January - The second half

It's hard to put too much of a finger on what I've managed to do in the past two weeks.

I've been extremely busy at work and my brain has been I think on the side of being depressed.  It's hard to explain, but I've found myself just as easily distracted as I usually am, but my ability to do usual tasks is as though I'm on go slow.  I can still do what I need to do, but it's just taking a lot longer.  Partly it's because I don't have as hard a deadline as I would do usually as there is no run club to rush to on a Tuesday and no Guides to get back for on a Thursday.  I know I can log on and do more into the early hours of the morning when my brain is typically working better.  I then fall into a vicious circle of being more and more tired and then slower in the mornings.  We finished on budget at work which in any January is a good effort, but with all the uncertainity at the moment, is pleasing.  I've pitched for a couple of roles last week and hopefully should win one of them.

I started a creative writing course "Writing Workout" with The Bowery and have done 2 sessions on Mondays so far.  The first was a intro and the second was re-writing of fairy stories.  I have a good set up to re-write Rapunzel which I need to get onto soon before I forget my ideas.

I completed Red January by running, walking, cycling or doing Pilates everyday and ran a total of 87.5 miles which does put me 19 miles behind my ideal challenge of running 2021 KM in 2021, I may be kind to myself and shift it to running 1021 miles to increase my target last year, but not injure myself by overdoing it.  We even went for a ride outside, but I had to first change a flat tyre before we set off with lots of Alan's help and then another when we were 4 miles away before we came home because we were really cold!

I also completed a full month of The January Challenge by 64millionartists which I really enjoyed and I think having no commute at all helped me get through without the stress of having to do something everyday.

We've been back at Guides for 3 weeks now and the past two weeks we did relaxation and also some games such as two truths and a lie.  We've had more brownies join us as Guides and it's hard to not see them to welcome them, but feedback we have had has been good.

The weather has been wet and cold with potential flood risks in the village, but no more snow.  It's not been as nice to get out and run, but there have been a couple of days with beautiful sunshine and one was earlier this week when I saw Kirstie and Willow out for a walk when I was out for a run and I walked with them for a little while.

Alan has been busy brewing and I've been helping him with pouring sparge water.  He's kegged up a "Mango milkshake IPA" and he's created a "Biscoff Stout" for me which is still fermenting in a snazzy new fermenter.

I had my EMG on my leg on Friday and it was a bit painful - like using Alan's TENS machine too much and my foot twitched and my leg kicked.  The consultant seemed to suggest there wans't anything degenerative or seriously wrong, but that it might not necessarily get much better than the numbness and tingling that I have.

Audi rang me up the week before last and tried to persuade me to trade in my car early which would mean paying £3K of negative equity and an extra £200 per month to get a new car, I will wait until closer to my trade in time in June and make a decision and I might just refinance or take out a different loan and keep mine, especially as I'm hardly using it.

My Dad had his vaccine last Saturday and hopefully my Mum will get hers soon, every person I hear getting a jab gives me hope as we have such a high deathrate at the moment averaging 1000 per day.  We're nearly at 8m having had their first vaccines though so around 12% of the total population and double what we had last time I updated, so I may even get one by the end of lockdown at this rate as I suspect I'll be group 6 as I typically get a flu jab and have asthma.

Thankfully Trump did leave the White House without any further violence and Biden was sworn in.  The inaugration was interesting to watch as I've not watched it before and we watched some of the music tributes until late into the night.

I finished another 2 books and nearly have finished one today - The Two Lives of Lydia Bird and Wallflower at the Orgy and last night we watched The King of Staten Island 

My energy levels have been really low and I was thinking it might be my lack of social contact so I signed onto the parkrun zoom yesterday and today I did a writing zoom with Northern Writers Studio from 10am - 4pm with a break for a run to try and get as far as I could in 21 minutes for my HPH challenge (4.11K today, 4.55K last week, I must plan a better route!).  I managed to rewrite the first chapter of my novel and half of a second, it is slow progress, but I think I'm over a bit of a hump and will keep trying to do a little more each day if I can.

We've carried on with Hello Fresh as usual and had a couple of takeaways from Tokies and one on Friday from The Thack when it opened again for takeaway.

February is only 28 days, so let's see how it feels, at least we have at least an hour extra daylight in the evenings now.