My health insurance does virtual therapy sessions, so I just signed up for that. waiting to hear back   Over the weekend I did my hometowns 5k for the 29th year in a row. If I can stay healthy :knockonwood: I hope to keep running into my 80's like a few other local runners, which would put me close to 70 years if not over, as along as they keep having the event. 

Another day that I took real slow:   Day   Week   Sunday Monday     09/22 09/23             Success%       63% 50%             Walk       Yes Yes Breakfast           Hygiene routine       Yes Yes Workout           Cleaning           Batch cooking           Financial accounting       Yes Yes Alumni meeting       Yes   Hike           To bed by 10 pm       Yes  

Hey you! How's it going? Did you win the Jackpot and end up taking off on an adventure?   We're going to want pictures. 

Date: 23/09/24   All is solved by walking Total min exercise   10 Walk 30-60 min   10         The strong anvil 5 min Hindu pushup     5 min Hindu squat     5 min  bridge             Clothes maketh the gender-neutral man Jacket and tie   P A nice close shave             Dawn is friend to the muses Kept 8-10 schedule   Y Kept 10-12 schedule   N Kept 12-2 schedule     Kept 2-4 schedule     Kept 4-6 schedule             Rest is the best medicine 6-8 hours of sleep     In bed by midnight     AM writing exercise     AM meditation     PM writing exercise     PM meditation     Interoception meditation            

I hope things go better this week.   I was able to get the new graphic novel (Here be Dragons) from my library. That might hold you for a day or two until the new book comes in.

Righty ho then, how did Week 2 go?   Scheduling the psych eval is in the works. The retreat went very well. I got to lead morning prayer (in front of my summer class professor, who is an Archdeacon, a little intimidating) as well as overseeing the practical details of the retreat. Only downside is that spending so much of the day sitting in a pew did not do anything for my poor, abused back. Oh, and other downside is that I am now officially behind on class work, though I should be able to catch up once I seriously apply myself.   Got all three of my workouts in.   Finished the decking, including the trim and caulking, so that's a big win. Did not call the electric company, although I did dig out the phone number for it.   All in all, not too shabby. Netted enough points to be slightly ahead of my target goal. A solid week.   For this week's goals:   Ordination - Just keep watching for psych eval news and make a more concentrated effort on class work. My head is way too fuzzy with my poor sleep lately to digest heavy theology, but I'm hoping to address that today. Strength - Lower, upper, lower week. Think I am changing up my lower days, instead of doing heavy squats and deadlifts on the same day, think I will do squat/RDL one day and deadlift/lunge (or maybe reverse Nordic curls) on the other. Will need to ponder whether that means I am consistently doing 2 lower days (which means weeks with 2 upper days would have 4 workouts - not something I'm opposed to, but do need to consider the extra time commitment) or if I am okay with greatly reducing the frequency of my squats and deadlifts. Barndominium - Have my first stair stringer marked and ready to cut. I'm pretty sure I have it marked too long and will need to trim it down, but can't be certain until the cut is made, and better too long than too short. Goal this week is to get both stair stringers cut and installed. Plus calling the electric company guy since I didn't do that last week, and if I'm really motivated perhaps call my uncle as well to get his input on some things.   The week schedule is shaping up to: Monday - Taking it easy, an aching back is no joke. Rainy today, so just going to hole up with my book on my lunch break. After work, heading to the mattress store. I can already feel the pull of going straight home instead, but have recruited the discord nerds to hold me to mattress shopping. If all goes well, I will buy one today and it will be delivered tomorrow. Ideally would cut the stringer tonight and/or do some class work, but we will see how long mattress shopping takes and how my back and brain feel. Tuesday - Assuming my back is up to it, lifting on my lunch break. Otherwise, class stuff. Dinner with my sister. Wednesday - Probably lifting on my lunch break, helping my neighbor after work. Thursday - Class work during lunch. Barn work in the evening. Friday - Possibly lift at lunch. If not, we'll see. Maybe class work, maybe errands, maybe just turn my brain off for an hour. Forbidden Lands in the evening. Saturday - Lift if I didn't yesterday. Class at 10. Barn work and probably house work the rest of the day. Sunday - Chalice-bearing at church and assisting with Sunday school. Maybe do a bit of barn work and class work in the afternoon, but also plenty of chilling as well.

space       I 100% understand this and also agree that this is the root of the problem. I also get very judgemental with myself sometimes, not wanting to admit that I haven't done the things I "should" have done (and my inner-talk gets a bit nasty sometimes and says "should have already done,") and end up avoiding the whole mess just becuase it's difficult and onerous and intimidating. I'm very proud of you for finding the tax things after procrastinating only a day -- this is pretty badass, in my opinion, especially coming back from a trip. Re-entry is hard.   I do stuff like this all the time, and then not only have I managed to oopsies!! find a way to avoid doing what I didn't want to do (that usually involves leaving the house), I also manage to put myself down about it, both with what I chose to eat up the time and for not doing what I had planned. I hope you are giving yourself a ton of compassion. When I come back after a day of out-and-abouting or an evening football game extroversion overload, I am usually only fit to stare at a screen and not move for several hours. This is okay, and if that's what I need, then so be it. The sky will not fall and I am not any less of a worthwhile human being (I have to remind myself of this often). I think that having a day or two in yoga clothes without yoga and scrolling instead of aikido or any other class is absolutely fine, and probably restorative. As evidence, I submit to the court that the sky did not, in fact, fall.   See below: ❤️  I really like this for you. I have the world's cleanest house and most organized closets when I have a paper due.   I completely understand about a four day trip being wonderful and also exactly what you don't need. I have been there. Sending compassion and solidarity.   I hope all goes well for Dumbledore's space and things. I don't envy him the triage part; I agree with your assessment that the grunt work is fine, but triage is exhausting.   The cacti are just as cute as can be! Was the one with the boring repetitious leaves the white one with spiky fronds or the orange one with round lobes? I think there's something to this mental itch you're having lately: I think you are craving a sense of completion and order. You have so many things in progress, especially projects without definitive end points that it only seems reasonabl to fixate on things that you can square off and shore up and deem Officially Finished.   I hope you have a good week. Sending lots of yoga-clothes-without-the-yoga restoration energy your way.     

This particular friend is the widow of a friend who ran a RPG that Dumbledore played in for years. We would go over to their house for special events and the occasional holiday. She moved to California to be close to her sister after her husband died. I have other older friends in spinning and aikido.     Yes, I think so. Saturday I was not able to face much. Sunday I had the energy to repot a plant and a cutting that has been sitting by the kitchen sink for months. I also cleaned the downstairs bathroom. That is technically Dumbledore's responsibility, but he will be busy with other things this week. It really needed it.      Some of them are fine. In my experience, people show their true colors over time. Some people are active in the community, some go on adventures, while others are still griping about the same things that they complained about 20 years ago. I want to be around people who are actively pursuing doing interesting things with their lives. That is not an age-dependent qualification.

I am hanging in there with meditation and sleep. Logging fell off again last week.   Apparently I do not want to write things down when I am feeling stressed.   Work is going pretty well. I am starting to chip away at the backlog of tasks that I put on hold when we were short-handed. This week we have 3-5 people out for events and trainings and we still have enough people to cover our workload.   Saturday I went to aikido, followed by a dojo board meeting. The new board is not quite official yet, but we are nearly done with the paperwork to get there. That looks like the easy part. There are lots of policy and planning things we need to discuss once the logistics tasks are complete. I was a responsible adult and got the minutes written and posted the same day. I have learned that letting that task wait sets off the alarms in my brain. Aside from that, I bought cat food and a few groceries.   Sunday I was feeling more productive. I was working on the dishes when I got a call from Dumbledore. He was visiting his brother for the weekend, and got a notice from the landlord of the building where he has an office. They had a water main break. His office is on the ground floor. I went over to check it out and found the water was knee deep. I was able to move a couple boxes that were only partly soaked before the property manager told me to leave. The water was still coming in and was getting close to the electric box. 😬   Today we are going to move everything that is still dry to a storage unit. All the ground floor offices are going to have to be gutted and redone. Elf and I will help this afternoon. More friends will come to help after work. It looks to be a messy job.   Dumbledore is doing much better now that he can take action. He was a mess yesterday not knowing how bad it was and not being able to do anything. The landlord got the water drained and let people in this morning. Dumbledore has already arranged for storage space and rented a truck. He is going to Costco to get shelving units and plastic storage tubs. There are lots of metal shelving units in the office, but they will need to be cleaned before they can be used again. You might think that water from the water main would be clean, but it was brown soup by the time it flooded everything. I had to take a shower after wading in it - something made my skin itch.   I am glad to be moral support and grunt labor for this crisis. Moving boxes and throwing out soggy books and papers is easy. Making triage decisions on the iffy stuff is exhausting.

Got a lot in today.  was stuck in a random and surpiringly long traffic jam in the middle of nowhere that may have been a double decker bus and a cement lorry getting jammed against each other on a tiny road (yay, cornwall)   went into town with my cousin and poked round the shops. I dont usually go in on a monday, so was surprised by how many things dont open on a monday here.  but had the best book haul. Got a gorgeous hardback copy of empire of the vampire for £1 (which is like new and may even be a special edition or something as it had illustrations 😱)and an unread copy of what lies beyond the veil, which i have been wanting to read for ages. Also clan of the cave bear, which i have been hunting for second hand for ages.  Bonus find was a tiny guiro frog, which is adorable.      and then jammed some swimming in and ran into some of my swimming group, so got to say hi to everyone i haven't seen in ages (because of my arm and then my ankle.) which was lovely.    gratitude journaling is going well. Is a nice manageable thing to do before turning in. Going to have a go at the journaling once my cousin has gone back home and normal service resumes reasonably. Right now i dont feel like i have the headspace for it at the end of the day.