January 2019: Week 4

Here's my planner pages for this week:

☑ posted my weekly planner pages for accountability pic.twitter.com/zxAjnplwdH

— sassa loves and appreciates u (@AWildSassaApprs) January 29, 2019

I ended up spending a lot of time looking after someone else going through a rough time this week, but I don't regret that at all and I'd do it again for them in a heartbeat (and most likely will, given their rough time is still going). But, at the same time, I kept up the daily planner habit and I managed to go to bed before midnight three nights this week, instead of the single night I managed the previous few weeks haha.

Less fortunately I spent every night this week lying awake and not sleeping for the majority of the night which isn't that surprising given what my days were like but that's just how it be sometimes. And then at the end of the week I got to have my first sleepover in years with my closest friend, we marathoned the entirety of  My Love Story over two days, went out for  breakfast and bubble tea... all around wonderful and exactly the kind of healing I've needed for months now if I'm being honest. I've spent the last 3 years quietly isolating myself from my offline support network thanks to [career events that made my anxiety levels go through the roof] but now that I'm finally past that point in my life it's so good to know my friends are happy to pick up from where we left off. And I can properly appreciate how wonderful they are now that I'm not just clinging onto life white knuckled on the edge of a cliff, haha...

Not only did I manage to look after someone going through a bad time, see my best friend, and keep up with my planner, I even went to a board games night on Sunday! Of the new games I played, Sagrada stood out. Playing it is both satisfying and challenging, as well as just being a very beautiful game.

It's nice having a space like this where I can just brain dump my week in review and remind myself I actually did well, without the need to try and entertain people. It's just good to get it out somewhere, and doing it publicly makes me feel a nice bit of pressure to continue (but not so much pressure I throw up my hands in the air and decide to just go live in a bucket floating in the ocean off the coast of Borneo). Because if I was going to live in a bucket, Borneo would be a nice scenic place to do it.

Did you know Borneo has a leopard species called the "clouded leopard"? How good is that? Right? I knew you'd agree with me.

I keep thinking I really need to improve my handwriting just a little now that I'm posting my planner weekly but OH WELL.

January 2019: Week 3

Here's my check-in for this week!

Here's January Week Three! I'll follow up with a blog post in a bit but yeah, a good part of last week got eaten by family drama h...hah... still, I managed to pull myself out of it! pic.twitter.com/wD2qtmAnql

— they're definitely vampires (@AWildSassaApprs) January 22, 2019

So, I kinda lost a significant portion of the first four days of the week to family drama and the resulting depression. While I can get anxiety attacks out of nowhere, generally a depressive episode is linked to something external like this (I know it's not that way for everyone).

I kind of just had to ride this one out - my partner is also going through some rough times at the moment so we kinda huddled together under a blanket on the couch and tried not to succumb to the void. Eventually I was able to pull myself together, and spent all Friday doing as much as possible to make my environment comfortable and good for mental health - because over the four days of depression I didn't do a heck of a lot of cleaning etc so the dishes, laundry had all piled up.

But once I made it through that, and got the apartment looking good again, I was able to get back on track. The family drama isn't exactly over, but hopefully I can avoid getting eaten by it against for at least a little while. And I'll try to get ahead on all my writing targets so that if they do come back to drag me down again, at least it won't be such a hit to my goals.

Still, I think I did pretty well considering the week I had. And while I'm now behind my writing targets, I've made a lot of progress over the last few days so I think I'll be back where I wanted to be with my drafts within another 3-4 days or so.

I had to miss out on seeing my RL best friend last week because of the depression - but we rescheduled for this week, hopefully nothing will get in the way this time! I could definitely use some friendly RL human interaction.

Gonna continue to try to sleep before midnight, because while in a void I'd absolutely sleep days and work nights, it's too incompatible with being there for my partner and my friends with daytime work, and much as I love late nights, there's definitely something to be said for getting all your most important tasks done by lunchtime. So. I'll keep trying. The biggest problem I face is that it's easiest for me to write at night. There's no distractions from the outside world, it's quiet and dark: absolutely perfect for me to focus. Writing during the daytime comes with a host of issues by comparison. But, I'm gonna try to do that more anyway...

I'm definitely going to need to think about getting some more paid work/commissions lined up post-March, but I'm doing okay for now... so I probably won't do much towards finding more writing work until mid-February. That still gives me six weeks to find something!

January 2019: Weeks 1 - 2:

I started reporting the state of my weekly planner to my Twitter followers this year as a way of holding myself accountable and just... realistically reporting against my life. I did want to collect these weekly reports somewhere, so I'm going to make a weekly post to accompany them from now on.

Given I only started this blog in Week Three, here's my first two Twitter check-ins.

So I have a pretty strong set of milestones and stuff for myself this year, the thing I am not sure how to achieve yet is accountability.

I'm thinking maybe I post a photo of my planner at the end of each week, something like this? pic.twitter.com/z8foCetPCA

— they're definitely vampires (@AWildSassaApprs) January 4, 2019

Week Two: 76% of Must Do tasks completed! I do think the looming threat of posting my success rate did help me focus, so while I didn't do the week perfectly, I feel like this is an experiment worth continuing.

It's also reminded me to snap out of it when I mono-focus too long. pic.twitter.com/roLcD85pYj

— they're definitely vampires (@AWildSassaApprs) January 14, 2019

Because these are both already so far in the past to my mind, I'm not going to add anything else here, but in my future weekly check-ins I'll probably add a little more detail into the post itself.

I couldn't take it any more

So I created this blog.

It should probably be a Wordpress blog, Blogger's way of generating HTML even when you're typing directly into the post editing window is kinda crazy, all <br>s and no <p>s. Why is that even a thing in 2019?

You don't care about that.

Maybe I should stop caring about it.

Platforms die. Standards die. People die.

Do you ever feel like maybe you died a long time ago?

I'm so scared of beginnings, but I'm also terrified of emptiness. This time the fear of emptiness won out over the fear of beginnings, so I've started a blog.

Mostly I just wanted to collect the attempts at accountability into clawing my life onto the high shelf  I wanted to leave it on before I died, and a blog seemed like an okay way to do that. If Twitter hadn't (mostly) killed Moments, I'd have done it with Moments, but hey, maybe it's for the best. I kinda missed having an honest-to-goodness blog. It's been a long time since I maintained somewhere like this, just for myself.

I don't really expect to have an audience for this. I just want somewhere to curate my attempts to not drown in my own life. Maybe some people will enjoy it, I know I'm not the only one who still feels like they can't swim.