Reorganising

[juliet]

Have just had a bit of a friends-list purge. This is because LJ is starting to feel somewhat out of control (in terms of quantity) and it's making me feel stressed. This I do not like. Yes, I'm aware I can use views to help this, & I'm doing that as well (notably taking out things like the news feeds, which I find useful but would rather have more control over when I see them; but also starting to use a reduced default view, though hopefully I'll mostly read most stuff anyway). Anyway: nothing personal, & all that.

I've generally been feeling a little stressed, and unfocussed, and other such words, lately. This is Not Good. I have been contemplating ways of getting rid of this.

gemoon's, I'm thinking that I need to rethink my mornings. Currently I get up & potter around the house for about an hr, a significant chunk of which is spent reading email/LJ while eating breakfast (which slows down breakfast, of course). I think a better bet might be *not* switching the computer on, eating breakfast faster, and fitting in a 20min walk round the park (possibly before shower/breakfast, in fact). Might help me settle my brain better; whereas dealing with email & LJ tends to unsettle it. I can always check them when I get in to work. Theoretically, of course, the bike ride in ought to allow for a little contemplation time, but in practice I'm too busy concentrating on not being squashed.

I'm feeling unfocussed at work; I seem to be seeing it as a space to have to myself and potter in, and having to fight against that. Also Not Good. I think partly this is because I'm not getting enough time/space *out* of work hours. So I think I need to have another go at making sure I spend at least one evening a week (and probably part of the weekend as well) at home Not Doing Much. Not necessarily on my own - having other people come over would be fine, as long as they didn't mind me pottering around doing things - and possibly including useful stuff like washing up, tidying a bit, etc, as well as knitting/reading/playing with computer a bit/etc. I think the other part is too many distractions - LJ (see above) and also email. Might *finally* be time to filter incoming mail (other than for spam) into separate folders for lists. I'm also wondering whether having some personal stuff around (other than my mug - I dunno, a postcard or two or something) might help me feel more settled.

There's some other stuff I need to think about, about how much of other people's responsibilities I'm taking on, but I need to talk that through with the people concerned, really, rather than wittering about it on LJ.

Comments

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

[hugs] Good luck at getting things more sorted - I can empathise.

[morgan99.livejournal.com]

Sorry to hear you are feeling stressed. It's good that you have managed to pinpoint the main reasons why & are taking action to resolve this.

Good luck with the new routines etc. The walk round the park sounds like an especially good idea. Exercise always seems to help me destress & focus properly.

B x

[juliet]

Me too; it's just that the sort of exercise I get most of currently is cycling, and whilst that's good physically, it's not so good for the mental aspects, because of the dealing with traffic! I'm not about to stop doing that, though - it *does* make a difference to my general levels of wellbeing.

[kake]

Walking more is a good idea. I find when I walk, interesting ideas come into my head and I can spend time thinking about them. And when I get to do that a lot, I seem to be healthier.

[juliet]

Yeah, I tend to find that. I'm thinking that this is maybe what I've been missing. Knitting is also good for that. Cycling is *sometimes*.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

You need to go cycling in a traffic-free area (Lee Valley might be your closest nice place), and also you need to escape London again (which you may do whenever, obviously).

[hieroglyphe.livejournal.com]

Good luck with the de-stress, hope it all goes to plan :-)

dead, dead good at no handed

[the23.livejournal.com]

when cycling concentrate on touching the handlebars as little as possible. this exercise makes the ride more entertaining and filters out all worries other than of survival. it only made me fall off once in a few months and i was really, really good at riding no handed by the end of it.

[brightybot.livejournal.com]

I think the job can be an unfocussed one. With the herschel stuff, after cosmos left, my main person who kept an eye on what I was doing was Steve, in Didcot, and Stephan, in another country. And Ivan does faff a bit, and doesn't exactly give a lot of guidance in things he wants done. So it's very easy to drift, and hard to focus sometimes. I'm having to get used to the opposite in my new job, where clients are on my back the whole time to get stuff done, and I barely have time to read my email, let alone lj, while I'm at work (hence reading it all in a big chunk now). Anyway, don't know if it's true for you, but I did find focussing hard sometimes at Imperial - sometimes I found setting myself arbitrary deadlines helped.

[juliet]

Well, good to know it's not just me :-) Deadlines tend to be helpful, yes, I should probably do that more. (one of the bad things about Oxford: taught me not only to work to deadlines, which is useful, but to be very bad at working *without* deadlines, which is less so).

Lists are always useful.