Re-June-evating
Blogging has been a great New Year's resolution this year as I can read about how I was feeling a month before and see the improvement. In May I said I was about 60% better, I reckon in June I'm about 70%. Maybe even 80%. I manage to get through til about 3pm each day before I need to crash. That means that frequently getting home from work is the hardest part of the day, sitting on a lurching bus feeling like death, or slowly walking back to the station and then sitting waiting at Burwood for another bus home, pushing past the school kids to get a seat. Last week I did 27 hours (out of 35) which I think was the most I've done since February.
This month I made a more concerted effort to move a bit more, by upping my commute to try and catch a bus and train and walk from the station. It was a mixed success. I eventually had to stop because my foot was getting too sore, but I mostly made it through a week, which meant I ended up doing more walking and movement overall.
On the long weekend, I risked going to the pool - I figured that I could try swimming on the Sunday and still have the Monday to rest. Plus interviewing was done and I knew that it wasn't as important to be at work. I went to Enmore, because it was a freezing weekend and I didn't want to face outdoors as well as the pool for the first time in 4 months. That was a poor decision because there was only one lane for public lane swimming and it was filled with people going slowly, but it was good too, because it forced me to stop and be patient with themselves and also meant I rested. It was lovely to feel the water and I ended up doing a slow kilometre. Fitness wasn't very good, but I can hardly expect it to be after 4 months of nothing!! Subsequently this month I've gone swimming every Saturday (because it gives me Sunday to rest). I did 1.5km the next two Sundays and yesterday did 1.2km (because I had a big day and had people over later in the day).
My friend J was coming to Sydney to visit and asked if I wanted to catch up for lunch. She and D agreed to come to Croydon Park and I thought we could go to a cafe nearby, but then I had to clean the house anyway and I had enough energy to have them both over for lunch. I went to the local chicken shop (I didn't know we had a local chicken shop!) and baked bread and we had a lovely catch up. My energy flagged and they kindly washed up for me which was great. That was the first proper hospitality I've done this year, although of course I had a couple of visitors when I was sick. It was great to bake bread.
Although it's technically July now, today I had lunch with a bunch of church people, and then came home and had a nap. I just couldn't keep my eyes open. There's only so many hours of socialising my energy lets me do in a day.
What else happened in June? Well, I managed to do something social a couple of times - I went out to the ladies church dinner (I was the first to leave, but I felt like it was such an achievement as it was midweek). I went to the CBTB Living Single conference - such a great initiative and had lunch with A and E and J beforehand, which was the best. I made it to bible study a couple of times. And I even went out on a Saturday night: last weekend I went to see Assassins with my neighbour at the Opera House (what a weird musical - I quite liked it in terms of the subject content, but wasn't a huge fan of the sometimes quite long soliloquies (and started to struggle to stay awake)). The others went out for drinks afterwards, but I just went home.
These all felt huge because I was hanging out with other people, and not just sitting at home eating Youfoodz meals.
Work was more of a sustainable month, with conducting 12 senior leader interviews, and running a practice version of the workshop I'm doing in Auckland on the 9th July. I've had to find some late people for recruitment and managed to get a bit more on top of the work, except that I still haven't processed about 50 of the observations from the senior leaders (and may never get to them, to be honest). It's not a disaster if I don't, just disappointing.
July will be another tricky month managing energy, but I'm hoping that my delegation of two significant big jobs which are also fairly straightforward (albeit as frustrating as anything) will help. And the new leader training I will be much more aware of getting help from the seniors and doing less. It's usually a pretty tiring day anyway, and I plan on letting them pack up and do all the certifying that I normally do. Perhaps even not coming in for Day 2, or not doing the whole day.
The next challenge is Auckland on the 5th. I have a couple of days of actual holidays (the first since January, even though I've been taking leave every single day it's not the same) and I'm going on a tour, which hopefully will be quite restful as I won't be driving and can just chill in the coach, and then the conference on the 9th and 10th before flying home on the 11th. We shall see how that all goes.
This month I made a more concerted effort to move a bit more, by upping my commute to try and catch a bus and train and walk from the station. It was a mixed success. I eventually had to stop because my foot was getting too sore, but I mostly made it through a week, which meant I ended up doing more walking and movement overall.
On the long weekend, I risked going to the pool - I figured that I could try swimming on the Sunday and still have the Monday to rest. Plus interviewing was done and I knew that it wasn't as important to be at work. I went to Enmore, because it was a freezing weekend and I didn't want to face outdoors as well as the pool for the first time in 4 months. That was a poor decision because there was only one lane for public lane swimming and it was filled with people going slowly, but it was good too, because it forced me to stop and be patient with themselves and also meant I rested. It was lovely to feel the water and I ended up doing a slow kilometre. Fitness wasn't very good, but I can hardly expect it to be after 4 months of nothing!! Subsequently this month I've gone swimming every Saturday (because it gives me Sunday to rest). I did 1.5km the next two Sundays and yesterday did 1.2km (because I had a big day and had people over later in the day).
My friend J was coming to Sydney to visit and asked if I wanted to catch up for lunch. She and D agreed to come to Croydon Park and I thought we could go to a cafe nearby, but then I had to clean the house anyway and I had enough energy to have them both over for lunch. I went to the local chicken shop (I didn't know we had a local chicken shop!) and baked bread and we had a lovely catch up. My energy flagged and they kindly washed up for me which was great. That was the first proper hospitality I've done this year, although of course I had a couple of visitors when I was sick. It was great to bake bread.
Although it's technically July now, today I had lunch with a bunch of church people, and then came home and had a nap. I just couldn't keep my eyes open. There's only so many hours of socialising my energy lets me do in a day.
What else happened in June? Well, I managed to do something social a couple of times - I went out to the ladies church dinner (I was the first to leave, but I felt like it was such an achievement as it was midweek). I went to the CBTB Living Single conference - such a great initiative and had lunch with A and E and J beforehand, which was the best. I made it to bible study a couple of times. And I even went out on a Saturday night: last weekend I went to see Assassins with my neighbour at the Opera House (what a weird musical - I quite liked it in terms of the subject content, but wasn't a huge fan of the sometimes quite long soliloquies (and started to struggle to stay awake)). The others went out for drinks afterwards, but I just went home.
These all felt huge because I was hanging out with other people, and not just sitting at home eating Youfoodz meals.
Work was more of a sustainable month, with conducting 12 senior leader interviews, and running a practice version of the workshop I'm doing in Auckland on the 9th July. I've had to find some late people for recruitment and managed to get a bit more on top of the work, except that I still haven't processed about 50 of the observations from the senior leaders (and may never get to them, to be honest). It's not a disaster if I don't, just disappointing.
July will be another tricky month managing energy, but I'm hoping that my delegation of two significant big jobs which are also fairly straightforward (albeit as frustrating as anything) will help. And the new leader training I will be much more aware of getting help from the seniors and doing less. It's usually a pretty tiring day anyway, and I plan on letting them pack up and do all the certifying that I normally do. Perhaps even not coming in for Day 2, or not doing the whole day.
The next challenge is Auckland on the 5th. I have a couple of days of actual holidays (the first since January, even though I've been taking leave every single day it's not the same) and I'm going on a tour, which hopefully will be quite restful as I won't be driving and can just chill in the coach, and then the conference on the 9th and 10th before flying home on the 11th. We shall see how that all goes.
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