It’s been some time since I last checked in, since I’ve felt the need to put words to thoughts. But to words I find myself returning, I find them so much easier and are my comfort zone.
My last post on needing to put words to thoughts happened last August here. Since then I’ve been mostly happy to just be. To take things as they come. I’ve tried not to worry about how things are different now but I still worry about that worry. The ability to talk myself both in and out of things still remains.
For instance at the start of this year, I began a podcast. Why someone so introverted would put themselves through that is still a question I’ve not been able to answer. I’ve done a number of episodes and I’ve been relatively happy with them but the willingness to sit down and record an episode in the last month has vanished. I feel because I started it I should be recording and posting regularly, otherwise why start it. I dislike starting something and then not finishing it, that seems a little pointless to my mind. So that’s one internal argument. The other internal argument is I’m not feeling in a chatty interactive mood and I don’t wish to record when I’m feeling like that. In the last few months I’ve tried to make the commitment to myself to only do those things that where possible I want to and do more things I enjoy. I’m quite prone to guilting myself into doing things I think I should be doing and not because I actually want to. So perhaps now you can see the internal debates that go on.
My answer to the dilemma, at the moment, is to write.
So here I am, and like I said, I find it so much easier to return to words.
I also noticed that my blog has been neglected with only the weekly making posts happening here. So it seemed like the best and most natural solution. It certainly doesn’t mean that I’m any good at writing but over the last few months I’ve realised writing is something I really enjoy. It’s mentally challenging and yet enjoyably creative.
In recent months I’ve tried hard to make the conscious decision to stop guilting myself into doing things because I think I should, and instead do more things I want and that I enjoy. It seems pretty obvious that I should only be doing things I want and enjoy doesn’t it? Why I perhaps wasn’t is a question for another time.
So what else, other than writing, have I been doing and enjoying.
In my making life all you need do is read back through the months and months of weekly updates to see creatively what I’ve been doing. I think going forward I need to get back to giving those individual projects their time in the spotlight and put the projects to words and not just visual referencing in podcasts. Getting the details and process of a project across in only words and pictures is different to showing in vlog format but is something I want to challenge myself to do again. They are skills I want to remember. There was a time some years ago when blogs were all I used to show off and talk about projects and I enjoyed the process. Perhaps this maybe one reason why I wish to write about projects rather than talk about them.
Up until Christmas I spent a good chunk of my time updating some skills that although I still had, they were perhaps a little out of date. So I’ve gotten re-trained. I still have a couple of modules to complete but in the coming months those should be finished and I then have the option to return to the work force. It needs to be weighed up against family life and commitments which of course will and do come first, but I like knowing I have the option. The mental challenge that this brought reminded me not only how important it is to be mentally challenged but also how much I enjoy that aspect of things!
Last August I made the decision to join Slimming World. I’ve never been quite happy with my weight over the years of having children and I had convinced myself that I didn’t have the time to give to myself to do something about it. This of course is just rubbish. In the months previous to joining there were a couple of things I wanted to change about my diet. Firstly, I switched the tea I drank from regular black tea to herbal tea, predominately mint tea. I cut coffee out of my diet completely for months in order to break the addiction of it and now can enjoy one or two coffees a week without needing or wanting to have more. Secondly I also cut butter out of my diet. Both of these were relatively easy to accomplish but there were a couple of other changes I wanted to make. I wanted to cut down on the amount of carbs I was eating along with sugar. Before I began to make those changes I joined Slimming World and over the months since I joined both of these things I’ve managed to cut down to a level now where I’m happy with the changes to my diet. I discovered that too many carbs were part of the reason I was putting on weight so cutting down on the amount of them has led to loosing weight. To date I’ve now lost 2 stone (12kg/26lb approx) and have a little bit more to go. Now I have to say, it’s not that I enjoy dieting but I wanted to make the changes to my diet more than anything and I love the changes that doing this has brought, not only to my figure which is a plus, but how I feel about myself in general.
After Christmas with most of my course modules complete I found I had some free time and I thought about what else I could do that I might challenge and enjoy myself. About then I saw a local group advertise a couch to 5k challenge. I mentioned it to my cousin and we both decided we’d join and encourage each other. The aim of the group was to get those who joined going from a couch (non-active) position to walking or running (whichever they preferred) 5k by the end of the 8 week program. It’s not that my cousin and I had any great love for running but we decided we’d work in the walking/running group within the challenge. I wanted to run the entire 5k by the end of the challenge. So we started out walking parts and running other parts and over the 8 week period we had built up to mostly running all of the 5k. On the last week of the challenge I did indeed run the entire 5k. In the weeks since the program ended we’ve both kept it up and I certainly have found a new enjoyment for it. Nobody is more surprised by that other than me. I would have always said there was no way I’d start running or enjoy it but here I am four months into the year and I’ve met the first challenge, to run 5k, and I’m now working on completing the next personal challenge, to run 10k. I’m not interested in running races or doing timed events, I run purely for myself and for my own enjoyment. Some of the time I run with others, some of the time I run alone. I love the thinking time as well as the time alone this gives me, not to mention the health benefits so it seems this has been a win win and it will be interesting to see where this goes in the coming months of this year.
Reading over all of that makes it seem like life has been quite hectic and that I’ve been doing quite a lot but it hasn’t been like that. Each thing I’ve taken on was taken on with intent and purpose. I’ve thought about what I’ve wanted to accomplish from each thing and some have turned out to be things I’ve enjoyed more than I would have originally said (running in particular), others I’ve found I need to think as to what purpose and intent continuing with them will bring (podcasting).
The purpose of this post has been to recap the last 8 months and bring a little clarity and focus to what I’m enjoying, to what I’m doing, and to what I want to keep doing. Obviously with intent and purpose.
