A quarter gone?

Talk about neglect! Best find out where I hid the mop and dusters. This place needs a really good clean out.

“What happened?” I hear you ask…

The winter trip took us from Portugal, up through Spain and back to France, returning home in early February. I brought souvenirs!

We seemed to bring a little of the Spanish sunshine back with us, at least initially. We set to on unloading the van and fixing the new bugs that had appeared over the winter. We began to plan our Spring trip to the UK and we purchased a pair of bikes and a bike rack for the van. We even had a ride out on the bikes to try them out.

We did begin the Keto diet thing (and if you will permit and forgive, I plan a separate post on that topic) and both lost a surprising amount of weight quite quickly.

I had many plans that had emerged from a period of introspection around the New Year. These plans have remained dormant due to…. well Life happening. To be honest though, plans may be too strong a term. Shall we say that I had and still have, ideas. Why did I not put them into action?

It soon became apparent that we needed to bring forward our Spring trip due to urgent family issues and we found ourselves heading towards the UK at speed at the beginning of March. We returned home on Tuesday this week.

Living in the van and the UK weather have taken their toll on the weight and fitness front. I was alarmed to see how much weight I had gained whilst we were away and am consequently taking immediate steps to address that and to get back onto my downward graph gradient.

Major Life happenings, referred to above, have given us pause for thought about this, that and the other and we find ourselves determined to actually spend some money instead of always being prudent as has been lifelong habit. The bikes were an expression of this and since we came home we have had a wee spending spree. Expect forthcoming posts of glee and excitement as various packages wend their way across France to our door (with what degree of success, I wonder.)

As for those dormant plans…. well, I am sitting here (having updated my WordPress) and am putting fingers to keyboard at last. It feels good. I having been missing self-expression.

More “Me” time is needed for:

• Writing
• Photography
• Reading
• Knitting
• Spinning
• Learning and development
• All The Other Stuff that is waiting to be explored

The problem is that just living gets in the way. We enjoy so much time walking the dog, preparing meals and just simply being together that it becomes difficult to compartmentalise time for oneself. However, I plan to have a go and am signed up to two Futurelearn courses beginning on Monday. There are so many that I want to do but selecting just two may give me a better chance of seeing them through rather than being overly ambitious and failing.

Oh, what? Erm, “Antisemitism: From Its Origins to the Present” and “An Introduction to Recreational Math“. I’ll bet that you are sorry that you asked…

To make room for reading, knitting and spinning I shall need to create time by stopping wasting it in less positive pursuits. Wish me luck in kissing Facebook goodbye 😉 I could also create time by rising earlier and going to bed later. Importantly, I could stop regarding that space between dinner and bed as “do nothing” time. I feel that latter would be the greatest liberator of all. Another approach would be to get a telly. Mindless TV-watching tends to generate much space for both knitting and spinning 😉

Where else can I free up time? I could pass the washing up over to Mr L, I suppose. Hmm…. perhaps axing the computer games might be productive? Ahem.