12 December, 2016

Keep going

After something of a rest yesterday I've tried to work hard today. (Yesterday we went to church and did 100 yen shop Christmas shopping for in-family gifts. I baked four-dozen biscuits for family snacks, and hosted a couple of teenage-guests for dinner. So it wasn't the most restful of Sundays, though I did lie down with a good book for a couple of hours.)
I love this sign. It's a shop in a house at the top of a hill we
sometimes ride up. It seems to be a strange thing for a commercial
 business to encourage you to do, but it is a nice thing to read after
labouring up the hill on your bike.

Yesterday I also took a look at my schedule for the week and realised that if I was going to achieve my goal of getting sufficient work done (editing especially) so that I didn't have to take my computer away on holidays with us this Saturday, I'd have to knuckle-down this week. That meant starting with Monday morning. And I knew that could be difficult, often I find Monday morning after a wrestling meet really hard going because of fatigue plus adjusting my focus from what has often been an all-consuming and emotional Saturday of sport.

So today I set myself to start hard. With meetings at school (prayer meetings, not the hard parent-teacher variety) from 10-12, I had 8.30 till 10 to work. I figured coffee at the coffee shop with my computer would be a great way to kick-start the day. 

So I marched out of here with my computer in my bag just a few minutes after the last boy left the house. And I've been on a roll ever since then and gotten much more done than I thought would be possible.

January and February will be harder because we have several weekends running with wrestling tournaments, plus a couple of mid-week ones. This time I've got holidays to look forward to. But I still think it might be a good way to kick-start the week on those difficult Mondays. If I can be more efficient in getting work done, then it's less guilt-inducing if I need to take a break later in the week. And it seems, for me at least, that if I can make a good start to the day, the rest of the day rolls out better.


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