Resolutions From A Stay-At-Home Holiday

I spent last week on holiday, at the Plage-de-Sept-Cadrans in the further western reaches of Greater London. That's a shot down the path to the road leading to the Plage. When it was hailing.

Each day I went to bed at ten-thirty and woke up between half-six and seven the next morning feeling something I haven't felt for the longest while. Rested. Relaxed. Content to just lie in bed for a few moments. You know what a real holiday is? When you don't have a giant to-do / must see / must keep busy list to tick off, but there is some stuff you'd like to get done, just not some giant project.

Mine was about getting all the DVD's and CD's off the shelves and into boxes - I'm neat, my house is small, and those things no longer represent a "collection", a subject I will write about later. Over the week I bought twelve packs of plastic CD slips from Rymans and six shoe-box size boxes from Paperchase, and it's still not completely done. I had ten black plastic bags of DVD covers and CD boxes. Nine three-foot shelves of box sets and single CD's / DVD's are in six double CD-width boxes. It took a lot longer to make the transfer than you might think. I sourced, bought, assembled and used a new lawnmower, since the last one burned out after a lot of service. I had lunch at some good local restaurants, went to the gym and watched a bunch of movies and stuff on the DVD player. 

Mostly I enjoyed the feeling that I could set off to do something and have enough time to do it, without feeling it was taking time from other stuff or "life". For the first time in a very long time, I wanted to leave the house to "do stuff", rather than wanting to stay in so I wouldn't have to see the outside world. (Not sure if that will last a week at work though.)

As I revelled in having a proper relaxed level of hormones going around me, I was able to get a few things straight:

1. Spinning and running are on hold for a while - I suspect Renata-the-trainer is right and both activities mess my hormones up

2. The corrective training schedule Renata's given me, done three times a week gives me the feeling that "I've done enough work" whereas what I was doing before didn't give me the feeling that what I was doing was enough

3. Gym is twice during the week and Sundays - the other evenings are for kicking back one way or another.

4. I will blog twice a week from now on - right now, three times a week is taking too much time and effort, and the quality is too variable. Tuesdays and Fridays. 

And when I say "hailstones", I mean, like this. Click to enlarge and see April hailstones.