As the year speeds up

May has disappeared just as quickly as April did. We’re almost halfway through the year and it’s almost a year since we moved to NZ.

Read on for my monthly recap, where I take a look at the areas of my life that are important to me, that I’m working on or trying to improve.

Reading

Just the two books finished this month again, so I’ve slowed down a little bit. Or just reading longer books perhaps? Or, more likely, it’s that my reading time is split over more books. Because, oops, I tripped and fell and accidentally started another two books…whoopsie!

I also added a few more books to my TBR list because I read a listicle that had a whole bunch of music related books in it and now I want to read them all. I currently have 502 books on my TBR. I think I’m going to do a clean up of it though. There’s a lot of books I put on there because I felt like I “should” put them on there, but I don’t really have an interest in reading them.

Finished

• Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks. I enjoyed this, even though a lot of it when over my head because I don’t know a lot of chemistry. It was interesting the get a more biographical view of Oliver Sacks, as opposed to the clinical. What amazes me is how much he knows about chemistry, and yet that’s not even his profession! It’s just what he did for fun! I’d love to read something similar with a focus on his later life, when he started learning neurology.

• Spare by Prince Harry. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to bother with this book and my recommendation would probably be to give it a miss. It was interesting and kept my attention, but I just can’t believe any of it. I don’t even know where to start trying to untangle what is the truth and what isn’t, that the best way forward is to just disregard it all. There's the obvious contradiction of so adamantly wanting to be left alone, and then to publish a book. And then there’s so much that’s just there to ‘set the record straight’. I agree that the public scrutiny that he’s been put under is incredibly ethically questionable, but this book didn’t help that, and I feel more like I contributed to it for having read the book.

In progress

• Winter’s Heart by Robert Jordan. Still no progress.
• Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake. Still no progress.

• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. About 40% of the way done with this one now. I’m enjoying it, it’s not at all what I expected and feels a lot more modern that it actually is
• The King in Yellow by Robert W Chambers. No progress.
• The Golden Fool by Robin Hobb. Still chipping away at this one. It’s actually become a bit too interesting for my sleepy time book, but I’m still using it as such. I get a little frustrated by the main character, he can be a bit ‘poor me’ and if he could solve most of his problems with a little communication and not being so self-involved all the time.
• Empire of Gold by Shannon Chakraborty. Looking forward to seeing how this series finishes, I've really enjoyed it. I'm only a short way in and it has to go back to the library and there might be a bit of a wait before my hold comes up, unfortunately.
• Heroes by Stephen Fry. Haven't really progressed on this one. I only started it as something for S and I to listen together but I'm not very motivated to finish it on my own. It might progress to sleepy time book when Golden Fool is returned or finished.
• The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. I grabbed this because I needed something bitsy to fill in some time at work and also because Borrowbox will rotate to landscape on my phone whereas Libby won't. This means I can have it up on my phone most of the day and easily flip my cover down without it looking too strange and get some reading done at work. I'm not really liking it so far to be honest. It's a bit wishy washy, open yourself to the energy of the universe nonsense.
• Do Hard Things by Steve Magness. This hold came up from the library and I should have just put it back for later and let someone else have it for now, but I just borrowed it without really thinking. I've only read the first chapter but I'm enjoying it so far. I'm thinking perhaps I opened myself to the energy of the universe and it decided I needed to read this book right now.
• Tribe by Sebastian Junger. I grabbed this one as a filler as it’s only 4 hours long and will hopefully fill the gap while I wait for Empire of Gold to become available again.

Health

I’ve pretty much just been maintaining here. No real focus on eating healthily, but I don’t think I’ve gone off the rails either. I think I’ve found a decent midpoint, where I’m eating decently, but it’s enjoyable enough that it’s not leading me to binge foods I’m craving.

Exercise has lapsed the second half of the month, as S got an injury that’s stopped him from training Muay Thai. Generally, if one of us is out, so is the other. That’s not great when one of us is injured, but I guess we just accept it. I’ve done parkrun every week, but haven’t seen much improvement in my times at all. Just maintaining around that 40 minute mark. I’d really like to reach 35 minutes, but I’ll have to do more than run once a week to get there, I think. I will miss the last parkrun of the month because of embroidery guild. They have meetings on Saturdays during winter months, so once a month I’ll have to miss parkrun now that they’ve changed over.

Weight has been pretty stable. I feel like it’s dropped a little, but I’m staying away from the scales because everytime I’ve thought that I’m dropping weight, it turns out I’m not. I’m sick of the disappointment so I’m not weighing myself at the moment.

Writing

I wrote my 1800 word story for the prompt this month. I technically didn’t write it all in one sitting the weekend before it was due, but it was basically that.

I didn’t go to writers’ group as it was a workshop that just sounded awful. Almost a role-playing murder mystery type thing.

Book of Stitches

I was stoked to find out that I won one of my categories for the regional exhibition. I won the miniature category, which only had four entries. But one of the entries was from the president of my guild. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but I’m very glad I came away with a win. I’m not really surprised my other entry didn’t get any awards, my heart wasn’t really in that one.

I’m now working on coming up with something for the next exhibition. It has an entry fee, but I think I’ll enter anyway.

I haven’t done anything with Etsy that has resulted in any updates, but I have made some moves in the background to get closer to putting up a new pattern on there and making some changes to existing listings.

This months stats are:

Views: 147 (102)

Visits: 82 (68)

Sales: 2 (3)

I’m thinking about starting another blog to document my process and progress with what is starting to feel more like Art. I’m feeling more like I want to create individual works, and while that’s not exactly a money maker, it’s what my heart wants to do.

Finances

I’ve been a bit too free with the discretionary spending lately and winding up with nothing extra at the end of the week. I will focus on tightening that up so that I can pay off some more debt.

My debt free date is credit card paid off by 6/076/2026 and all debt by 8/03/2027.

I also remembered that I have some paperwork I need to do to claim back our pension contributions that we made while in Japan. That will probably end up being about $1,000 each for Steve and I, which will be a nice little injection for us. I just have to get my head around the paperwork…

Work

Work is fine. I think I’m going to remove this section from future recaps. I’ll give updates if there’s something to say, but it’s otherwise it’s just what I have to do to earn a living.

Actionable goals

Last months goals were technically a 50% success, but if I’m honest, not really that.

• Exercise twice a week.

Fail. This was on track until S injured himself

• Put Thylacine pattern up on Etsy

Have started to move on this, but haven’t actually done it yet.

• Finish two books

Success. The only real success this month.

• Write this months prompt earlier than the weekend before it’s due

Yeah, but not really.

I’m feeling like the actionable goals aren’t helping me at the moment so I’m not going to make any for next month.

I'm considering making a change to the whole format of my monthly recaps, actually. During the month I often think of things that I should put in here, but when it comes to writing it, I either forget, or it doesn't really fit into one of the categories. So I'm thinking of keeping more of a running journal throughout the month and then posting it at the end of the month, as well as the sections from this recap. Or at least those sections that interest me.

See you next month, in whatever format that may be!