21 for 2021: week 8
Week 08/2021: week of 22 February
21 for 2021 update
I’m working through the Habits chapter of the Change Journal (thing 4). I’m working on doing yoga stretches every day, the pre-work routine every work day, and this week I started the end of work ritual, which feels as awkward to do as the pre-work routine did when I started it. I’m hoping that by the time I’ve done it for a few weeks, it will start to feel less forced.
I don’t think I’m using this journal exactly as it was intended, which is to work through a chapter a week. I currently have two other chapters on the go: chapter 8 (Clarity) and chapter 9 (Pitch Yourself), which is about identifying your strengths and learning to talk about them naturally. Both of these chapters are feeding into updating my resume (thing 18), where I’m looking at finding ways to describe my skills and strengths in a way that will “sell” me through my resume, which is where “Pitch Yourself” comes in. So it’s all nicely connected. But they aren’t consistent daily habits or practices like most of the other things in the book are, as they ask you to write about different things every day. So I’m not being very consistent about doing them every day.
Whatever. It’s my book. I can use it however I want
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.
If you read last week’s post, you might remember how I had decided to make the Ultimate Cheesy Garlic Bread Bake (page 38) last Sunday night, without noticing that the recipe notes say “Begin this recipe one day ahead”. Rather than let this be a setback, I decided to prep the recipe on Sunday so Kramstable and I could have it with the dinner he cooked on Monday. It worked brilliantly and we had left over garlic bread for the rest of the week.
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. I worked on these ones this week.
- Thing 8: Spend an hour a week working on Kramstable’s videos. I spent about an hour and a half on this project on Sunday afternoon. I have almost two hours of footage in the project that I need to cut down to something more digestible!
- Thing 9: Write my mother’s life story. My mum kindly got out her old photos for me this week and told me the stories of some of the people in them. There’s a bunch of old people in them she doesn’t know who they are, which is sad because it means their stories are lost, at least to us, but I’m trying to focus on the things Mum can remember and the people she does recognise. I also got some information about my grandfather’s time at school in Sydney from his old school, which was interesting.
- Thing 10: Complete the Compelling Frame course. I completed lesson 4 and started work on lesson 5.
- Thing 17: Brainsparker gym*. I did the second lesson of the third module and learned about the 5 Whys technique. The exercise in this lesson gave me a useful insight into a particular behaviour I’m seeking to change and what a possible cause of the behaviour is that I need to look at rather than trying to address the symptom.
21 for 2021 summary
- Things completed this week: 0
- Things completed to date: 1 (1)
- Things I progressed: 8 (2, 4, 8, 9, 11, 17, 18, 20)
- Things in progress I didn’t progress: 3 (5, 6, 13)
- Things not started: 9 (3, 7, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 19, 21)
What else did I do this week?
I ran the bridge. Well, I entered the Run the Bridge five km walk. There was no running involved, except from Kramstable, who ran a personal best in the five km run. Lil Sis and I took the more leisurely walking option.
Blast from the past
Following on from my 10-year review of my blog, here’s one of my favourite posts from 2011: 11 April 2011: Books.
It’s interesting to see how my go-to section in the bookshop has changed since 2011. I don’t go to the kids’ picture books, cooking, gardening or spirituality sections much these days, but I do spend a lot of time in the photography and architecture sections, as well as the Tasmanian section, especially the second hand area in the Tasmanian section.
What did I do for the Earth this week?
I didn’t do much other than feel helpless. A recent report is telling us that 19 ecosystems within Australia and Antarctica are on the verge of collapse and that without urgent action right now, we will lose them. It seems incomprehensible that this is happening across the world, yet our government continues to support coal mines and fossil fuels, and Queensland wants to host the 2032 Olympics as if the world is going to look like it does now in 2032. Why can they funnel money into sporting events and not into trying to save the planet we’ve living on? What’s more important? Sports, obviously.
I don’t know what to do.
What I’m reading this week
- You Know it’s Love by Jen Morris
- Personality Hacker by Joel Mark Witt & Antonia Dodge
- Me by Elton John
Habit tracker
- Days I did my morning planning routine at work (Goal = 5): 5
- Days I did my post-work pack up routine (Goal = 5): 5
- Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 2
- 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): 6
- Days I shut my computer down before 10.15 (Goal = 7): 7
About The Author
