Sunday Update

It's a sunny, cool, Autumnal day. Here in the dining room there's enough sun coming in to make it feel warm and cheery. I have a pot of coffee, Roderick on the Line, my trusty computer, and a whole day to do anything I like.

And I like puttering around inside; following thoughts; cleaning a thing here; colouring another thing there; rummaging through a forgotten box; reading a few pages from a remembered book.

These are my favourite kind of Sundays.

Declarations update

At the beginning of the year, instead of making resolutions, I made declarations. 

I was about to admit "It's not going well." While that is technically true, the fact of the matter is I've actually learned a lot about why it's not going well - these declarations are just not visible to me. 

Saying I want to do something; making promises to myself and others; writing the goals/declarations inside my personal planner; telling people about them here on the blog and IRL - all text book actions for goals and declaration success. But nope, not for me. It seems if they are not visible to me in my daily life, they get forgotten. They're not on the top of my brain and they're not in the front of my eyes.

I've taken steps to remedy that situation and it seems to be working - although we're in the early days - watch out for a blog post coming up this week with more detail.

Rabbit update

I realised I haven't posted much about the rabbits lately. It's mostly because taking photos of the bunnies works best if I lie on the ground and with all this seasonal weather and early sunsets, the ground is too damp and cold with the light levels too low and look at me making excuses when I look up from typing to see a white fuzz ball in the middle of the garden chomping grass.

And it just started raining again.

Women in Leadership

Back in April I mentioned the Women in Leadership (WIL) programme I'm involved in at work. I don't have much to share here but wanted to let you know it's going really well. The cohort is so supportive and generous; the workshops are spot-on and practical; my mentor is incredibly helpful and I'm so grateful to have been paired with her.

Willo and Milly got married

View fullsize

Wonderful picture of the willos - fantastic couple - very special day.

Last month I was so happy to be able to attend the wedding of Willo and Milly. For those of you who have been around for a while, you'll know that I lived with Willo for most of the five years I lived in Australia.

He is one of the very best people I have ever known. So it was so fantastic when the girl of his dreams became his wife. The wedding was so special and so "them" and such a privilege for me to be able to go back to Australia and reconnect with the wonderful Williams family and Eldorados of South Muckleford (sound so posh when it's typed out like that) to be part of such a joyous celebration.

I know I sound like I'm gushing but it really was a wonderful, intimate, reaffirming weekend.

Associated links

• Roderick on the Line (Podcast: if new, try Episode 98)
• International Women's Day (WILs post)
• Declarations (New Year post)
• Eldorados of South Muckleford (Facebook)

Planner Event Horizon

I’ve been thinking about black holes this week and if there was ever a massive gravitational pull in my life similar to that which distorts spacetime as much as a black hole it’s my aspirational desire to be a planner girl.

Back in April I let you know I was wandering around the web warren of planner tutorials and websites. I bought a cheap-as-chips Personal (relates to the size rather than use) planner and after having a good think about what I’d want to use my planner for, knocked a prototype together. I’ve been using it since then and it suits me well in someways, and reveals itself less helpful in others.

What it has been good for is:

1. to do list (in the form of a bullet journal)
2. card wallet
3. blog article planner

The planner also housed a section for my goals, notes, drawing paper, and a section called “inspiration” with the idea of capturing good, well, ideas. Although I thought I needed those sections, I didn’t use them in my daily life. I thought by having my goals in my daily planner they’d be more visible, and therefore easier to take action against. Alas, this did not work for me - so I’ll need to figure out alternative ways of keeping my goals ‘front of mind’.

But back to the planner.

The bullet journalling technique for tasks worked brilliantly. I loved everything about this system: drawing my own calendars; writing very short descriptions against dates; key of symbols so I can see quickly if it’s an event or a test etc.

Keeping my important cards in the planner has been a god-send too. It sounds simple but up until this planner I hadn’t had a wallet in a long time. I think I’ve lost about two years of my life looking for my EFTPOS card in my handbag - not to mention if I’d ever needed to dig out my Driver’s Licence and I never did know where my AIRNZ Airpoints card was. Using the purpose-made slots for my cards works well and (so far) I’m pretty good at returning the cards to their safe home.

Speaking of cards, one of my old plastic cards was used to store Washi tape. It came is so handy when I was overseas a couple of weeks ago. I’m a fan of utilising train-station lockers to hold bags while I shop, or before I check into a hotel. The key-code for getting back into the locker is always printed out on a small piece of paper that I worry I’m going to lose. Not this time: washi-taped to the inside of my planner I always knew my locker ID code was safe and sound.

Fold out monthly blog planner

Although there hasn’t been much evidence of it here, the planner was also a good home for blog article ideas and plans. I created a fold-out page with a grid to represent a month’s worth of days to house my topics for the blog.

Now I have ever been a fantastic planner and a poor executor of such things. I love planning and my best intentions for getting those words onto the screen has a bit more work to be done, but I’ll get there.

All in all I’m chuffed with my cheap-as-chips Personal planner and the things I’ve learned while using it. I’m looking forward to upgrading to a newly decorated A5 leather planner with much more confidence in the investment of time and money knowing it will be used and useful. 

Planning my new A5 Kikki K planner's monthly spread