The Daily - 20180408

Sunday 8th April 2018

No fireworks; no trumpet heralds; no press releases. Just a step in the right direction.

So today was an OK day among all of the other days lately.

On the plus side: I saw my mum & dad! I travelled up by train with my son, and seven hours later (5 on the train, 2 in the car at either end) we had a wonderful 5 days together. Especially as we almost lost my dad to illness just after Christmas, this was an especially sweet time for all of us. Frankie beat me at chess for the first time ever :-) and Grandpa got him a chess timer (just like the ones he uses in competitions), plus a book called 'How To Beat Your Dad At Chess' which funnily enough Frankie hadn't begun reading when he beat me. We all relaxed, chatted, played some great games such as Khan of Khans; The Lost Expedition; and a bunch of card games (with some quite odd House Rules that Frankie insisted were the actual ways those games were played... he got some wacky ideas from the other Cubs on their last camp, including that a five card trick beats out everything else in Blackjack lol). It was also lovely to come back home to Judy and all the animals. Even one-eyed Maisie the dog dragged herself from her sleeping bed to come and welcome us home.

On the downside: my main computer died when I turned it on after I returned from my travels. I now have a lengthy process of elimination trying to swap parts in and out to determine which is faulty, before I then get around to fixing it. A lot of stuff is on that machine that I need access to right away, so this is a high priority (but it has taken two days so far and I'm still no closer to sorting it out). Also I have to be in work during the holidays as too many pupils have suffered software outages and issues that weren't their fault, so I said that I'd come in for a few days this holiday week and help them out. But a lot of the files and stuff I need for the pupils is on that currently expired machine. Ho hum.

Writing

Writing has been fun this week as I have been prepping for a hybrid Sci-Fi fiction/rpg writing exercise. I have also started writing up some non-fiction stuff for business (an 11+ style Maths worksheet) which I'll eventually be making available for purchase on my website. I didn't write any PLR pages this week and I plan on adding that to the mix of tasks in this coming week. And my happy moment today was writing 300 or so words of fiction on this new Sci-Fi WiP (Work-in-Progress) and getting that ball rolling sure has been a long time coming.

Health

Health has been its usual bad self this week, and today was no exception. I haven't weighed myself yet but I am guessing by the general feel of me that I am somewhere in the region of 18 Stones (that's 252 lbs, or 114.3 kg). I walked the dogs in the forest today which was great (Frankie and Judy came too!) and was set to work a couple of hours up in the new loft taking out the old insulation that got nested in by rats. Unfortunately I started to get dizzy and before I knew it I was laid out with a full-on migraine. It was all I could do to get my protective gear off and crawl into bed, where I slept it off fitfully as my head felt like it was exploding. I don't get migraines often, but they sure take me out when I do. On the cards for the week ahead are some long expedition-length walks; some cycling; and starting up the HIIT routines again to help me really alter my physiology. I want to get back down to 14 Stones again, and I have a theory that if I say I won't shave off my beard until I do hit 14 Stones, I'll have a nice surprise when I finally get to shave it off and see what I look like underneath.

Steemit Goals

So for a number of reasons I just have not yet found my consistent stride. I'm yet to find that habit of posting and I think I am overthinking things which is getting in the way of freely posting too. I keep having conversations with myself about not posting things which I think people might not want to read; and about how I haven't posted for a while in a series I started etc. I really just need to post and be damned lol. I just need to post the things as I write them, instead of sitting on them and thinking about it. It's not like I can't be a prolific poster, after all. And if it wasn't for @angelacs and her wonderful posting and commenting challenge I don't think I would have achieved a small fraction of what I have done, so huge thanks to her.

I'm getting there anyways, and today was just one more step in that right direction. I'll be charting my progress as I go and we'll see what works and what does not work for me. And hopefully, some of what I learn along the way will be useful to some of you, too.

Peace be with you all xxxx