Echoceanic

Hey, another one who knows this dude. I tend to use his youtube channel for form tips. Make it the first week of the month you have them? Honestly need is the funnest way to learn. You have no idea how many things I know to do I have started because I needed to explain to someone or something needed to get done. And you get both the I now know this' endorphins and the 'I fixed this' endorphins.

This sounds awesome.

I was gonna say, if they want to spend more time with you, but then don't when you're free, maybe talk and agree on a thing? And then be like once a week depending on how busy we are we do X for X long, even if you have to break it up into multiple chunks of time. For me it helps when both parties are involved in the solution, because then there is no miscommunication and you did your best. Takes the pressure off, and they get told you care. Feeling your feelings and letting them go is so hard. The way you feel is valid, and taking the time to unpack something is work. You can't do all the things if you're not okay, it's like working with a faulty machine, if you don't do maintenance it'll break. But also maintenance for you might be 'stay afloat' right now and that's perfectly okay.

I actually tracked doing this every day for a few months because it's my worst daily chore. Now I am wayyy better than before. But weekly chores are the ones I tend to skip - because I tend to postpone them to the weekend for some reason and then can't do it. Laundry is not my chore at this point, but I think I'd do okay, I don't have a lot of clothes weekly.

Whenever I do this, 90 % of the time it means dishes.

I'm glad you're focusing on you, and aren't trying to do everything at once.

Well, this challenge was quiet. I spent it mostly oscillating between 'i don't do anything' and 'my productivity does not define my worth, and maybe if I gave myself some slack it would be easier to do things because there would be less stress'. But in the end, I like that I caught myself sliding back in that hole. I think I need to learn to have fun again, and enjoy while I'm working, and not just see my day as a to-do list.

And it doesn't even feel like a motivation issue at times. It's weirdly fluctuating for no reason. I need to find out why first, and then figure out tips and tricks.

I'm glad you're taking the time, but also recognising that you need to take care of yourself.

I really like seeing your drawings. I'm bad at taking time to do it, but I like drawing shapes and playing with perspectives the most. At least I did a celtic knot doodle in my planner this week, that was progress. Hope you're doing well.

This is where my mind lives at times. But focusing on step by step makes it easier.

Oh and the pattern is cut and I am at the stage where you put the pieces together by hand and try it on (if you need to change something, removing thread you sewed by hand is far easier than removing ti if you sewed it on a machine). I think the front piece will need to be taken in a little but everything else should be fine. I might finish it today, and if I remember I will take photo. Edit: here it is!

Hope she went and gave it to someone else. This sounds so good. I haven't managed to get guilt free relaxing time in a while. I currently have like maybe five scenes of one in a notebook. I add to it when I can think of something, and see where the story goes. Some of it will be unusable depending on how the details of the plot turn out, but oh well.

So yeah. I vanished for a while there. I didn't have much to say and I kept postponing posting here and whoops, it's almost the last week. But I do have something to post now. So, I am in a good place mentally. I have my ups and downs like any person, but the downs don't involve me slamming head first into a pit of despair anymore. My base emotions when it comes to my life have gone up from ambivalence to cautious optimism, which is a great thing. So, it means my issue with starting things is not as directly correlated to my mood as I thought. See, I do a lot. I have a lot to accomplish. That is really nothing new or amazing, and from what I can see, pretty standard for people here. For me it's easy to stay in motion once I start a thing - I am capable of spending a few hours on a thing, and have to consciously stop myself from, for example, trying to edit an entire book in a day. But starting? That is really really hard. And I'm talking about starting anything that is not a habit (it is easier to get up and do the dishes before bed because it's at a set time and it's a daily thing). But getting up once I am awake, opening a file and writing, grabbing anything to finish is really really hard. The energy I have to implement to push to start something is far more than what I think is normal. Part of this might be habit, because I spent a lot of time pushing through to get anything done so now that I don't encounter the same resistance my mind might be confused, part might be because I am frustrated with the lack of progress on some things, but yeah. I am still looking for a solution to this.

I'll update, though I might not remember to take photos - didn't yesterday when I copied the pattern on a blank piece of paper and cut if out.

Thanks. I'm better today, though I'm hoping I won't feel sick again when the heat wave gets here. Update: I am gonna be doing a new project - sewing. Doing it on my own (with running commentary from someone with more experience, but no help hopefully) too see if I can actually complete a project from beginning to end for once. Kinda exciting. So that was today. Because I have been doing stuff, now i feel a bit better and a lot more eager to do more, so I might finish all of the stuff I need (it's three things, and maybe exercise).

It's a thing a lot of people struggle with apparently. Looking back is always nice.

I'm sorry to hear that. It's incredibly hard when there is nothing you can really do. Feel free to contact me if you want/need. I'm usually always around somewhere.

The weather changing on a dime always fucks me up far more than anything else in existence. It's consistent in a way none of my life will ever be, and I am annoyed about that

Update: The weather has turned on its head, and that means it is cooler now (so I can breathe) but geesh my head had decided I will now have an almost constant headache, and my stomach will complain at least once every day. Boooooo...

That was a roller coaster read! I'm glad you're doing better after all of that.

I find leaving it for about half a month to a month (depending how quickly you alienate yourself from your writing) and writing another first draft for something else helps. Because it engages different writing muscles. Ditto. But then you need to see when you need to stop revising. If you don't need your phone for something else, maybe turn it off at the end of the work day? Or airplane mode. Because boundaries are a thing. And geesh no wonder you're not caught up on emails, since you both have work and you get bugged constantly. I'm very good at designating stuff like that, so for me an end of the day email would work really well. But I'm also the type to batch respond to projects only when I'm working on them.

HI! Glad to see you too.

That a really good idea for busy people in general. With me, I tend to have incredibly fluctuating days due to the situation I am in, and my mindset tends to go in 'all or nothing mode'. And this is what I'm trying to internalise now. Feel free to write again if you want. :)))

Update: Well, I need to stop planning my dailies days ahead, because plans change and I feel like a failure. A lot boils down to 'I don't have a consistent wake up time and I have been going to bed later and later'. Can I blame the heat? I'll blame the heat.