working it out as I go along

On the seventeenth day of Advent, I became aware of the need to have a big plan, incorporating motivation and goals and rewards. I was reading a book on study skills. Odd that I always thought I had study skills, because I always did well at school, and at university in the past, but now the nature of universities has changed, and this book incorporates all of these changes into its message. It’s called The Study Skills Handbook, by Stella Cottrell, if anyone is interested. I like it especially because its layout is made for dyslexic students – not that I am dyslexic, but I have the same scotopic sensitivity thing, so it is a book that is really easy on the eyes. The font is blue and with no serifs.

Well, I’m not sure if I came up with a strategy as such today, but I decided to try incorporating yoga into my routine. I haven’t done any exercise for a while – mostly because my exercise of choice is swimming, which isn’t advisable when I have an ear infection. But my back has been aching and tense lately and it occurred to me that yoga might help. So I got out my yoga video (which still had a few uncomfortable connotations attached to it, ever since the Bible study group people were in my house and saying that things like yoga videos could put a curse on a house. Not that I believed them, but still I was upset that they said such things about my house and my yoga video, so it made the yoga video have an unpleasant association attached to it). But I did one of the yoga workouts today, and I was pleased and surprised that I felt a lot better – my back felt stretched, like the tension had been released, and the pain was gone. I also felt a lot more alert and awake afterwards, with more energy. So I decided that yoga is a very good idea and I shall do it every day.

I also went to Asda, not so much because I needed to, but because I realised I hadn’t been going out and getting fresh air, and I really should. So I went to Asda. I noticed that my shopping method is very inefficient when I don’t have an idea of what I’m going to buy. Things catch my eye so I randomly follow whatever attracts my attention and go wandering into aisles that I don’t need to go into. I saw some fluffy toy frogs that I liked, so I went down the toy aisle. I saw some fluffy dressing gowns that I liked, so I went down the clothes aisle. I didn’t buy any of these things, and nor did I want to – I just liked the look of them. And then I saw myself in the mirror, with my fluffy cream-coloured fleece coat that is way too big for me, and my fluffy grey trousers, and I thought about how very frumpy and unfashionable I looked, although I didn’t care really, and the thought was quite amusing to me. So all these things distracted me, and I considered how it is much better to go in with a shopping list and only go to the aisles which contain things on the shopping list.

So today was a lot of thinking about potential strategies, but I didn’t come up with a particular one yet.