Little tasks: After a late night Saturday with a big bowl of gumbo and some wine, Sunday was pretty quiet in our house. But a quiet Sunday is good, it means time to get around to all those little jobs that we’d been planning to do like cleaning our hiking boots after the big muddy walk last weekend and (in my case) removing the shoelaces to wash off the mud. I also hemmed a pair of work trousers that have sat in the repairs pile for about a month, boxed up the unwanted DVD (that we put in a pile in December) to send off to one of those ‘we-buy-DVD’ sites, and mopped the kitchen floor (so it was clean for an hour or two until the cat came in with muddy paws).
Train chaos: Monday was not a productive day. Lots of meetings, lots of questions. No time left for concentration and actually doing stuff. I stayed late to try and get some sense of achievement, that I did get something done, but due to the wild weather (wind and rain), the trains were in chaos when I left.
Why is it on days when you stay late, these are the days that the trains stop working? I got to the station thinking I’d missed the 18:33 train but it turns out it was cancelled instead. The 18:48 was also cancelled but then suddenly the 18:18 train appeared back on the departures board at around the same time the 18:48 should have been leaving. I tried getting to the platform but with the crowds of people waiting for cancelled and delayed trainis I didn’t make it in time.
So instead I took a different train:…and two buses. It didn’t take too much extra time but the inconvenience of extra changes on your commute really adds to the pain of commuting. That and the hanging around in the station for 30 minutes hoping my train would eventually appear and not be cancelled.
2020 Challenge: Time to commit myself to a challenge for 2020 so I have booked a room for public speaking practice group. Then I drafted the email. And then I sat and looked at it. And then I sent it late in the day. But by 10:30pm (because I am crazy enough to check my emails so late at night) I had three positive replies. So good news, people still trust me enough to want to come along.
2020 Changes: I’m hoping to get some serious changes going on in 2020. I feel the energy is right, and right behind me this year. I’m following Mel Robbins #BestDecadeEver programme and today I also got my pre-reading and plan for Find Your Ikigai, something I’m doing locally through the East of Eden yoga studio one day a month over four months. It’s going to combine yoga meditation and journalling exercises to help identify things that light up your soul (or something like that).
Under #BestSecadeEver I’ve decided I want to focus on writing. I am writing at every small opportunity – on my phone, on computer, in my journal. The main thing is for me to write something every day, be it public or private. Practice, practice, and no more fear!
No fear means this week I made a mention of this blog in a Facebook post. Why I never mentioned it before? Feelings of “not good enough”? Or “what if no one cares”? It’s good enough for me and I care.
Kindness This week during a morning commute I saw a couple carrying a pram/buggy down the stairs at the station. At the bottom of the stairs he said “Are you OK now?” And she replied “Yes, thank you so much” And I realised they were not a couple, he was just helping her. I feel so happy when I see these little signs of kindness especially in a city that can seem so cold and uncaring as London. Especially during commuting time when people are just that little bit more uptight and selfish.
Surprise: I got an email message from LinkedIn, from someone interested in my experience and wanting me to send my CV for consideration for a job. I had heard of these things happening but it has never happened to me before. It wasn’t a phishing email, the company is real and it does do things related to what I do now. How funny that I get this at a time when I’m not actually thinking of moving. Oh well.
Roast Garlic: We were running out of frozen roast garlic cloves (only 2 left!) so we bought a dozen bulbs during the week and after a long process of skinning the cloves, put them in to roast while we were doing a chicken for Saturday dinner. We now have over 100 roast garlic cloves in the freezer. That should last us a few months.
Tales from Tobhamhor 