose and fulfillment. This is different from the social notes above, but also related. But there's plenty of other stuff of course - work, gaming, reading. I was surprised to learn that some of the work that I do from home actually does make me feel fulfilled and happy, because it is fun and lets me be creative. Some of it is drudgery though, and I would rather leave that to the time they are paying me. And other than reading, I didn't have very much that hit the "creative and fun" box. I have not been knitting or tatting or any of the other hobbies I have dabbled in. This is something to work on. I have also been shortchanging myself on self-care. I had a lot of days where I was mentally exhausted after work, and I threw myself into a game because that was all that I could do at that time. This is all right in the moment, but it doesn't make the problem (or my life) any better. The things that help in the long-term, such as exercise, are lacking. I even noted that I should look to meditation again, as I am lacking "moments of joy". Other than work, the main things that can contribute to my stress are not knowing I have enough invested to give me security down the line (rising cost of housing/living not helping!), and just feeling behind in things. The economic security I am actively working on - I have a plan and am also working on a backup plan for if things get so bad here that I cannot afford to stay. That helps a lot - I am controlling what I can control, and I don't think there's much I can change here. The feeling behind is a thing that has cropped up before when doing these thinking tasks, and it is a combination of two things - letting stuff pile up until it becomes overwhelming, and taking in too much stuff by being bad at saying no. While I have some physical stuff to go through, I've been pretty good at minimizing the physical clutter. It's INFORMATIONAL clutter that I am bad with. My piles of paper are full of interesting things to try. I have stacks of library books far larger than I will ever read. I get too much email, follow too many YouTube channels, etc. And somehow I feel like I need to do and learn it ALL, even though that is impossible, and the unrealistic pressure of that mountain of information is stressful. And entirely self-imposed - it's pure FOMO. I just want to know and understand all of the things. 😅 I could use some advice on managing this information hoarding tendency if anyone has it to give. I definitely still need to work on this. I can't say that I have "found my purpose" or solved all of my problems through this exercise. But I think I have a better idea of where I am, and a sketched-out map for where I need to be going. (Some areas still lacking detail - "Here there be dragons.") If you read this far, thank you. I hope that maybe something of this may help you as well in some way.

I don't have the energy for a proper update today. I shall put up the conclusions I came to based on observations and thinking before challenge end, but I feel like I still have a long way to go.

I spoke a wee bit soon, it turns out. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My Tuesday began with learning that my coworker's parent had unexpectedly died, and that the room I was supposed to use for a Girl Guide group that night was double-booked, which left us scrambling for staffing and space. But my program went well (better than if it had been in the room, actually), and my coworker is doing okay, so this is all manageable chaos that is winding down (fingers crossed). I feel like I am not going to have a solid plan going forward by the end of this challenge, but maybe that's okay. My observations have already led to dropping some small activities that no longer brought value. I do need to figure out more clearly what I want, what adds value, and what does not, and I have begun that process, but it's not a set-it-in-stone kind of thing. It's going to involve some experimentation and false steps as I work out what works best for me. I'm not great at letting things flow without a plan, but that might be the way forward for the moment. That the plan is not to have a plan. Just for now. So that the path becomes a little clearer. Anyway, I've just started reading Designing Your Life, which I'd heard good things about, to help me with this rethinking process. At the moment it seems more career-focused which is not really what I was looking for, but we shall see.

Thanks! I think I'm through the worst of it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Exam season is done, my son is on a plane, and tomorrow's event is completely planned. All the chaos that directly affects me is resolved, with only one item still being outcome unknown. I can live with that. I have taken some time off this weekend to do very little of anything, and I am now feeling much more refreshed mentally and able to think about planning and just anything beyond today really. So I shall get on with doing that before the end of the challenge, which is rapidly approaching.

Amen to that. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chaos has rolled on again, with some assurance that it will work out on Monday. We shall see. At least I didn't have to phone and then get yelled at by my ex; was not looking forward to that prospect. Might still have to though - I can think of three very possible ways that Monday could go wrong. I spent the whole day playing games of various sorts and reading a little, and I regret none of it. This break was so, so needed.

Thanks guys! This past week (and possibly the next few days) have been just crazy. Sample items: my son almost got jumped at his workplace, I almost had the cops called on me, and I had to give a witness statement for an accusation I didn't even know about until that day. I've had a headache for a couple of days just from dealing with it all. I would very, very much appreciate some stability and plain old boring predictable days right about now.

Thanks! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have taken some notes on what makes me happy and what unhappy; what I want more of and what I want less of in future. But it feels like it needs to percolate a bit before I draw conclusions on it, so I will sleep on it and see if anything more bubbles to the surface. It seems pretty obvious that the next seven months or so, until my son is in college, are going to be unpredictable. There is a lot of travel going on, there has been recent drama with family and work, and things are just pretty unstable, changeable, and inconsistent. I should keep my expectations low until I can actually make plans that I can count on. That doesn't mean that I can't make plans, but my planning should be loose and flexible and with the goal of setting myself up to be okay later rather than achieving things for right now. This is a transition time.

Did not mean to vanish, just haven't found the time to make it back over here. I've had some late-night convos with the son, work nights where I was too tired to make it back to the computer, and I've just been cried on by a very drunk girl for a solid hour while reassuring her that I don't hate her. This is not the sort of thing that one budgets their time for - worth doing but out of one's control. Tomorrow (well, technically today) is my birthday. That feels like a really really good time to finally do the thinking and processing part of this challenge. For tonight though, I'm going to go distract myself with some light YouTube videos, or reading, or something else low-stakes. It's been quite the evening.

My time tracking was also pretty bad for the last couple of days, unfortunately. But it shouldn't be too hard to make a solid estimate. Yesterday, I was mostly working on a project. Of the time I was not, I spent about 2 hours gaming, 30 minutes eating, and 2 hours playing board games with my son and his new girlfriend. She said that she had never played a board game before, so she had a lot to learn. She got really nervous during pick-up sticks; it was kind of hilarious. Today I worked for only an hour or so on the project, did 1-1.5 hours of internetting, maybe an hour of gaming, helped my son with his essay for almost an hour and talked for an hour more, and walked for an hour. That doesn't add up to a whole day, but I'm not sure about the rest. It was probably on the computer though.

SAME. Why the compulsive need to finish, so that fun turns into not fun turns into work? Don't get it either, but I do it too. Well... sometimes timing is a thing. Like, if someone has just miscarried a child, you do not call them up to tell them how the thing they said at lunch yesterday hurt your feelings. That WOULD be very selfish. But I get your point. Thanks guys. My rational brain needs some prodding sometimes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The last two days have been a bit of a blur on the time-tracking front. I have had a headache since getting home from work yesterday, and I have come down with something that's making me feel bleh. So I've been flipping between closing tabs, reading, games, the most mindless work possible, harder work, just sitting there with my eyes closed, and so on as energy and concentration allow. It's been the sort of day where having 5-minute tasks to do (and books with nice short sections) has been super useful. But as to how much time I have spent on any one thing, I have no idea. I can't focus well, so I've been switching it up sometimes every 5-10 minutes. Not going to include these last couple of days in the general time tracking evaluations because they are not "usual", but still good to remember that I do indeed get sick, being human and all, and so this sort of day happens. Any sort of future plan has to take that into account.

Yeah, and if it's a game with an end to it, that's not such a bad thing. Then it's like a page-turning book. You just might want to take a break before starting the next in the series or whatever, or time it so that you can immerse yourself when your life will permit it. It's the endless ones that are an issue, because the addictive cycle never ends. I'm so glad that MMOs never appealed to me, because that could have been my whole life down the drain right there if they did. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I ran out of energy very early today. I had some trouble sleeping because of thinking about stuff, which never helps. I was actually still in tears on the way in to work. But then, I had two coworkers going through actual genuine big-deal crises, one absent and one breaking down at work, and got home and found two friends also having a big thing to deal with. So I not only feel bad and self-indulgent for my own little difficulties earlier when other people are dealing with so much more, but I'm also trying to give them some support while also dealing with the regular day-to-day stuff of work. I got a couple of hours of sleep in after I got home, but I was just never able to get off a very low energy level. Nothing is interesting right now, and I don't want to do anything. Might go to bed two hours early just because, what else is there to do? Edit: given how many errors I made while getting this post to its final form, bed is the correct place for me. Night!

Or, bringing conscious attention makes one act more consciously. It CAN be. But mine isn't always. I consider good leisure time to be something that enriches you in some way - gives you a creative outlet, immerses you in a story, etc. - that leaves you feeling satisfied afterward. Ideally anyway - a much-looked-forward-to book could end up a terrible letdown for instance. A game consciously chosen can certainly be this. But bad leisure time isn't so satisfying or enriching. It can be just a way to kill time, relieve stress (when something like movement would be more beneficial), hold off boredom when something more engaging could be selected, to procrastinate on something that needs doing (especially sleep), or it can be good time gone bad, if it becomes a bit addictive and sucks time needed for other areas of life. My present gaming is falling more into the bad leisure category than the good, especially when it takes up many hours (I guess I have an addictive personality). Same. Welcome! These transition times are a good opportunity to reevaluate for sure. I hope you figure out what you want to add (and subtract) to make your personal "better"! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Before work: 30 minutes gaming 1 hour work 30 minutes... talking? Something like that. After work: Getting home routine including exercise: 30 minutes. I was go go go today at work (even though there weren't that many customers) and I didn't want a really physically demanding program, so I picked Vitamin, which is more about technical skill. Concentrating on that and doing the same movements for several minutes at a time helped slow my brain and was relaxing. Gaming: 1 hour. Food: 30 minutes. I'm missing just under an hour of time in there, not sure what it was. We finally got the snow that we've been missing so far this winter. It was pretty bad on the way into work, even though it only started falling around noon, but by the time I left work, it was mixed with rain and freezing on the road in chunks. That was about 9pm. My son didn't leave his work until midnight, and he described our street as "apocalyptic". I wonder if it will all be cleared up by the time I head into work - it's supposed to get even worse overnight. Getting tired, so going to take a book to bed and then sleep. I've been reading Barakamon when I need to wind down for a little bit now, and I recommend it if you are looking for light reading with short chapters that are mostly episodic. My library describes it as a "heartwarming island comedy". It's about a calligrapher from Tokyo who moves to the Goutou Islands (a very remote area of Japan) after punching the director of a calligraphy competition where he came in second. He meets the quirky islanders, including a number of children (his home was formerly their "secret base"). The chapters are a little bit fish-out-of-water stories where he learns about fishing and other bits of island life, and a lot funny moments of daily life with the kids (who love him).

Right now I have a list that I put into random.org because it was too long for the dice technique to be manageable. So, adapted the technique, but yes, still use it. The picking-the-easy-thing was more for what was supposed to be fun free time, not work time. I don't really want to roll dice for that, because I want to choose what seems fun in the moment. I just don't want the books I want to read and the yarn that wants to be knit into things and the board games that haven't been played yet to be ignored in favour of less satisfying things just because they are easier to grab or more visible in the moment. But that is what is happening. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- I kept a poor accounting of my time today, so my "time diary" is more of a "time rough description". I did a mix of things: cooking (onion bhajis!), work (off my long long list), going through library books that needed returning (7 now off my holds rotation!), and some gaming (but not excessive like yesterday). I spent more than 1 hour on cooking/eating, and more than two hours on each of the other things. I am becoming painfully aware that cleaning has not happened in any serious way, and that is going to have to change. The clutter is not nice to look at or move through and probably adds a level of background stress that I don't need.

Indeed! I just have to remember that this is a tool that I can use in these situations. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Time diary: Gaming: ...um... about 3.5 hours. Maybe 4. It was a lot. Work: did stuff off my list for perhaps 2 hours. Talking with my son: 1 hour. I just went to show him something quick but we always get to talking. Not complaining about that; I consider it time well-spent. There have to have been other things, but I do not know what they were. Today was a lesson in the potential pitfalls of unstructured time. I would be sitting and thinking of what to do next and coming up blank, so I drifted to the easiest option for "just a few minutes". 🤦‍♀️ I may not have made the level 50 life evaluation yet, but I know that there are things that I want to do with my free time - crafting, reading, exploring town, etc. - and that I'm not currently choosing them because they are not top of mind and at the tips of my fingers. This is going to be a thing to think about.

Time diary: 30 minutes gaming on getting home from work 30 minutes eating/talking to family 1 hour general computing 3.5 hours D&D (well, Genesys) 1.5 hours general computing (more or less) To come: probably roughly 1 hour of reading I was tired, but not super tired, on getting home from work (another not-quite-enough-sleep night, as are most work Saturdays). I talked myself out of exercise. I knew I was doing it too, but I let it happen. I have noticed that I have spent exactly zero time looking at other people's challenges. I have been quite stressed this past week, but this is something that I would like to make time for. I spent some of my general computing time today on ChatGPT, and I MUST learn how to use this better. I gave up searching for Mad Libs after 3am on Thursday night in disgust - the sites were full of ads and the stories on offer were meh. It was taking forever and I was getting nowhere. But one of the pages suggested using ChatGPT to write Mad Libs, so I tried it. The result needed some editing for sure, but I ended up with usable Mad Libs faster than if I had kept looking for already-made ones. And the pirate escape room that I've been stressing over because I have to almost completely remake it? I asked it to age up and lengthen the one that our volunteer wrote. It ignored the already-made part (so I still need to tweak that), but also gave me four extra puzzles to add on, at least 2-3 of which look usable, and it was happy to swap one out when I said we didn't have the equipment needed. Whether I use them as written or just to help me come up with my own spin, this is a godsend. I feel so much less stressed about this task!

I get it about being in the zone, but I think it can also turn into a "work expands to fill the available time" phenomenon. Or an "information-gathering is more fun than actually doing things" one. Yeah, this is something that we need to talk about next time we have a meeting. She was there today, so it's not like she doesn't know how hard I am working at least. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Time accounting: Nothing pre-work. Woke up and went straight out. Got a little under eight hours of sleep, and I'm feeling it right now. At work: the day FLEW, because I was rushing around getting stuff ready. The program went really well, and I hope to run it again sometime. However, the last-minute prep of stuff that couldn't be done from home, plus the normal nervousness around programs, made my heart rate go sky-high (it hit 151 at one point). I was running on adrenaline by the end of my shift and was going to need cool-off time. Post-work: Did a GMB Respiration exercise instead of an exercise session and I could really feel the difference it made in only five minutes! I needed that. 30 minutes: phone call with a friend 1 hour: catching up on the news 1 hour: gaming 30 minutes-ish of other internetting 30 minutes for food I'm missing an hour of time in there, probably to rounding and short things. After yesterday I was 100% not in the mood to do work things, so I didn't. I will have some time at work to do them tomorrow (Saturday work time is not perfectly reliable, but better than Wednesdays). I needed to relax, so I focused on that. And I will need to go to bed early. I plan to read for a little and then turn in. In a couple of days I will look at the data I have been gathering, my thoughts about what I want my life to look like, and think about what needs to change. But for now, reading and sleep. Good night!

Today's time is gonna be a bit inaccurate because of all the unscheduled time. I didn't pay super close attention to exactly how many minutes I spent doing each thing, plus they got mixed together, but I also didn't do all that many things really. 🤷‍♀️ Cooking & eating: about 1.5 hours Gaming: probably about 1.5 hours total. It was almost all in in-between times, like waiting for something to simmer a bit, or waiting for my hair to dry. The rest of the time was spent working on my program. Only about an hour-1.5 hours of that was distracted time, so that is... a lot of time. I absolutely did not actually need to spend all of this time on this program, but I'm enjoying the research (collecting and testing out variations of play for Rory's Story Cubes), and I have enough stuff that I have essentially also planned a teen program for the future as well, and have lots of stuff for future programs that are variations on the theme. I still have to gather some important bits, like a handful of Mad Libs stories, so my prioritization was not what it could be, but if I had to run the program with what I have right now, I could have it ready in 30 minutes or less and it would be fine. So, though I have had fun with this and have ended up with two programs with lots of flexibility for the future, I still think I have spent more time on this than I really should have, especially in my own personal time. Still need to do the Level 50 pondering, but having to have a program to run tomorrow was more urgent.

I think I have the opposite problem - I spend too much time on low-priority items and then feel like I have no time for high-priority ones. But we shall see. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Time accounting: 15 minutes pre-work, because I got up, got dressed, and left. Work itself was chaos. We lost public wifi and printing, there was a constant stream of people needing help and little things going wrong, and so I lost two hours of the four hours of planning time I was meant to have to that, one that was on the desk but doing planning-adjacent things, and one where there was a constant risk of being interrupted so it was hard to concentrate, and I didn't get a break, but somehow, SOMEHOW, I still got an event fully planned. Thank goodness it is a fairly low-planning program and I had a pretty clear checklist in my head of exactly what I needed to do to make it happen. If actual thinking had been needed, I would have been screwed today. (This sadly seems very common during my planning times, which is one of the big reasons that I take work home. It's just too hard to do it at work when uninterrupted time to concentrate is a fantasy.) That left me with a racing brain on the way home. I had planned to exercise to calm that down a bit, but that didn't happen. I was pulled in another direction before I even got my coat off, and those conversations took about 30 minutes. I never got back around to exercise. By this point, I was fading pretty hard. The 30 minutes of reading I said I was going to do yesterday was actually more like 90, and I didn't sleep great. New monthly round of the game I've been playing started up today with a bunch of free energy, and I was just trying to stay awake, so I did that. For 2.5 hours. I just couldn't jump back into planning programs on getting home from work (even though I have one I urgently need to work on), but I probably would have been better doing the exercise and taking a nap. Eating: 30 minutes ish. This is the only meal I had all day. Combined work/random videos: 2 hours. It was about 50/50 each. Social time with friends: 3 hours. Walk: 1 hour. And now I will work on the program I need to run on Friday for a little bit more. Then probably read a little and sleep a lot. This is a more revealing one that feels like a more typical pattern.

Thanks! I feel like I need an accurate picture in my head - sort of how you might make a food diary to find out how you are REALLY eating. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Time accounting: I woke up late because I slept a bit poorly. I had 2.5 hours before work. I spent two of them working on work stuff (mostly), the other 30 making and eating food. After work, I did my exercise and ate (1 hour), played a game (1.5 hours), went for a walk (1-1.5 hours, not sure), and hung out with my son (45 minutes-1 hour). Now I am making some food and reading for about 30 minutes more. However, I should have been in bed half an hour ago. But I am hungry, so I may as well read while eating. 🤷‍♀️I do feel like I end up in the "adequate sleep or adequate food?" situation more than I should though. I think my pre-work was influenced by the fact that I was observing it, as I suspect I would normally have wasted much of it. The game time was not the greatest, but I don't feel so bad about it because it was the end of an event and there was a thing I was trying to finish up. I consider the rest of the time to be well-used. This is the day of the week when I have the least free time after work. Future days when I have longer blocks of unscheduled time could be revealing.

First challenge of the new year!