It is a wet, wet, wet day on the Sunshine Coast today. We’ve had a lot of rain overnight, and today they’re predicting more combined with the possibility of some severe storrms this afternoon. Needless to say, today I’m staying home.
So why not write a blog about how my 52’s are tracking?
Done:
Talk to my estranged sister
This one was incredibly tough for me. My sister and I had quite a dramatic falling out when I was a teenager, and for nearly 15 years I’ve barely said two words to her. I wouldn’t say I’ve been rude to her when I’ve seen her, I’ve just chosen to stay away or just say hi and that’s it.
This year, being the year that I’m getting married, I decided to try and make a conscious effort to bury it a bit. Well, I’ve done it, reached out and we’ve had dinner. Baby steps…
Set up a filing system
In the past I’d had a filing cabinet, and I’d had a filing structure about 5 years ago, but since then my filing cabinet has been developing a fire starter kit. There was so much loose paper, and almost none of it was necessary.
I cleaned it out, set up the drop files, and now my other half and I have a bit more organisation going on. Well, provided we continue to do regular filing at least.
Side note – SO hard to get him to admit his 10 year old expandable file kit was long dead and needed to be tossed. He finally agreed I was right – hooray!
Put leftover coins from wallet into a money box at the end of each day
Let’s be honest, I suck at saving money. I’ve never been able to successfully do it, so I happily tasked that over to the other half. Literally, he takes care of all money and I just have my “pocket money” to spend for the fortnight. It’s so effective it’s ridiculous.
On top of that, I decided to implement one of the saving mechanisms one of my friends had told me about so long ago. It’s how he actually saved for a house (Joel if you ever read this – it was you). At the end of each day he would come home, and put all of his coins into a money box. When it was full he would put the money into savings, and start all over again.
I’ve already cashed this out once this year…I’m trying to remember what it was for, but all I can think was that it was something social for Mario and I. At least it definitely went on something fun. I’m getting good at doing this, and I’ve got a long wishlist of things I want to buy myself so I figure that’s what the money box can be for. Thanks to Mario we’re doing well with our joint savings – hooray!
Try pilates
I’ve tried it and I’ve enjoyed it! I found a kit at aldi which meant I got the pilates ball, and a book for the various different exercises to try. I still do these regularly, and even Mario has picked up a few moves (he’s got some core and back issues he’s trying to work on). Really glad I tried this one, and highly recommend it for others.
Shame I still haven’t been able to find a good app on my phone to follow through for routines etc. Anyone for developing one with me to take over the world?
Run 100km in 30 days
I actually wrote an update about this in January, and then never got back to writing the finishing post. Well here’s an update: I did it – woohoo!
The problem: I went from not running at all to running too often and too far. I suffered an achilles strain, and had to finish the month with lots of rest breaks and walking. On the final day of the month, I walked 10.3km to finish it off, but I’ve never been so proud.
You can see from the below the days that I was resting (huge stretch of 5 days in the middle), and that because I was walking my pace was pretty horrible. But hey – I did it!
And I got a cool medal!
Read a book with techniques for life improvement
As you’ve seen my spamming of posts about stress lately, I’ve just finished reading a book about techniques for dealing with stress. It’s a huge issue for me and still continuing on. For more info I’ll let you read all the stress posts- there’s no point duplicating it all here.
Make an appreciation jar
Earlier this year I was feeling really quite down in the dumps, and quite negative about myself. To help get over that, I decided to get this 52 under way. Each night for a week I forced myself to think about something that I really appreciated about myself, and slowly I felt the fog lifting. I’d like to dedicate a post to this one a bit more in the future as I think it’s highly effective, but the blogger in me wants to make sure the jar is decorated and looks nice beforehand 🙂
Since that initial week I’ve kept going with it, and I’ve expanded it to also be about the things I appreciate about others and my life in general. The jar is growing, and on New Years Eve I plan on opening it and re-reading them. I’ve made sure to write down situations that I appreciated and found hilarious as well, so hopefully there’ll be some good laughs.
Find a new podcast to listen to
I’ve found quite a few pocasts this year that I keep coming back to:
In the mornings when I’m driving to work it’s the perfect time to listen to podcasts, and I’ve found it really enjoyable! If you’re not familiar with what a podcast is, just imagine a radio show but you can download it to your device and listen to it when it suits. You can subscribe as well, so that new episodes are downloaded automatically.
In the past I’ve listened to Hack (a political radio show on Triple J on week day afternoons, also released afterwards as a podcast), and Serial. However this year I wanted to expand it a bit more and look for something new, and the top 2 on the list are definitely on high repeat.
The Half Size Me is about weight loss, and it’s just really interesting hearing techniques and tactics people have used for their own success, including avoiding binge eating, which is a huge issue for me.
Freakonomics is a little more varied in the topics, but it’s really interesting. Their tag line is “explore the hidden side of everything” It’s fascinating, and I’ve been exposed to so many amazing and interesting concepts. It’s great for opening up your mind; I highly recommend it.
Donate to a local charity
I had a major clean out of the house this year, and as a result a car load of stuff made it’s way down to the local St Vincents. I surprised myself, because I found I was even one of those people that still had clothes in the cupboard with the tags on that I’d never worn. It was nice to clear out the house while most importantly giving something to someone less fortunate than ourselves.
Crap wine tasting night
Oh my goodness, this was SO much fun!
Thanks to reddit, I had discovered that supposedly putting cheap wine into a blender makes it taste better. I had to try this out for myself, so I invited one of my great reds fan Bel and Kat (a non-drinker keen to observe our reactions) over for dinner and some crap wine.
We’re talking really crap wine.
Like a $3 bottle.
Go ahead and judge, it was for testing purposes.
On a side note – how the hell is that stuff so cheap?! Surely that’s a drinking problem issue right there??
We had 3 different samples for testing: bottle opened and poured straight into the glass and aired, one where we poured it through an aerator, and the incredible put in a blender for a few seconds and then poured.
The difference was way more dramatic than I ever could have imagined. I’ll admit, I think it did actually taste better! So there ya go!
I still think I’d prefer to just buy nice wine in the beginning.
Go back to Molescan to get my moles investigated further (scraped)
I’d already written about this one, so yay me!
Round up
There’s a few things that I have in progress at the moment, for example I’m already 5 plasma donations down for the year out of a goal of 10. It would be higher but they asked me to donate full blood at one point, so I wasn’t able to donate again as recently. But with 6 months left to go, and the ability to donate every fortnight, this is looking good for getting done. I’ve already booked out the next 4 or 5 appointments as well – love that they can schedule those in for me.
All up there’s 41 tasks left to go for the year, but there’s quite a few things on the go at the moment. I’ll try and do another update in a couple of months, and will hopefully have a few more completely crossed out.
Anyone else doing a list of things for this year? Having any success?