The disappearing month

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.

Excuse me, but where did this entire month even go? I blinked and missed it!

Reading

I barely scraped in two finishes this month, both in the last few days. On the one hand, all the books I had on the go this month were long ones, but also, I just haven’t prioritised it much so not a lot of reading got done. I also didn’t do as much of the usual things I do when I listen to audiobooks, like running, cleaning or stitching. I haven’t started any new books just yet, and with the two I’ve just finished that leaves me with only three books on the go at once. I think that’s some kind of record!

FINISHED

• The Biology of Human Survival: Life and Death in Extreme Environments by Claude A Piantadosi. Ok, this one wasn’t really that long, but it was pretty dense. Lots of maths and biology and sciency stuff mixed in with the good bits. I appreciate that the science parts were there, it just made it harder to read and I skimmed a little in some sections. Overall, really interesting though.

• Wanderers by Chuck Wendig. Loved it, 5 stars, excellent read. I listened to the audiobook and the narration was only ok, but that didn’t detract from the excellence of the story. Hard to believe it was published in 2019 pre-pandemic.

IN PROGRESS

• The Path of Daggers by Robert Jordan. I’m at about 75% now and in the thick of the main plot point of this book in the series. I’ve honestly just cruised through this one without taking in too much. I’m torn on whether I’ll go straight into the next in the series or if I should take a break.

• The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. I’m keen to get further on this one, it just happens to be on the device that I read from least often so it doesn’t get much of a look in. I’m also torn here on waiting to continue the series or continue straight away, but I don’t really want to be ready two chunky fantasy series at the same time.

• 2666 by Roberto Bolano. We’re so close to being done with this one. I’m at 75% and I’ve got it for 15 more days so I might be able to polish it off without having to wait to borrow it again. It’s getting really bogged down at the moment though and feeling like a bit of a grind.

Health

So after all the chaos last month I guess I can’t be too surprised that I got sick again. Fortunately this time it was nowhere near as bad. On a Friday I started sneezing and feeling snotty with a sore throat. Saturday I spent all day in bed with a temperature, snotting and coughing everywhere. Sunday I was still leaking all kinds of mucous but the temperature had gone and I was able to go to work on Monday. Took all week for the phlegm to clear up. I thought Steve managed not to catch it but it was his turn the following weekend. I was pretty worried seeing as how he had pneumonia just a month ago. He definitely caught it worse than I did and was unwell for most of a week and is still clearing it out of his system now.

I had been building up my running again after the first bout of illness and was almost back to a non-stop 5k before I got sick again. But I went out last weekend and managed 3.8k non-stop and then finished the 5k after a short walk. I really wanted to go in the morning before work at least once, but that didn’t happen. I’ll try again though. I would love to be that person who just whips out a 5k every morning to start the day. I have a feeling though, that once we move to NZ it might not be possible in Winter, what with sunrise not being until 8am. I will have to take safety a lot more seriously than I’ve been doing here.

I took a mental health day recently too. I’d slept badly and dreamt about Mum and woke up crying and feeling generally sorry for myself. I called in sick and spent the day in bed, basically slept until 3pm. Getting a bit of anxiety around the move now, which is to be expected I suppose. I think I’m dealing with it ok, though.

Diet has been pretty far from my mind, but I don’t think I’ve let it slip too far. I haven’t weighed myself, but there’s been a couple of times recently when I feel like I’ve been gaining weight again so I will try and be more mindful of what I’m eating again. I also haven’t been exercising as much the last 2 months so I’m sure that’s part of it.

I’ve had a couple of other general odd health things lately that if I was in an English speaking country I would make a doctor’s appointment for, just as a precaution. But because it’s so much more difficult here I’ll just keep an eye on things and wait a couple more months.

The first one is my periods. I’ve had the Implanon implant for 5 years now and haven't had periods during that time. On a very few occasions I’ve had a tiny bit of spotting, but nothing that has lasted more than a day. The last few months I’ve had occasional bleeding that’s lasted for a couple of days. One occasion was accompanied by some fairly bad cramps. I still have a year left on this current implant so I’m not sure what has changed. I wouldn’t mind getting a check up though, especially since finding out that Mum had endometrial cancer she didn’t tell us about.

The second thing is probably related to the two colds I’ve had recently, but it’s also happened before. When I tilt my head at certain angles sometimes, but not all the time, a gush of clear watery fluid will come out my nose. Googling told me it could be Cerebral Spinal Fluid, which sounds pretty scary, but I didn’t get a hit on the head or any other other potential causes and I don’t have any other symptoms. It’s happened before on occasion. It will happen a few times over the course of a week or so and then stop. It’s been happening fairly regularly over the last month. I’m hoping it's just sinus issues and with the multiple colds it's taking longer than usual to clear up.

Writing

I entered an unofficial writing comp that I saw here on Vocal. I didn’t win, but the story did get picked as Top Story which was really cool. I managed to also use that story as my submission for my writing group this month. Very efficient of me, but it also meant it was the only thing I wrote all month.

I did actually write a whole piece to post here, about just writing, whether you have anything to say or not, whether you think it's good enough or not. But I ended up not posting it because it felt like rubbish. So I didn’t take my own advice.

But with last month’s top story, the previous challenge win and other bonuses, I finally had enough in my Vocal wallet to make a withdrawal! That felt pretty nice to make some money off my writing.

Business

I did actually manage to put some time into my craft business, Book of Stitches, this month. Mostly because I was avoiding doing other things and I could say I was still doing necessary work this way. I made a few changes to my Etsy page and spent some time researching and trying to better optimise one of my listings. I think it may have had a small impact too, so I will make the effort to do it for all of my listings.

I think the increase in numbers is due to the work I’ve been doing, so even though it’s tedious and I hate it, I need to do it. I put another listing up, and I’ve got three finished patterns that I just have to put together the pdfs for and get listed. I have a couple of ideas rumbling around for new patterns, but nothing concrete yet.

I finally made a Facebook page for the business as well. I wanted to use the scheduling tools in Meta business suite to schedule posts for instagram, so I figured I would set up the FB page while I was there.

I got accepted to participate in the cross stitch zine. I’ve already created the pattern and done the model stitch. We took some cool photos last weekend, now I just have to send through all the bits and pieces to the organiser and I’m done, well ahead of the deadline too.

Finances

I spent a big chunk of money on buying our flights to NZ. They are all paid for now, so I guess there’s no backing out at this point. Not that I wanted to anyway, I really do feel that this is the right move for us. It’s just strange to see the numbers drop once we made the purchase. I’ve hit a little mini goal I had of putting aside $1,000 as a personal savings/emergency fund. That’s on top of our regular savings for the move. This is for unexpected expenses that I want to take care of without dipping into our joint savings or emergency fund. But now I can concentrate fully on paying down the credit card. There’s just under $3,500 left on there to pay.

Work

Work is actually picking up again, with more classes than there has been. I have a couple of classes most days now. I find that I need time to switch between tasks, so even though I don’t really have any prep to do for classes, I just waste a lot of time noodling around before and after, because there’s not enough time to really get into anything. Only two months of work left though, and classes will drop again in about a month as they gear up for exams. My last month won’t have many, but June is probably going to be classes every day. I’m going to have to be stricter with myself to get job apps done between classes or I’ll just fritter the days away.

I had 8 days of leave left, then I took that day off. School also happened to be cancelled that day because heavy rain, so I’m not 100% if I can get away with not using a leave day. But I’ll assume I have to, so I only have 7 days of leave left, which I’ll use spread over my last 3 weeks.

The Big Move

Two months and about a week until we move to a new country. It’s come up all of a sudden and now two months feels like no time at all. I don’t have a job lined up, and we don’t have a rental lined up.

I’ve been applying for any job that looks reasonable. I’ve been getting rejections or no response. I’m wondering if it’s because I’m applying too early. I’m saying in my cover letters when I’m available to start and maybe they are just looking at that and discarding my application because it’s too far away. As we get closer that will become less of an issue. Maybe it’s a resistance to conducting interviews and recruiting online? I would have thought that everyone was comfortable with it by now, but maybe it still pushes me down the list over local candidates. I’ll keep applying though, even if it’s not an ideal job. I can always stay in it short term while I look for something that ticks all the boxes. I have a feeling though, that until I’m actually there and able to attend interviews I’m not going to get hired.

The rental situation isn’t looking too bad. There seems to be a decent amount of places in our price range that are the kind of thing we’re looking for. My main concern here is, again, not being there in person. I’m worried that they won’t want to get into a contract with us until we’re actually in NZ. Also, if I don’t have a job it will be harder. Hopefully Steve’s income, proof of what I earned in Japan, plus our savings will be enough to show we can afford the rent.

I did a very rough practice pack of all my clothes and, of course, there’s a lot more than I thought. I easily filled up one suitcase. I think I could have gotten everything into one and a half. My hope is that once it’s all vacuum sealed it will fit in one suitcase. But I’m mentally preparing myself for the fact that I’m going to have to get rid of more stuff.

I think we’ve solved the postage problem, we just have to be brave and go into the post office here. It’ll cost a bit to send a box over, but as long as the cost of postage is less than the cost of replacing the items it’s worth it.