Between a Blog and a Hard Place

First things first: this is a filler post. Set your expectations appropriately low.

Lower.

Okay, that should do it.

Publishing a blog post every week is hard for me. This is not news. I've been down this road before, but for a while there it seemed like it wasn't as hard as I remembered.

When I made my first post on this blog I was between jobs. During that sweet sweet month of downtime I established some good patterns that allowed me to exercise, write, learn, do some chores and relax in a sustainable way.

It felt pretty good, but all good things come to an end. It wasn't long after I started my new job that everything shifted.

That's not to say I didn't expect everything to shift. Human existence is a finite space and you can't jam another thing into your life without making room for it somewhere else. I adjusted my patterns to give up a bit of exercise and learning time and assumed that would be enough.

And it sort of was.

Until I noticed I hadn't really progressed any of my learning goals.

Don't get me wrong, I was still learning plenty of things thanks to the new job, but it made me sad to see that my professional development Trello board wasn't really moving.

I had scheduled time so that it would be available, but it was being chipped away. An early meeting here, a desire to get online earlier there and all of a sudden that carefully planned morning goes out the window, the blog post for the week is behind schedule and something has to give.

I suspect part of the problem is my failure to account for mental load. Starting a new job is mentally (and emotionally) taxing, so while I had the time, I didn't have the motivation. Dragging your proverbial feet a little bit here and there adds up quickly and all of a sudden there is no time left.

All of those words are really just to explain why I don't have a proper blog post this week. If you want some additional words, I have some available, like:

• I'm getting my home office refit this week, so I had to move my work area. That doesn't sound too bad, but its a disruption all the same and I think it put me off. Also, I don't like having people in my house. It makes me uncomfortable.
• I slept in on Monday, which started the week on the back foot straight away. Why did I sleep in? Because I was up late the night before, possibly engaging in revenge bedtime procrastination as a coping mechanism for the impending week. A bad precedent that needs to be nipped in the bud ASAP.
• I have completely changed the foods I eat, because I'm taking a crack at the CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet. I'm pretty fit these days, but there is always room for improvement. Its pretty good so far, but like the home office refit, its disruptive and a source of additional mental and emotional load.

Now, you might look at those reasons and think they are perfectly valid, but they feel like excuses to me and I rail against them. I want to hold myself to a higher standard. I want to be able to weather any storm unscathed, like some sort of immovable, indestructible rock.

But people tell me I'm too hard on myself and that I should accept what I do manage to accomplish, not what I don't. Its difficult for me though, I think because I'm terrified of being lazy and fat and unmotivated and sad.

Because I've been there before and it sucked.

Anyway, writing this filler blog post has helped a little bit. It means that I still wrote a blog post this week, therefore I didn't break the expectation I set for myself. Sure, it was a weak post, but they can't all be amazing.

I wonder how next week will go? Is this the start of the decline? Will I clean up my act and get on with it?

Only time will tell, so make sure you come back for the next instalment in my inevitable descent into madness.

Or a blog post about OKR's.

Could be either really.