Made it to the Quarter Mark

These are the areas of my life that are important to me, or that I’m working on. Each month I review where I’m at and check in. I don’t feel like much happened in March. It went by very quickly. I still spent too much time gaming and not enough time making progress elsewhere. There was a low level of background anxiety building all month.

Reading

I finished four books this month. Very happy to still be on track for finishing a book a week.

FINISHED

• Bridge of Clay by Marcus Zusak. Ahhhh, this book destroyed me. I cried the whole way through. Many years ago I read The Book Thief by the same author and absolutely loved it. No other book has had me crying and laughing and laugh/crying like that one did. A few years later I read another book by Zusak and didn’t really enjoy it, so that made me put off reading Bridge of Clay for a long time. I think part of its impact is timing. If I’d read this book while Mum was still alive I still would have thought it a great book and I would have recommended it to her. Instead, I had a copy shipped to my sister. I hope she enjoys it, even though it’s going to make her cry as well.
• Flatland by Edwin A Abbott. Finally finished this one. Even though it’s not very long, it took me a while to get through. I’d had high hopes for this book, but it was mostly just boring. It’s an interesting thought experiment, but it just wasn’t an interesting read. It’s subtitle says it’s a romance. It is not a romance.
• Oliver Sacks: The Last Interview. This was a quick, one sitting read. I have read a few of Oliver Sacks’s books and really enjoy them. The kind of cases he looks at are the reasons I studied Psychology in uni. These interviews just increased my appreciation of the person Sacks was.
• The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. My library loan came up and I really enjoyed finishing this one. Once I was reading it regularly, instead of in just bits and pieces, I found it easier to keep track of who was who. I really enjoyed the juxtaposition of the World’s Fair against the horrors of what Holmes did.

STARTED

• Feeling Good by David Burns. I have previously read The Happiness Trap and found it really helpful. I use many of the CBT techniques in there to help me every day. I’m not finding Feeling Good to be as helpful. Maybe because it’s an older book and the theories and techniques are not as refined as the more recent Happiness Trap.
• The Biology of Human Survival: Life and Death in Extreme Environments by Claude A Piantadosi. I saw this mentioned in a Tumblr post as something useful for writers to see what they can put their characters through realistically and have them still live. The download was from the author themselves so I grabbed a copy. I’ve only read the intro so far but it is already interesting.

IN PROGRESS

• The Path of Daggers by Robert Jordan. This is now my only bedtime read. I’ve made progress but it’s all kind of just washing over me. This is just such a long story that I’m getting a little fatigued with it and losing concentration with all the moving parts.
• The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. Same update as last month: only a little progress here, another chapter or two. Still enjoying it though.
• An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir. No progress on this one because I was waiting for my library loan to come through, only to find that I hadn’t made a reservation on it. Reservation is now in place so now I have to wait again.
• Mythos by Stephen Fry. This is no longer a sleepy time book as I’ve become a little too invested. I’m enjoying the stories and Fry’s take on them. Not progressing very fast though because I have so many audiobooks on the go right now.
• 2666 by Roberto Bolano. Most of this month was on the waitlist for this one, it only just came through for me to borrow again with a couple of days left in the month. Was able to jump right back in though and I’ll try to power through as much as I can before it has to go back again. I’m under no illusion that I’ll be able to finish it though. It’s a monster!
• How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X Kendi. I’m struggling with this one a little, so I’m just listening in small chunks as I ride to and from school. I find that either there are points brushed over that I want to stop and dive deep into, or a point that seems self-evident to me is belaboured needlessly. I have a lot more I want to say about this book, but I don’t feel that I have the skills to do it justice.

Health

I have only been running outside once since my race. That’s pretty on brand for me though. I don’t have any external impetus to get out and run, so I haven’t. I’ve done a couple of short bursts on the treadmill.

I’ve been lifting pretty regularly this month. At least twice a week. I feel like I’ve found a point in all my lifts that are a good balance. Not too easy, but hard enough to make me progress. I’m finding that I need two days recovery before I’m ready to lift again. I’m also using that as an excuse to not run though.

I haven’t weighed myself for a while and I’m ok with that. My body feels good, and that’s what matters, not the number on the scale.

I’ve been eating ok-ish. I think evening snacking has diminished. I have been eating ice cream almost every night though. There’s a seasonal lemon ice cream out at the moment and it might be the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten.

I’m trying to make sure I eat some vegetables every day.

Mental health has been a bit weird this month. I was crying A LOT the early in the month, what with reading Bridge of Clay and talking to my sister a bit. But it felt like good crying, not bad crying. I think it was some necessary grief processing.

Writing

I had a big win for writing this month. I submitted to a Vocal contest and won a runner up prize. I was surprised and so happy!

My short story prompt submission this month was a long one - 2500 words. I got it done though, even though I didn’t write anything for about the first two weeks.

I’ve started publishing that story as chapters here as well. No one has read it yet, but it will at least help keep me accountable.

Next month’s prompt is very short so I hope to be able to start work on some other writing as well. Steve and I want to write something together, and I feel like I want to write something here about the planning for the NZ move and how I’m handling it.

Study

Language study has been minimal. Duolingo and Wanikani.

I finished the SQL course that I started. It was fine, but as mentioned last month not really what I was hoping for. It’s on my resume now though. I still want to do more coding and will keep using the free resources.

I’m particularly interested in the intersection of coding and art and have found a few YouTube channels that I want to get deeper into. I want to use it to help me make cross stitch and embroidery patterns.

Business

This has just taken a big setback. The Audiobooks are dealing with some copyright issues that are going to have a massive impact on our ability to make money. It’s still up in the air right now and I hope we find a resolution that doesn’t completely wreck us, but it’s hard to be hopeful. This in turn is going to effect our financial state, and then flowing on from that, our move to NZ.

I have been still fairly slack with my craft business. But also made some good progress on parts. I haven’t posted as much to social media as I wanted to. I think I’ve done some good pattern drafting though. The zine that I was a part of seems to have been fairly successful and the person running it said that they’ll put my name down for the next one. I’m really going to try and be more consistent working on this over the next month. I’ve already cancelled my subscription renewal on WoW, since we now need to worry about money I can’t justify it anymore. But it will also make me more likely to actually do business work.

My Etsy numbers have slightly improved this month. Last month I had 47 views, 64 visits and no sales. This month I had 54 views, 77 visits and 1 sale. I don't know if this actually reflects anything I've done on my part, or if it's just natural fluctuations.

I keep getting hit up on insta by ‘Etsy experts’ or ‘SEO optimisers’. I responded to one of them and said upfront I’m not paying for any services. They continued to engage with me, telling me everything they could do for me, then told me what it would cost. I reminded them that I’d already said I wasn’t going to spend any money with them. They got quite aggressive with me and at one point said “What’s the problem, are you on a budget or what?”. I found it funny, but why would I work with you after you get so aggressive with me?

Finances

No real change in financial situation, and with the issues with the audiobooks I’m now starting to panic a little. Income is going to drop substantially and I’m worried about how I’m going to be able to make credit card repayments. I periodically also have a panic attack about how we’re going to be able to afford to live in NZ, what if I can’t find a job, what if we use all our savings etc.

I was taking $50 a week from the business in exchange for some pretty minimal services. Keeping an eye on email, updating Patreon, sending some invoices. But I’m going to stop taking that now. I’m not sure how I’m going to pay the $75 a month minimum on my credit card from now on. I guess I’m just going to have to work hard to make my Etsy bring in some money. I have some savings set aside that I’ll use first.

Work

Work has just been deskwarming, but that’s allowed me plenty of time for writing and finishing my course. That’s fine with me, I’m just worried about how I’ll adapt to returning to a ‘real’ job.

I’m worried about what kind of job I’m going to be able to get. I’m on a sub reddit for people in NZ and it’s mostly people complaining about not being able to get a job. I know reddit is generally a pretty toxic place and people only go there to complain, but it makes me scared that I won’t be able to get any work.

The Big Move

Once my course was finished I brushed up my resume. I’ve started contacting recruitment agencies and setting up job alerts. I’ve updated my profile on a couple of job sites. I flip flop between thinking it’s going to be fine, there’s plenty of jobs out there, to I’m never going to be employed again and if I do it will pay peanuts.

It’s still this weird time of being too soon to actually take any action, but soon enough that I’m starting to panic about everything.

No further action towards getting a rental, again, it’s still too soon. My main concern here is that without a job lined up they won’t want to rent to us. I’m hoping that by showing we have sufficient savings we’ll be able to convince them that we’re safe tenants. The rent is going to be so much higher than we’re used to though. We have always been really lucky in being able to find places to rent that are below the average rental price at the time. So much of our income is going to have to go on rent, it’s scary.