Taking my finger off the self-destruct button

RosaBernicia

little_h wrote: »

I am seeing an osteopath at the moment and managed to give him a bit of an eyeful the other week. I don't have sensible bras and unfortunately it was neck and shoulder week so my top had to come off and there he was confronted with leopard print - I was mortified

:rotfl: can top that I'm afraid - I don't have many sensible bras either, so at one point wore an old solid cotton one thinking it wouldn't matter if it was 'slightly' too small... except that shoulder manipulations were involved and I found there was a sudden hiatus while the osteo politely averted his gaze and suggested I make an adjustment :o:o... now I wear sports bras to appts!

Rosa xx

Wordsmith

My rebirth has taken a bit of time because I can’t stop being the old me for long enough to become the new me. I have decided now is the time … To start, I decided to look back at my first post to see how far I have come. It’s not pretty reading.

Business:

• get more, and better paying, clients Well, I have got one more. It’s fairly regular work for about four hours a week. My short-fuse client is still there, but he does owe me a fair bit (in my terms, anyway) of money. I think it will be paid, but may take some tme. Main proofreading client has been trundling along, but they are demanding some crazy turnarounds, which I would do better at if I didn’t do shop work etc., but then if I didn’t do that I would have no steady income and be twiddling whatever bits you twiddle while waiting for work.
• run my business properly … moving swiftly on …
• do my accounts and keep them up to date I did the accounts for the year I was talking about way back then, and now have later year(s) to get up to speed with, so moving swiftly on again …
• finish my web site … and again …
• make headway on the projects that I would love to be making money at but keep putting off because someone is paying me to do something else … and again …
• prioritise better … am moving so swiftly now I am tripping over myself …

So what do we deduce from this boys and girls? OK, the good things: I have work and mostly I enjoy it. A big, huge, massive plus that I am very grateful for. There is, ahem, room for improvement though.

House:

• do what I can to make it a nicer place to be – ... I’m not lazy, but I need someone around to tell me what to do as the practical genes overslept and missed the bus when I was born. I think maybe my biggest realisation here is that actually I am lazy! I have a plan, for when I get a day to myself, to get a skip and at least tidy up the place a bit. I could and would make use of the some of the land, but my efforts at (paying someone to) get rid of the Japanese knotweed have so far proved fruitless, and I can’t do anything until I get rid of that. I have a bit more of a plan for getting rid of it starting this year, but it could take a couple more years.
• aim to make a few improvements to the English house so it is sellable No thanks to any effort on my part, I think I have sold it (well, I have sold it and it is all with the solicitors at the moment … not counting chickens yet though). It involved a lot of heartache deciding to sell, but I know it is the right thing to do. If/when it does, there will be several hard decisions to make then.

Life:

• reconnect and keep in touch with good friends No, got worserer and worserer at this. I don’t know why – I had/have some lovely friends. It’s that damn self-destruct button I can’t take my finger off.
• get fitter and lose weight Moving very swiftly on … but only in a waddly and creaky manner …
• try to take more pride in my appearance Umm, well, I am a bit more choosy about what I buy at the charity shop, but still end up with dark and shapeless clothes. I do have a few more of them now though. And I did splash out in a sale on a new stripey, and therefore radically (for me) funky, cardigan. And, go me, I occasionally now wear a necklace.
• get some kind of social life and stop being so reclusive No moving swiftly on on this one ... just crawling under my rock.
• get the blood tests done that the doctor told me to have done six months ago. I did this! I did this! And all was well.
• get birds and a goat and a donkey … Am waiting on having land to put them on. Since I start the diary though, I have increased the Wordsmith household by three cats and then decreased it by one of them as I was careless enough to lose him.
• stop having evil thoughts and just be nicer Erm, no. Still a bit of a cow.
• stop saying “but” … I think I am getting better at this. Only nine new instances in the text above!

Get debt free. Scary, scary, scary. I’m still in debt and I'm still scared. But – big but that I am allowing myself (as opposed to the big butt that travels with me) – I am not as scared. I have made some headway, albeit s-l-o-w-l-y. Very, very slowly. I have made lots of changes to the way I live. I have had some big, unavoidable expenses, which I could have done without and have slowed up getting out of debt, but I have had the money to pay for them.

In a nutshell, from two years ago many of my plans never got underway and are stagnant – bad, bad, bad; but I am happier and more positive and feel ready to move on. It will take a little introspection, which is not a happy place for me, to work out how to. So I will give it some deep thought and be back to you in, oh, about five minutes.

Radish72

Its been 5 minutes

Wordsmith

OK, well that’s enough thinking about me. Eugh. Took longer than five minutes only because I had to go off looking for confirmation cards in the shop. No need for anyone to read the following. It’s boring, but I need it.

Resolutions that I would have made at New Year if life and death hadn’t got in the way. Big breath, hand on heart …

Business
It’s not a business. I get work. I do work. I don’t get paid very well for work. I will change it into a business, which incorporates getting my finger out and catching up with accounts and creating a web site that sells my services, as opposed to being another random page on the Internet.
I will get more work that I enjoy. Essentially this is publishing work in various guises. That is difficult to get, but it certainly won’t happen if I don’t put in a bit more effort.
I will post to-do lists on the self-employed thread. I have been doing this and it has helped to organise my day.

House
I’ve still no money for doing up the hovel. There are still things I can do to make the “space” more attractive. A small amount of money may be needed, but definitely a lot more time and effort on my part.
I can’t make any decisions on what to do when I sell UK house, as at the moment it is out of my hands. I will sit on that until something happens.
The house I am renting is somewhere I go at the end of the day and leave in the morning. It won’t take much to make this somewhere comfortable to be, so that’s what I’ll do, using the magic 15 minutes a day that seems to help a lot of other people on this board.

Life
My eating habits are slightly better than they were, but they can be a whole lot better. I have arranged with a gardening friend to buy a box of veg from her every week so hopefully I will start making some proper meals. For this, though, I have to get home earlier than I do. At 9 or 10 or 11 at night I do not feel like turning round and cooking a meal. I don’t have a freezer, nor the space to put one. And quite frankly I’m not sure the electrics in my house would cope with one.
I will exercise more. I take the dog out every morning and was going to use this as a means of walking fast to get exercise. Then the cats started coming with us and because their legs are little, we have to go quite slowly and keep stopping to let them catch up. I love our little family all going for a walk together, so I will find another way of getting exercise that doesn’t cost anything. I’ll have to think on this one, but it shouldn’t be difficult. No, Wordsmith, it really shouldn’t.
The social life issue is a difficult one. Most nights when I get home I am just so tired I can’t contemplate going out again. I love, really love, going home, greeting the cats, having a bite to eat and sitting down for an hour and reading (my greatest passion), sometimes in silence, sometimes with the radio on. I have to be sociable during the day and am not a recluse, but I don’t have any friends here or do anything outside work and home, and I work seven days a week. What I need to do is try to take at least half a day off a week and do something in it. I can see that this will fade into the background if I don’t make some serious effort to do it. I need a hobby that involves a group of some sort. Hmmm.
I will make at least one phone call a week to one friend or another so that I don’t lose touch. I am going to find this very difficult to start with, but hopefully it will become a habit.
I will make an appointment to visit the dentist. Looking forward to that, I must say.

These are all the things I should be doing. Now for what I want to do.

I want to write. I have a couple of novels planned in some detail in my head. I don’t have time to write them down. I am conscious that it is unlikely I would make money at writing and as it is quite a time-consuming process I feel I can’t justify spending any time doing it. But I want to, so I’m going to. It doesn’t matter if they don’t see the light of day, it’s what I want to do. Rather than fix a day or an evening for doing this, which I know will fall by the wayside for “more important” things, I will set myself a word-count challenge for every week and I will find the time somehow.

I want to do something creative. This is tricky because I don’t have a creative cell in my body. I have three projects in mind that I want to spend some time on. They could make me a bit of pocket money – not so that they could be considered an income stream, but just so that I can justify spending a bit of time doing them.

I want more than anything to make some memories. They don’t have to be earth-shattering travelling the world with just a back-pack and a mouth-organ type memories. Just things that it would be good to look back on and say “That was an enjoyable day”, or be able to relate to someone else with some spark of interest. I am just so bluddy boring it’s no wonder I can’t make friends.

Time, or lack of it, is my enemy. But only because I let it.

Oh, and I am going to try to post on my diary more often. Not as serious and boring (I hope) as this post, but just day-to-day things to keep my focus - debt busting and memory making. When I lapse diary-writing for a short time, I find it very difficult to get back to. Don't know why - not going to think about it, just change it. And now I haven't got StartAgain's diary to hijack, I'd better give my own some attention!

Radish72

Can goats eat Japanese knot weed, then you would have a goat and cleared land

Wordsmith

Radish72 wrote: »

Can goats eat Japanese knot weed, then you would have a goat and cleared land

They don't seem to like it too much. But the main problem is that they may keep it down while they are on the land, but as soon as you keep them off it (to make a bit of a garden or something), the knotweed comes back. It is terrible stuff.

Lula-Hula

Hello from a fellow anti-social cow :wave:

I have no help for the knotweed I'm afraid but as for free exercise, I recommend yoga to keep you supple & skipping is an excellent way to keep fit & will only cost whatever a piece of thin rope or washing line cord does. Star jumps are also free.

No excuses now, jump to it :j

RosaBernicia

You're not boring, Wordsmith. It's people's thoughts that make them interesting, not their schedule.

*wonders if could finally learn to skip 30-odd years after everyone else*

Rosa xx

ani_26

Reading your updates, reminds me why i was ' attracted ' to your diary in the first place. The similarities are uncanny, but maybe everyone is more eloquent and intellectual, than i am. Or maybe my coping mechanisms and self esteem are at an all time low. With that, i'll shut up, stop posting, but keep reading.

Wordsmith

Thanks all. Lula-Hula, I love yoga. I used to attend a class, but don't now, partly because I can't find one where the times fit and partly because of my back (before I saw the light and actually when and had it fixed). I can do some by myself and will, but I prefer a class because I am not an expert and am conscious that if you do some of the positions in the wrong way then it can do more harm than good. Thanks for the nudge, though - I'll start, um, very soon. As for skipping, I did bring a skipping rope over with me, with precisely that in mind. I didn't get on with too well because of my lack of co-ordination; I will dig it out and (find a very remote spot and) give it another go. I love the idea of skipping. Okay, I'll do it. Yes, and star jumps ...

All newborns take a while to get into their stride, right? Well, last night I left the office later than I intended. This was, however, because I was doing a spot of internet research (ahem), and because I phoned my sister - okay, that's not a friend I haven't kept in touch with, although I did owe her a call, and I wanted to talk about the web site I have been doing for her. (Did you notice the clever avoidance of the word "but" there? Did you?) It was still just about light when I got home, so I took the tart and the moggies for a walk down the lane. And then, the b1tch was there one second and gone the next. One hour later, after I had trudged up and down lanes, roused the neighbours and braved the German Shepard guard dog in the yard down the lane, she runs up to me and says "Where were you?" At 11 o'clock at night cooking a full and nutritious meal wasn't an option (trust me, it wasn't), so I made do with a glass of wine from the bottle that lovely boss man had given to me and a Mars Bar that had somehow found its way into my house, ooh, months ago. Failed on the healthy eating; passed with honours on the exercise (I got out of breath and everything). I don't know where she was, but she was up to mischief wherever it was. I suspect it had something to do with MrP down the road (he who used to be referred to as "elderly gentleman") - if you have read Lionheartedgirl's diary you might be thinking "Oooh, Mr Possible - give us the goss." Sadly, in my case MrP stands for Mr Perv - that's all I'm saying on the matter (but rest assured the name doesn't come from anything to do with dogs).

I am a shop girl all weekend. I was trying to get a large loaf of bread into a small plastic bag for first, elderly gentleman customer, and said, "It's a tight fit, John." He said, with a chuckle, "Better a tight fit than too loose." Really, I haven't even had a cup of tea yet. (By the way, it wasn't MrP. We have a few "elderly gentlemen" around these parts.)