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Being an Ant
R and I had an interesting conversation yesterday, about where we were mentally. The gyms have opened back up in our neck of the woods and he's taking advantage of it. It clearly does him good to be working out again, and I'm happy to see how much he's missed it. We're both generally ready to start pushing ourselves again after seven months of...well, dealing with the world and our places in it. We did the first two stages of the KonMari Technique over the summer, and now I'm kind of itching to get back to it, piece by piece.
We're both wanting to push ourselves more than we have been this year, to finish the year strong. R has started working on his next book and is picking up the torch with exercise again. I've started walking most mornings before meditation, just to wake myself up a bit more and get in a bit of activity first thing in the morning. I'm trying to be more consistent with writing and projects, and I think that scheduling longer sessions of deeper work might be the thing to do here. 1 Pomodoro every day of like, six different projects doesn't feel quite right. Doing 2 or 3 Pomodoros of two or three projects feels better.
I would also like to get serious about writing again. There's the Patreon, which I'm perpetually behind with, but there's also a strong desire to work on stories that could find homes elsewhere. There are always open submissions in furry circles and in black speculative fiction; I just need to get my shit together and start pushing for it. I know that I have the talent for it if I apply myself, and that's the trick. I never quite learned how to knuckle down and be gritty.
Part of it is my mental health, and it's important to acknowledge that. My anxiety disorder is triggered really hard with activities that I want to do well, and that's...just about everything. With work undergoing another significant change this quarter, I also know that some days I'll be a bit too exhausted to do much in the evenings, and I need to make room for that. But the fact remains that a lot of time is wasted and I could be a bit more diligent about spending my time more wisely.
There's an app called Owaves that popped up in the How to ADHD YouTube channel, and it's kind of a visual representation of the 'multi-sized rocks' idea of time management. Basically, it teaches you how to prioritize by making time for the 'biggest' rocks first. Then you fill the time left with smaller rocks as you can. This way you can pick one or two things that are non-negotiable, make sure they're done, and fill in less-important stuff after that. I used it once, but I'm not quite sure I used it *right*, so I'll need to fiddle with it and make sure I've adapted it to my use case.
We've decided to enter a voluntary lockdown two weeks before (American) Thanksgiving so we can celebrate with two other households. I think we agreed to it before we thought through the ramifications -- that's two weeks without going to the store or any other place there's likely to be other people. Which means no gym for R, and (likely) no impromptu stops at the store. We're going to have to shop ahead for those two weeks, and most likely get groceries delivered for anything we'd like to make for Thanksgiving itself. It's a kind of exciting challenge, and I would like to prepare for it now so we can devote those two weeks of lockdown towards other projects -- like moving through KonMari, deep-diving on some creative projects, or maybe even doing a deep clean of the apartment.
There are two projects I'd like to make sure are done by then: straightening the linen closet and organizing/stocking our pantry. The linen closet isn't too bad, but I've bought organizer pockets and I'd like to get an order going in there so we know where the dish cloths, washcloths, tea towels, bedding and everything else is. We've got a lot of games built up over time, and it would be nice to arrange those with a bit more care. And, hopefully, straightening the linen closet gives us a bit more storage room for other things -- like kitchen appliances that we just don't use.
The pantry will be a bigger job. We've got about 20 cabinets of varying sizes in the kitchen, but the space is kind of hard to utilize properly. The topmost shelves are really difficult to reach, so obviously rarely-used items should go there. But we also have too many coffee mugs, wine glasses, etc. and it would be a lot better to pare those things down for easier use. Our foodstuffs are scattered around with little rhyme or reason, and it'd be nice to get that in better shape so we could easily see what we have, what we need more of, and what we're just not using. I generally only bake around the holidays, so there's brown sugar and confectioner's sugar that may be just wrapped up as tight as possible in its original bag and thrown in the cabinets over the stove when they could go better in airtight containers on a top shelf. They'll keep better, be better organized, and (hopefully) bring a sense of order and peace to our long-suffering kitchen.
We'll see how well I'm able to get all of this done. I'm a great planner, but when it comes to execution my game is so weak.
We're both wanting to push ourselves more than we have been this year, to finish the year strong. R has started working on his next book and is picking up the torch with exercise again. I've started walking most mornings before meditation, just to wake myself up a bit more and get in a bit of activity first thing in the morning. I'm trying to be more consistent with writing and projects, and I think that scheduling longer sessions of deeper work might be the thing to do here. 1 Pomodoro every day of like, six different projects doesn't feel quite right. Doing 2 or 3 Pomodoros of two or three projects feels better.
I would also like to get serious about writing again. There's the Patreon, which I'm perpetually behind with, but there's also a strong desire to work on stories that could find homes elsewhere. There are always open submissions in furry circles and in black speculative fiction; I just need to get my shit together and start pushing for it. I know that I have the talent for it if I apply myself, and that's the trick. I never quite learned how to knuckle down and be gritty.
Part of it is my mental health, and it's important to acknowledge that. My anxiety disorder is triggered really hard with activities that I want to do well, and that's...just about everything. With work undergoing another significant change this quarter, I also know that some days I'll be a bit too exhausted to do much in the evenings, and I need to make room for that. But the fact remains that a lot of time is wasted and I could be a bit more diligent about spending my time more wisely.
There's an app called Owaves that popped up in the How to ADHD YouTube channel, and it's kind of a visual representation of the 'multi-sized rocks' idea of time management. Basically, it teaches you how to prioritize by making time for the 'biggest' rocks first. Then you fill the time left with smaller rocks as you can. This way you can pick one or two things that are non-negotiable, make sure they're done, and fill in less-important stuff after that. I used it once, but I'm not quite sure I used it *right*, so I'll need to fiddle with it and make sure I've adapted it to my use case.
We've decided to enter a voluntary lockdown two weeks before (American) Thanksgiving so we can celebrate with two other households. I think we agreed to it before we thought through the ramifications -- that's two weeks without going to the store or any other place there's likely to be other people. Which means no gym for R, and (likely) no impromptu stops at the store. We're going to have to shop ahead for those two weeks, and most likely get groceries delivered for anything we'd like to make for Thanksgiving itself. It's a kind of exciting challenge, and I would like to prepare for it now so we can devote those two weeks of lockdown towards other projects -- like moving through KonMari, deep-diving on some creative projects, or maybe even doing a deep clean of the apartment.
There are two projects I'd like to make sure are done by then: straightening the linen closet and organizing/stocking our pantry. The linen closet isn't too bad, but I've bought organizer pockets and I'd like to get an order going in there so we know where the dish cloths, washcloths, tea towels, bedding and everything else is. We've got a lot of games built up over time, and it would be nice to arrange those with a bit more care. And, hopefully, straightening the linen closet gives us a bit more storage room for other things -- like kitchen appliances that we just don't use.
The pantry will be a bigger job. We've got about 20 cabinets of varying sizes in the kitchen, but the space is kind of hard to utilize properly. The topmost shelves are really difficult to reach, so obviously rarely-used items should go there. But we also have too many coffee mugs, wine glasses, etc. and it would be a lot better to pare those things down for easier use. Our foodstuffs are scattered around with little rhyme or reason, and it'd be nice to get that in better shape so we could easily see what we have, what we need more of, and what we're just not using. I generally only bake around the holidays, so there's brown sugar and confectioner's sugar that may be just wrapped up as tight as possible in its original bag and thrown in the cabinets over the stove when they could go better in airtight containers on a top shelf. They'll keep better, be better organized, and (hopefully) bring a sense of order and peace to our long-suffering kitchen.
We'll see how well I'm able to get all of this done. I'm a great planner, but when it comes to execution my game is so weak.