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Onward into October

Think it, Plan it, Do it
splosh
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Onward into October

#85057

Postby splosh » October 2nd, 2017, 10:23 am

Righto, project Survive September seems on the whole to have succeeded, which means there is a whole new month ahead to deal with.

I'm hoping that October will offer a little more breathing space to catch up with myself. At this point there two major unknowns that will affect how demanding the month is going to be, but I think even if both resolve to the 'lots to do' option, it will be easier than September as there will be less travelling.

Work
1. Attend convention
2. One coaching trip
3. Eat miscellaneous administrative frogs that piled up while I was busy
4. Lead the first of four days of a course. This is the first unknown - registrations have been slow, so a decision is going to be made this week whether or not to cancel. I'm happy enough either way - it's a course I enjoy teaching, but I have enough on not to be bored without out it.
5. Go for tryout session with new choir. This is the second unknown. If they decide to offer me the conductor post and I decide to accept it, there will be lots of prep to do in Oct and Nov for a Jan start, especially since I will be away for all of December so need to get properly ahead of myself.

Play
1. Go to a couple of events put on by organisations I volunteer for. (Could have gone under volunteering, below, but these are the kinds of things I'd have joined in with before I got involved with the organisations)
2. Get together with friends B & E

Home/Health/Family
1. Regroup after bonkers September (sleep, eat better, do lots of laundry, etc)
2. See my brother
3. Continue garden tidying
4. Get back into upcycling project

Volunteering
1. Two committee meetings
2. Help other committee members with rationalisation of mailing lists
3. Design and implement new voucher scheme

That doesn't look too short of things to do, does it? Though when you have 'sleep' on your goals list for a month, that says something about your state of mind...

Best wishes to all YTSTers!

splosh

Brava21
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Re: Onward into October

#85917

Postby Brava21 » October 5th, 2017, 9:38 am

Onward indeed, Splosh. I suppose we must...

I haven't posted for ages as I have been feeling terribly low. Really flat, and I don't know what to do with myself. I have next week off (the sad thing is that I am only having next week off because I really don't want to be there, and have limited idea to what I am going to do at home other than cleaning and other minor jobs).

So if anyone can think of any motivational tips for me I would be very grateful.

best wishes to everyone else!

Brava x

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Re: Onward into October

#86484

Postby Violinista » October 7th, 2017, 1:11 pm

Oh dear Brava, that does sound dispiriting. Can I suggest that you make it a goal to go for a walk and kick your way through a big pile of leaves, every day? It is terribly therapeutic.

This is my first post on Lemon Fool, although I recognise many names from Fool days - hello all! I have a startling to-do list at the moment so perhaps I should come and post it here to make sure Tortoise wags her finger at me and keeps me on track.

House
Empty spare room, get new carpet, advertise on Spare Room and receive rental. Simples.

It was my office. A lot of stuff has been either binned or placed in loft. Placing in loft is a process much easier if there is someone to hand you up stuff. Last week, Himself proved amply able to Hand Up Stuff. This weekend, he has disappeared on a Jolly Boys Jaunt, a walking weekend, liberally punctuated by beer and meals featuring mostly meat. This has left me to bounce up and down the ladder like a yo-yo until my legs felt too wobbly and I've retreated to the sofa. I have at least cleared another shelf and placed a third screen in the loft - Just In Case.

Storage
Not mine, I hasten to add. I am far too much of a long term Fool to be foolish enough to be paying an eyewatering amount each month for storage. It is Himself's. However, it is so densely packed that having viewed it, I was initially tempted to slam the doors shut again, replace the padlocks, weld it shut for good measure and search eBay for a small nuclear explosive device that might provide an ultimate solution. But that's just not the spirit, is it?

So we have been back, selected a small box-ful of quick wins for immediate dumping and discussed why he was paying to store stuff that random, often unnamed people might want at some undetermined point in the future, and getting grudging agreement that if said people hadn't materialised in 7 years, (SEVEN YEARS!!) begging for just exactly an item that he happened to have in his storage, they were unlikely to materialise now.

We have the start of a plan. I have room for several of the large bookcases in my living room, and my rent a room project will happily accept the chest of drawers. That will give him enough room to manoeuvre to extract the filing cabinet that he's promised the church. We can negotiate on the 14 pairs of speakers, and maybe slim down the 5 drum kits?

Work
Of course, all of the above is just delightful distraction from the elephant-sized frog in the room, which is the slight lack of a job. I have been on gardening leave since Christmas. My boss has recently intimated that he is likely to soon overcome his dislike of administration and actually cancel the standing order that has been paying me all this time. Drat. One can only rely on the tardiness of others for so long. I have a CV. As I suspected, it is an utter dog's dinner of roles. There are no jobs that I'd want to do in the sector that I've been working (!) in for the last 6 years, and my knowledge of what I was doing before then is, of course, drastically out of date. Being a good Fool, I have savings of course, but I am rather attached to them, and don't want to run through them all.

Himself, coincidentally has also been hit with redundancy, and is also out of work. It is lucky that he has a work history that is indisputably one thing. However that thing is very slow at present - most of his friends in the industry say they have made no sales in that area since before the summer. Brexit is not helping. Being the sort of numpty who would pay for storage, it goes without saying that he has no savings.

So, succinctly:
    Empty rest of spare room into bin or loft
    Order new carpet
    Buy a bed
    Take photos of it looking like a bedroom and list on Spare Room
    Reduce storage volume and costs by 50%
    Restate (my) CV until some sane person can understand it
    Apply for three specific jobs with focused covering letters a day (both)
    Email 5 contacts a week for suggestions on where to apply (both)

That should do for this month. Gulp.

Violinista
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Re: Onward into October

#86497

Postby Violinista » October 7th, 2017, 2:28 pm

May I just smugly report that I have grasped one particular nettle by the horn, remembered that my mobile contract was up and got a better deal for a third of the price?

There's no stopping me now!

Tortoise1000
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Re: Onward into October

#86755

Postby Tortoise1000 » October 8th, 2017, 8:58 pm

Hallo Violinista, how great to see you again! That's a fine set of Foolish goals you have posted there. As regards the clutter, did you see my comment last month about the Marie Kondo sparking joy distinction? It honestly helps, to hold each thing and decide if it does. You can get rid of loads that way. Good luck with finding a congenial lodger.

Brava, I am so sorry you are feeling down. I assumed you were simply busy. Are you well enough to run yet? I'd have thought some running would cheer you up. Have you a running buddy you could run with in the mornings and go for coffee afterwards? That might be a cheery start to the days.

I have not posted goals yet partly because 'support TJ' is taking up phenomenal amounts of time. I cant even begin to describe the level of detail required. However that's one of the goals. I am trying to help him a) learn to cook, b) get out of his overdraft, c) apply for a job and d) stay in his new lodgings , the third in 3 months. Meanwhile he is working long hours in his two current jobs, studying and doing various courses, running, and now he has decided to learn to box in his non-existent free time. He is resistant to and forgetful of advice, whilst frequently asking for it and phoning up about crises caused by not following it. Aargh. Sometimes it gets difficult to keep track of my own life, I spend so much time mentally where he is.

Anyway I am managing to keep a few things going. Top of the list the health self-care. GP appointments for test results on Friday, hopefully resulting in a short course of magic medicine that will fix everything. SW and tracking exercise on Strava to continue.

Finish this blessed bedroom-decorating project and order the carpet. Get the carpenter back to do a few things, including putting up a shelf in the garage that needs doing before I order some wood for the stove. Winter draws near.

Oh dear, just remembered, shop :-( for a dress for an occasion in early November. That is so ghastly a prospect I shall stop thinking of more goals for now .

T

splosh
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Re: Onward into October

#88538

Postby splosh » October 16th, 2017, 11:39 am

Bah, well I drafted a long post full of cheery encouragement for Brava and violinista, and sympathy for Tortoise's travails with TJ, as well as an assessment of how I'm getting on with the month's goals. Hit preview without noticing my wifi connection had dropped (an annoying habit it has picked up in just the last week), and it all disappeared.

Can't be doing with typing it all again. Executive summary:

1. Keep going, everyone
2. So far so good with October

splosh

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Re: Onward into October

#88722

Postby Tortoise1000 » October 16th, 2017, 10:23 pm

Bah! That is indeed irksome.

Thank you for the encouragement, however. It was appropriately timed while I was out dress-shopping this morning and contributed to a good outcome. I had been dreading the job, as I told you. So I went for the nuclear option and booked a personal shopper at a local department store. Success! Occasion wear has been purchased. The appointment went so well I did various other errands while I was there too. If only shopping was always like this.

I hope you are managing to catch up on your sleep, splosh. It is a good time of year for it.

T

Brava21
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Re: Onward into October

#89293

Postby Brava21 » October 19th, 2017, 12:26 pm

Hi all

And thank you Violinista, Tortoise and Splosh for your good wishes. It is very much appreciated and I do think the positive vibes have helped a little, though I think the fact that I have just looked at my diary to see how many more weeks after this week there are in work until Christmas* says that I have some way to go :)

I had a week off last week, and tried to be productive. I wrote myself lists of things I could be doing (or else I feared I would simply waste the week away) and it seemed to work. I did not do anything terribly exciting, but I do have clean blinds, windows and kitchen cupboards now (on the latter task, the oldest store cupboard item I threw out was BB July 2014, which I thought wasn't too bad really, but when you consider that we moved here in May 2016, it does start to look rather shoddy, doesn't it, moving out of date items from one home to another). :lol:

We've had one bit of really good news here in Brava Towers, which has bucked me up no end. Mr B, who some of you will know had a heart attack 6 years ago aged 46 1/2 (terrible genetic stock, for those who are wondering - he has always been fit, active and healthy) and has since been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes (again, runs in the family...) has had wonderful success in dealing with his health conditions. He has changed his diet to restrict carbohydrates, has lost 30lb and, most significantly, has reversed the T2D.

This was revealed to him at his latest 3 monthly check up at the diabetic clinic at the GP surgery. He said the nurse was really chuffed. He is delighted, and went away feeling rather pleased with himself (and not a little 'in-your-face, nursey') due to the fact that last time he was there, when he told the nurse he was starting to lose weight, had changed his diet etc. and they had a chat around the fact that it is possible to reverse T2D through diet and exercise she said (dismissively) 'oh yes, it is possible of course, but in practice none of our patients achieve that'.

When she broke the news that he was no longer diabetic, she revealed that he is only the second diabetic patient on their books to have reversed it himself. He is now focusing even more closely on getting some more weight off (he would like to lose another stone, preferably) in order to retain Star Patient status for his next appointment in early December. He is aware that he has reversed the condition and not cured it, and that he needs to keep up the good work to stay healthy.

Goals for the rest of this month are not earth shattering but are designed to keep me sane/hopefully make me more sane:

1) Make more effort to be sociable (I tend to withdraw when I'm like this) - coffee with a mate in the diary for next Monday (at the new bike repair shop/café near the museum in Cardiff, I expect TJ knows it, Tortoise) and also coffee with another mate the following Tuesday, plus have emailed girly mates to see if they are up for a curry in early November
2) Keep up the running as best as I can and don't beat myself up if progress still seems so ridiculously slow that I wonder why on earth I am bothering (I was unable to run for health reasons for 5 months this year and at my age, it isn't half difficult to get back into)
3) Continue to support Mr B in his excellent weight loss and health improvement plan (encouragement, cooking low carb meals, etc.) whilst trying to drop a couple more pounds myself.

That will do for now, love to all

Brava xx

*Sorry to use that word... but I was trying to brightside, honest :)

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Re: Onward into October

#89916

Postby futuresaver101 » October 22nd, 2017, 1:48 pm

Hi all,

Sorry - where did the month go ? Rhetorical Q. For me, it disappeared under the cosh of a particularly challenging-but-interesting project. I hit all my deadlines but everything else went to pot.

Brava. Have a big hug. And imagine some of my particularly wide-roaming-and-bumbling-but-essentially-cheerful vibes coming your way.

Splosh. I have been there, careful typing and crafting of messages only for the computer to eat it. I LOVED your synthesis though !

Violinista. Welcome ! P.S. I thought I was the only one: "14 pairs of speakers, and maybe slim down the 5 drum kits?" Mr FS101 only has three drum kits, but a surprisingly large (at least to me) number of snare drums and cymbals. Depends at what point you count a speaker as a speaker...if we add in all the small ones I am sure we could get to double figures in the FS101 house. Good luck with the two-job-find-now situation too

T - good luck with project "Support TJ". I did misread your message at first (somehow) and read that you had taken up rock climbing, running. Please don't ask me how I managed to get there...

I do like this board. I really do. Thanks to all you YTST-ers, who read and post and lurk and more.

FS101

P.S. Oh, almost forgot. I hear there's this tradition we have on this board of setting goals, finding frogs. And actually doing stuff about it :D Being green, and recycling the ones from last month. Which I managed to do nothing about (said project).

1) Sport.

Change Goal #1: Buy and use silicone cups (muscles, and cellulite too)

2) Brain (aka Mind and Work).

Change Goal #2: Step up my Headspace, to daily practice on the morning commute.

3) FS101 in 2027. What's the saying, you can only predict that it will be unpredictable?

Change Goal #3: Think of myself as an energetic-approaching-50, and find 5 role models, and put their photos on my phone.

splosh
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Re: Onward into October

#90045

Postby splosh » October 23rd, 2017, 10:37 am

Hi again all, time for another attempt at an update, let's hope this one doesn't disappear into the ether.

Excellent news re Mr B, Brava - most impressed! And yes personal shoppers can be very useful, can't they T? Haven't done that for years, but it's a good way unstick when you're stuck.

So, progress check...

Work
1. Attend convention
Starts on Weds
2. One coaching trip Done
3. Eat miscellaneous administrative frogs that piled up while I was busy Done, including some I was quite daunted by
4. Lead the first of four days of a course. Ended up being cancelled as not enough registrations, so life has been a bit freer than it might have been. It's a pity, but I've been busy enough that I didn't mind too much.
5. Go for tryout session with new choir. I've been for the session, it went pretty well. I'd like the gig. They have another potential conductor coming for a tryout next week though, so I won't know for a couple of weeks whether this lands on my to-do list.

Play
1. Go to a couple of events put on by organisations I volunteer for.
Done. One was fun, the other rather dull. Oh well.
2. Get together with friends B & E This won't happen this month, but we have a date in the diary for early Nov

Home/Health/Family
1. Regroup after bonkers September (sleep, eat better, do lots of laundry, etc)
Yes, I am pretty much caught up on myself now, and sleeping normal hours again. Lots of napping happened in the first half of the month!
2. See my brother Yes, that was fun
3. Continue garden tidying Yes, pretty much sorted for the end-of-summer stuff.
4. Get back into upcycling project Finished it yesterday! Quite pleased with it.

Volunteering
1. Two committee meetings
Done
2. Help other committee members with rationalisation of mailing lists Pretty much done. Individual queries still coming out of the woodwork, but I think that will always be the case.
3. Design and implement new voucher scheme Ready to go when I hear back about one of said queries.

So, October is still going pretty well. The convention will eat up most of the rest of it, so see you at the start of November!

splosh

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Re: Onward into October

#90463

Postby Tortoise1000 » October 24th, 2017, 8:07 pm

Brava, that is fabulous news! Many congratulations to Mr B! It is great you are both keen on keeping fit. You can keep each other going. Does he run with you?

Splosh has woken me up to the fact that three-quarters of the month has passed and there must be only a week left. However, due to setting very easy targets I am hopeful of success.

Definitely no rock climbing, though. If you ever see a post from me saying I have taken up rock climbing, you will know there is an impostor .

T

Tortoise1000
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Re: Onward into October

#92462

Postby Tortoise1000 » November 1st, 2017, 9:59 pm

How has everyone got on? I forgot to report yesterday, with it being Hallowe'en.

October report:

Health: GP appointments for test results on Friday, hopefully resulting in a short course of magic medicine that will fix everything. SW and tracking exercise on Strava to continue.

No luck with the magic medicine, I have to go for an ECG. Waiting for an appointment to be sent. Usual NHS tactics no doubt, string me along until Ive got something really worthwhile. I think my generation are going to have to rely on ourselves as we age, the system is already completely overloaded looking after the 80-somethings. Did you see that that Panorama programme about being 100? It gave me a new perspective on my retirement investing strategy. 40 years, it could be! Flippin’ heck, that is a long way to go. So I’m doing the right thing with the Strava and the SW. The weight is going down extremely slowly, and the fitness is going up extremely slowly. But it’s all in the right direction. In 40 year’s time I should be in excellent shape.

Finish this blessed bedroom-decorating project and order the carpet.

Yes! Carpet was laid yesterday

Get the carpenter back to do a few things, including putting up a shelf in the garage that needs doing before I order some wood for the stove.

The shelf is up and other things done, he is coming back to do more, possibly tomorrow

shop for a dress for an occasion in early November.

Yes, hooray, so I can look forward to the occasion. Amazing how a suitable outfit brightens up the prospect. I've done quite a but of clothes shopping recently, and cleared out some old ones I am never going to wear, and folded everything neatly a la Marie Kondo. The incentive was moving into a smaller bedroom while the larger one was decorated. Now I've got rid of all this stuff, I could leave the large bedroom empty! Apart from a bed. Her ‘sparks joy’ test is very clever. So much fails the test , and is easy to get rid of. I hope I’m doing it right. I’ll be living in an empty house soon, at this rate.

Support TJ


As usual.

T


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