Week in Review – 12-18 Jaunary 2015

Another week at work.

I had a few things happening, and enough little things to distract me from being able to sit down and concentrate on one thing for any length of time.

I’m slowly putting the systems from Getting Things Done into place at work, and I hope that whenever I start to feel very pressured, these systems will help me stay in control.

Last week I signed up to do the CARE Australia Walk In Her Shoes Challenge again this year. Because, as you might remember, I had such fun walking 20,000 steps every day for a week last year.  20,000 steps a day for a week in March 2015 is my goal.

I’ve replaced my 9-year-old walking shoes now, so it’s going to be easier this year, right? RIGHT??!!

I remember one of the statistics on CARE’s webpage that caught my attention last year – their statement that “on average, in developing countries, women and girls travel over 6 kilometres every day collecting water. They carry around 15-20 litres per trip.”

This statement alone continues to make me realise how lucky I am to live in a country where I don’t have to walk somewhere to get water. CARE observes that many girls and women in communities that CARE help miss out on getting an education and working because they have to walk to collect food, water and firewood for their families. I can’t imagine what this would be like. In particular, can’t imagine what it would be like to not have access to education.

So, while I’m raising funds to help support women and girls in these communities through Walk in Her Shoes, I hope that pushing myself physically will remind me of exactly how lucky I am, and help me to be more grateful for what I have.

As part of my “training”, walking in the mornings is an old habit I’m trying to re-establish and I’ve been getting up earlier to do it. This week Juniordwarf said he wanted to come with me so that he can get some more exercise.

I was a bit reluctant at first, because I just want to get the walks done and I knew he’d be slower than I’d be by myself. But I didn’t want to discourage him from exercising, so I said it was fine for him to come along.

The weather at the start of the week was very wet, but we still went out. We got wet, my phone got wet (I’ve been tracking our walks on RunKeeper) and started doing very strange things, but we did it. My aim is for a 30 minute walk each morning.

I’d reduced my Fitbit daily step goal to 13,000 instead of 15,000, because most days I wasn’t getting to 15,000 and I was starting to get annoyed with myself. So, because I get a kick out of the device on my wrist buzzing when I reach my goal, I decided to reduce it to something achievable over summer when all my routines are out the window. My aim is gradually increase it to 20,000 by March. I achieved this goal every day except Tuesday, but over the while week I did enough steps to make up for that, so I’m happy.

I don’t have a lot of photos from this week. Most of them are from Monday’s 12 of 12, so I was a bit photo-ed out during the week.

My copy of the Transportation Almanac, which I helped fund through Pozible, arrived – congratulations to everyone involved! I’m looking forward to reading it.

And I had this rather delicious beer (thanks to Slabs for finding it for me).

We went away for the weekend, but that’s another post (or three) and a lot of photos. So stay tuned for that!