Runaway October

Before I knew it, the clocks had changed, or rather, one did and the others hadn’t, because they need doing manually, and I hadn’t realised it was that time already.

I also thought we had a week left of October, to get things done, and alas there are barely four days remaining. So I write up a list, as I do, of things I want to get done before the end of the month and, as usual, there is too much; too much stuff I keep putting off, and a list too long to be achievable; believe me, it’s over ten items long which is always my list limit (my actual number of things achievable from any one list is actually far less).

There’s car stuff, judders and leaks, bathroom stuff, leaks and drips, garden to do stuff to (although I did successfully separate my rhubarb plant into many rhubarb plants) books to read about Stargate Conspiracies (which delves into so much more), Arabian tales (1001 nights), and the third instalment of The Expanse series, which strangely ties back to those Stargate Conspiracies. There are computers to tweak; I’ve been participating in SETI@home ahead of schedule (compared to last year) since I usually wait for the clocks to change, but instead have been crunching since the SETI WOW event back in August; still not all of my machines are running as I need them to be.

There are those few walks up and around Snowdon that I did and wanted to document further, and edit more photographs of, and return to; we have a couple of days of nice weather forecasted so maybe I’ll do that… but also I want to cycle some more miles and also get back into running as I’ve neglected that for a few weeks. I’ve also neglected my yoga’ing lately also (the weather is rapidly cooling here making it all the more important for me and my aches and pains). I’m always trying to manage my energy and motivation by not overdoing things one day, leading me to under-do things thereafter; this rarely seems to work though and I end up with some down-days where I lack the effort to do much at all, or focus on what I want/what I put on any sort of To Do list. I’ve been trying to develop daily and morning routines to combat this and they worked for a while (as they tend to do) and then they slip. Which is why I now try and claw back my efforts for the end of the month. I’ve yet to get model-railwaying into a daily or weekly routine, for which I remind myself regularly (I’m like a nagging wife to myself, which is odd because I’m generally thankful for being single and not having to put up with a badgering partner).

As always (mostly) there is guitar ‘practice’ where I tell myself I’m going to practice some songs to improve on them to a point where I can upload a recording, when truthfully I just do what I normally do and play along to stuff for an hour, wear myself out, ready to do the same all over again a week later. I’ve done that for years! I “recently” acquired an old karaoke machine that has been fun to use in conjunction with my guitar amp for some encouraging effects, so that has provided a little extra kick lately, but nothing quite yet recorded well enough to develop into something ear-worthy.

I have also acquired other things including an old laptop that I need to fix up and do away with, an old video camera to at least do something with and do away with, or just do away with, and a pile of other things to simply do away with (aka list on ebay).

So that’s pretty much my list, as it were, albeit in paragraph form so I could at least get something posted.

Oh, and it’s Halloween in a few days so I need to bake some cakes.

Thanks for reading!