Week 44/2021: i’m not listening

Week 44/2021: Week of 1 November 2021

I’m not listening

I felt better this week than I did last week and finally went to see my physio needle massage therapist (I’m not sure that this is his official job, but it works for me.) He had been in the process of relocating his practice so there was a bigger gap than normal between my appointments. That gave me a bit of relief in my neck and shoulder, which I’m sure has been contributing to my headaches. That and not paying attention to my posture.

He said he thought my over-sensitivity to noise and light is moving into migraine territory, and he’s not the first person to have suggested that. This is something that isn’t familiar to me. My refusal to rest has probably also played a part. But I feel like I need permission or some kind official diagnosis that “everything is too loud and too bright for you right now” before I can take any time off, and that without that, I’m just making stuff up and complaining.

I clearly never got the memo that said, “Listen to your body”.

21 for 2021 update

I feel like my 21 for 2021 is limping towards the end of the year and I know I’m not going to get most of the things done. I think I over-committed myself to a bunch of big projects that I wanted to do but didn’t quite want enough to actually do them.

I feel really worn out and exhausted both at work and with my own projects, even though there’s still two months left in the year and plenty of time to get things done. It’s like that end of the year vibe you get after you’ve had your work Christmas lunch in the middle of December and you start to get ready to wind down.

Only it’s not the middle of December. It’s the beginning of November.

Anyway, on with the list.

In Praise of Veg (thing 2)

Vegetables are back! In case you’d forgotten, thing 2 is to choose a different vegetable every week from Alice Zaslavsky’s book In Praise of Veg and make a recipe from the book using that vegetable.

I had got up to 37/50 vegetables and then I lost momentum because it was starting to get into the difficult territory either in terms of ingredients or techniques or both. But this week I ticked two more off the list and will write about them in their own post.

Kramstable’s videos (thing 8)

I finished video number two for the year. It’s now ready for Kramstable to quality check and find those little errors that I overlook when I’m in the midst of working on it. I hope there won’t be too many because it would be really nice to have this finished.

My mother’s story (thing 9)

I went through some more of Mum’s photos with her, mainly from her childhood, and I learned about how they used to make hay stooks on her parents’ farm.

Photograph some unexplored areas (thing 14)

I had the opportunity to walk around Moonah for an hour on Tuesday so I took my camera and went exploring. It was fun. I just took my 50 mm lens, which reminded me of my 50 photos challenge from last year. I enjoy using that lens and I like the way it forces constraints on me that I wouldn’t have with a zoom lens.

I put some of the photos on my photoblog.

Brainsparker (thing 17)

The modules were supposed to restart last week but they aren’t ready yet so I didn’t do any work on this.

21 for 2021 summary

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

What else did I do this week?

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

Well, one thing I didn’t listen to was my body telling me to slow down and rest. I’m not good at that.

I’ve been watching the peregrine falcons nesting in Melbourne’s CBD (they got mentioned on an episode of Rosehaven this year, so they are well and truly famous now). I listened to a Q&A with a falcon expert on Sunday afternoon, and learned a lot of fascinating things about these birds. Apparently, the falcons don’t sat seagulls, despite them being in plentiful supply, because they taste so bad. And in the month leading up to the egg laying, the falcon pair can mate 400 times. I guess they want to be sure.

It’s been so cool to watch these babies from hatchlings to being almost ready to fly off into the world.

What did I do for the Earth this week?

I did nothing except despair at the Australian prime minister’s performance at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) and this country’s embarrassing lack of action and frightening lack of concern in this space.

He said that scientists, not politicians, will come up with the solutions to climate change, conveniently overlooking that fact that it’s politicians, specifically politicians who are in government, who need to make the policy changes and direct funding towards the actions those same scientists, who the government isn’t funding, have been telling us FOR DECADES need to happen.

It’s chilling to think that by the end of the century there could be countries that no longer exist, not because of political reshuffling of borders, but because they have literally sunk under the sea.

Here’s what the Climate Council had to say about what the prime minister said.

The Climate Council, you might recall, came about because the government abolished the Australian Climate Commission, so it is basically a crowdfunded research organisation doing the research that the government should be doing.

What was the best thing about this week?

My photowalk. Oh, and Alan Jones getting sacked from Sky news.

What I’m reading this week

• The Awen Alone by Joanna van der Hoeven
• Rustication by Charles Palliser
• Untamed by Glennon Doyle

Habit tracker

• Days I went for a walk in the morning (Goal = 7): 7
• Days I did my morning planning routine at work (Goal = 4): 0
• Days I did my post-work pack up routine (Goal = 4): 0
• Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 7
• 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): 5
• Days I shut my computer down before 9.30 (Goal = 6): 7