Isolation Journal 10

Alan slept in the other room last night because he had a cough, although then didn't cough at all in the night and seems to be fine now thankfully.

I got up and made breakfast and had coffee again - we're a bit short on milk so I went for yoghurt, granny smith apple and granola and it was really nice.  

We had our morning kick off meeting and then I prepped for my meeting with a client at 10am with one of my colleagues and it went well.  We've certainly been a lot busier this week which has been positive.

I then did pilates online with my physio with some really tough core exercises.  I had to move Qubit in the Amazon box out of the way.  

Alan cooked some more of our home grown artichokes for lunch with garlic and I had a carrot chopped into batons and then 2 crisp breads with goats cheese and chutney.  

Back to work and a launch call for a BD competition next week and then more calling and then a team quiz which was good fun even if I was completely rubbish.

Alan kindly cooked dinner - pil pil prawn stir fry with rice and brought it up to me and so I came downstairs to eat it, but remembered that my friend Lauren was having a short story read out on the radio and so tuned in just in time - it was really good!

I then had guides online at 7pm and one of our young leaders lead the session by doing an online dance session - it was tough, but really fun and she was so good!  We had some guides join in that had been reluctant to, it's hard to get them all to be comfortable with seeing themselves online, I wish I could help them feel more comfortable.

I read an interesting post from one of my friends about #blacklivesmatter in how she thought her white friends could help support the movement.  One thing she mentioned was how people should unfriend her if they were bigots and my view is slightly different, I won't allow people who are already in a negative echo chamber to increase their own noise, I think it's important to challenge negative views and also see how they are forming the opinions that I may strongly disagree with.

It rained a lot today, but fortunately by around 8pm it had stopped so I went out for about 30 minutes and did 6K.  I didn't mean to go particularly fast, but it was still less than 8.30 minute miles.

I was a bit covered in mud by the time I came back as I splashed in puddles so I had a bath with a lavender lush bubble bar.

I then logged on to do my isolation blog and my computer did some updates and got stuck, fortunately it saved everything!

20 things 20 times in 2020

"but that's 400 things?!" said Alan when I explained my plan for 2020.

Box ticking is one of the things Alan finds a bit irritating and I have to say I can sometimes see his point - ticking something off a list (especially one that someone else has written) to say "I've done that" seems a bit...well arbitrary.  Visiting x site when actually a less famous site might be more to your taste than queuing up for "the selfie" that everyone else has.

As I know that this is the year that my age arbitrarily changes into another decade, I'm going to attempt not to have any mid-life type crisis and just think positively about this new decade and concentrate on doing more of the things that either make me happy, improve my wellbeing or are good for the world in general.  I quite like that the numbers are all 20 as this makes some of the tasks quite easy to achieve, but they are all important and valuable activities for me and some of them will be more of a stretch.

(You might notice that none of the below specifically include "spending time with Alan....I'd hope that I don't need to arbitrarily task myself to do that, plus he doesn't like ticking off boxes ;-) ) 

1 - Complete 20 parkruns - an "easy" one as I've averaged more like 40 per year since I discovered parkrun in 2014.
2 - Donate to charity / recycle 20 bags or boxes of stuff - living in a house with no storage is great in some ways as it forces this issue, but recently I've definitely accumulated too much and a sort out would be useful.
3 - Go to 20 yoga or pilates sessions.
4 - Write 20 letters or postcards
5 - Complete at least 20 crafting sessions - either alone or even better with friends
6 - 20 sessions of creative writing / blogging entries
7 - 20 sessions of mindfulness - Ideally I'd do this everyday, but I'm not great at always remembering, so this is a nice achievable target.
8 - Today having a stunning walk around Fairburn Ings RSPB nature reserve I realised this is one thing that makes me really happy and so I want to do at least 20 walks or runs around beautiful nature locations.
9 - Leading or backmarking at least 20 run club sessions
10 - Volunteer at least 20 times
11 - Meet friends for coffee/lunch/catch ups at least 20 times
12 - Read 20 books
13 - Watch 20 new films
14 - Spend 20 hours learning something new
15 - Get at least 8 hours sleep 20 times (this is a challenge as my regular daytime sleep is only 6.5 hours)
16 - Visit 20 new places (not countries, just different places that I've not been before, whether a restaurant, or a nice place to walk)
17 - Visit the gym at least 20 times (pretty sure I didn't manage this in 2019)
18 - Plant 20 "things" whether seed bombs or vegetables.  
19 - Watch at least 20 live music acts (should be achievable as we are least going to Blue Dot festival again and hopefully might still get tickets to Glastonbury in the resales - fingers crossed!)
20 - Get to work without driving at least 20 times (I'll cheat if needed and include working from home!)

Wish me luck