Knowing when to take a break

I've been thinking and reading and talking a fair bit about self-discipline over the last months. As you know, I struggle to resist the call of chocolate chip biscuits at work and tend to have more projects on the go at any one time than I can possibly complete. I don't do sport or exercise anywhere near enough and the housework is usually just overlooked.

As I suspect are many people, I am an expert in feeling really guilty about 'being bad' - whether with my health or my home - though not very good at turning that into action. It's actually a fairly familiar background feeling.

However, I had a conversation last week which has made me rethink this. After a busy week at work, I felt I ought to get out of the house and do something at the weekend, towards one of my other goals, but I was so tired physically and mentally that I really just wanted to curl up with some knitting, an old DVD and a cup of tea. The response was that self-discipline also means not pushing yourself too hard, knowing when you have earned and in fact need a rest.

I realise that I generally feel that I should be doing something productive, and if I'm not, I feel bad. But after putting in a lot of time and effort at work, it's perfectly ok if I preter to read than to sweep the floors. I do want to get that done too - but feeling bad about not doing it will not help, nor will pushing myself to sweep the floors at ten o'clock at night, or clean toilets first thing on a Sunday morning.

I really enjoy a lot of the posts about home from people like Rhonda at Down to Earth and Shannon at Radical Homemakers. I love the idea of home as the harbour we come back to after our trips out to sea - some beautiful, some tempest-tossed, some fruitful and some frustrating - where we restock and repair. nourish body and soul, and prepare for the next trip. Today, home is making pancakes for brunch in spite of the state of the floor.

Vintage chocolate chip cookies

As some of you may know, I have been hitherto entirely failed to resist the chocolate chip cookies at work. They are terrible, industrial, mass-made biscuits that can last about a year in the packet. They don't even taste nice, they're just moreish.

Last month for the first time, I resisted the call of the biscuit jar all month. No cookies at work. (This doesn't apply to other biscuits, crisps, croissants... but I'm picking my battles - one at a time!) I'm keen to wean myself off this frankly addictive crap - eating real cookies is a far better option than the cardboard stuff from the supermarket. I wouldn't touch a plastic-wrapped cake or plastic-wrapped waffle - so why do I persist in eating plastic-wrapped biscuits?

So to reward my success and make the shop biscuit less appetising, it only seemed logical to bake chocolate chip cookies at home. I haven't made these for ages - if in fact I ever have, not sure - so I'm sure I'll have to bake a few batches before I perfect them. I used this recipe from BBC Good Food - it is called 'Vintage chocolate chip cookies', and I couldn't resist the vintage. I made them over the weekend and they disappeared very quickly, so this is definitely a recipe to be repeated!

Reflections on January 2014

For the last year or two, I have tried as regularly as possible to join in the Slow Living Month by Month series, started by Christine over at Slow Living Essentials. It's definitely a good tool to reflect on what I've done each month and remind myself of many areas where I don't do as much as I'd like.

However, I do feel that there are two or three key challenges which are becoming major themes in my journey, in this blog, and it would be good to take a moment to reflect on those separately and more informally.

So, January. First month of the year, traditionally a time for much-touted new beginnings and overambitious resolutions which last all of three days. I can't even remember what my resolutions were, but I am definitely feeling more purposeful in general, more on-track in terms of where I want to be, and also more content with where I am now, accepting that life is a journey.

Clutter - Living well with less

One of the biggest changes this month is that I have started Project 333. For the uninitiated, this essentially means putting 80% of my clothes and shoes in the basement, and living with 33 items of shoes and clothing for three months. I was a little nervous, and thought I might end up recycling the same few outfits on endless loop, constantly running out of clothes and stressing about the laundry. 

In fact, I'm loving it. I'm wearing loads of variations that I've never worn before, and have started to receive compliments on my clothes/outfit at least once a week from friends and colleagues, which is definitely new. Caring for my clothes becomes less daunting, with fewer of them to worry about, so I no longer scrunch worn clothes into a ball at the back of the cupboard. Clothes clean enough to be re-worn are hung up or folded. Clean clothes are ironed. Shoes are polished and waterproofed. Damages are repaired. It's all just much more manageable, and much less work. I'm even doing fewer loads of laundry.

It's also making me rethink how I approach my clothes, and I'm very slowly starting to improve my wardrobe - so the clothes are better fitting, more colourful and just more of an expression of me and my life. I'm already mentally preparing to let quite of lot of the clothes in storage go when I change them around in April.

Routines - Making housework easy

This month I've been holding back on urges to be ambitious and plan lots of routines. I'm focusing on allowing new habits to evolve however and wherever is easiest. Basically, the stuff I do that has an immediate positive feedback gets repeated, until it sticks. Taking more care with my clothes, it seemed the next thing to do to set out an outfit for the next day every evening. Doing the washing up in the morning before going to work makes the evening's pile less daunting, makes a more pleasant kitchen for my boyfriend to bake in, and offers me a moment of domesticity before work. 

The latest evolution is an extension of that. I got sick of the dirty floor one evening last week and cleaned it. And it was so lovely I wanted to keep it that way, so I've started sweeping the kitchen floor each morning as well. It takes me about three minutes but it makes such a noticeable difference. But I'm trying to be careful not to add to this - I want to give myself time for each new habit to become normal.

Self-discipline - Resisting temptation

I do struggle to motivate myself to not eat the chocolate bar, to go for a run, to get off the sofa and do the hoovering, to pay the bill that came in the post. I'm trying to improve my self-discpline in general, and finding that at the moment it really comes down to food and sport.

 

Basically, when I eat fruit salad and yoghurt for breakfast, I have MILES more energy and mental clarity during the day than just about anything else. Ditto for having a soup or salad for lunch, rather than a sandwich, and ditto again for snacking on fruit, vegetables and nuts through the day rather than less healthy options. It sounds sickeningly healthy and I'm not yet sticking to it everyday but it makes a very obvious difference to how I feel and thus on every other part of my life. My big achievement this month is that I HAVE NOT EATEN A SINGLE CHOCOLATE CHIP BISCUIT ALL MONTH. (NB this does not also apply to other kinds of biscuit, but I'm still going to celebrate it as an achievement.

The same goes for sport. If I get out for a run, I feel so much better afterwards, and yet it's still a struggle to motivate myself. A job with long hours is too easy an excuse not to do sport, and the same goes for the swimming pool's opening hours, the terrible weather outside, a sore back etc. I've done a little better this month than some, but I'm still not close to where I want to be (half an hour, five days a week).

Resisting

Today I have a hankering for chocolate. I have resisted the chocolate biscuits in the jar for almost two and a half weeks, which I think must be a record, but today I feel the call. I’m observing a rather unexpected ‘strategy’ which the cravings are using. They tell me: You’ve knocked this. You have developed the self-control to say no to a chocolate biscuit. Therefore you can also say yes. 

This is very sneaky. As I think we all have cause to know and bemoan, each time you say no to the chocolate biscuit makes it a bit easier to say no next time, and each time you say yes makes it a bit harder. I might be able to say no now, but I know that if I say yes once, that will probably make me say yes again and then I’ll be back at square one eating half a packet of biscuits *cough* in a sitting. 

So far I am resolutely resisting. For how long?? I have a theory that if I wait long enough, the industrial biscuits here at work (which have a shelf life of two years!) will not taste nice anymore and that will make it easier to resist, like the first McDonald’s I had in about three years - I was really looking forward to it, I’d missed it and resisted it, but when I bit into the burger it was disgusting, I couldn’t finish it and I’ve never craved fast food since. 

So much of the food we are sold now is so divorced from its origins - a biscuit which lasts two years can’t have much in the way of real butter, eggs or milk in it - that we’ve lost a taste for real food. Like children who grew up during rationing in World War Two, who were so accustomed to the taste of powdered egg that they preferred it to fresh eggs. 

This is really a process of educating my tastebuds and my palate to savour fresh, nutritious foods and discard the crap. The first part is complete - I really enjoy sitting down to a bowl of homemade soup or stew, or a fresh salad. You can just feel it doing your body good, you know? I just haven’t yet fully weaned myself off the processed snack foods - even though I infinitely prefer the taste of a homemade cake or scones to the industrial biscuits.

I will continue to resist the call of the chocolate biscuits. Not thinking about the chocolate biscuits would help...

Little things make a difference

I'd like to share the last hour of my life with you, because it illustrates some of the little and yet not so little changes that are taking place in my life.

Say six or even three months ago, I would have come in from work, utterly shattered, and spent an hour, or maybe two, slowly recuperating my sanity through distractedly browsing the net, reading blogs, or rereading some of my favourite old books either physically or as ebooks on my laptop. I would have accomplised precisely nothing, felt bad about it, procrastinated about doing the washing up and finally gone to bed late, and not really very refreshed.

The first difference: I put my work clothes away. I never normally do this, because my wardrobe is such chaos that it's a hassle. I wear my work clothes until I go to bed, and then I shove the clothes in a crumpled pile to the back of the wardrobe. Now, there is space for every garment in the wardrobe so I hang them up as soon as I get home, and put on my jeans.

The second difference: I folded and put away the clothes from my last laundry batch. Normally I wait until the space is needed, which often means trying to remove clothes while my boyfriend simultaneously hangs his gym kit to dry. There's not really enough space. Today I didn't mind doing this because there aren't many clothes to put away, and I no longer need an MSc in Jenga to fit them into the wardrobe.

The third difference: Looking at how crumpled my shirt was, I decided to iron it. And a few other items. Once I'd done one, it looked so much better than the others that I even ironed one of the shirts already hanging in the wardrobe. I haven't ironed a thing in months, but when you only have four or five items to do, it's surprising how little time it takes.

The fourth difference: When I made my tea, I realised that the bin was full. So I emptied it. I know it sounds pathetic, but this is kind of amazing for me. Normally I agonise, procrastinate, feel guilty etc for some time before I get around to doing something like this, but today I saw it was full and just emptied it while I was waiting for the kettle to boil.

The fifth difference: I decided that while I was up and doing things, I may as well put on a load of laundry.

Wow. As I write this now - feeling alert, not too tired, and with a cup of green tea next to me - I feel really quite good about the first hour of my evening. I think I can chill for the rest of the day. So much progress, but I really find that if something allows me to get started, it's much more straightforward to just keep on going. Just having space in my wardrobe started a chain of events that has made my evening both productive and relaxing.

A friend and five lessons learned

This post is addressed to, and inspired by, a very dear friend of mine. She is a kind, thoughtful, intelligent and creative person, who gives far more of herself than anyone has any right to ask, and she has consistently been a far better friend to me than I have been to her.

This lovely friend of mine is grappling with a major personal challenge. Owing to a number of factors which I won’t go into, but which are absolutely and in no way her fault, she is caught in a tangled web of self doubt, self criticism and perhaps even self hatred. She knows she needs to get out of this web, but that is a lot easier said than done. I can tell her how wonderful a person she is until pigs fly, but this is not a journey I can make for her, it is entirely hers. 

While she is in an unusually difficult position, I think to some extent we all want to change ourselves and our lives in some ways. Break bad habits, break bad relationships, do the thousand and one things we always dream of doing but never really believe we can. We sort of half believe that, in fact, we could get up at 5am and run 10km and come home, renovate the bathroom, still be at work by 8 etc. Whether it’s a sport thing (I’ll get fit), a diet thing (I’ll eat healthier), a work thing (I’ll be more dedicated), a craft thing (I’ll finish all my projects), a homemaking thing (I’ll clean the whole house top to bottom)… 

We’re all caught between thinking we can do everything and thinking we can’t do anything, so we end up doing nothing and feeling like failures. At least speaking for myself, I have generally found that I think to myself that I should go for a long run and get some exercise, but feel discouraged or defeated before I even put on my shoes and end up rewatching an old tv programme on my laptop eating crisps or chocolate. And it seems normal when you’re there, even though from the outside it’s easy to suggest that maybe going for a walk would be a good halfway point. 

What I’ve found is working for me (at least at the moment, and life is always a three-steps-forward-two-steps-back business for me) is setting infinitesimally tiny goals. My goal today – the entire day – is to take the rubbish out. My goal for today is to write a letter. My goal for today is to not eat the croissants provided at work. (That one always fails). It’s easier to set a goal to do something than not do something (easier to eat a piece of fruit than not eat a biscuit, even if eating the fruit then helps me not eat the biscuit…) 

I don’t want to tell my friend that I know how she can ‘fix’ the tangled mess she finds herself in. What works for me won’t necessarily work for her. And I do know how effing frustrating it is for people to roll out their tips and tricks and make it sound so easy, when I know it isn’t. 

But this blog is really about a journey to try to shape a life more deliberately and intentionally, and there are a number of things that have helped me with my journey so far. I haven’t really seen much discussion of self-discipline on simple living blogs, but I think it’s the foundation of my simple living journey in many ways because the ideas, projects, crafts that are here would still all be in my head without it. It’s something I’m still working on, every day, so this post is as much a reminder to myself as a very long-winded and beating-about-the-bush way of saying to my friend: I can’t fix it, but maybe some of this will help?

1. Set small, easy goals

Really, really, really tiny. Today I will go for a two-minute walk in my lunchbreak. Today I will eat an apple. It doesn’t feel daunting. Try to keep the goals positive – I will – rather than negative – I won’t. Plan when you will fit it into your day, ideally with a cue (I will eat an apple when I get home from work/with my lunch/when I finish checking my emails). Minimise the effort involved – make sure you don’t need to go out to buy something. If you need something, prepare it in advance and take it with you. Make sure it doesn't depend on other people.

2. Choose the path of least temptation 

My office is essentially built like a square with the middle missing. From the kitchen to my desk, there are two possible routes. When I’ve made a cup of tea, I tell you, it’s a hell of a lot easier to decide to walk back along the route that doesn’t have a biscuit tin than it is to walk past the biscuit tin without taking a biscuit. Try to build your day to avoid temptation. Always stop in at the bakery? Walk a different route, or along the other side of the road. Always end up going straight home instead of to the swimming pool? Take a bus that doesn’t stop near your house.

3. Be your own cheerleader 

What mental messages are you sending yourself? Even if you tell yourself that you can, is there still a negative voice saying ‘you won’t do it anyway’? Squash that voice. Go on. Shove it out the door. And turn the lock. Or if you can’t, drown it out. While you are doing your small challenge, or preparing to do it, talk to yourself – or sing, or recite, whatever helps. When I go out for a run (and run isn’t quite accurate, it’s lots of walking with intermittent jogging), I am constantly saying (more like shouting) to myself: You’re nearly halfway! You’re already nearly halfway! You can do this! Think how good it will feel when you finish! Think how wonderful it will feel all the rest of the day, the rest of the week! You’re making yourself fitter and stronger! You’re building your willpower and your self-discipline every second that you keep going! Look, you’re still going! You can do this! (etc…) And I’m finding that very gradually the voice that says ‘wouldn’t you rather be watching Downton Abbey with a slice of cake?’ is getting quieter and easier to ignore. 

4. Feel pride in even the smallest achievement 

Even if your goal was to eat an apple, feel good when you do it. Setting a goal and delivering on it should feel good, regardless of the goal. And the positive feedback loop helps motivate the next goal. Even if that is only eating a pear. Treat yourself (in some way that doesn’t undo the progress you’ve made). One of my treats is to take a long soak in a hot lavender bath with one of my favourite books. If you plan on repeating or building on your small goal, track it. An excel spreadsheet, a pretty notebook, a scrap of paper pinned to the wall – so you can look at it and think: Yes! I did that every day this week! 

5. Forgive yourself and keep going 

If – WHEN – you slip up, because we all do, don’t beat yourself up. Don’t feel bad. Don’t let one slip ruin a good week. Remind yourself that to fall, dust yourself off and face up once again to the challenge is something that has always been difficult, and is a theme handled in many classic stories. Remember this example from The Horse and his Boy? 

“In other words," it continued, "you can't ride. That's a drawback. I'll have to teach you as we go along. If you can't ride, can you fall?"

"I suppose anyone can fall," said Shasta.

"I mean can you fall and get up again without crying and mount again and fall again and yet not be afraid of falling?"

Distractions

Do you get these periods? Maybe it's just me. I periodically seem to sort of 'switch off' for a week or so. I don't really engage with anything, and all I seem to want to do is reread old books and rewatch old movies that I've read/seen a million and twelve times (roughly).

I know this is not ideal - this is very much a retreat from the frontier of life, and it's extremely unfair on my boyfriend who starts wondering if he's annoyed me somehow. It says a lot about my lack of self-discipline that it takes me so long to pull myself out of it. But I'm out again now! And trying to catch up on the housework that I allowed to pile up.

During these detached, unproductive and undisciplined moments, I find myself re-reading books by LM Alcott and similar, in which the characters openly discuss their battles against their weaker instincts in a journey to be 'good' human beings, with value not just through their jobs or their material possessions but through growth and relationships. There's something ironic about reading rather than living this kind of life, and I find myself thinking 'what would Darryl Rivers do?' (She certainly wouldn't be inside blogging on a day like this!)

I am now enjoying once again the lovely feeling of being lazy and productive at the same time. Thank you, oh thank you industrial revolution! for giving us the washing machine. Is there a better feeling in life than curling up with a cup of tea, smug in the knowledge that the laundry is being washed and the bread being baked while I sit and relax? 

My 30 Day Challenge: Tubeing it old school

I love TED talks. They always make me want to completely rebuild my life - or rather, they make me believe that I can, that we can all make huge changes. The risk is, of course, that you spend so long watching TED talks that you never get around to making any of those changes a reality.

This one here is pretty cool, and brilliantly illustrates the power of the baby step: