This week in the Change Journal I tried out the Eisenhower Principle chapter, which I am familiar with but don’t think I’ve ever actually used. It’s a way of prioritising things according to their importance and their urgency. I’ve seen it used to organise things in a long term way as well as to prioritise things on a daily basis. (James Clear has a good explanation of it.)
One of the ideas it promotes is to try and focus most of your time working on things that are important but not urgent, so that you work on them before they get to the urgent stage and you start to panic. However, we also know that many things that crop up on a day to day basis might be urgent but they aren’t really that important in the long term. And there a lot of things we might do that aren’t urgent or particularly important, such as excessive social media scrolling, which we (by which I mean I) spend way too much time on when we’d be better using your time on things that are important.
Chapter 6 lays out an Eisenhower matrix for each day of the week so you can have a go at prioritising your tasks each day according to their importance and urgency.
I had limited success with this as a daily planning exercise and I think it would work better for long-term planning. I see it more as a way of identifying the things I want to be prioritising and the things I would be better off limiting, and then developing my daily to-do list from that and giving it a way of identifying the top priority things (a la the Circle technique). Something like that anyway. Because, for example, I’m not going to put “check twitter” in the not urgent/not important box of a daily list, but it is something that in a long-term big picture view would go in there.
I’m sure that makes no sense. So I’m calling that chapter done.
I did some work on my resume (thing 18) this week. Due to a recent reorganisation in my team this week, I started a new job this week, which is going to give me some new challenges and, I hope, more of an opportunity to use my strengths and skills. As a result of that, I’m not sure I need to apply for a new job this year, so I’m taking that part of thing 18 off. I’m only going to apply for a new job if something irresistible comes up. I’ve been putting off saying my resume is finished because there are a couple of statements in there that I’m being overly picky about wording and it‘s holding the whole thing up.
I think I just need to do it and be done with it. It’s not like anyone is going to see it right now.
Vegetable of the week
Thing 2 is to choose a different vegetable every week from the book In Praise of Veg and make a recipe from the book using that vegetable.
This week I cooked with fennel, which is anther vegetable I don’t think I’d cooked with before. The recipe was called Fennel Cacciatore with Free-form Polenta Dumplings (page 72), and it’s Alice’s twist on chicken cacciatore. It’s another simple dish, which involves browning the fennel pieces mixing in some olives and garlic, then cooking with tomatoes for about 45 minutes. Alice says you can add chicken if you like or, as I did, cut up some pork and fennel sausages, cook them and add to the sauce.
The recipe also calls for what she calls free-form polenta dumplings on top, which I found a little bit dry, and I imagine you could also serve it with a creamy potato mash.
This was another for the “will make again” list.
Regular projects
There are several things on my 21 for 2021 list that I have made a regular commitment to doing in the hope that this will be more likely to make me do them. I worked on these ones this week.
Thing 5: Spend an hour a week working through my annoying undone things list. How about ten minutes reading one of the books on that list?
Thing 8: Spend an hour a week working on Kramstable’s videos. I spent a couple of hours on one of these videos on Sunday afternoon.
Thing 9: Write my mother’s life story. I went to see my mum on Thursday and talked some more about her school days.
Thing 17: Brainsparker gym*. This week, I completed Module 5. I was supposed to attend the live workout on Thursday morning but I managed to mix the time zones up and tune in an hour after the actual start time. That was 3 am, and there was no way I would have got up for that! I only managed to get up at 4 because I woke up then anyway. But I missed it, and went for a very early walk instead.
Ursula enjoying the wet weather this week
21 for 2021 week 18 summary
Things completed this week: 0
Things completed to date: 2 (1, 20)
Things I progressed: 7 (2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 17, 18)
Things in progress I didn’t progress: 7 (6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16)
Things not started: 5 (3, 12, 15, 19, 21)
Blast from the past
Following on from my 10-year review of my blog, here’s the final flashback to my favourite posts from 2011. This one is from 17 December 2011: The unchristmas tree. Coming up to midwinter (okay, that’s a few weeks away . . .), it’s a good one to finish this series with.
I think that means I probably should have finished sorting out my websites to coincide with the 10-year blogiversary (thing 13) but I haven’t. It’s a small matter of getting some words right. (See above comment on my resume.)
What I’m reading this week
On Writing by Stephen King
Dæmon Voices: On Stories and Storytelling by Philip Pullman
Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit
Habit tracker
Days I did my morning planning routine at work (Goal = 5): 5
Days I did my post-work pack up routine (Goal = 5): 5
Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 2
Days I read a book (Goal = 7): 7
Days I did yoga stretches (Goal = 7): 6
Days I had a lunch break away from my desk (Goal = 5 work days): 5
Days I went for a walk or did other physical activity in the afternoon (Goal = 7): 1 (er . . . )
Days I shut my computer down before 10.15 (Goal = 7): 7
What do I want to do better next week?
See that number one next to the number of days I did some physical activity in the afternoon . . . ? That.
This week, I started the last of the five habits in chapter 7 of the Change Journal (thing 4). This habit relates to a challenge I’ve started this month with Trina O’Gorman to write for at least 15 minutes every day. Trina is running the challenge on her instagram feed, to see if writing every day has any affect on people’s sense of wellbeing. I’m using some writing prompts I’ve been meaning to write to for a while now and kept putting off, and have committed to handwriting my responses every morning for 20 minutes. It’s a bit like Julia Cameron’s morning pages ritual but with guided prompts rather than unassisted stream of consciousness writing, which I have always struggled to do.
I’ve started work on chapter 11 (Reading), which asks you to record how much you read each day in six-minute increments. This actually isn’t much of a challenge for me because I made reading a habit last year, so it’s just a matter of remembering how much I read and noting it down each day. Since that one’s easy, I also thought I would make start on Chapter 24 (Journalling), which has spaces to record one line a day for 21 days and then two lines a day for 16 days. I already have a journal calledSome lines a day, in which I write something I’m grateful for each day and then a brief highlight (or lowlight) of the day every day, so I don’t really need to do this chapter. But it’s there to be done and I had the idea of noting down the most significant insight/s from my morning writing each day in that section. So that’s what I’ll be doing for the next 37 days.
I love how everything has connected up like this!
I did some behind the scenes work on my websites (thing 13) and I think the main thing I want to do is to make sure my intro statements are consistent across all my platforms. I have so many platforms, I was thinking about making a linktree to keep track of them all.
Vegetable of the week
Thing 2 is to choose a different vegetable every week from the bookIn Praise of Vegand make a recipe from the book using that vegetable. This week I chose “herbs”, which is a pretty broad section of the book and is one with more than a couple of recipes. The one I chose was called Lobio, which is a kidney bean stew with coriander on page 354.
Lobio
It’s a pretty easy recipe to cook and it’s the first bean stew I’ve made without tomatoes, which I’ve always seen as a staple ingredient for bean dishes. Not so. The part that took the longest was picking off the coriander leaves and chopping up the stems.
This was a great mid-week dish that I can see myself making double the quantity of and having a week’s worth of lunches sorted.
Regular projects
There are several things on my list that I have made a regular commitment to doing in the hope that this will be more likely to make me do them. I worked on these ones this week.
Thing 5: Spend an hour a week working through my annoying undone things list. One hour on Saturday morning. I’m reading one of the books I have committed to read and give back to its owner. I don’t think she’s read it yet . . . I’ve had it for long enough now, so I need to get on with it!
Thing 7: Clear out the area at the side of the house and make a space to sit. One hour on Sunday afternoon for garden projects. The area I want to clear out is home to the gas cylinders, which have gradually been encroached on by the invasive plant from next door to the extent that last time the gas delivery came they couldn’t get to one of the cylinders. So the idea was to cut some of the plant back before the next delivery. It was one of those jobs that gets put off because there’s no rush. Well, no rush until I got a text on Wednesday afternoon telling me the gas was coming on Thursday. So when I got home on Wednesday, I had a little over an hour before my yoga class to cut back as much space as I could and hope it would be enough. I’m glad it was this week and not next week after daylight saving ends, because doing that in the dark would have been even less fun than this was. Nonetheless, I got it done, I made it to yoga on time, and the gas was delivered the next day. And I get to call this thing started as a bonus.
Gas bottle hell
Thing 9: Write my mother’s life story. I went to see my mum on Thursday. I found a book that I had got for her to write about her life for Kramstable several years ago, you know, one of those “For my grandson” books. She hasn’t started writing in it, so I thought the questions in there about her early life would make good questions for this project.
Thing 17: Brainsparker gym*. This week, I worked on the third class of module 3.
We went to Tahune Airwalk on Sunday, so I didn’t do the things I’ve set aside time to do on Sundays.
Tahune Airwalk
21 for 2021 summary of the week
Things completed this week: 0
Things completed to date: 1 (1)
Things I progressed: 8 (2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 13, 17, 20)
Things in progress I didn’t progress: 7 (6, 8, 10, 11, 14, 16, 18)
Things not started: 5 (3, 12, 15, 19, 21)
Not a project, a chicken
Blast from the past
Following on from my 10-year review of my blog, here’s another one of my favourite posts from 2011. This one is from 1 September 2011 and it’s the post I meant to do at the half-way mark of my 365-day photo project. It’s about making my blog my own.
What I’m reading this week
Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit
Writing the Story of Your Life: The Ultimate Guide by Carmel Bird
On Writing by Stephen King
Habit tracker
Days I did my morning planning routine at work (Goal = 3): 3
Days I did my post-work pack up routine (Goal = 3): 3
Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 3
Days I read a book (Goal = 7): 7
Days I did yoga stretches (Goal = 7): 7
Days I had a lunch break away from my desk (Goal = 5 work days): 5
Days I went for a walk or did other physical activity in the afternoon (Goal = 7): 4
Days I shut my computer down before 10.15 (Goal = 7): 7
I still haven’t started a new chapter of the Change Journal (thing 4) but I have been working my way through the Habits chapter (7), the Clarity chapter (8) and the Pitch Yourself chapter (9).
I mentioned doing the UK trip book (thing 10) to my mum a few weeks ago and she sounded interested in seeing it. I wrote a travel blog with photos while I was on the trip on a platform called Travelpod, which no longer exists, but I was able to save all the entries as webpages so I can see them in a browser. I could just print them but it would look a bit shitty so I think putting everything into a nice photobook would be a nice thing to do. It will give me a chance to go back and choose the photos to tell the story with more distance from the events, rather than being on the trip and having to pick photos on the spot every day for the post. And hopefully do a better job editing them. So I started looking around for a platform to make the book on and trying a few test templates to see what will work best.
This week, it rained. The chickens got wet.
Vegetable of the week
Thing 2 is to choose a different vegetable every week from the book In Praise of Veg and make a recipe from the book using that vegetable. This week I used (most of) the rest of the pumpkin from the weekend’s soup to make the Classic Zesty Pumpkin Risotto (page 168). It took a lot longer than I expected. I don’t know if that’s because the rice was so old (as in, the last time I made risotto was before we moved to this house at the start of 2017 and the rice was left over from whenever that was) or if the recipe was just over-optimistic.
Pumpkin risotto
Regular projects
There are several things on my list that I have made a regular commitment to doing in the hope that this will be more likely to make me do them. I worked on these ones this week.
Thing 5: Spend an hour a week working through my annoying undone things list. One hour on Saturday morning. One of my undone things (actually, two) is to read a book I borrowed from a friend and haven’t read, and give it back to them. This week, I started reading one of those books.
Thing 9: Write my mother’s life story. I wrote up some more of my notes and spend way too much time googling my great great aunt Annie’s family. Someone made a comment on a post I wrote on here about my great great grandfather (aka Alfred the builder) a few years ago, to tell me that his grandmother was Alfred’s daughter, Annie. As Annie was my grandmother’s aunt, she’s my great great aunt, which makes this guy some sort of cousin (I think). My grandmother spent some time in NSW looking after Annie’s kids, so I’m guessing one of them must have been the parent of this guy. I would love to get in touch with him to find out if his parent ever said anything about their childhood and knowing my grandmother, but his comment has no contact details, so I have no idea how to do so. I’m following a couple of other leads to see what I can find. It’s fascinating how the idea to write my mum’s story has turned into a quest to find out about other family members.
Thing 11: Complete the Compelling Frame course. I did some more work on lesson 6.
Thing 17: Brainsparker gym*. This week I completed the second lesson of Module 4.
Saturday afternoon walk
21 for 2021 summary
Things completed this week: 0
Things completed to date: 1 (1)
Things I progressed: 8 (2, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 17, 20)
Things in progress I didn’t progress: 6 (6, 8, 13, 14 16, 18)
Things not started: 6 (3, 7, 12, 15, 19, 21)
Blast from the past
Following on from my 10-year review of my blog, here’s another one of my favourite posts from 2011. This one is from 29 August 2011: Dear inner critic. This is one I still battle with. Reading back on this made me cry.
What I’m reading this week
Diana: Her True Story – In Her Own Words by Andrew Morton
Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit
Writing the Story of Your Life: The Ultimate Guide by Carmel Bird
Habit tracker
Days I did my morning planning routine at work (Goal = 4): 4
Days I did my post-work pack up routine(Goal = 4): 4
Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 2
Days I read a book (Goal = 7): 7
Days I did yoga stretches (Goal = 7): 7
Days I had a lunch break away from my desk (Goal = 5 work days): 5
Days I went for a walk or did other physical activity in the afternoon (Goal = 7): 5
Days I shut my computer down before 10.15 (Goal = 7): 7
Last year, one of my 20 for 2020 things was to have a month without alcohol. I started that on 2 March 20202 and I haven’t had a drink since then. So this week marked the one-year anniversary of my last drink. We went to Dunalley for lunch at the pub and stopped at Barilla Bay to get oysters on the way. I bought a can of their Oyster Stout, which I was going to drink at home that evening. I didn’t and it‘s still in the fridge where I left it on 1 March 2020.
I still haven’t decided whether the alcohol-free thing is a permanent change. I quite like saying “I don’t drink” but I still have some rather delicious beverages in my beer cellar that I would very much like to try. So I need to work out a way to drink them but not make drinking a mindless habit like it used to be for me.
I had some interesting work to do this week, which made the week go faster. That was nice and I actually enjoyed being at work. Well you know, apart from the noise. On the recommendation of my audiologist, I got some noise-cancelling earbuds, which are a lot more portable than the headphones I’ve been using and they’ve been making a big difference in my capacity to function and not get overwhelmed in noisy situations both inside and outside.
I’ve also been working through a couple of non-work courses in my spare time, which are on two topics that are totally unrelated and I’m finding great joy in discovering the connections between two topics that I would have thought were completely different areas. It has been an interesting week of discovery for me.
I’m still working through the habits chapter of the Change Journal (thing 7) with my yoga stretches, the pre-work ritual (thing 20) and now the post-work ritual. Now that I have my exercise program from the exercise physiologist (thing 1), I need to build that into my routine as well. I’ve decided there are a couple of the exercises that I will try and do every day and track them in the Change Journal, and then the rest of the program I’m going to do four days a week instead of my afternoon walk.
I had to get out of the house on Saturday afternoon, so I decided to take my SLR camera for a walk (thing 16). I picked up this camera, a Pentax Z70 with a 28-80mm lens, from a second-hand camera shop in Canberra many years ago. I went to a class to learn how to use it but found everything too overwhelming, and ended up staying in green mode most of the time. Around that time I moved to the country and, having been inspired by the work of a local landscape photographer, spent some time photographing rural scenes with it. I didn’t use it much after I got my first digital camera. I remember going through a roll or two of film when Kramstable was a baby but, apart from that, it’s been sitting in a drawer for the past 13 years or more. I still had a battery for it and there was a roll of film in it with about seven exposures left on it. I have absolutely no idea what is on the rest of the film, so I figured what better way to find out than to finish it off. The film is very expired so this could be very interesting when I take it into the camera shop to get processed.
After having gotten used to a digital SLR, I found the controls on this camera to be very minimal, and the instruction book that came with it even more so. I eventually worked out how to put it into manual mode and how to adjust the exposure and shutter speed. Before now, I’d only used it in manual mode for the class, when all of this was very new to me. At least now, having had the experience of using a digital SLR in manual, I had some idea what I was doing, even if I wasn’t sure exactly how to do it.
For my first photo, the camera wouldn’t focus. This was not going well. Then I remembered that the lens gets stuck at the extreme end of its focus range and needs a little jiggle to get “unstuck”. Right. It was so weird to hear the buzz of the film advancing as I pressed the shutter instead of the digital click, and even more odd that I couldn’t look down at the non-existent LCD screen to see what the photo looked like. That’s a habit that’s very hard to get out of.
I used up the film, it rewound itself and I’m going to take it into the shop next week to see what’s on it. I’m not calling this thing done yet. I want to go out somewhere and make photos with it for a few hours and use at least one roll of film.
Vegetable of the week
Thing 2 is to choose a different vegetable every week from the book In Praise of Veg and make a recipe from the book using that vegetable.
This week I chose bok choy and I cooked Alice’s Grilled Bok Choy with Peanut Sauce (page 434) on Tuesday. I have to say the amount of peanut butter I’m going through to cook the recipes in this book is pretty phenomenal, but peanut butter, yum! I’m not complaining.
Grilled bok choy
I probably could have served this with another veggie dish but I poached some chicken breasts, shred them and serve with rice noodles. It was a simple dish overall, excellent for mid-week.
On Saturday it was time for a fully vegetarian dish, Seven-Spice Butternut Tagine (page 160). This had a lovely combination of coriander, cumin, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, nutmeg and pepper. As well as butternut pumpkin (squash), it had tomatoes, chickpeas and red capsicum. It was really nice with lots of leftovers. I’d definitely make this again.
Butternut squash tagine
Regular projects
There are several things on my list that I have made a regular commitment to doing in the hope that this will be more likely to make me do them. I worked on these ones this week.
Thing 5: Spend an hour a week working through my annoying undone things list. One hour on Saturday morning. I didn’t do this. In lieu of this, Kramstable and I spent at least an hour trying to catch one small chicken and lock her away with the others after we’d seen a hawk in the yard. Four of the others were appropriately terrified and huddled in the chook house. One so much so that she let me pick her up and hold her for basically as long as I wanted. I had managed to lure one of the other two, who are now candidates for the most stupid birds in the flock, into the cage with food, and had almost got the last one in when the first one got back out again and refused to be caught. It was a very traumatic time as we imagined what her fate might be if the hawk returned and she was still running around the yard, but catching her seemed like an impossible task. In frustration, I decided to get some water to fill up the bowls and while I was out of the yard, Kramstable, by some miracle, had finally managed to grab the elusive chicken and we got her into the cage with the others.
The elusive chicken refusing to be caught
Thing 9: Write my mother’s life story. I went to see my mum on Thursday as usual. She showed me a photo of her grandfather’s house in Scotland that he had built in 1918. I managed to locate it on Google streetview, so it was cool to see where it was. I doubt the oil rigs would have been the bay in 1918 but it was cool to see the town where his family had lived for a time.
Thing 11: Complete the Compelling Frame course. I worked some more on lesson 5. I need to do the practical exercise. It’s been hard to photograph something in full sun when the days have been overcast and rainy though! I watched the video for lesson 6 as well.
Thing 17: Brainsparker gym*. I worked on lesson 3 of the third module, which explained the “empathy map”. I missed this month’s live workout on Thursday because my alarm didn’t go off, which I’m very annoyed about because I really enjoyed the last one.
21 for 2021 summary
Things completed this week: 0
Things completed to date: 1 (1)
Things I progressed: 7 (2, 4, 9, 11, 16, 17, 20)
Things in progress I didn’t progress: 5 (5, 6, 8, 13, 18)
Things not started: 8 (3, 7, 10, 12, 14, 15, 19, 21)
I think the point I wrote then is still true today:
. . . while I’m waiting for my life to be perfect, my life goes on. I’m wishing some things were different but I’m not doing anything about them, and at the same time I’m not really appreciating the things I do have
9 May 2011
What I’m reading this week
Personality Hacker by Joel Mark Witt & Antonia Dodge
Me by Elton John
The Summer Island Festival by Rachel Burton
I totally enjoyed this. It made me laugh, it made me cry. Recommended.
Habit tracker
Days I did my morning planning routine at work (Goal = 4): 4
Days I did my post-work pack up routine (Goal = 4): 4
Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 3
Days I read a book (Goal = 7): 7
Days I did yoga stretches (Goal = 7): 7
Days I had a lunch break away from my desk (Goal = 5 work days): 5
Days I went for a walk or did other physical activity in the afternoon (Goal = 7): 7
Days I shut my computer down before 10.15 (Goal = 7): 6
Susannah Conway’s Unravel Your Year 2021 workbook asks you to describe the year just gone by in three words. It’s left open to you how you interpret this: you could, I imagine, choose three words that describe the year from a global perspective, from a personal perspective or anywhere in between. There’s one word I’ve heard more often than I care to remember that has been used to describe 2020 that I never want to hear again and I have no intention of using it. It starts with unp . . . .
And that is the last I will say about that word.
I’ve chosen three words to describe the year from my own isolated perspective from the bottom of an island at the bottom of the world. They are:
Unexpected
Inconsistent
Introspective
Unexpected because I didn’t in my wildest dreams imagine that the world would be thrust into a pandemic that shut everything down, took so many lives, and shook everything up, leaving people jobless and causing so much worldwide despair, uncertainty and confusion. On a personal note, I didn’t expect the issues I was having in my workplace with noise to be (temporarily) resolved by having to work from home. There were other unexpected things too, not all good, and not all for this blog.
Inconsistent because, while I made a lot of progress in some areas I wanted to work on and I achieved a lot, I didn’t do as much as I’d hoped in other areas. I completed my uni course, and I had some good results at work but, there were other areas I was less successful in developing (no judgement here, just stating a fact) and they continue to haunt me. A lot of that is connected to me not being able to stop procrastinating and giving into distractions. And not getting into an exercise routine that works for me.
I struggled to find a third word but I chose Introspective because I started to work on some long standing personal issues in my head that are preventing me from being the person I want to be. It was hard work but rewarding, and I think I am starting to discover small chinks in the façade I’m trying to break down.
I would also add interesting to the mix . . .
I started the year with beautiful sunny Sunday morning photo expeditions, a couple of times with a good friend and other days by myself. It seems like so long ago now . . .
Sunday morning explorations with my camera
A major focus of my year was my uni program, of which I had three units to complete. The first one was intense, involving a lot of self examination and analysis, which left me feeling drained but also with some very clear ideas of what areas of my life I specifically needed to work on. I finished the course in October and received my qualification in December and am very glad that’s over but also grateful for the opportunity to have done it and learned so much.
I managed to keep reasonably healthy in 2020, not least because I have now gone for nine months without drinking alcohol and, as a formerly very regular moderate drinker, I’m particularly proud of my efforts to do this. I read the book The Alcohol Experiment by Annie Grace, and it totally changed the way I looked at alcohol. I’m not saying I will never drink again but for now I’m very comfortable with my decision not to.
This book changed my life
I had a potential issue with my eyesight that I had to have checked out a couple of times during the year but it all seems to be okay for now and the professionals are monitoring it. I got a hearing test at the start of the year, which revealed I have a low noise tolerance, which makes sense of all the issues I’ve been having at work and in other situations. I’m not sure what we do about this but a retest later in the year showed that my sensitivity had increased and I still don’t really know how to manage it. I kept up with my dental checks and my physio visits to resolve long-standing neck, back and posture issues.
I’m grateful there was never a time during the lockdown that I wasn’t able to go out on my regular morning walks. That would have made it a lot more unbearable.
Morning beach walks, muwinina Country
I started riding my bike to work, which became a whole lot easier when everyone had to stay home because of the pandemic and, as I said at the time, while I didn’t love riding in the traffic, I didn’t necessarily want the roads to be clear because no one was allowed outside. I stopped doing it as much (at all) as the weather got colder, the buses stopped charging fares and, eventually, when I was working from home full-time. It’s something I will start to pick up again when I go back to work after the holidays.
Bike riding to work
Another habit that I actually stuck with was reading, and there were a couple of things that made this possible. First, my goal was to develop the habit, rather than to set a number of books I wanted to read, which the pressure to read a certain amount off and allowed me to just focus on doing it. Second, keeping my no alcohol month going the whole of the year led to me going to bed earlier, which meant I could read in bed before I went to sleep. As of today, I have finished 34 books, which is 13 more than in 2019 when I set myself a target of only 12 books to read and never really stuck with it after I’d finished the 12th book.
The most powerful book I read in 2020, Truganini by Cassandra Pybus
I didn’t do as much work on learning Photoshop as I had intended at the start of the year when I signed up for a bunch of courses. Even though my uni work took up a lot of time, I still had a lot of free time that I could have done this work and I’m not sure what was stopping me. It’s not like I have to do the courses all at once or that there’s a time limit. I can do them in my own time, and maybe that’s the problem. I’ve worked well to deadlines where there is a clear assignment to complete but with these courses there are no assignments, just instruction and it’s up to you to play around with what you’re shown and see what you come up with. This is one of the areas I’m disappointed that I didn’t achieve very much in, and I want to do more in 2021.
I completed the major photography project I wanted to do this year, which was to spend 50 days making a photo a day with my 50mm lens. I’m really pleased with that project and it’s made me appreciate and understand that lens a lot better. I certainly won’t be keeping that one stashed in the bag again!
50mm photo of the Aurora Australis, the day before she left Hobart for the finial time
I had a couple of exciting moments in my photography in 2020 too. In January, one of my photos was published in Australian Photography magazine.
My first photo published in a national publication
I was equally chuffed when the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court asked if the court could use one of my photos of the court in their Christmas cards this year.
Supreme Court 2019
And just before Christmas, I found out that one of the photos I had taken of the Hobart Magistrates Court at the Open House Hobart weekend had been chosen as a winner of their photo competition, which was a lovely way to end the year. I’ve really enjoyed my photography this year.
Hobart Magistrates Court 2020
I was lucky to be able to get away for a couple of short breaks during the year. We had a trip to Bridport in the July school holidays. I hadn’t been there since I was a kid and couldn’t remember it at all, so it was great to be able to explore a part of Tasmania I wasn’t familiar with.
Old pier at Bridport on pyemmairrener Country
In October we had a night at Port Arthur, a place I am always somewhat reluctant to visit because of the many sad layers of history held by the area. And then, as a reward for finishing my uni course, I took myself off to Launceston for a photography retreat and I had a wonderful time photographing some of my favourite buildings and walking all day.
Tessellated Pavement near Eaglehawk Neck on paredareme Country
Kramstable adapted really well to online school and I was impressed with his commitment to his work, his ability to self-direct and to manage his workload. The schools did a huge amount of work to ensure that kids could continue learning during the lockdown and I have nothing but admiration for them for what they achieved. Thank you seems like such a lame things to say to convey how grateful I am for what they did. It has been wonderful watching Kramstable learn and grow this year, and for it to start to become more obvious what his strengths are and where his passions lie. The high point of his film work was his nomination as a finalist in one of the categories of this year’s My State Film Festival. It’s also exciting to watch his work and interests develop outside of school. Seeing his dedication sometimes makes me wonder how my life might have been different if I’d had such a passion as a teenager and had been supported to pursue it in the same way I hope I’m supporting him.
Sadly, Bethany the Australorp chicken and Rex the rabbit died earlier in the year. Two new chickens joined the flock in November, Dorothy and Shirley, who are black copper Marans and are very cute. After a month in a cage in the chook yard, they are now finding their feet with the big girls, some of whom are none too pleased to have them there.
The new chickens
Aside from the working from home, covid didn’t have a massive impact on my life. I don’t like going out much, I detest shopping, I don’t play or attend sport and I don’t enjoy being around large gatherings of people. I spend a lot of time at home anyway, and I love it. So I pretty much did what I always did, it’s just that I didn’t have a choice any more. Regular Friday night dinners at the bowls club were replaced with trying out various takeaway and home delivery options from local restaurants and pubs. I actually reversed my no caffeine strategy and started getting takeaway coffees from my local cafe (I am sorry for the plastic, but they weren’t allowed to use keep cups). I’m not sure why. One day I felt like a coffee and it was a valid reason to get out of the house and one day tuned into a couple of times a week, turned into every day. And when they were allowed to reopen, it because my go-to place to write. And a place to work when I needed a change of scenery.
Monthly review at the coffee shop
I realise that I am incredibly lucky that this was my experience when so many others suffered greatly and many continue to do so. I am so grateful for having the job I have and that the Tasmanian Government did what it needed to do to keep our state safe. I haven’t stopped being grateful for being in the position that I’m in this year.
It was, indeed, an unexpected year.
A weed is just a plant growing in a place someone doesn’t want it to grow in
Unravel Your Year asks you to consider what the gifts of 2020 were. I know for many, this would be difficult. I offer the following.
2020 brought me the gift of afternoon walks. Instead of being at work all afternoon, packing up and catching the bus home, I packed up my home office and went for a walk every day. I watched the afternoon light dance on trees, rocks, water and the opposite shore, and I made photos of what I saw. I would never have been able to do this if I hadn’t been working at home.
2020 brought me intense self reflection and the deep inner work that I need to do to start to heal myself.
2020 brought me a confidence boost that tells me maybe I do have an artistic side.
2020 brought me a brain that is no longer befuddled by alcohol, and the clarity and health benefits that go along with this.
2020 brought me respite from a work environment that was becoming increasingly stressful and difficult for me to cope with. My stress and anxiety levels are lower than they have been for a long time as a result.
A friend recently posted that we all need a little more yellow in our lives. I agree. You can never have too much yellow!
Goodbye, 2020.
You were not the year I expected you to be. I know the challenges you have presented, both on a global level and to me personally, are not going to disappear when the clock ticks over to 2021. In reality, the date on the calendar is just an arbitrary thing anyway. The sun is going to come up tomorrow, covid is still going to be here and I’m going to have the same struggles I have today. The climate emergency hasn’t gone away and there’s a lot of work to do. However, the end of the year is a good time to have a bit of a reset, to re-examine my priorities and goals, and make sure the course I’m on is still the one I need to be on.
Thank you, 2020, for the gifts and the opportunities you have offered me. I ticked 18 things off my 20 for 2020 list. I haven’t made the most of everything, but I think I’ve made some progress and I have learned a lot. I intend to continue to learn in 2021.
One thing I know, 2020, is that I won’t forget you in a hurry.
One from the #losttrolleysofhobart series on Instagram
What did I want to do better this week? Start to try out the new ideas for planning my days that I’ve been learning about.
So, how did that go then? I think the operative words are “start to try out” not ‘implement perfectly”. This week was a bit unsettled anyway because I had two days off work to hang out with Kramstable and do school holiday stuff.
Manicare time for meand Kramstable
I think there is a rule in the universe that says any time I plan to sit down for a day to finish a project off at work before I have some time off, the shared mailbox that I manage (and that is the thing that I allow to contribute most to my inability to ever focus on work for extended periods) is going to explode with things that need urgent attention. It happened last time and it happened again this week. Somehow, I managed to get everything done on Thursday afternoon, though this did involve working two hours longer than I normally would and skipping my afternoon walk. It was pouring rain so it’s quite possible I wouldn’t have gone out anyway, but still, I don’t like to do that too often.I’m still working on making these ideas work for me and I’ll continue with it over coming weeks.
On to 20 for 2020 Again this week, I was focused on my uni assignment (thing 8). I didn’t work on any of my other things. I was thinking on Saturday afternoon when I was out walking how weird it was that at the same time next week, I’d only have one day of the whole course left.
Much reading matter for my assignment
It seems a bit unreal. And a lot of the time it’s not the actual work that’s weighting heavily on my mind. It’s just knowing that it’s there. Even when I’m not actively doing it or thinking about it, just knowing that I have to do it takes up a huge amount of mental energy. It will be a huge relief to free up that space in my head. At least, I hope it will be!
I spent most of Saturday sorting through the conversations I’d had with people and the questionnaires they submitted and trying to make some sort of sense of it so I could put it into my report. I am constantly amazed (and delighted) that almost every time I get up and do something else like go for a walk after I’ve been focusing for a long time, I get a new insight into what I need to do or how I can do it better.
What did I achieve this week? My regular check in: I did my weekly work on my photojournal and my street corners project. Just for this next week, I’m going to be easy on myself if I don’t do them. Being one week behind will be okay and I’ll be able to drag that back on track. But I know that if I let myself get any further behind it will be too easy to get even further behind and I’ll end up with the mess I had before I caught up.
I did get the work project to the point (again) where I could hand it back to my manager before I had my day off, so I was happy with that. It seems to be one of those projects that keeps getting worked on, forgotten about, dragged out again when someone remembers we have to do it, worked on again . . . I really want it to be over and done with. It’s another one of those things that takes up an enormous amount of mental energy just to know that it’s there and not finished.
What didn’t go so well? I still think I’m letting myself get distracted by things instead of focusing on my work, especially my uni project. I set up Habitica so that I lose health if I check social media during the work day. This is working well (as long I as I’m honest about it) but maybe I need to change it to be for any time I’m working on something I want to focus on.
I need to revisit Indistractable (thing 13)!
What do I want to do better next week? All I want to do next week is finish my project report and hand it in. Nothing else matters, really.
I’ll keep working with the planning system and tweaking it to suit how I work.
Pepsi the chicken
Summary for the week
Things completed this week: 0
Things completed to date: 12 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20)
Things I progressed: 1 (8)
Things in progress I didn’t progress: 5 (7, 11, 13, 17, 22)
Things not started: 4 (9, 12, 19, 21)
Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 3
Days I read a book (Goal = 7): 7
Days I did yoga stretches (Goal = 7): 0
Days I shut my computer down before 10.15 (Goal = 7): 6
Days I went for a walk in the afternoon (Goal = 5): 5
Days I had a lunch break away from my desk (Goal = 5): 7
On Monday, I started my alcohol-free month (thing 5). I did it in March last year as part of 19 for 2019 and decided to repeat it this year. A few weeks ago I came across The Alcohol Experiment by Annie Grace, which is subtitled “30 days to take control, cut down or give up for good”. I thought “30 day alcohol experiment” sounded better than “no alcohol for a month” so I decided to follow the program in the book for the coming month. Last year I did my month. It was easy, but I gradually slipped back into my old ways, which is not something I wanted to do, and was always a risk after reaching a goal without a clear plan on what I wanted to do afterwards. It means that I still stay up too late, I don’t get enough sleep and I am tired a lot.
The program outlined in this book shows you a new way of thinking about alcohol and “asks you to look a little close about why we drink, what we get out of it and whether it’s really the alcohol that’s giving us what we want”.
There have been some interesting things to think about and challenges to some of my beliefs, so it’s a lot to take in. I think the most important thing that I have learned is that it isn’t a lack of willpower that makes me reach for another wine when I really should have started packing up and getting ready for bed, and that treating myself with compassion for my past “failures” is going to be very important. I’m not very good at that.
The “lack of willpower is not the problem” theory also features in the book Indistractable (thing 13) and Nir Eyal suggests a similar compassionate approach towards yourself when you make a mistake.
I reviewed what I’ve done so far in the book and where I’m up to. I started to feel a bit overwhelmed about some the ideas because I know that they aren’t going to work for me. Scheduling time to reply to emails (chapter 15), for example, might not work in an organisation that relies on email for a lot of its “immediate” interactions. I do this a lot precisely because I don’t want to disturb people by going to talk to the face to face, but actually talking to them would probably save a lot of time when I get into those back and forth email conversations. So, okay, let’s not say never. I will give this a try.
I’m not sure about the stuff on work interruptions (chapter 14). I always thought that putting on headphones meant that you didn’t want to be disturbed but in my workplace, noise canceling headphones are essential to get any work done, not just the work you need to concentrate on because the noise is unrelenting, so people feel quite at liberty to come and talk to me. I think the only way to be truly uninterruptible is to go and work someplace else when you really need to focus. For me, it’s not just the noise, it’s the constant movement in my peripheral vision that keeps me constantly on edge and unable to concentrate, so I don’t even think putting a “do not disturb” sign on my computer would help that. I read somewhere that it’s like your lizard brain constantly scanning the environment for signs that something out there is about to attack you, so you’re always in this semi-alert state, ready to fight or flee if you have to.
I’ve picked a few things out to try rather than go full-on and implement everything at once. I think one important thing to be sure to have is a clear work space around me (chapter 19), which means no phone within reach and only the things I am working on in front of me. I’m very good at clearing the spaces off but not so good at keeping them clear. I let stuff pile up and then I spend ages clearing it off again instead of putting things where they belong in the first place.
Wet chickens are wet
Earlier in the year I made a STOP-START-KEEP list, which I hope is pretty self-explanatory. As I discover things I’m doing that aren’t serving me, they go into the STOP section, things I’m doing now that are working well are in the KEEP section and things I want to start doing, well you get the idea. I’m going to add a TRY column to this list for things I might want to start but are more of an experiment than a thing I definitely want to do.
I stuck some more photos from my 2019 photojournal into the book (thing 4) and trimmed all of the ones I printed last week ready to go in the book. I worked on my photo project (thing 1) and completed the last three modules of my uni course (thing 8). I watched a webinar from the wellbeing course (thing 3), which relates the journalling that I need to complete from last year to call this thing done for the year.
Summary for the week
Things completed this week: 0
Things completed to date: 5 (6, 10, 15, 16, 18)
Things I progressed: 7 (1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 13, 14)
Things in progress I didn’t progress: 3 (7, 11, 22)
Things not started: 7 (2, 9, 12, 17, 19, 20, 21)
Days I stuck to my 15 minutes creative habit this week: 7.
Days I scheduled (and did) 50 or 25 minute blocks of time to work on my projects: None.
Days I read on the bus on the way to work (or another time for at least 15 minutes): 6.
This week’s baby step in taking better care of me (thing 6) so that I can do the things I want to do this year is to focus on breathing. I have learned that diaphragmatic breathing helps to activate your parasympathetic nervous system to bring you back into a state of calm, rest and repair after a stressful situation has occurred. I am seeking out times when I can spend a couple of minutes focusing on my breathing to try and make this breath something I do more naturally, especially when something happens that I would normally react to in the moment. Using the principle of habit stacking, which James Clear explains in Atomic Habits, I’m finding existing habits that I can stick the new habit of deep breathing onto.
One of these is drinking water, which was last week’s baby step. I’ve stuck the word “breathe” onto my water bottle so that every time I pick it up I will be reminded to sit down for a moment and take a couple of deep breaths. I wished I’d had a nice fancy sticker with the word breathe but I also realised if I waited until I’d found the perfect sticker I’d never do it, so I used what I had. It doesn’t look good but it does the job. And done is better than perfect.
Remember to breathe
I was on holidays this week so I was pretty relaxed. I watched five of the photo course videos and took some photos of my chickens in lieu of “wildlife”, which was the actual assignment for one of them (thing 1). I edited some of them in Lightroom (thing 19) and as a bonus, started learning about the healing and cloning tools in Photoshop. I did another assignment after that, so I’m now up to day 16.
I finished two books this week (thing 5).
La Belle Sauvage had been on my to-read pile since last year and once I got into it I found it very hard to put down. I finished reading Let me tell you about a man I knew in a day. I don’t remember the last time I read an entire book in a day!
I made three photocollages for my 2018 photojournal (thing 11) and I set up my 33 Bottles of Beer spreadsheet in Google Sheets (thing 12),
Kramstable and I had some adventures together. On Wednesday, after the fun (not) task of buying his new high school uniform (yes high school!) we visited the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, which is a great place to visit. It’s always interesting to see what grabs his interest each time we go there. This week it was the museum cart, which is an ever-changing display of objects in clear perspex boxes, the history of the gay rights movement in Tasmania, the thylacines and his old favourite, the ice in the Antarctic section. I was quite taken with this chair, which is called Splash, by John Smith (2011), and the display of Tasmanian geology.
Splash chair
Tasmanian Geology
The always wonderful Bond Store staircase
Butterflies
I was also intrigued by the different pelvis shapes of the thylacine skeletons and asked TMAG on instagram if this was an actual difference between male and female thylacines or if the bones had been set at different angles. They said that the skeletons were put together in 1922 by a man named T.F. Moore, a Melbourne taxidermist and skeleton articulator, and that they didn’t know the reason for the different angles. They suggest that the wires may have loosened over time due to movement between museums or age, but the female (front) is more accurate. So there you go.
The mystery of the thylacine pelvises
TMAG isn’t on my list but it was still a fun day.
We went to kunanyi on Friday. This counts as thing 15 because I didn’t say I had to do it by myself! It takes a bit of planning to get there because we needed to catch a bus to town and then another bus to Fern Tree and those buses only go once an hour. We headed in a bit earlier than we might have needed to because we weren’t sure the later bus from home would quite get us to town before the Fern Tree bus was due to leave. That gave us enough time to go to the coffee shop before heading off on our adventure.
I wanted to do the Fern Glade circuit, which would take in Silver Falls and get us back to Fern Tree in time to have lunch at the Fern Tree Tavern. That was the plan. I got a bit confused because I’d seen two descriptions of the circuit and they were both different so I said to Kramstable that we’d just start walking and see where we ended up without worrying too much about whether we got to where I wanted to go. I figured, and he agreed, that we were there to have a nice walk on a mountain track and that just being there was the point, without any real expectation of getting to a destination.
Nice walk
As it turned out, we ended up doubling back on ourselves but we eventually found the right way to the falls, which were lovely.
Silver Falls
Near Silver Falls
From there it was easy to find our way back down to the park, the pub and lunch. I’m glad we did do the double back because we would have been too early for lunch if we’d gone the right way in the first place!
Relaxing at the Fern Tree Tavern
We had a nice lunch and had 50 minutes before the bus was due so we relaxed on the very cool chairs for a bit, walked a short way along the Pipeline track, and then caught the bus back to town.
The Pipeline
Fortunately for us, we made it back just in time to catch our bus home. We saw it pull up at the stop as the bus we were on was pulling in to its stop on the other side of the road. A frantic dash to wait for the lights, cross the road and run (yes, run) to the bus, which was just late enough and had a lot of people getting on. A most satisfying end to what had been a lovely day out.
Today is Day 29 of my 30-day reset of not eating sugary snacks and treats. It’s gone surprisingly well.
When I started my mission get back into my no sugar lifestyle, I imagined that I’d slowly cut out one day’s treat over a period of several weeks and that by the end of it I’d be back on track. My first steps were to make sure I had something else to eat in place of my Monday afternoon snack, to remove any cash from my wallet that might make it easy to buy something I didn’t want, should I accidentally wander into a bakery or coffee shop.
After a couple of weeks of this I found that, even on the days I was allowed to have an unhealthy snack, I didn’t want to, so the 30-day reset began. In contrast to previous attempts at this, I’ve found the last 29 days to be quite easy and I haven’t really missed the cakes and chocolate.
I wondered why this was, because in the past it’s been really hard and I’ve struggled.
I think that because I’ve had several long periods where I haven’t eaten sugar, my body knows that this is my “normal”, so once I made the decision to go back to this and started to not eat cakes and chocolate, my body accepted it quite easily. I guess it knows that I am someone who doesn’t eat refined sugar, which is exactly the person I want to be.
I know some people think that cutting out something is a bit extreme and that most things in moderation are okay. The theory goes that if you completely deny yourself something, you’ll feel like you’re missing out and you’ll end up binging on the [forbidden thing], which would be worse for you than allowing yourself to have it occasionally.
Gretchen Rubin discusses this in Better Than Before. She says that some people do better by completely abstaining, because they find this easier than having the [forbidden thing] in moderation – for “abstainers”, having just a bit is almost impossible. Once they have opened the biscuit packet they’ll eat the whole lot. They won’t have one, and put the packet away until tomorrow.
As an abstainer herself, Ms Rubin notes that when abstainers deprive themselves of the [forbidden thing], they “conserve energy and will-power because there are no decisions to make and no self-control to muster”. They don’t have to decide whether to have (or do) the thing, then decide how much of the thing they will have (or do) and finally make themselves stop consuming (or doing) the thing. The decision is already made, and they can go on with their day.
She notes that someone can be an abstainer in relation to some things, but can be a “moderator” – someone for whom “everything in moderation” works well – for others. I might be an abstainer in relation to sugar, but a moderator in relation to alcohol, for example. So I’ll eat the whole block of chocolate, but I can have one glass of wine at lunch time and not spend the rest of the afternoon drinking. Unless I make a conscious choice to.
Ms Rubin notes that successful habit changes involve coordinating multiple strategies, and she gives an example of how she combined abstaining with other strategies to change her eating habits. For me, I can see how I have combined the strategy of abstaining (from sugar) with the strategy of identity (I am a person who doesn’t eat sugar) to change this particular habit. (I mentioned this strategy in this post.)
So this was an easy 30-day challenge for me – but it was only easy because of earlier work I’d done. I imagine that I’ll have more slip-ups in the future, but I hope that this experience of quite easily falling back into a healthy pattern will mean that the slip-ups aren’t frequent and aren’t as long-lived as this one was.
And here’s an unrelated picture of one of my chickens, as I contemplate what my next 30-day challenge will be.
Friday 12 June started out cold at home, but warmed up very nicely during the day to about 13 degrees.
Yesterday had been intense, and I was feeling all sorts of things all at once. I stayed up way too late last night and looked and felt like it this morning.
1 of 12 – Coffee. I needed many of these. This is my fabulous Kalgoorlie-inspired cup by the wonderful Kim, aka frogpondsrock. I got this last month at Kim’s Mud & Ink exhibition with the cartoonist Jon Kudelka at the Long Gallery in Salamanca.
2 of 12 – The moon looked very pretty when I went out to let the chooks out. At 6.45 am.
3 of 12 – The chooks were still in bed at 6.45 am, like I wished I could have been. The two older ones came out at the sound of their food bin opening, but the young ones took a bit longer to get moving. I don’t blame them. In the meantime these two hooked in.
4 of 12 – This person needs more coffee right now.
5 of 12 – Nice to see these posters popping up around Hobart. They are part of Peter Drew’s “Real Australians Say Welcome” project.
6 of 12 – Some sort of restoration work at the GPO. (As you can see, I pay a lot of attention to what’s going on.)
7 of 12 – It’s always exciting when “other mail” is waiting for me in the PO Box. The excitement is usually followed by disappointment when it’s not for me.
8 of 12 – The bus mall coming out of the GPO is a dark and scary place. And look! I managed to get the person in the red top in my photo. Because in every photo you take of a tourist spot, building or landmark, there is always That Person In Red.
9 of 12 – Inbox Zero is one of my goals each week. I’m slowly making progress with my organisational systems. It’s one step forward two steps back some days, but I’m feeling a lot more in control than I had been.
10 of 12 – Well that’s a bit blurry. A planning application notice near Franklin Square. Unsure what it’s for. Not that you could read it anyway.
11 of 12 – Fountain at Franklin Square on my way to the bus.
12 of 12 – The GPO at night and Dark Mofo’s light tower to show us what a real actual tower would look like. Apparently. Art ‘n’ stuff.
One from the #losttrolleysofhobart series on Instagram
Much reading matter for my assignment
Pepsi the chicken
stepping on the cracks 