Week 34/2021: observe

Week 34/2021: Week of 23 August 2021

What did I want to do better this week?

Walking. Mornings and afternoons.

So, how did that go then?

I went for a walk every morning and every afternoon except Monday.

I’m counting walks that have an actual purpose as well as walks for the sake of walking. So one morning I left early to have coffee with a friend at a coffee shop about 15 minutes walk from my bus stop. That counts as a morning walk, the same as walking back to work from my mum’s place counts as an afternoon walk.

The result for this week was seven morning walks and six afternoon walks.

21 for 2021 update

The Change Journal (thing 4)

I haven’t focused on the Change Journal for several months and there are still 13 chapters to work through. I had thought that I’d complete a chapter a week for six months and be finished by the end of June but it’s now the end of August and I’ve got more than half the book left.

So, it’s time to get moving with it. This week, I chose chapter 14, Single Tasking. This asks you to pick an activity each day and to “remember to be especially mindful when you perform it”.

Okay. So I started out with good intentions to do this. On Monday morning, I wrote down the thing I was going to focus single-mindedly on and . . .

I completely forgot.

What was that about “what did I want to do better this week”?

Let’s try again next week.

Kramstable’s videos (thing 8)

I’m continuing to work on this. Actually, I almost forgot on Sunday because I was out in the middle of the day, and I normally work on the videos on Sunday afternoons. I was just hanging round working on some photos when I realised it was well past video time. I think I’m just over half way through sourcing clips for the video so I’m on track to have it finished by the end of the year.

My mother’s story (thing 9)

This week I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to my mother as the time I normally go to visit her ended up being a trip to the doctor. So I didn’t progress this project at all this week.

Brainsparker (thing 17)

I started module 9, which is about the habits of innovators. The video looked at five things that innovators do, based on findings discussed in the book The Innovator’s DNA.  These include observation, questioning and experimenting.

The exercise for this week asks you to pick one of these things and try and do it more in your life. I chose observation. Noticing small details that you’d normally overlook. I think this will work well with the mindfulness activity in the Change Journal.

21 for 2021 summary

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

  

What else did I do this week?

What did I do for the Earth this week?

I got a reply from my MP’s office to my email about the IPCC report last week. They advise that my MP is well aware of the urgency and seriousness of climate change and will continue to raise it in Parliament. Earlier this year he submitted a petition “calling on the Government to abandon its dangerous and short-sighted plan for a gas-led recovery from the recent economic downturn”. I’m guessing it’s this one.

That’s more than I’ve done.

His office suggested that anything we can do now to reduce warming, even by a fraction of a degree will have an impact and that I need to be contacting Senators, especially those who haven’t already indicated they agree that the government needs to take action now.

I feel like it won’t make much difference but on the other hand, if I don’t tell them this is important to me, perhaps they’ll think the community is happy to continue to ignore the science and condemn its children and potential future grandchildren to a life of hell on earth. It would seem the future painted by the climate science of what will happen if we don’t take steps to address warming doesn’t bother them personally.

It doesn’t make sense. Why aren’t they worried? And if they are, why aren’t they doing anything about it? This is an issue that is way beyond party politics. It’s too important to be used as a pawn in political games and in-fighting. It is literally life or death.

So I will write to them. It doesn’t seem like much but I don’t know how else to let them know that this is a Big Deal and it is way past time to be acting on it.

What was the best thing about this week?

Going out with my camera to make photographs of the fog on the river.

What didn’t go so well / What do I want to do better next week?

Focus on being observant.

What I’m reading this week

• Waking Up: Searching for spirituality without religion by Sam Harris
• Mindfulness-Integrated CBT for Well-Being and Personal Growth by Bruno A. Cayoun

Habit tracker

• Days I went for a walk in the morning (Goal = 5): 7
• Days I did my morning planning routine at work (Goal = 4): 3
• Days I did my post-work pack up routine (Goal = 5): 0
• Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 3
• Days I read a book (Goal = 7): 7
• Days I did yoga stretches (Goal = 7): 0
• 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 = 5): 6
• Days I shut my computer down before 9.45 (Goal = 6): 7