21 for 2021: Week 4 update

21 for 2021 update

I did a bit more work on my blog this week (thing 13) and posted the second part of my series reflecting on blogging for ten years. 

This includes re-posting a post from each month of my first year over the next few weeks as a trip down memory lane. So for this week, here’s a post from 3 February 2011, which is about why I put in an objection to the local council about plans for building a fast food “restaurant” in the town I used to live in. 

Something that continues to amuse me is that a post I wrote in 2014, originally for a blog (which no longer exists) of a writer who called herself Betty Herbert about kids TV shows, about the show Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom, continues to be my top rating post. Just this week, I got a comment on the post from a reader who watches the show with his five-year-old, which is just brilliant. I blame the monkey kittens for this. 

I’m still working on the “habits” chapter of the Change Journal (thing 4), which has included my pre-work planing routine (thing 20) but as I’ve been off work this week, I haven’t been doing that. I think it’s time to start work on one of the chapters that I can actually complete in a week or I can see this dragging out over the whole year. 

Vegetable of the week

Thing 2 is to choose a different vegetable every week from the book In Praise of Veg and make a recipe from the book using that vegetable. This week I chose wombok, Chinese cabbage, which I already have a couple of salad recipes for that I make occasionally. This recipe, Chang-Ed Wombok Slaw with Plum Sauce (page 94), was also a salad that included radishes, crispy noodles and those spring onions I used in Saturday’s eggplant dish. It was simple.

The biggest part was cutting up the veggies, which I never enjoy doing. The dressing was based on plum sauce, which I had left over from another recipe, and I served it with pork steaks. 

Regular projects

There are several things on my list that I have made a regular commitment to doing in the hope that this will be more likely to make me do them. This is not necessarily so. I’m very good at making commitments to myself and then when the time comes, deciding I want to do something else. It’s something I want to work on.

I worked on these ones this week.

  • Thing 5: Spend an hour a week working through my annoying undone things list. One hour on Saturday morning. This took more like two and a half hours, but I cleared out the bathroom cupboards and made more space for Kramstable’s stuff.
  • Thing 9: Write my mother’s life story. This week, I wrote up the notes from my first meeting with my mum and sent it to her to have a look at. 
  • Thing 11: Complete the Compelling Frame course. I finished the first lesson I’d been working on, completed the second lesson and started the third one.
  • Thing 17: Brainsparker gym*. I did the second lesson in module 2 this week. I found this really interesting as it was all about broadening your knowledge of the field that you work in to tap into emerging trends and ideas from “thought leaders” in the field. It is very similar to an exercise from my career review that I struggled with doing a couple of weeks ago, so I’m thinking getting the same message again so close to the first one is a sign I need to pay more attention to this.

21 for 2021 summary

  • Things completed this week: 0
  • Things completed to date: 0
  • Things I progressed: (7) 2, 4, 5, 9, 11, 13, 17
  • Things in progress I didn’t progress: (5) 1, 6, 8, 18, 20
  • Things not started: (9) 3, 7, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 19, 21

When did I listen and what did I learn this week?

I went to the rally on 26 January organised by the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre and listened to some very passionate people argue why this is not a day to celebrate. The words of a young Syrian man summed up my reason for being there best: “I will never understand your anguish but I see it and I stand with you”. 

26 January Rally, nipaluna/Hobart

A key message from the day was that we need to learn the history of this place we live on, we need to honour it and protect it. We need to tell the truth about what happened here. There is a lot to learn, a lot to take in, but it is important that we do this. I found myself agreeing with the Anglican Archbishop, who observed that “mature nations tell the truth about their past”. We cannot become a mature nation while we act like a sulky child and our leaders continue to spout the “not gonna, you can’t make me” line. We can’t wait for them to take any action on this. They won’t. They’ll just talk and talk, or else they’ll try to tell us how hard it was for the white people who colonised this land. Here is a post that is worth reading about that particular comment

It feels like the climate issue. Our leaders are not going to do anything because it doesn’t serve them to do so. It is up to us to take the lead. 

I felt drawn to these two quote, both similar but from very different sources. This from Brené Brown in here book Braving The Wilderness (which is a great book and anyone who has ever felt along the lines of “if you are not with us, you must be against us” might benefit from reading it. In fact, anyone who despairs at the shouty, fearful, disconnected world we live in would, I suspect, relate to what Brené says in the book on page 40).

Braving the Wilderness.

The quote is actually from the author Joseph Campbell, and in relation to it, Brene says that while we may be all sharing the same map, our paths will be different, and we must all find our own way.

If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.

And photographer David DuChemin says

As you head into 2021, remember that your journey can’t be measured by the metrics created by other people. Learn everything you can from every source you can, but remember your journey can’t be measured by the footprints of others and you can’t borrow their map. It doesn’t matter where you are relative to others, but that you’re taking the next steps that get you closer to a destination only you will recognize.

What was the best thing about this week?

Having the week off with Kramstable.

What I’m reading

  • Braving the Wilderness: The quest for true belonging and the courage to stand alone by Brené Brown
  • The Queen of My Self by Donna Henes

Habit tracker

  • Days I did my morning planning routine at work (Goal = 5): I didn’t go to work this week, so none
  • Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 4
  • Days I read a book (Goal = 7): 7
  • Days I did yoga stretches (Goal = 7): 7
  • Days I had a lunch break away from my desk (Goal = 5 work days): 5
  • Days I went for a walk or did other physical activity in the afternoon (Goal = 7): 5
  • Days I shut my computer down before 10.15 (Goal = 7): 7

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