![[sticky entry]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/entry/sticky_entry.png){kind=small}
I think I wanna get back to DWing again. Properly, as a 40 year old grown-arse woman. I stopped because, to my knowledge, the few remaining people who're still on DW at all don't read their own flist, only update so those who follow them can keep up on their lives. Those few remaining, I talk to on a regular enough basis that this is where I update them on life-happenings, so tpyo became a bit of a time-wasting, pointless exercise.
This past, let's be real, two years has taught me the painful lesson of how to write for myself, not for others. I want to start DWing again, but for me. For a time capsule to look back on, should I feel like it. Unlike just a paper journal, though, this'll be easily sharable. This is to say: no holds barred. tpyo is my journal for me. I want to go D&M like I've only ever done in private posts before, for a multitude of reasons--not wanting to talk about it, not wanting to hurt feelings, not wanting to break confidence. I still won't break anyone's confidence, I'll keep those posts private, but not wanting to talk about it is all the more reason to do so. Not wanting to hurt feelings? Fuckit. If I'm hurt, I'm try and articulate it to myself.
My journal for me.
I'm an optimistic cynic; a cynical optimist. I see the best in people, in situations. I hope for a positive outcome. I see something wrong, I try to fix it. I try to be the peacemaker, the safe place for anyone to come to with their problems and I'll either offer a sympathetic ear to be ranted at or I'll offer advice, whatever it is that's needed. I want my people to be happy! I want to be happy myself! It's so, so much easier to go through life anticipating good things. I love going to new places, new events and getting excited about what I'm going to find. There are SO many festivals in this city, it's fabulous. Illuminate's just finished; SALA's just started. I'm going to do up my kitchen at the end of the year, do the Inca Trail next year and watch the sunrise over Machu Picchu on my birthday, then sell my unit and buy a house for me and my girlfriend to live in. No more trying to fit two full lives into one little unit.
There's your optimism.
The cynicism? How I get treated in return. I'm sick of being a doormat. I get told half a secret but never learn the resolution to it. I get told my brother and I are treated equally (see: I go to France on exchange, Colin gets a new computer) and yet they've received $25k I've not seen, but I guess $20k on IVF doesn't equate to $20k on a new kitchen and the other $5k I'll see when I get married, too. If I can do something for myself, I will; I'm sick of being so bad at asking for help. I'm sick of offering everything I am, only to be told, 'I don't believe you.'
But I'm still an optimist; I still face all that with optimism. Maybe one day, when that secret means nothing to the holders of it anymore, maybe they'll tell me. Maybe I'll get that $25k when I get a house and want to do my kitchen up again, but this time for us, not for sale. Maybe people will help without me asking for it. Maybe Sallie will eventually listen to me and realise I never lied. Maybe I'll get that apology.
tpyo is my journal for me. Maybe I should rename it; tpyo doesn't really mean anything anymore. Neither does Annarti, if we're honest.
I'm Anna, the cynical optimist.
'I support you in whatever you feel you need to do.'
This was the hollow epithet I heard time and again from everyone around me when I announced I was giving up on writing Silent Harmony, and trust me I heard it plenty*. I've been giving that statement a lot of thought lately, because here's the thing: I did not feel supported. I felt so very, very alone. I was crying out for help, literally begging for someone to give SH some attention. Just one paragraph, I begged. Please. Just one paragraph? I gave up, as it turns out, not because it wasn't being read, but because I wasn't being supported.
I asked everyone who hadn't even started it, why they hadn't? Results didn't really vary: no time, no energy, plus Cassie's breath of fresh air to say the writing style doesn't click with them, and Shanrie who forgot I'd sent it to her, so that was an easy fix. But the no time/energy? To sit and read (just one paragraph, please) in four years? Still rankles, and it always will. At this point, that's not a lack of time/energy. That's a lack of care. If you can't make time or find energy to read a paragraph of this thing I've told you I care deeply about, you don't care.
So I gave up. 'I'll support you in whatever you need to do. [Except that. That's too much time/effort.]'
Because that's what support is, in the end. It's effort. It's putting in some effort when someone you love is feeling down. Maybe it's getting in the car and driving over to their house with a punnet of ice cream, or picking up the phone if they live interstate. Maybe it's stopping your fitness run halfway through and heading home to give a hug. Maybe it's making dinner on what should be your night off after they've had a bad day. Maybe it's staying up past your bedtime to chat. Maybe it's getting up at arse-o'clock in the morning to take them to the airport.
I have a friend who moved to Sydney to get away from her parents, moved in with her aunt, and copped nothing but abusive texts and voice messages from her parents. Until she finally and successfully cut of contact with them, all she ever said she wanted from them was support. They kept trying to send her birthday presents or cash or whatever, which she never accepted, because all she wanted from them was to hear they were happy for her. Sometimes, support is just actively listening. Sometimes, it's just saying what they need to hear.
All I needed to hear at the time was don't give up. Instead, I got the hollow fucking epithet, I support you in giving up. I didn't want to give up; I actively said this at the time. SH had been my life! My every creative input was to do with this story, and everyone who loved me was supporting me in giving up? That's not support, guys.
Short of the bleedingly obvious (just one paragraph, please? I just want you to get the same joy from it that Ido did!) support would've been encouraging me to take joy in it for myself, and only myself. Learn to write for myself, not for anyone else. Lock it away and don't let anyone see it until you're comfortable with people not reading it. Nobody was reading it. Even if you couldn't understand what SH meant to me, surely you could see how much it hurt.
I needed support. I didn't need to give up. What I needed was to shut it away and learn to write for myself. I didn't know this at the time, but nobody suggested it, either. Instead, yep, just give up, 'narti. That's what's right for you. I support you in anything you feel you need to do, and if that's to give up, well then, I support you giving up.
Support takes effort, otherwise it's an empty platitude. If you don't have the energy or the time to actually be supportive, then don't offer it. If you do, but don't know what support looks like, just ask. How can I support you? Have the hard conversation, find out what they actually need, not just what they think they need. I needed people to care about my story, about me and my attachment to it. I didn't get that at all. I felt entirely unsupported and alone. I needed to shut down the hope of anyone reading it and learn to write for me, but because I didn't get that care for SH nor any acknowledgement of what it meant to me to give it up, I didn't get that encouragement, either.
I've learned it for myself, by myself now. No more asking people to read it. If anyone does want to, they can ask me. I'll still talk about it, still get excited in chat about it, still draw from it and share art from it, but the story itself is mine again. If nobody reads it now, at least it's my choice.
At least I find it exciting.
* Just in case anyone feels singled out, I've invited no less than eleven people directly, plus a chat full of people who read and enjoy fantasy, to read Silent Harmony since starting the rewrite. I could also facetiously count the half-dozen people I was friends with back at the beginning and who have since fallen by the wayside but that wouldn't be fair. Their support disappeared long ago.
This was the hollow epithet I heard time and again from everyone around me when I announced I was giving up on writing Silent Harmony, and trust me I heard it plenty*. I've been giving that statement a lot of thought lately, because here's the thing: I did not feel supported. I felt so very, very alone. I was crying out for help, literally begging for someone to give SH some attention. Just one paragraph, I begged. Please. Just one paragraph? I gave up, as it turns out, not because it wasn't being read, but because I wasn't being supported.
I asked everyone who hadn't even started it, why they hadn't? Results didn't really vary: no time, no energy, plus Cassie's breath of fresh air to say the writing style doesn't click with them, and Shanrie who forgot I'd sent it to her, so that was an easy fix. But the no time/energy? To sit and read (just one paragraph, please) in four years? Still rankles, and it always will. At this point, that's not a lack of time/energy. That's a lack of care. If you can't make time or find energy to read a paragraph of this thing I've told you I care deeply about, you don't care.
So I gave up. 'I'll support you in whatever you need to do. [Except that. That's too much time/effort.]'
Because that's what support is, in the end. It's effort. It's putting in some effort when someone you love is feeling down. Maybe it's getting in the car and driving over to their house with a punnet of ice cream, or picking up the phone if they live interstate. Maybe it's stopping your fitness run halfway through and heading home to give a hug. Maybe it's making dinner on what should be your night off after they've had a bad day. Maybe it's staying up past your bedtime to chat. Maybe it's getting up at arse-o'clock in the morning to take them to the airport.
I have a friend who moved to Sydney to get away from her parents, moved in with her aunt, and copped nothing but abusive texts and voice messages from her parents. Until she finally and successfully cut of contact with them, all she ever said she wanted from them was support. They kept trying to send her birthday presents or cash or whatever, which she never accepted, because all she wanted from them was to hear they were happy for her. Sometimes, support is just actively listening. Sometimes, it's just saying what they need to hear.
All I needed to hear at the time was don't give up. Instead, I got the hollow fucking epithet, I support you in giving up. I didn't want to give up; I actively said this at the time. SH had been my life! My every creative input was to do with this story, and everyone who loved me was supporting me in giving up? That's not support, guys.
Short of the bleedingly obvious (just one paragraph, please? I just want you to get the same joy from it that I
I needed support. I didn't need to give up. What I needed was to shut it away and learn to write for myself. I didn't know this at the time, but nobody suggested it, either. Instead, yep, just give up, 'narti. That's what's right for you. I support you in anything you feel you need to do, and if that's to give up, well then, I support you giving up.
Support takes effort, otherwise it's an empty platitude. If you don't have the energy or the time to actually be supportive, then don't offer it. If you do, but don't know what support looks like, just ask. How can I support you? Have the hard conversation, find out what they actually need, not just what they think they need. I needed people to care about my story, about me and my attachment to it. I didn't get that at all. I felt entirely unsupported and alone. I needed to shut down the hope of anyone reading it and learn to write for me, but because I didn't get that care for SH nor any acknowledgement of what it meant to me to give it up, I didn't get that encouragement, either.
I've learned it for myself, by myself now. No more asking people to read it. If anyone does want to, they can ask me. I'll still talk about it, still get excited in chat about it, still draw from it and share art from it, but the story itself is mine again. If nobody reads it now, at least it's my choice.
At least I find it exciting.
* Just in case anyone feels singled out, I've invited no less than eleven people directly, plus a chat full of people who read and enjoy fantasy, to read Silent Harmony since starting the rewrite. I could also facetiously count the half-dozen people I was friends with back at the beginning and who have since fallen by the wayside but that wouldn't be fair. Their support disappeared long ago.
City-Bay Fun Run
Mon, Sep. 21st, 2026 05:57 pm
Yesterday, I ran in the City-Bay Fun Run! I was kinda considering it last year, but only remembered it was on a coupla weeks out. This year, I got in on the early bird pricing back in autumn. I had grand plans back then of cracking a one-hour 10km by the end of the year, and so set myself an optimistic but not unrealistic target of 1 hour, 12 minutes for the 12km City-Bay. I'd hoped to set one of my Garmin training plans for a 1-hour 10k run the week before, but unfortunately the training plans were all too long to fit the time frame, and if I let it run the full course (to some time in late October/early November) then it'd treat the City-Bay as a secondary event rather than the primary event I was training for.
So I went all through winter just on my own, doing my pilates and gym classes and going for the watch's recommended run on the no-pilates days. A month out and it still wasn't setting me any long runs, barely anything more than like a 45-minute 'base' run (which works out to about 7-minute pace for me) so I largely gave up on it and made up my own training runs. I did discover PacePro Plans, though, literally last week, where you tell it how far you're going and what you want to run it in, then use a slider to work out how fast you should run each kilometre to hit your target, either starting out fast and finishing slower or starting slower and speeding up. I know how my body do by now, so last Wednesday I set myself the 1-hour 10k starting out fast (5:20 pace) and slowing down towards the end. I think it was about 1 hour 2:45 or there abouts, not my target, not a PB, but still only about 30 seconds off my PB after not having done a long run in a while, so definitely something worth sticking with. I set up a PacePro Plan for the City-Bay, knowing I probably wouldn't hit it but it'd at least keep me on track for the duration.
Race day arrived and it was stunning. Blue sky, northerly breeze meaning a tail wind for the entire run, and an absolutely massive group of people all there for the same reason. The highest bib number I saw was like 42,000. Waiting for the tram from South Terrace, I was trying to figure out how to put my bib on, thinking the foamy bit at the top was an adhesive, but nope, that wasn't meant to come off. Asked two people also waiting how it was supposed to attach and they said little clippy things were being handed out when you picked up the bib (missed that, whoops) and they each had a spare couple of safety pins they gave me to pin mine on. In Elder Park, just random people come and start chatting about running. This your first time doing the City-Bay? One had done it twice before, once staying with an injured friend and once just from the 6km, but this time aiming for sub-60 (omg). And there's no distincting among the runners between the elites--the sub-60s, the sub-50s--and those who are only likely to run every second kilometre.
This is something I've noticed even just running along the Torrens--extremely fit people will never shame people who are new to running or using running to get fit. I've had so many complete randos cheer me on. 'You can do it!' 'You're nearly there!' I remember a group of three Lululemon girls with their tight little pilates bubble-butts cheering and clapping with hands over their heads. In a decade of trying to find my Thing, I've had one knob yell out, 'Pedal faster, fat girl!' and let's just say he was trying to make himself feel better than me. Most people just want to make you feel good about yourself, keep pushing, not give up.
And that was the atmosphere in Elder Park waiting for 8am to tick over. 'You can totally smash that,' whenever I said my target was an hour 12. 'Do you do body building?' Kinda-sorta-not-really? I just started doing pilates this year and gym like two months ago? 'No way, you don't get a body like that without body building.' Omg the pump-ups! It was just so incredibly uplifting.
Finally we started lining up, elite athletes including genuine Olympians at the front, then the sub-50s, sub-60s, then the rest of us and finally the walkers due to start at 8:30. A lot of standing around waiting and trying to see if they were moving at the start line yet. For a long time, it seemed not. Finally, by about 8:20, we started shuffling towards the start line. Then walking, then a light jog up to the start and off we go!
'Oh my god now we've gotta actually run 12k.'
'I know, right? Seems fake.'
--two friends, 100m in
It was, against every prior thought I had of Fun Runs, actually fun. Every kilometre or so there was some sort of pump-up thing going on, from just a random member of the public dressed in an inflatable cow suit singing 'I like to move it, move it!' over a megaphone with a cardboard sign saying 'I like to MOOOOOVE it,' to the army band playing outside the barracks on Anzac Highway and various radio stations with pump-up music playing.
The first kilometre I was 5 seconds ahead of the pace on my watch. Second kilometre, another 2 seconds ahead. I didn't start dropping behind until I think about the fifth or sixth kilometre, but not concerned because I was still ahead of where I expected to be.
Drink stations were a hazard. I was running with my drink bottle, so I just beelined for the middle of the road and did my best to avoid all the paper cups in the road. Idk how people run without a drink bottle. I swear I didn't see a single person with one. Insane.
There were a few points, maybe four or five, where for no discernable reason people were bunching up. It made it a bit tricky to weave around them and find gaps to get ahead, but most often people would part when they heard me coming up behind. I only had to actually say 'excuse me' once for the whole run.
We ran past the start point for the 6km run--halfway! A couple of ks later an ambo came back up the other side of the road, sirens blaring, so someone had succumbed :x
At the 10k mark, I was only about 30 seconds off my pace, which I knew would be a PB for the 10km but didn't know by how much. The PacePro feature only gives the target and actual pace for that kilometre, not for your whole run, so I didn't know how long I'd been running yet. Still, feeling good about that!
Approaching the turnoff in Glenelg and a group of three kids running yelled out the '1k to go!' sign. Everyone started speeding up and I kinda got caught up in that a little bit. The excitement was palpable. Around the corner onto Jetty Road, and the street was lined with spectators. Towards the finish line and they were cheering and clapping and it was just so cool! I had the biggest grin on my face as I ran around the last bend from Jetty Road to Colley Terrace, and then suddenly there was the finish and I was done!
I ran the City-Bay!
Slowly funnelled along Colley Terrace to pick up my medal, which feels only marginally less special when you see the literal tens of thousands of them in boxes to be handed out, but getting my first race medal, omg amazing.
Final time: 1 hour, 12 minutes, 43 seconds. I'm absolutely stoked. To be within a minute of my goal, I'm calling that a win.
And I cracked the 1 hour 10k, at 59 minutes 35 seconds. No doubt helped by the tail wind and downhill the entire way, but this one's official so it absolutely counts!
I'm so proud. I had more fun than I could've imagined. The atmosphere is so overwhelmingly positive, so uplifting. I'll absolutely be doing this again. I don't know that I'll ever achieve the sub-60 category, but never say never! Maybe next year I'll target 1:06 😜
So I went all through winter just on my own, doing my pilates and gym classes and going for the watch's recommended run on the no-pilates days. A month out and it still wasn't setting me any long runs, barely anything more than like a 45-minute 'base' run (which works out to about 7-minute pace for me) so I largely gave up on it and made up my own training runs. I did discover PacePro Plans, though, literally last week, where you tell it how far you're going and what you want to run it in, then use a slider to work out how fast you should run each kilometre to hit your target, either starting out fast and finishing slower or starting slower and speeding up. I know how my body do by now, so last Wednesday I set myself the 1-hour 10k starting out fast (5:20 pace) and slowing down towards the end. I think it was about 1 hour 2:45 or there abouts, not my target, not a PB, but still only about 30 seconds off my PB after not having done a long run in a while, so definitely something worth sticking with. I set up a PacePro Plan for the City-Bay, knowing I probably wouldn't hit it but it'd at least keep me on track for the duration.
Race day arrived and it was stunning. Blue sky, northerly breeze meaning a tail wind for the entire run, and an absolutely massive group of people all there for the same reason. The highest bib number I saw was like 42,000. Waiting for the tram from South Terrace, I was trying to figure out how to put my bib on, thinking the foamy bit at the top was an adhesive, but nope, that wasn't meant to come off. Asked two people also waiting how it was supposed to attach and they said little clippy things were being handed out when you picked up the bib (missed that, whoops) and they each had a spare couple of safety pins they gave me to pin mine on. In Elder Park, just random people come and start chatting about running. This your first time doing the City-Bay? One had done it twice before, once staying with an injured friend and once just from the 6km, but this time aiming for sub-60 (omg). And there's no distincting among the runners between the elites--the sub-60s, the sub-50s--and those who are only likely to run every second kilometre.
This is something I've noticed even just running along the Torrens--extremely fit people will never shame people who are new to running or using running to get fit. I've had so many complete randos cheer me on. 'You can do it!' 'You're nearly there!' I remember a group of three Lululemon girls with their tight little pilates bubble-butts cheering and clapping with hands over their heads. In a decade of trying to find my Thing, I've had one knob yell out, 'Pedal faster, fat girl!' and let's just say he was trying to make himself feel better than me. Most people just want to make you feel good about yourself, keep pushing, not give up.
And that was the atmosphere in Elder Park waiting for 8am to tick over. 'You can totally smash that,' whenever I said my target was an hour 12. 'Do you do body building?' Kinda-sorta-not-really? I just started doing pilates this year and gym like two months ago? 'No way, you don't get a body like that without body building.' Omg the pump-ups! It was just so incredibly uplifting.
Finally we started lining up, elite athletes including genuine Olympians at the front, then the sub-50s, sub-60s, then the rest of us and finally the walkers due to start at 8:30. A lot of standing around waiting and trying to see if they were moving at the start line yet. For a long time, it seemed not. Finally, by about 8:20, we started shuffling towards the start line. Then walking, then a light jog up to the start and off we go!
'Oh my god now we've gotta actually run 12k.'
'I know, right? Seems fake.'
--two friends, 100m in
It was, against every prior thought I had of Fun Runs, actually fun. Every kilometre or so there was some sort of pump-up thing going on, from just a random member of the public dressed in an inflatable cow suit singing 'I like to move it, move it!' over a megaphone with a cardboard sign saying 'I like to MOOOOOVE it,' to the army band playing outside the barracks on Anzac Highway and various radio stations with pump-up music playing.
The first kilometre I was 5 seconds ahead of the pace on my watch. Second kilometre, another 2 seconds ahead. I didn't start dropping behind until I think about the fifth or sixth kilometre, but not concerned because I was still ahead of where I expected to be.
Drink stations were a hazard. I was running with my drink bottle, so I just beelined for the middle of the road and did my best to avoid all the paper cups in the road. Idk how people run without a drink bottle. I swear I didn't see a single person with one. Insane.
There were a few points, maybe four or five, where for no discernable reason people were bunching up. It made it a bit tricky to weave around them and find gaps to get ahead, but most often people would part when they heard me coming up behind. I only had to actually say 'excuse me' once for the whole run.
We ran past the start point for the 6km run--halfway! A couple of ks later an ambo came back up the other side of the road, sirens blaring, so someone had succumbed :x
At the 10k mark, I was only about 30 seconds off my pace, which I knew would be a PB for the 10km but didn't know by how much. The PacePro feature only gives the target and actual pace for that kilometre, not for your whole run, so I didn't know how long I'd been running yet. Still, feeling good about that!
Approaching the turnoff in Glenelg and a group of three kids running yelled out the '1k to go!' sign. Everyone started speeding up and I kinda got caught up in that a little bit. The excitement was palpable. Around the corner onto Jetty Road, and the street was lined with spectators. Towards the finish line and they were cheering and clapping and it was just so cool! I had the biggest grin on my face as I ran around the last bend from Jetty Road to Colley Terrace, and then suddenly there was the finish and I was done!
I ran the City-Bay!
Slowly funnelled along Colley Terrace to pick up my medal, which feels only marginally less special when you see the literal tens of thousands of them in boxes to be handed out, but getting my first race medal, omg amazing.
Final time: 1 hour, 12 minutes, 43 seconds. I'm absolutely stoked. To be within a minute of my goal, I'm calling that a win.
And I cracked the 1 hour 10k, at 59 minutes 35 seconds. No doubt helped by the tail wind and downhill the entire way, but this one's official so it absolutely counts!
I'm so proud. I had more fun than I could've imagined. The atmosphere is so overwhelmingly positive, so uplifting. I'll absolutely be doing this again. I don't know that I'll ever achieve the sub-60 category, but never say never! Maybe next year I'll target 1:06 😜
no subject
Thu, Sep. 3rd, 2026 10:33 pm
I've been wondering when it'll be 'elephant in the room' time, but I don't know that it ever really will be. Having your best friend of 20+ years tell you 50 ways you suck* and then disappear into the ether is never going to be something I just write about once then I'm done. It was unnecessarily harsh, the silence continues to be so, and I'm going to keep finding new things to be pissed off about.
The crux of it is in the lies. Sallie told herself (and doubtless everyone around her) so, so many lies about me, and then believed those lies instead of the person she's known and loved for half her life. Instead of talking to me about it, she essayed at me, filling the entire thing with words like 'misinterpret,' 'misunderstand,' 'maybe you didn't intend this.' By her own admission, she invented meaning in everything I said. When she couldn't twist my words into something that fitted her new vision of who I am, then I just got a straight up, 'I don't believe you.'
I don't believe you.
I poured my heart out. I considered every sodding word so carefully so as not to be misunderstood, not to be read as manipulative or anything. I was as raw and open as I could be. I locked SH so the hope of someone reading it would be gone. I wrote the obituary as a reminder to myself to stop blaming the people I love for ending it. I hated myself for feeling like that. I was at my absolute lowest and tried so hard to put that feeling, of being so very alone, into words. I could not have been more honest.
But that honesty doesn't fit with who I am in her mind anymore. I'm manipulative; that was a manipulation to try and make her ask me to read it. HAH. It'd been four years. I still had a skerrick of hope, and that hope was killing my love of writing it. So I removed it. Otherwise, why did I do it in silence? If I was trying to manipulate people into reading it, wouldn't I have bragged to everyone that I'd taken it down because of them? I knew nobody would find it, because nobody had in the past four years.
'You have been heard and very much understood.'
Bullshit. If she'd understood, she wouldn't have had to make up lies to create a new Annarti. If she'd understood, I would've gotten a hug. Genuine support, instead of the hollow, 'I'll support whatever you need to do,' that everyone was giving me around that time. What I needed to do, as it turned out, was to lock it away where nobody could give me hope of reading it. Did I get support for that? No, I got, 'I don't believe you,' and then off she pissed.
The biggest one, though, and the one that rankled at the time, was in dragging Shanra into her argument. Shanra, to whom she hasn't spoken in a decade or so, didn't just have words put in her mouth, but thoughts and feelings put in her head. Sallie decided what Shanra was feeling about the whole situation and has been lying to herself about that, too. She's made up lies for Shanra to feel and, once again, believes those lies rather than talking to the person she's making them up about.
I never asked after her dad after her first email 'back'. Lies. My reply to that email was to ask if we could talk in person, because this was all too big for email. First conversation, hours later, we talked about her dad. She said she felt uncomfortable talking about it. So I didn't bring it up. I'd feel the same, I wouldn't want to talk about it either. My dad's got cancer and I don't want to talk about it much.
I said publically I'd stopped writing, but I was writing in private. Lies. I was done. I'd lost all joy in writing, why would I keep doing it? I had no intention of picking it back up again. To just assume I was writing in private to spite her? Why?
I'm manipulative. Everything I did was to manipulate her specifically into reading SH. Lies. I asked, I begged, I pleaded, and then I gave up. I had no support, nobody had read it in four years. Why would I expect anything to change? Everything I did with SH was for me. It had nothing to do with anyone else. I can't, nor would I ever try to, force anyone to read it. But I can protect myself from how I feel when they don't.
There are little ones, too. Accusing me of a tonal shift, when I'm just saying the same thing I've been saying all along. She decided there was something else going on in my life and I needed to work on that, which just proves how little I was understood at all. This was the biggest thing in my life at that point, and it was a big thing. Assuming I've been nasty to Shanra? Oh right because she needs someone else to drag in and justify her lies, despite not having spoken to Shanra in a decade. The thought that I was blaming her for not reading it because of her illness. No. It's because four years went by without a single sentence of Silent Harmony being read. And let's be clear here: all I did was lock it. I never wanted to shut down our friendship because of it. I said three or four times, silence was a bad idea and communication was the best option. 'Full support,' my arse.
'We'll reconnect in the new year,' she said.
Lies.
* sorry, 50 ways I can improve myself. omfg.
The crux of it is in the lies. Sallie told herself (and doubtless everyone around her) so, so many lies about me, and then believed those lies instead of the person she's known and loved for half her life. Instead of talking to me about it, she essayed at me, filling the entire thing with words like 'misinterpret,' 'misunderstand,' 'maybe you didn't intend this.' By her own admission, she invented meaning in everything I said. When she couldn't twist my words into something that fitted her new vision of who I am, then I just got a straight up, 'I don't believe you.'
I don't believe you.
I poured my heart out. I considered every sodding word so carefully so as not to be misunderstood, not to be read as manipulative or anything. I was as raw and open as I could be. I locked SH so the hope of someone reading it would be gone. I wrote the obituary as a reminder to myself to stop blaming the people I love for ending it. I hated myself for feeling like that. I was at my absolute lowest and tried so hard to put that feeling, of being so very alone, into words. I could not have been more honest.
But that honesty doesn't fit with who I am in her mind anymore. I'm manipulative; that was a manipulation to try and make her ask me to read it. HAH. It'd been four years. I still had a skerrick of hope, and that hope was killing my love of writing it. So I removed it. Otherwise, why did I do it in silence? If I was trying to manipulate people into reading it, wouldn't I have bragged to everyone that I'd taken it down because of them? I knew nobody would find it, because nobody had in the past four years.
'You have been heard and very much understood.'
Bullshit. If she'd understood, she wouldn't have had to make up lies to create a new Annarti. If she'd understood, I would've gotten a hug. Genuine support, instead of the hollow, 'I'll support whatever you need to do,' that everyone was giving me around that time. What I needed to do, as it turned out, was to lock it away where nobody could give me hope of reading it. Did I get support for that? No, I got, 'I don't believe you,' and then off she pissed.
The biggest one, though, and the one that rankled at the time, was in dragging Shanra into her argument. Shanra, to whom she hasn't spoken in a decade or so, didn't just have words put in her mouth, but thoughts and feelings put in her head. Sallie decided what Shanra was feeling about the whole situation and has been lying to herself about that, too. She's made up lies for Shanra to feel and, once again, believes those lies rather than talking to the person she's making them up about.
I never asked after her dad after her first email 'back'. Lies. My reply to that email was to ask if we could talk in person, because this was all too big for email. First conversation, hours later, we talked about her dad. She said she felt uncomfortable talking about it. So I didn't bring it up. I'd feel the same, I wouldn't want to talk about it either. My dad's got cancer and I don't want to talk about it much.
I said publically I'd stopped writing, but I was writing in private. Lies. I was done. I'd lost all joy in writing, why would I keep doing it? I had no intention of picking it back up again. To just assume I was writing in private to spite her? Why?
I'm manipulative. Everything I did was to manipulate her specifically into reading SH. Lies. I asked, I begged, I pleaded, and then I gave up. I had no support, nobody had read it in four years. Why would I expect anything to change? Everything I did with SH was for me. It had nothing to do with anyone else. I can't, nor would I ever try to, force anyone to read it. But I can protect myself from how I feel when they don't.
There are little ones, too. Accusing me of a tonal shift, when I'm just saying the same thing I've been saying all along. She decided there was something else going on in my life and I needed to work on that, which just proves how little I was understood at all. This was the biggest thing in my life at that point, and it was a big thing. Assuming I've been nasty to Shanra? Oh right because she needs someone else to drag in and justify her lies, despite not having spoken to Shanra in a decade. The thought that I was blaming her for not reading it because of her illness. No. It's because four years went by without a single sentence of Silent Harmony being read. And let's be clear here: all I did was lock it. I never wanted to shut down our friendship because of it. I said three or four times, silence was a bad idea and communication was the best option. 'Full support,' my arse.
'We'll reconnect in the new year,' she said.
Lies.
* sorry, 50 ways I can improve myself. omfg.
Happy Birthday to Meeeee
Mon, Aug. 17th, 2026 07:06 pmI kind of already did the birthday-introspective at the beginning of the month so I'm not sure how D&M this is likely to get, but we'll see. Currently sitting in St Louis with a piece of orange cake and a decadant hot chocolate waiting for my 7:15 Peaches & Cream pilates class to start, having just finished a 25-minute base run because my watch reckons I slept like shit last night and feeling not-very-41 about it all. My workmate did the whole, 'lol happy birthday ugh,' thing to me today, which is the first time I've encountered it, and it was just a bit of a frowny, wtf moment. Idk man, I really don't mind. Sure, there are certain milestones I'd have hoped to have reached by now that I haven't, but it's not like they're things I can't still achieve. The biggest of those things, upgrading from unit to house, is on track to happen next year. I'm way fitter than I ever have been, with measurable goals on track for the end of the year. Job? Who knows. I start looking into that, sometimes even appying for stuff, then just get depressed about the constant knock-backs so give up on that.
Technically I'm middle-aged now, but like, are you really cognizant of what's going on for the first ten, fifteen years of your life? I sure as shit wasn't starting to figure anything out until my 20s, so if life didn't really start til then, and I've still got a good 50+ years left, I'm only like a third in. I'd planned to buy my first house by the time I was 30, which I did, got my unit back in 2014, and I'd planned then to upgrade to a house by age 40. 30-year-old me didn't count on COVID, subsequent interest rate hikes and associated house prices skyrocketing, so that didn't happen, but it'll happen. We should get the house out of the way next year, maybe 2028, then I'm pretty much sorted. It'll only be comparitively small things to save for then.
Maybe my tune will change once perimenopause hits but, until then, body doing good. All my general body issues, which were only ever extremely minor to begin with, have all but disappeared since getting fit, and the remaining vaguest of vague niggles are only ever temporary because of pilates. I hear the aches and injuries are the biggest annoyance with aging, but this seems to be the complaint of people who do nothing about it and just accept it as a part of aging. Throw all the evidence at them you want, from academic studies to anecdotal evidence to a real human they know standing in front of them, and they'll still go, 'lol old age amirite?' and no, you're not. You're not right.
It's taken me a good 12 years, I reckon, of trying to figure out my own fitness situation. I'm finally there, but the point is I know it's hard. I know all about starting again. I know about getting to a milestone, taking a day off, that turns into a week, a month, the whole of winter, then start again from scratch on January 1. The point is you've never failed. If I didn't start doing life until my 20s, and I only just started working out fitness in my 20s before finally getting a routine at let's call it 39, then I am set for the next 50 years. Aches and pains aren't inevitable just because you hit 40. You don't have to listen to middle-aged people complaining about being middle-aged and just accept that's gonna be you, too.
I'm 41 and I can run faster, bend more, lift more, run longer and get up earlier than I ever could in my 20s, and I think that's pretty neat.
Technically I'm middle-aged now, but like, are you really cognizant of what's going on for the first ten, fifteen years of your life? I sure as shit wasn't starting to figure anything out until my 20s, so if life didn't really start til then, and I've still got a good 50+ years left, I'm only like a third in. I'd planned to buy my first house by the time I was 30, which I did, got my unit back in 2014, and I'd planned then to upgrade to a house by age 40. 30-year-old me didn't count on COVID, subsequent interest rate hikes and associated house prices skyrocketing, so that didn't happen, but it'll happen. We should get the house out of the way next year, maybe 2028, then I'm pretty much sorted. It'll only be comparitively small things to save for then.
Maybe my tune will change once perimenopause hits but, until then, body doing good. All my general body issues, which were only ever extremely minor to begin with, have all but disappeared since getting fit, and the remaining vaguest of vague niggles are only ever temporary because of pilates. I hear the aches and injuries are the biggest annoyance with aging, but this seems to be the complaint of people who do nothing about it and just accept it as a part of aging. Throw all the evidence at them you want, from academic studies to anecdotal evidence to a real human they know standing in front of them, and they'll still go, 'lol old age amirite?' and no, you're not. You're not right.
It's taken me a good 12 years, I reckon, of trying to figure out my own fitness situation. I'm finally there, but the point is I know it's hard. I know all about starting again. I know about getting to a milestone, taking a day off, that turns into a week, a month, the whole of winter, then start again from scratch on January 1. The point is you've never failed. If I didn't start doing life until my 20s, and I only just started working out fitness in my 20s before finally getting a routine at let's call it 39, then I am set for the next 50 years. Aches and pains aren't inevitable just because you hit 40. You don't have to listen to middle-aged people complaining about being middle-aged and just accept that's gonna be you, too.
I'm 41 and I can run faster, bend more, lift more, run longer and get up earlier than I ever could in my 20s, and I think that's pretty neat.
Am I missing something? I coulda sworn you could pin entries in DW. Can't for the life of me find where to do that anymore.
Soooooo writing. Where we at with that right now? Y'know what? Good. Writing is good. After picking it back up again last year, at an oh-so-fragile time, I finally finished writing and the bulk of editing Ch21 about two months ago. Per my normal routine, I then wrote Ch20 during Novuly (more on that later) and came back to give Ch21 the final pass and add all the info from it to the Big Book of Stuff last week.
Not only was I going through A Time while writing Ch21, but the themes of the chapter were almost exactly the same, which made it extremely difficult to write, and then hard to distance myself from when editing. Does it land how I intend it to, or does it just feel emotional to me because of what I've been going through? I don't suppose I'll ever know, but if some of that real emotion is visible in the words, then I've done my job.
Now, Novuly. Back in ye olde days of NaNoWriMo, we had an Adelaide NaNo server on Discord. When NaNo ceased to be, we kept our server going, called it the Adelaide Writer's Club (I think? I can't remember now) and rebranded NaNo to Novelember. Same idea, but fewer rules--target whatever you want, and you can use and existing project for the challenge. Earlier this year, some weird drama happened that saw our prickly mod, who was stickling a little too much to the rules, leaving a passive-aggressive message and just deleting the server. It was all very odd and petty.
Anyway. One of our enterprising members contacted as many of us as usernames she had, and created a new server called TAWC (Talk About Write Club). Most of the same people, minus the prickly mod, and now far more active outside of November. To the point where we started a new challenge in July, much the same again but with an added option for a time target, so editing, researching and planning can all be counted. I still went for words, but 31k (1k a day for a 31-day month) because I wanted to use SH as my project and get some serious words into it. It'd taken a year to write that one chapter.
Still only managed one chapter, which I put down to this being an existing project. For all the NaNos in the past, I've deliberately made the plot something that'll be easy to just keep going, never need to refer back or stop and work things out, just go. SH is not planned that way.
16 months ago, I'd burried this story. I was at such rock bottom I can't reliably articulate it--and then I got punched down even further. I truly cannot overstate how shit I was feeling about the whole situation. To have now been able to pick it back up again and be happy about what I'm writing, I'm filled with delight and excitement again. It's been a hard lesson, learning how to really, properly write for myself.
I've always written for others; I've always written for Sallie. To be so soundly shot down by my formerly biggest supporter will never stop hurting. I made Kurae more of a dominant voice in the Own for her. I made up a seahorse steed in Tsayth for her. I wrote her characters into the story, partnered them with mine; they were canon. And the story has been better ad stronger for it. I've loved that input. I don't know how asking once too many times to read this thing that once brought so much joy and imagination has resulted in the end of our friendship, but here we are.
Now I have to write all those characters out. I've already created--and introduced!--a new future-boyfriend for Kurae. Prince Kanera was mine to start with, anyway, so I'll just reclaim him. Zakaariss is going to be the trickiest one, he's really been part of the plot, but that just means I need to fill his vacancy with more thought. There's more than one way to be a dick in the Assiraz army. Maybe his replacement doesn't even need to be a dick, wouldn't that be refreshing? He could be the very epitome of a respectful Kazinian gentleman.
There'll always be sadness in the absence. It'd be impossible for there not to be, for someone who's been so intrinsic in a story--in a whole hobby--since day one. But I think, now, there's more joy and excitement in writing now than sadness. I'm definitely excited to get started on the next chapter now, excited to get to the end of Rust.
So that's where writing is right now. Sad, but ready to put that sadness away. Writing is good. I can write with joy again. For the first time, I can write for me.
Soooooo writing. Where we at with that right now? Y'know what? Good. Writing is good. After picking it back up again last year, at an oh-so-fragile time, I finally finished writing and the bulk of editing Ch21 about two months ago. Per my normal routine, I then wrote Ch20 during Novuly (more on that later) and came back to give Ch21 the final pass and add all the info from it to the Big Book of Stuff last week.
Not only was I going through A Time while writing Ch21, but the themes of the chapter were almost exactly the same, which made it extremely difficult to write, and then hard to distance myself from when editing. Does it land how I intend it to, or does it just feel emotional to me because of what I've been going through? I don't suppose I'll ever know, but if some of that real emotion is visible in the words, then I've done my job.
Now, Novuly. Back in ye olde days of NaNoWriMo, we had an Adelaide NaNo server on Discord. When NaNo ceased to be, we kept our server going, called it the Adelaide Writer's Club (I think? I can't remember now) and rebranded NaNo to Novelember. Same idea, but fewer rules--target whatever you want, and you can use and existing project for the challenge. Earlier this year, some weird drama happened that saw our prickly mod, who was stickling a little too much to the rules, leaving a passive-aggressive message and just deleting the server. It was all very odd and petty.
Anyway. One of our enterprising members contacted as many of us as usernames she had, and created a new server called TAWC (Talk About Write Club). Most of the same people, minus the prickly mod, and now far more active outside of November. To the point where we started a new challenge in July, much the same again but with an added option for a time target, so editing, researching and planning can all be counted. I still went for words, but 31k (1k a day for a 31-day month) because I wanted to use SH as my project and get some serious words into it. It'd taken a year to write that one chapter.
Still only managed one chapter, which I put down to this being an existing project. For all the NaNos in the past, I've deliberately made the plot something that'll be easy to just keep going, never need to refer back or stop and work things out, just go. SH is not planned that way.
16 months ago, I'd burried this story. I was at such rock bottom I can't reliably articulate it--and then I got punched down even further. I truly cannot overstate how shit I was feeling about the whole situation. To have now been able to pick it back up again and be happy about what I'm writing, I'm filled with delight and excitement again. It's been a hard lesson, learning how to really, properly write for myself.
I've always written for others; I've always written for Sallie. To be so soundly shot down by my formerly biggest supporter will never stop hurting. I made Kurae more of a dominant voice in the Own for her. I made up a seahorse steed in Tsayth for her. I wrote her characters into the story, partnered them with mine; they were canon. And the story has been better ad stronger for it. I've loved that input. I don't know how asking once too many times to read this thing that once brought so much joy and imagination has resulted in the end of our friendship, but here we are.
Now I have to write all those characters out. I've already created--and introduced!--a new future-boyfriend for Kurae. Prince Kanera was mine to start with, anyway, so I'll just reclaim him. Zakaariss is going to be the trickiest one, he's really been part of the plot, but that just means I need to fill his vacancy with more thought. There's more than one way to be a dick in the Assiraz army. Maybe his replacement doesn't even need to be a dick, wouldn't that be refreshing? He could be the very epitome of a respectful Kazinian gentleman.
There'll always be sadness in the absence. It'd be impossible for there not to be, for someone who's been so intrinsic in a story--in a whole hobby--since day one. But I think, now, there's more joy and excitement in writing now than sadness. I'm definitely excited to get started on the next chapter now, excited to get to the end of Rust.
So that's where writing is right now. Sad, but ready to put that sadness away. Writing is good. I can write with joy again. For the first time, I can write for me.
I'm absolutely going to rename and reskin my DW, as well as bloogum. The grey and gumleaves are very 10-years-ago me; me now is citrus and colours, so I'll do something about that sooner or later.
Today's topic, because it's been a solid feature of my life for a year and a half now, is fitness. It's taken a good decade or so to finally sort this out, dozens of stop-starts and failed winters, but I'm there now! I can consider myself fit and I'm so immensely proud of this achievement.
What finally worked has been a combination of factors. The new things have been a Garmin fitness watch, gifted for Christmas 3 years ago by Amanda, and Amanda herself. The watch gives me so many shiny metrics to look at beyond the ever-fluctuating weight and times, plus actual, tangible goals and programs to achieve them. I inadvertently started a streak of 10,000 steps a day last year in March, which I managed to keep going all through winter for a full 365 days. That was Amanda, making sure I did the thing even on cold, shitty, dark days in the middle of winter, even on days when I just didn't want to, or days where we'd been out all day and got home late and I still needed another 4000 steps. True accountability, living with someone physically there to move me on instead of sympathising with my Just Don't Want To.
Initially, the goal was straight up weight loss, then the times and fitness would jus be byproducts of that. I made a consicious decision to change that, beginning of last year when I discovered the training plans aspect of my watch, to make it about times and fitness. Get faster, get fitter, weight loss will just happen. It was a tough thing to swap around, but I'm genuinely more excited now about a Parkrun PB than dropping the last 5kg to my target.
Last year, I also managed to bung my back early in the year, ankle in March (before the streak started) and my glute right at the end of the year (less than a week before a targeted 5k, which was exceptionally annoying). I therefore decided this year, once I'd hit day 365 of my streak, to start doing pilates and/or yoga. Didn't really know exactly what either was about beyond moving your body, improving balance and core muscle strength, but as far as the movements went I thought they were reasonably similar.
I've trialled about a dozen different places now and... they're not XD Pilates is way more full-on than I'd anticipated, with many classes tailored towards a full cardio workout or strength, while yoga is smoother than I'd expected. Balance is an element of pilates, but not as much as it is in yoga. Flow is important in both, but in different ways. It's been really interesting to compare and contrast, but pilates is definitely the one I'm keeping up with. From the first glute-targeted exercise I knew it was exactly what I needed.
There's also way more difference between studios than I was ever expecting. I was just doing the trial periods of all these places because it's the cheapest way to do pilates, usually half the price of a full membership, but it really has been worthwhile. The place I've landed on, Studio Spring, have awesome, attentive instructors. They go to the trouble of learning your name from the very first class, can identify the difference between struggling and needing encouragement to get there, or struggling and needing to drop it back a spring or modify the exercise to achieve what it's meant to actually do for your body. I still suck at balance, so there's a bit of tailoring the balance ones to suit.
They also have a small gym attached, only 8 people per class, on circuit training around the room. Absolutely perfect. Also also, a 'stretch room' for mat pilates, stretches and (probably in the future) yoga, but I only fitted one mat pilates class into my trial because they're not terribly frequent. Officially I'm signed up for two-room, reformer and gym, so I've signed up here for the Peaches & Cream class on Mondays, gym on Tuesdays and basic reformer on Thursdays. I have a pilates/gym routine! This is pretty cool. I have the unlimited membership so I can do as much as I want for the week, so I'll probably do something on Friday-Sunday, depending on how it'll fit into the weekend.
Running has fallen by the wayside just a little while the trials have been going on, mostly because it's winter and half the purpose of finding a pilates place has been to have somewhere to go inside over winter. Now I've worked out my routine, running will be Monday after work and before Peaches & Cream, Wednesday and Friday, plus Parkrun on Saturday and probaby something on Sunday unless my watch tells me to take a break.
I can't quite articulate just how good all this progress has been making me feel. I've kept up with this genuine level of fitness now for a year and a half, doing something literally every day.
I get up at arse-o'clock on a Saturday and go for a 5k run with complete randos somewhere around Adelaide and it's gorgeous, the course itself, the vibes of everyone there, it's just so good. I regret missing them on the occasions I do, most often because it's frigging cold and sleeping in is more appealing at the time, but I always wish later in the day that I'd just gone (unless it's been pissing with rain, no regrets then.) The sense of achievement, of getting another Parkrun ticked off the list of SA courses, of getting faster and just feeling better at the end of each race is so good. I gauge how I'm going through it, I know I'm not going to conk out like I once would have. Still chasing a PB to knock the frigging Patawalonga off top spot, but omfg when I get that it'll be bliss.
Pilates is harder to measure, especially since the watch only gives me like a 6 or 7 load for each class when I'm putting in just as much effort as a run of the same time :P But I've made it to August without yet bunging any muscles, which was the original goal. At Spring specifically, when I first started the trial I was on the base level springs for each exercise, because they were hard, but now I'm mostly taking the challenge level. Will I ever have a tight little pilates bubble-butt? No, but at least it won't go boing. Having a routine now will likely help to establish some sort of more concrete goal here, idk. Gym, still learning. I've done all of five sessions, I think? Four? I haven't used all the equipment yet, have lifted the barbell once and only ever done the same exercise twice, maybe three times, so no idea how to measure progress there yet. It'll happen, though. Get stronk. Become swol.
Amanda's even joined me on a couple of Parkruns, just Belair and Nuri so far, and only walking, but the bug has bitten her, too ;) AND she's taken up pilates, started doing the trials with me when she could, and has settled on her own place because it's open 24 hours and has individual screens for the reformers, which is perfect for shift work. They also have times when instructors are in to run a proper class, so it's not like you're alone, there's always the option for someone to make sure your form's correct and so on. It makes me so unreasonably happy that she's joining me on this road, both the pilates and Parkrun, tho moreso the pilates. We can talk about the same stuff, about when exercises really make that muscle work or when our arms are dead. No joke to say she's been a hugely significant reason for me keeping up with it all.
I'm proud of having made fitness a part of my life now. Only taken me til I'm 40, but I needed to figure it out for myself, and I got there. Goals for the year now:
25-minute 5k
City-Bay at 6 minutes pace (I think that's 1 hour 12 minutes?)
No injuries
75kg, but if I don't make it that's fine. Whatever I get to will be my weight now.
Today's topic, because it's been a solid feature of my life for a year and a half now, is fitness. It's taken a good decade or so to finally sort this out, dozens of stop-starts and failed winters, but I'm there now! I can consider myself fit and I'm so immensely proud of this achievement.
What finally worked has been a combination of factors. The new things have been a Garmin fitness watch, gifted for Christmas 3 years ago by Amanda, and Amanda herself. The watch gives me so many shiny metrics to look at beyond the ever-fluctuating weight and times, plus actual, tangible goals and programs to achieve them. I inadvertently started a streak of 10,000 steps a day last year in March, which I managed to keep going all through winter for a full 365 days. That was Amanda, making sure I did the thing even on cold, shitty, dark days in the middle of winter, even on days when I just didn't want to, or days where we'd been out all day and got home late and I still needed another 4000 steps. True accountability, living with someone physically there to move me on instead of sympathising with my Just Don't Want To.
Initially, the goal was straight up weight loss, then the times and fitness would jus be byproducts of that. I made a consicious decision to change that, beginning of last year when I discovered the training plans aspect of my watch, to make it about times and fitness. Get faster, get fitter, weight loss will just happen. It was a tough thing to swap around, but I'm genuinely more excited now about a Parkrun PB than dropping the last 5kg to my target.
Last year, I also managed to bung my back early in the year, ankle in March (before the streak started) and my glute right at the end of the year (less than a week before a targeted 5k, which was exceptionally annoying). I therefore decided this year, once I'd hit day 365 of my streak, to start doing pilates and/or yoga. Didn't really know exactly what either was about beyond moving your body, improving balance and core muscle strength, but as far as the movements went I thought they were reasonably similar.
I've trialled about a dozen different places now and... they're not XD Pilates is way more full-on than I'd anticipated, with many classes tailored towards a full cardio workout or strength, while yoga is smoother than I'd expected. Balance is an element of pilates, but not as much as it is in yoga. Flow is important in both, but in different ways. It's been really interesting to compare and contrast, but pilates is definitely the one I'm keeping up with. From the first glute-targeted exercise I knew it was exactly what I needed.
There's also way more difference between studios than I was ever expecting. I was just doing the trial periods of all these places because it's the cheapest way to do pilates, usually half the price of a full membership, but it really has been worthwhile. The place I've landed on, Studio Spring, have awesome, attentive instructors. They go to the trouble of learning your name from the very first class, can identify the difference between struggling and needing encouragement to get there, or struggling and needing to drop it back a spring or modify the exercise to achieve what it's meant to actually do for your body. I still suck at balance, so there's a bit of tailoring the balance ones to suit.
They also have a small gym attached, only 8 people per class, on circuit training around the room. Absolutely perfect. Also also, a 'stretch room' for mat pilates, stretches and (probably in the future) yoga, but I only fitted one mat pilates class into my trial because they're not terribly frequent. Officially I'm signed up for two-room, reformer and gym, so I've signed up here for the Peaches & Cream class on Mondays, gym on Tuesdays and basic reformer on Thursdays. I have a pilates/gym routine! This is pretty cool. I have the unlimited membership so I can do as much as I want for the week, so I'll probably do something on Friday-Sunday, depending on how it'll fit into the weekend.
Running has fallen by the wayside just a little while the trials have been going on, mostly because it's winter and half the purpose of finding a pilates place has been to have somewhere to go inside over winter. Now I've worked out my routine, running will be Monday after work and before Peaches & Cream, Wednesday and Friday, plus Parkrun on Saturday and probaby something on Sunday unless my watch tells me to take a break.
I can't quite articulate just how good all this progress has been making me feel. I've kept up with this genuine level of fitness now for a year and a half, doing something literally every day.
I get up at arse-o'clock on a Saturday and go for a 5k run with complete randos somewhere around Adelaide and it's gorgeous, the course itself, the vibes of everyone there, it's just so good. I regret missing them on the occasions I do, most often because it's frigging cold and sleeping in is more appealing at the time, but I always wish later in the day that I'd just gone (unless it's been pissing with rain, no regrets then.) The sense of achievement, of getting another Parkrun ticked off the list of SA courses, of getting faster and just feeling better at the end of each race is so good. I gauge how I'm going through it, I know I'm not going to conk out like I once would have. Still chasing a PB to knock the frigging Patawalonga off top spot, but omfg when I get that it'll be bliss.
Pilates is harder to measure, especially since the watch only gives me like a 6 or 7 load for each class when I'm putting in just as much effort as a run of the same time :P But I've made it to August without yet bunging any muscles, which was the original goal. At Spring specifically, when I first started the trial I was on the base level springs for each exercise, because they were hard, but now I'm mostly taking the challenge level. Will I ever have a tight little pilates bubble-butt? No, but at least it won't go boing. Having a routine now will likely help to establish some sort of more concrete goal here, idk. Gym, still learning. I've done all of five sessions, I think? Four? I haven't used all the equipment yet, have lifted the barbell once and only ever done the same exercise twice, maybe three times, so no idea how to measure progress there yet. It'll happen, though. Get stronk. Become swol.
Amanda's even joined me on a couple of Parkruns, just Belair and Nuri so far, and only walking, but the bug has bitten her, too ;) AND she's taken up pilates, started doing the trials with me when she could, and has settled on her own place because it's open 24 hours and has individual screens for the reformers, which is perfect for shift work. They also have times when instructors are in to run a proper class, so it's not like you're alone, there's always the option for someone to make sure your form's correct and so on. It makes me so unreasonably happy that she's joining me on this road, both the pilates and Parkrun, tho moreso the pilates. We can talk about the same stuff, about when exercises really make that muscle work or when our arms are dead. No joke to say she's been a hugely significant reason for me keeping up with it all.
I'm proud of having made fitness a part of my life now. Only taken me til I'm 40, but I needed to figure it out for myself, and I got there. Goals for the year now:
25-minute 5k
City-Bay at 6 minutes pace (I think that's 1 hour 12 minutes?)
No injuries
75kg, but if I don't make it that's fine. Whatever I get to will be my weight now.
no subject
Thu, Jan. 1st, 2026 09:53 pm
( 2025 )
( 2026 )
So yeah. Awesome has happened; shit has happened. Technically a lot of the shit continues to happen and there's nothing I can do about it, so I'll just keep plodding on, doing my positive thing and working on changing and fixing the things I can. I can continue to work on fitness so I can make middle- and old-age more physically comfortable and prevent my body from breaking. I can continue writing, still with the ultimate long goal of getting published, but learning how to be happy in myself and crafting the story I want to read. I can continue to reach out to those I love, embrace those who reach back and let go of those who don't. Hopefully this year I won't have to let go of anyone else. Hopefully, instead, I'll strengthen the friendships, the relationships I have.
( 2026 )
So yeah. Awesome has happened; shit has happened. Technically a lot of the shit continues to happen and there's nothing I can do about it, so I'll just keep plodding on, doing my positive thing and working on changing and fixing the things I can. I can continue to work on fitness so I can make middle- and old-age more physically comfortable and prevent my body from breaking. I can continue writing, still with the ultimate long goal of getting published, but learning how to be happy in myself and crafting the story I want to read. I can continue to reach out to those I love, embrace those who reach back and let go of those who don't. Hopefully this year I won't have to let go of anyone else. Hopefully, instead, I'll strengthen the friendships, the relationships I have.
no subject
Wed, Jun. 11th, 2025 12:45 pmI saw a meteorite last night :D As I was running at Glenelg, I saw this bright white light at a weird trajectory for a plan, then realised it was going WAY faster than a plane like 3-4 times as fast. Then I saw its tail! All sparkly orange-blue-white fire, not very long but definitely visible. It was very cool :D
I've decided to put the half-hour 5k on ice. Scheduled the weekend before my birthday, but we've now hit the shitty trinity of cold, dark and wet* for doing fitness after work, and it's just not fun. Every day last week I was very much of the 'just get it over with' mindset, rather than really pushing myself to improve as I had been for the previous 5k. Particularly on days when it had been raining, just the intense Do Not Want was a real suck to get past. I managed it! But... it was also at that time nine days into winter. Sure, I've been able to push through the Do Not Want until now, but I've got three months of this shit. So that one's on ice. I'll pick it up again probably on 1 September, or when daylight savings comes back again on the first weekend in October.
I'm not giving up on fitness, not even giving up on the half-hour 5k, just rescheduling that one until probably end of spring, maybe into December, and I'll do more indoor-friendly fitness things through winter. I've got workouts on the Garmin I can do, two YouTubers who do workouts you can follow along with, and I want to give a shot at yoga and/or pilates, too. When I get back from Sydney next week I'll book some single sessions at various places around home and work, do some of them and pick my favourite to keep something up there through winter. Also keeping up the 10,000 steps a day, because I'm at a current streak of 86 days and it'd be pretty cool if I can hit 365. Walking or running under my own steam is still doable, it's just the intense stuff the training plan gets me doing that I'm struggling to motivate myself to do XP
Sydney~ is happening next week :D Amanda and I are going to see Critical Role and also Supanova, very excite.
* It started raining properly late last week 🥳 Is it drought-breaking? Remains to be seen, probably not really going to know before the end of winter, but it's proper steady, soaking rain that means I don't have to keep watering the garden, don't have to fill up a jerry can of rain water from Mum and Dad for drinking water at home and I can just get it out of the tank tap. It's great.
I've decided to put the half-hour 5k on ice. Scheduled the weekend before my birthday, but we've now hit the shitty trinity of cold, dark and wet* for doing fitness after work, and it's just not fun. Every day last week I was very much of the 'just get it over with' mindset, rather than really pushing myself to improve as I had been for the previous 5k. Particularly on days when it had been raining, just the intense Do Not Want was a real suck to get past. I managed it! But... it was also at that time nine days into winter. Sure, I've been able to push through the Do Not Want until now, but I've got three months of this shit. So that one's on ice. I'll pick it up again probably on 1 September, or when daylight savings comes back again on the first weekend in October.
I'm not giving up on fitness, not even giving up on the half-hour 5k, just rescheduling that one until probably end of spring, maybe into December, and I'll do more indoor-friendly fitness things through winter. I've got workouts on the Garmin I can do, two YouTubers who do workouts you can follow along with, and I want to give a shot at yoga and/or pilates, too. When I get back from Sydney next week I'll book some single sessions at various places around home and work, do some of them and pick my favourite to keep something up there through winter. Also keeping up the 10,000 steps a day, because I'm at a current streak of 86 days and it'd be pretty cool if I can hit 365. Walking or running under my own steam is still doable, it's just the intense stuff the training plan gets me doing that I'm struggling to motivate myself to do XP
Sydney~ is happening next week :D Amanda and I are going to see Critical Role and also Supanova, very excite.
* It started raining properly late last week 🥳 Is it drought-breaking? Remains to be seen, probably not really going to know before the end of winter, but it's proper steady, soaking rain that means I don't have to keep watering the garden, don't have to fill up a jerry can of rain water from Mum and Dad for drinking water at home and I can just get it out of the tank tap. It's great.
no subject
Sat, Mar. 29th, 2025 09:03 pmMan it's been a long time since I used this icon. That man has not played cricket in about 15 years.
WE WON THE SHEFFIELD SHIELD!!!
The Sheffield Shield is our domestic long-form cricket competition, which mostly people don't much give a shit about (like they get an attendance of a dozen people through the season) but it is the competition that feeds into the Australian Test team, which is the absolute peak of cricket.
South Australia hasn't won the Sheffield Shield in 29 years. I was 10 the last time we won, and I didn't register it at all. Darren Lehmann, who was babby in that last winning team? His son, Jake, was 3 at the time. Jake was playing in this game. He scored a century in the first innings.
Full context, this has been really building up since we cemented our spot a the top of the ladder and hence hosting the final, which has been like three weeks. Before, even, since like halfway through the season and we were still top of the ladder. Even that is umprecedented. Like still trying not to count chickens etc, but omg hope was ignited. And then we got to host it, holy shit. EXCEPT. Because it's officially footy season now, the AFL decreed they couldn't play it at Adelaide Oval. I mean it's only been the home of cricket in SA for the last 155 years and we haven't hosted the Shield final in almost 30 but fine. FINE. It's FINE. Cricket Australia offered to reschedule it to starting on Monday so it'd have a scheduled finish of yesterday for the footy on Sunday, and the Adelaide Oval staff all said that'd be plenty of time to turn it around from cricket to footy, but nope. AFL said no. Arseholes. The Shield final has always been in March, it's the footy season that keeps getting longer and longer and encroaching on cricket season. We ALLOW you to play on Adelaide Oval in what is still CRICKET SEASON.
So anyway that spat has been dominating headlines since last week, so this final has been in the conscience for a while now. I do wonder if they'd have gotten the same attendance if that controversy hadn't happened. There were like 5000 people there. It was so great.
Anyway.
We'd been pretty much dominating since day one. Yesterday, the Queenslanders fought back somewhat and set us a target today of 270. Tricky in the final innings--the previous record winning run chase was like 200 or something?--and we lost three quick wickets in the first session of the day, but then Carey and Sangha dug in, each made a century, and WE WON. TWENTY NINE YEARS.
As soon as Sangha hit the winning runs, the crowd of about 5000 jumped the picket fence and stormed the ground, swarming the two players as they were laughing and celebrating. We all ran up to the stand where the players all were and waited for presentations. Which. I mean. Normally presentations are done on the ground but, considering how much they've been showing the crowd storming the ground after the 95/96 final win through the week, they really should've expected a pitch invasion. I do hope they prepared for this. Didn't look it but maybe they did, idk. Anyway, they moved all the cameras and presentation stuff up to the balcony, and every new prop that came out got a huge cheer. The Shield itself got a roar like the team had come out because that thing is OURS NOW. For the first time in almost THREE DECADES. The SACA staff who were bringing out all the stuff were laughing every time their movements got cheered. Like, Shield out, big cheer. Carry over to the stand, crowd builds with anticipation, "woahhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH EYYYYYY!!!" It was just so delightful, so much fun, so much excitement from the crowd.
Then the boys came out and they were so happyyyyy just looking out over THOUSANDS of people when they're used to like the echoing claps of like five people. And they each had their chance to raise their hands to the crowd and make us go WOOOO again.
omfg it was so much fun. SO MUCH FUN. I've never stormed the ground before, it was awesome 8D
Hopefully we don't have to wait until Jake Lehmann's son is playing until the next one XD
WE WON THE SHEFFIELD SHIELD!!!
The Sheffield Shield is our domestic long-form cricket competition, which mostly people don't much give a shit about (like they get an attendance of a dozen people through the season) but it is the competition that feeds into the Australian Test team, which is the absolute peak of cricket.
South Australia hasn't won the Sheffield Shield in 29 years. I was 10 the last time we won, and I didn't register it at all. Darren Lehmann, who was babby in that last winning team? His son, Jake, was 3 at the time. Jake was playing in this game. He scored a century in the first innings.
Full context, this has been really building up since we cemented our spot a the top of the ladder and hence hosting the final, which has been like three weeks. Before, even, since like halfway through the season and we were still top of the ladder. Even that is umprecedented. Like still trying not to count chickens etc, but omg hope was ignited. And then we got to host it, holy shit. EXCEPT. Because it's officially footy season now, the AFL decreed they couldn't play it at Adelaide Oval. I mean it's only been the home of cricket in SA for the last 155 years and we haven't hosted the Shield final in almost 30 but fine. FINE. It's FINE. Cricket Australia offered to reschedule it to starting on Monday so it'd have a scheduled finish of yesterday for the footy on Sunday, and the Adelaide Oval staff all said that'd be plenty of time to turn it around from cricket to footy, but nope. AFL said no. Arseholes. The Shield final has always been in March, it's the footy season that keeps getting longer and longer and encroaching on cricket season. We ALLOW you to play on Adelaide Oval in what is still CRICKET SEASON.
So anyway that spat has been dominating headlines since last week, so this final has been in the conscience for a while now. I do wonder if they'd have gotten the same attendance if that controversy hadn't happened. There were like 5000 people there. It was so great.
Anyway.
We'd been pretty much dominating since day one. Yesterday, the Queenslanders fought back somewhat and set us a target today of 270. Tricky in the final innings--the previous record winning run chase was like 200 or something?--and we lost three quick wickets in the first session of the day, but then Carey and Sangha dug in, each made a century, and WE WON. TWENTY NINE YEARS.
As soon as Sangha hit the winning runs, the crowd of about 5000 jumped the picket fence and stormed the ground, swarming the two players as they were laughing and celebrating. We all ran up to the stand where the players all were and waited for presentations. Which. I mean. Normally presentations are done on the ground but, considering how much they've been showing the crowd storming the ground after the 95/96 final win through the week, they really should've expected a pitch invasion. I do hope they prepared for this. Didn't look it but maybe they did, idk. Anyway, they moved all the cameras and presentation stuff up to the balcony, and every new prop that came out got a huge cheer. The Shield itself got a roar like the team had come out because that thing is OURS NOW. For the first time in almost THREE DECADES. The SACA staff who were bringing out all the stuff were laughing every time their movements got cheered. Like, Shield out, big cheer. Carry over to the stand, crowd builds with anticipation, "woahhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH EYYYYYY!!!" It was just so delightful, so much fun, so much excitement from the crowd.
Then the boys came out and they were so happyyyyy just looking out over THOUSANDS of people when they're used to like the echoing claps of like five people. And they each had their chance to raise their hands to the crowd and make us go WOOOO again.
omfg it was so much fun. SO MUCH FUN. I've never stormed the ground before, it was awesome 8D
Hopefully we don't have to wait until Jake Lehmann's son is playing until the next one XD
no subject
Thu, Mar. 27th, 2025 08:45 pmFor a change, I don't have a million things to catch up on. Is this what it's like to be organised? omg.
Fitness continues, running and walking around the Parklands, and I've finally come around to the bits I'm familiar with along the Torrens, which is the river that runs through Adelaide. Well, 'runs,' it's just sitting there at the moment, there being no rain to make the river flow, but still, felt a whole lot more lush and green than any of the northern parklands did. I'm less than a month now from the date I'll be attempting my 5km in 35 minutes, and feeling pretty sweet about it. Assuming I hit that (and even if i don't, tbh, tho I'll be surprised at this stage if I don't) I'll set a new goal of 5km in half an hour probably by the end of winter, then finally jetty-to-jetty in an hour.
OH I didn't go into the rewards bit! Every 5 kilos I'm rewarding myself with a new set of clothing items. First goal is undies, next will be socks, then bras, then pjs, then the one after that'll be my final goal so that'll be the whole wardrobe. Not all at once, but anyway. Baby steps. I hit the first goal a couple of weeks ago, so new undies! In the last couple of years I've really started making a conscious effort to try and buy Australian made, or at least Australian owned, and definitely natural fibres. I've had this page bookmarked since last year, so I've now bought one pair from everyone there. I'll give 'em all a couple of months of wear, then whichever's holding up the best I'll get a full set of. Currently think I'm most keen on Merino Country (made from wool, very comfy, comes in green) and Wonderpants (extremely comfy, also green) so we'll see how they go. It's been so long since I got new undies, this is the best.
March is coming up to when the writing comps I've been entering start drawing the winners. So far one's contacted me to say I didn't win, but eh. Honestly not expecting to place in any of them, but it's fun to be part of. I'm finally getting to write a story about my pigment hunter, who I've had ideas about for ages, so having a good time with that one in particular. Hoping to finish it tomorrow, then I can go back and edit for submission.
ALSO CRICKET. NOBODY CARES. BUT. South Australia is in the Sheffield Shield final! The last time we won it was 29 years ago! Today was day two and we're doing very well, planning to go down on Saturday, which'll potentially be the last day, and cheer on the boys. omg that would be so amazing.
Fitness continues, running and walking around the Parklands, and I've finally come around to the bits I'm familiar with along the Torrens, which is the river that runs through Adelaide. Well, 'runs,' it's just sitting there at the moment, there being no rain to make the river flow, but still, felt a whole lot more lush and green than any of the northern parklands did. I'm less than a month now from the date I'll be attempting my 5km in 35 minutes, and feeling pretty sweet about it. Assuming I hit that (and even if i don't, tbh, tho I'll be surprised at this stage if I don't) I'll set a new goal of 5km in half an hour probably by the end of winter, then finally jetty-to-jetty in an hour.
OH I didn't go into the rewards bit! Every 5 kilos I'm rewarding myself with a new set of clothing items. First goal is undies, next will be socks, then bras, then pjs, then the one after that'll be my final goal so that'll be the whole wardrobe. Not all at once, but anyway. Baby steps. I hit the first goal a couple of weeks ago, so new undies! In the last couple of years I've really started making a conscious effort to try and buy Australian made, or at least Australian owned, and definitely natural fibres. I've had this page bookmarked since last year, so I've now bought one pair from everyone there. I'll give 'em all a couple of months of wear, then whichever's holding up the best I'll get a full set of. Currently think I'm most keen on Merino Country (made from wool, very comfy, comes in green) and Wonderpants (extremely comfy, also green) so we'll see how they go. It's been so long since I got new undies, this is the best.
March is coming up to when the writing comps I've been entering start drawing the winners. So far one's contacted me to say I didn't win, but eh. Honestly not expecting to place in any of them, but it's fun to be part of. I'm finally getting to write a story about my pigment hunter, who I've had ideas about for ages, so having a good time with that one in particular. Hoping to finish it tomorrow, then I can go back and edit for submission.
ALSO CRICKET. NOBODY CARES. BUT. South Australia is in the Sheffield Shield final! The last time we won it was 29 years ago! Today was day two and we're doing very well, planning to go down on Saturday, which'll potentially be the last day, and cheer on the boys. omg that would be so amazing.
no subject
Mon, Mar. 17th, 2025 09:11 pmMy ankle is fully functional once more 🥳 I've been walking or running around, so far, three of the parks in the Parklands, with varying levels of interest, but mostly I'm just pleased I can finally use my ankle again and restart my workout. Despite the almost-month off, Garmin is still confident I can achieve the reset goal of 5km in 35 minutes, so that's a relief.
This was a busy weekend! On Saturday morning, caught up with Cassie's friend Maya, who was down for the week-ish, so we went for breakfast down at Brighton then a walk along the beach before it got too arse-bakingly hot. It was already 30°C when I woke up at 8:30 but it was still early enough that the Norfolk Island pines along the beach cast shadows in the beachy direction, so. Coulda been worse?
That evening, Amanda and I went to Orpheus, technically my second show of the Fringe after I won the freebie tix to Tommy's Naughty Forty last week. Orpheus was fantastic. Beautifully written, beautifully told, the little bit of audience participation with a comparatively small audience was so touching and I had a wonderful time 😊
Sunday~ was round 1 of footyball! Wherein Amanda won a free double pass through the Rainbow Crows so I got to go, too =3 We were behind the goals right next to the opposition cheer squad, who were St Kilda (Victoria). Preface: it has not rained since last year. On Wednesday, the forecast for Saturday was 39 with a 70% chance of 5-10mm, which are incongruous in Adelaide. I was dubious, to say the least. By Friday, the 39 hadn't changed but the rain had changed to Sunday, and was now a 70% chance of 0-2mm. By Sunday, it was a 70% chance of <1mm which... idk what that even means. A 70% chance of sweet piss-all? Does that mean a 30% chance of something? (spoilers: no, it doesn't)
So, during the game (which we won by 10 goals, 'spretty sweet), precipitiation started happening. 'Drizzle' would be a lie. 'Spitting' would be generous. When you're standing in the shower and you have that mistiness splashing off of you? That's what started happening. All the Victorians instantly got out their emergency ponchos and waterproof North Faces and being ridiculously prepared for rain. In Adelaide. HAH. None of the South Australians moved, except to knowingly roll our eyes at the Vics and wonder what the hell this weird wet stuff misting down from the sky was. Sure enough, the misting lasted about 20 seconds and that was it. That was our 70% chance of <1mm, not even enough to warrant wiping it off your glasses, it was that nothing.
More importantly, we won a game of footyball! Convincingly! This gives me hope for our season.
While watching, someone mentioned the score at the cricket, wherein we were 5/500-odd. When the footy finished, we'd declared for 600-something and already had two Queensland wickets, so instead of going home we headed up North Terrace to Karen Rolton Oval, during which time the Queenslanders lost another wicket, and turned up in time for the final session of the day. When you've finished watching your South Aussie boys flog some Vics, why not pop across town to wathc your other South Aussie boys flog some Queenslanders? :D Another two wickets fell in the final session of the day and we headed home, promptly forgetting to pop a bottle of Croser for the Crows because it's been so long, whoops.
This was a busy weekend! On Saturday morning, caught up with Cassie's friend Maya, who was down for the week-ish, so we went for breakfast down at Brighton then a walk along the beach before it got too arse-bakingly hot. It was already 30°C when I woke up at 8:30 but it was still early enough that the Norfolk Island pines along the beach cast shadows in the beachy direction, so. Coulda been worse?
That evening, Amanda and I went to Orpheus, technically my second show of the Fringe after I won the freebie tix to Tommy's Naughty Forty last week. Orpheus was fantastic. Beautifully written, beautifully told, the little bit of audience participation with a comparatively small audience was so touching and I had a wonderful time 😊
Sunday~ was round 1 of footyball! Wherein Amanda won a free double pass through the Rainbow Crows so I got to go, too =3 We were behind the goals right next to the opposition cheer squad, who were St Kilda (Victoria). Preface: it has not rained since last year. On Wednesday, the forecast for Saturday was 39 with a 70% chance of 5-10mm, which are incongruous in Adelaide. I was dubious, to say the least. By Friday, the 39 hadn't changed but the rain had changed to Sunday, and was now a 70% chance of 0-2mm. By Sunday, it was a 70% chance of <1mm which... idk what that even means. A 70% chance of sweet piss-all? Does that mean a 30% chance of something? (spoilers: no, it doesn't)
So, during the game (which we won by 10 goals, 'spretty sweet), precipitiation started happening. 'Drizzle' would be a lie. 'Spitting' would be generous. When you're standing in the shower and you have that mistiness splashing off of you? That's what started happening. All the Victorians instantly got out their emergency ponchos and waterproof North Faces and being ridiculously prepared for rain. In Adelaide. HAH. None of the South Australians moved, except to knowingly roll our eyes at the Vics and wonder what the hell this weird wet stuff misting down from the sky was. Sure enough, the misting lasted about 20 seconds and that was it. That was our 70% chance of <1mm, not even enough to warrant wiping it off your glasses, it was that nothing.
More importantly, we won a game of footyball! Convincingly! This gives me hope for our season.
While watching, someone mentioned the score at the cricket, wherein we were 5/500-odd. When the footy finished, we'd declared for 600-something and already had two Queensland wickets, so instead of going home we headed up North Terrace to Karen Rolton Oval, during which time the Queenslanders lost another wicket, and turned up in time for the final session of the day. When you've finished watching your South Aussie boys flog some Vics, why not pop across town to wathc your other South Aussie boys flog some Queenslanders? :D Another two wickets fell in the final session of the day and we headed home, promptly forgetting to pop a bottle of Croser for the Crows because it's been so long, whoops.
no subject
Wed, Mar. 12th, 2025 09:29 pmGetting back into fitness again. Yesterday I ran a whole kilometre 😱 Zero ill effects from the ankle, but I'm doing this properly so today was a rest, though still doing something to keep the habit going, so I went for a walk around Himeji Garden. That header image really is almost the entire thing, so not very big, but it is gorgeous. Except there was a guy there on his phone, talking loud enough I could hear him all through the garden, so after like 10 minutes I gave up and just walked around the entire associated Parkland, came back... and he was still there. The full goddamn hour he was there talking loudly on the phone. ARG. Read the room, dickwad.
Anyway, walking aorund the parklands did give me an idea, to do my fitness in all the parks that make up the Parklands! There are 40 total, but that includes the six city squares, which are too small to be of any interest for running and are also surrounded by traffic, so 34 it is! Of course I would come up with such an idea at the end of summer/daylight saving, but oh well, we'll just see how much light I have to play with after work. It'll be a nice thing to change it up a bit. Tomorrow, I run two kilometres omg.
We've started organising the studio, finally. This has been my dream. It's gone from being my favourite room in the house to just the storage room and it's saddened me so much ._. Over the weekend we've gotten a pretty significant chunk of it all organised into boxes, instead of just the boxes of largely random stuff they came up in from Amanda's place, so they're all just lined up under the TV now with probably another two hours of organising left of what's still in there. Once we know exactly how much space each category (ie yarn/knitting, cross stitch, watercolours, sewing, drawing, etc) takes up, then we'll know how much shelf space we'll need and can purchase accordingly, if needed. Cross fingers not needed. And then I can use my computer at my desk again without feeling like I'm in Dad's study with five boxes about to fall on me ._.
God I can't wait to have a house with space for all this stuff. Next year, kitchen, then house 🤩
Anyway, walking aorund the parklands did give me an idea, to do my fitness in all the parks that make up the Parklands! There are 40 total, but that includes the six city squares, which are too small to be of any interest for running and are also surrounded by traffic, so 34 it is! Of course I would come up with such an idea at the end of summer/daylight saving, but oh well, we'll just see how much light I have to play with after work. It'll be a nice thing to change it up a bit. Tomorrow, I run two kilometres omg.
We've started organising the studio, finally. This has been my dream. It's gone from being my favourite room in the house to just the storage room and it's saddened me so much ._. Over the weekend we've gotten a pretty significant chunk of it all organised into boxes, instead of just the boxes of largely random stuff they came up in from Amanda's place, so they're all just lined up under the TV now with probably another two hours of organising left of what's still in there. Once we know exactly how much space each category (ie yarn/knitting, cross stitch, watercolours, sewing, drawing, etc) takes up, then we'll know how much shelf space we'll need and can purchase accordingly, if needed. Cross fingers not needed. And then I can use my computer at my desk again without feeling like I'm in Dad's study with five boxes about to fall on me ._.
God I can't wait to have a house with space for all this stuff. Next year, kitchen, then house 🤩
no subject
Fri, Mar. 7th, 2025 07:19 pmHow has it been over a month? Gdit and I thought I was getting better at this shit. I am better on Insta, so there's that, I guess.
So anyway, somehow it's March already, dunno how that happened so fast, but February went pretty sodding well. Finally got to Chihuly Nights at the Botanic Gardens. It's an exhibition that's been on since October and runs til April, of these massive glass sculptures all around the gardens. I've been several times during the day, because it's just a great place to go for a walk or run after work, but yes, finally got there for the night showing :D The stuff inside the tropical glasshouse was all new to me, since that costs money during the day, and god it's stunning. I mean the whole thing's stunning but... yay new things!
Last weekend we drove to Melbourne to see Green Day! It was SO awesome. Baby's first mosh pit, at the tender young age of 39, aww. Boys were fantastic. It was a bit of an anniversary concert, of their first album, Dookie, 30 years ago; and American Idiot, 20 years ago. They ran through both those albums, track by track, with stuff from the new album last year scattered around, so it wound up being like a 3-hour concert. I last saw them right there back when Marvel Statium was the Telstra Dome back in 2005 (better rundown here on the Adelaide concert, which was earlier that year) and I promise they rocked just as hard as back then. Billie-Joe Armstrong doesn't look like he's aged at all; Mike Dirnt (bass) does look like he's aged about 20 years; Tré Cool (drums) looks like he's aged about 40. BUT LIKE. Drumming is frigging hard work. Mike was often running up and down right in fornt of us and god, that man makes some fun faces <3 I got a couple of them!
The brought up one girl from the mosh pit to give her a mic and sing with Billie-Joe and, after like three seconds of deer-in-headlights panic, it as like she consciously chucked all her inhibitions out the window and just ran with it. She was running up and down the stage, air-guitaring with both the guitarists, also sang really well after the initial fear of holy shit people had been thrown away. Then at the end of her bit, Billie told us all her name was Honey, so of course the crowd started chanting, 'Hon-ey, Hon-ey, Hon-ey!' and it was just a delightful moment :D
Thank you, boys. I did, indeed, have the time of my life 🖤❤️
The final show of the tour was supposed to be this Saturday on the Gold Coast, but um. idk if you've heard but it's a little... breezy... on the Goldie right now. So sadly that one was cancelled :< I feel so sorry for everyone up there, woulda been awesome, obvs.
On Sunday~ we went to Cranbourne Botanic Gardens, which I've been excited to go to for a while now. So many native botanic gardens are planted to look like they do ~in nature~ but like... I already live in the Hills, the bush is literally right there. I don't want to come to a curated garden to see bush, I come to see curated garden. So that's what Cranbourne is, properly architecturally-designed native gardens, and it is stunning. From photos online I've already taken a lot of inspo for the Raykinian royal palace, but seeing it in person is so cool. The red desert one is what you see first walking in, then everything else surround that. I could've spent hours more there, but we got home around midnight as it was, so I'll just have to go again when I go back to Melbourne next. Maybe it won't bloody rain, too :P Seriously, can't remember the last time we had rain in Adelaide* but it was last year, the two-ish days I'm in Melbourne and I get rained on when I'm out in a garden with no shelter. Course, then we started driving home and it was clear blue skies by Horsham. Bloody Melbourne.
I~ have bunged my ankle. This happened last Monday, the week before Green Day, by stepping in someone's footprint wrong in the wet sand on the beach. It's not bad but has just enough of a twinge that it's clearly warning me not to do more than like stand on it. Clearly walking is out. Running 10km? HAH. So I have disappointingly not done any fitness since last Monday. I'm so pissed off. I was doing so well! Running was starting to actually flow and feel natural. Doing the fitness literally every day, even on both days of the weekend, had become just a normal thing I do. I was excited to see the little wheel of confidence (how confident my Garmin app is that I can achieve my goal) go up and up and break from the green Confident range into the purple Very Confident, Maybe You Should Make Your Goal More Ambitious range. I got my VO2 Max, which is a key number for fitness, go from 32 up to 34, just this year! One more point and I'll be up from Poor into Fair! I could even become Good! Not Excellent cos that's the realm of elite athletes and shit knows I can't be bothered with that.
But all because of a bung ankle, that's just stopped. I can pause the actual training app, the one that tells me different running things to do each day, but that doesn't stop my actual body and fitness from going backwards. SO miffed. It's feeling much better just today, no swelling when I got home from work, which is a change, so I'm hoping by Sunday I'll be able to start working back up to doing fitness again. I'm not letting this slide, not this time. I've been doing so well and feeling so good about it, I won't drop it.
I've submitted four stories to various competitions, which I believe all start judging this month? So it'll be exciting to see if they go anywhere. First time submitting to competitions, I don't expect to, but it's still exciting!
Limes were $4.50 for a bag so cosmo's for cocktail hour tonight when Amanda gets home 🍸
OH and Sculptures by the Sea, that was in Feb, too. See, I'm good at Insta!
OH OH and I won a thing! Just on a whim I entered a radio contest to go see Tommy Little's Naughty Fortieth, which is basically part of the Fringe in the Garden of Unearthly Delights, and I won! It was a lot of fun =3 Opened with a stripper Fringe performer who uses FIRE and she was awesome. Then Tommy Little and Carrie Bickmore, who are said radio show, plus three comedian Fringe performers in Luke McGreggor, Ivan Aristaguierta (who is Venueulan and awesome) and Ross Noble came up to play Tommy's card game. Ross waid he got the single most Fringe experience ever, cos they didn't see the opening fire boobies act, but he was backstage. So what he got was this extremely hot, semi-naked woman (she had star nipple stickers and a gstring) wandering around with a giant cannister of parafin under her arm. 'No idea what the show was but it looks like fun!' XD That is indeed the most Fringey thing I've ever heard and I'm so pleased he had that experience X3 And he's been doing Fringe for frigging decades by this point. Ross Noble and Arj Barker are like the unofficial mascots. I LOVE THE FRINGE. And then walking back up Rundle Street to get back to the car, street closed with lights up everywhere, tables and chairs from the restaurants all out on the road, and this at like 11:30 on a Tuesday night. It's just such a fun, vibrant time to live here. Got another, this time paid, show happening next weekend, so excited for that one, too X3
All right now that's everything. Probably.
* If I don't even need to turn my windscreen wipers on, it's not rain. Also for the record, even that's only happened twice this year.
So anyway, somehow it's March already, dunno how that happened so fast, but February went pretty sodding well. Finally got to Chihuly Nights at the Botanic Gardens. It's an exhibition that's been on since October and runs til April, of these massive glass sculptures all around the gardens. I've been several times during the day, because it's just a great place to go for a walk or run after work, but yes, finally got there for the night showing :D The stuff inside the tropical glasshouse was all new to me, since that costs money during the day, and god it's stunning. I mean the whole thing's stunning but... yay new things!
Last weekend we drove to Melbourne to see Green Day! It was SO awesome. Baby's first mosh pit, at the tender young age of 39, aww. Boys were fantastic. It was a bit of an anniversary concert, of their first album, Dookie, 30 years ago; and American Idiot, 20 years ago. They ran through both those albums, track by track, with stuff from the new album last year scattered around, so it wound up being like a 3-hour concert. I last saw them right there back when Marvel Statium was the Telstra Dome back in 2005 (better rundown here on the Adelaide concert, which was earlier that year) and I promise they rocked just as hard as back then. Billie-Joe Armstrong doesn't look like he's aged at all; Mike Dirnt (bass) does look like he's aged about 20 years; Tré Cool (drums) looks like he's aged about 40. BUT LIKE. Drumming is frigging hard work. Mike was often running up and down right in fornt of us and god, that man makes some fun faces <3 I got a couple of them!
The brought up one girl from the mosh pit to give her a mic and sing with Billie-Joe and, after like three seconds of deer-in-headlights panic, it as like she consciously chucked all her inhibitions out the window and just ran with it. She was running up and down the stage, air-guitaring with both the guitarists, also sang really well after the initial fear of holy shit people had been thrown away. Then at the end of her bit, Billie told us all her name was Honey, so of course the crowd started chanting, 'Hon-ey, Hon-ey, Hon-ey!' and it was just a delightful moment :D
Thank you, boys. I did, indeed, have the time of my life 🖤❤️
The final show of the tour was supposed to be this Saturday on the Gold Coast, but um. idk if you've heard but it's a little... breezy... on the Goldie right now. So sadly that one was cancelled :< I feel so sorry for everyone up there, woulda been awesome, obvs.
On Sunday~ we went to Cranbourne Botanic Gardens, which I've been excited to go to for a while now. So many native botanic gardens are planted to look like they do ~in nature~ but like... I already live in the Hills, the bush is literally right there. I don't want to come to a curated garden to see bush, I come to see curated garden. So that's what Cranbourne is, properly architecturally-designed native gardens, and it is stunning. From photos online I've already taken a lot of inspo for the Raykinian royal palace, but seeing it in person is so cool. The red desert one is what you see first walking in, then everything else surround that. I could've spent hours more there, but we got home around midnight as it was, so I'll just have to go again when I go back to Melbourne next. Maybe it won't bloody rain, too :P Seriously, can't remember the last time we had rain in Adelaide* but it was last year, the two-ish days I'm in Melbourne and I get rained on when I'm out in a garden with no shelter. Course, then we started driving home and it was clear blue skies by Horsham. Bloody Melbourne.
I~ have bunged my ankle. This happened last Monday, the week before Green Day, by stepping in someone's footprint wrong in the wet sand on the beach. It's not bad but has just enough of a twinge that it's clearly warning me not to do more than like stand on it. Clearly walking is out. Running 10km? HAH. So I have disappointingly not done any fitness since last Monday. I'm so pissed off. I was doing so well! Running was starting to actually flow and feel natural. Doing the fitness literally every day, even on both days of the weekend, had become just a normal thing I do. I was excited to see the little wheel of confidence (how confident my Garmin app is that I can achieve my goal) go up and up and break from the green Confident range into the purple Very Confident, Maybe You Should Make Your Goal More Ambitious range. I got my VO2 Max, which is a key number for fitness, go from 32 up to 34, just this year! One more point and I'll be up from Poor into Fair! I could even become Good! Not Excellent cos that's the realm of elite athletes and shit knows I can't be bothered with that.
But all because of a bung ankle, that's just stopped. I can pause the actual training app, the one that tells me different running things to do each day, but that doesn't stop my actual body and fitness from going backwards. SO miffed. It's feeling much better just today, no swelling when I got home from work, which is a change, so I'm hoping by Sunday I'll be able to start working back up to doing fitness again. I'm not letting this slide, not this time. I've been doing so well and feeling so good about it, I won't drop it.
I've submitted four stories to various competitions, which I believe all start judging this month? So it'll be exciting to see if they go anywhere. First time submitting to competitions, I don't expect to, but it's still exciting!
Limes were $4.50 for a bag so cosmo's for cocktail hour tonight when Amanda gets home 🍸
OH and Sculptures by the Sea, that was in Feb, too. See, I'm good at Insta!
OH OH and I won a thing! Just on a whim I entered a radio contest to go see Tommy Little's Naughty Fortieth, which is basically part of the Fringe in the Garden of Unearthly Delights, and I won! It was a lot of fun =3 Opened with a stripper Fringe performer who uses FIRE and she was awesome. Then Tommy Little and Carrie Bickmore, who are said radio show, plus three comedian Fringe performers in Luke McGreggor, Ivan Aristaguierta (who is Venueulan and awesome) and Ross Noble came up to play Tommy's card game. Ross waid he got the single most Fringe experience ever, cos they didn't see the opening fire boobies act, but he was backstage. So what he got was this extremely hot, semi-naked woman (she had star nipple stickers and a gstring) wandering around with a giant cannister of parafin under her arm. 'No idea what the show was but it looks like fun!' XD That is indeed the most Fringey thing I've ever heard and I'm so pleased he had that experience X3 And he's been doing Fringe for frigging decades by this point. Ross Noble and Arj Barker are like the unofficial mascots. I LOVE THE FRINGE. And then walking back up Rundle Street to get back to the car, street closed with lights up everywhere, tables and chairs from the restaurants all out on the road, and this at like 11:30 on a Tuesday night. It's just such a fun, vibrant time to live here. Got another, this time paid, show happening next weekend, so excited for that one, too X3
All right now that's everything. Probably.
* If I don't even need to turn my windscreen wipers on, it's not rain. Also for the record, even that's only happened twice this year.
no subject
Wed, Jan. 29th, 2025 09:15 pm
I'm in paaaaaaain D: Today's fitness was running up a frigging hill. I run on the beach. I wonder how it manages to register 12m gained over 5km when I'm running right on the shoreline. 400m uphill, then 400m back down, 2 minute rest, four times. My calves are feeling it, 'sgonna be even worse tomorrow D: Thankfully no fitness scheduled, so I'll go for a walk around the botanic gardens instead.
On Saturday we went to the Women's Ashes at Adelaide Oval 💚 Absolutely dominant performance. Every match, England's been getting better and better, til the previous match in Canberra where it came down to them needing 22 of the last over, they got a four off the first ball of it, then it started raining and we won on Duckworth-Lewis. We probably still would've won but damn I would've loved to have seen the end. Anyway, come around to Adelaide, annnnnd that was a flogging. I even fluked filming the catch of the night! During the innings break, a kid was being interviewed in the crowd and they finished by asking him to give us a cheer, to which he went, 'Let's go, Strikers, let's go!' The Strikers are the local Adelaide team. We were watching Australia X3 BUT three of the players, including the skipper, are indeed Strikers, so y'know what kid you weren't far off.
After the win we got selfies with all the players bar Darcie Brown, the Thunder from Kapunda, because idk she forgot to go north of the dugout after the game. She's one of the three Strikers so it's not like I won't see her around again, but still. At least I got a photo with ma girl TMac 💚
Final match starts tomorrow, which is the Test at the G under lights 🤩 omg so excite.
Australia Day barbie on Sunday was delightful :D Up at Mum and Dad's so it was, like, 32 degrees, perfect barbie weather and a very chill afternoon. We ended up in the pool with a bottle of cider just floating around and having good conversation. This is what Australia Day is to me. I know there's ~*controversy*~ around it being Invasion/Survival Day, and I'm sure its days of being on 26 January are numbered, but so long as it's in summer and we get a public holiday for it, I don't care when it is. There's a case to be made for May 8, cos it sounds like maaaaate, but May is way too late for a barbecue and floating in the pool with a cider, so no. My vote is for, like, the third Monday in January or something equally irrelevant. Always a long weekend, not tied to any date, everybody's happy. But it's gotta be chill and have plenty of sport surrounding it.
I've aaaalmost finished the alchemist fic. I think it works? I'm not as proud of it as the tree prison one but it's only 1000 words. Maybe I'll get better at writing shorts over the course of the year. 'But you used to do these challenges all the time!' Yeah but they were never self-contained. That's the challenge here, and it's really ruling out using my established characters. I'm still determined to write in Tsyllaes (though this alchemist one's not entirely canon, since I've got a very clearly established way magic works and alchemy ain't it) cos I don't want to give up on this world. Even if I've given up on SH, way too much time and research has gone into Tsyllaes to just throw it all away. There are still thousands of stories I can write in Tsyllaes. Sucks absolute arse to try and accept it, but SH just isn't one of them.
On Saturday we went to the Women's Ashes at Adelaide Oval 💚 Absolutely dominant performance. Every match, England's been getting better and better, til the previous match in Canberra where it came down to them needing 22 of the last over, they got a four off the first ball of it, then it started raining and we won on Duckworth-Lewis. We probably still would've won but damn I would've loved to have seen the end. Anyway, come around to Adelaide, annnnnd that was a flogging. I even fluked filming the catch of the night! During the innings break, a kid was being interviewed in the crowd and they finished by asking him to give us a cheer, to which he went, 'Let's go, Strikers, let's go!' The Strikers are the local Adelaide team. We were watching Australia X3 BUT three of the players, including the skipper, are indeed Strikers, so y'know what kid you weren't far off.
After the win we got selfies with all the players bar Darcie Brown, the Thunder from Kapunda, because idk she forgot to go north of the dugout after the game. She's one of the three Strikers so it's not like I won't see her around again, but still. At least I got a photo with ma girl TMac 💚
Final match starts tomorrow, which is the Test at the G under lights 🤩 omg so excite.
Australia Day barbie on Sunday was delightful :D Up at Mum and Dad's so it was, like, 32 degrees, perfect barbie weather and a very chill afternoon. We ended up in the pool with a bottle of cider just floating around and having good conversation. This is what Australia Day is to me. I know there's ~*controversy*~ around it being Invasion/Survival Day, and I'm sure its days of being on 26 January are numbered, but so long as it's in summer and we get a public holiday for it, I don't care when it is. There's a case to be made for May 8, cos it sounds like maaaaate, but May is way too late for a barbecue and floating in the pool with a cider, so no. My vote is for, like, the third Monday in January or something equally irrelevant. Always a long weekend, not tied to any date, everybody's happy. But it's gotta be chill and have plenty of sport surrounding it.
I've aaaalmost finished the alchemist fic. I think it works? I'm not as proud of it as the tree prison one but it's only 1000 words. Maybe I'll get better at writing shorts over the course of the year. 'But you used to do these challenges all the time!' Yeah but they were never self-contained. That's the challenge here, and it's really ruling out using my established characters. I'm still determined to write in Tsyllaes (though this alchemist one's not entirely canon, since I've got a very clearly established way magic works and alchemy ain't it) cos I don't want to give up on this world. Even if I've given up on SH, way too much time and research has gone into Tsyllaes to just throw it all away. There are still thousands of stories I can write in Tsyllaes. Sucks absolute arse to try and accept it, but SH just isn't one of them.
no subject
Tue, Jan. 21st, 2025 07:50 pmAmanda's started a new job, well, end of last year, but this month it's been on what will be regular hours, which are the late shift at a flour mill, meaning she gets home around 11ish. I go to bed at 10, 10:30, which is kinda suck but also I get my me time? Which is nice. Currently catching up on all the YouTube videos I've fallen way behind on XD; And I can go back to making dinner once or twice and just having the same thing all week. Do miss having her cooking tho, and sportsball is always better to watch with someone. And seeing craft projects grow and come to life. The ideal would be like 2-3 days a week, but she does get home earlier on a Friday and I can stay up later, so it's not a total loss.
I've discovered a feature on my Garmin wherein I can set a fitness target and it'll give me fitness to do so I can achieve it. My ultimate goal is running jetty to jetty in an hour, currently takes me about an hour and 10 mins and it's just shy of 9km round trip. So I told the watch I want to do 10km in 1hr 10mins (it's 5km or 10km then it goes up to a marathon. HAH) and it said you'll be struggling to do that in the time frame. So I went to 5km in half an hour. You'll be struggling to do that in the time frame. 35 minutes? You'll be struggling--SCREW YOU. So it's at the longest possible time it can train me for, 37:30, which I'll be doing on ANZAC Day (25 April). I can currently do 5km in 38:40 so yay, I'll be carving off a whole minute 10 seconds in three and a half months. See if it'll let me try for 5km in half an hour after that .-.
I've finished my first short story, 4000 words about a guy in a Kazinian prison where the cells aren't walls and cages, but deep pits which you get out of by growing a tree from a seed. Not yet entered cos I want to read it again with fresher eyes before the deadline and see if I can improve anything, so if anyone wants to join me on this journey of short story competition entries please let me know! I'd love all the concrit I can muster 💚 The next one is proving difficult. 1000 words about alchemy. I've got something in my brain about an alchemist losing their license because they're making dodgy gems but it's just not happening. It's been a looooong time since I've written anything short. 1000 words is like one scene. Maybe two at a stretch. Fleh.
Garden continues to thrive despite heatwave. It's not attrocious (aside from the 39 on Sunday, that sucked) but it sure is lasting. My tank ran out of water yesterday so we're on tap water now, boo :< Adelaide tap water, ftr, tastes chlorinated and bad. There's a cyclone going on off WA so cross fingers we get dumped on at some point, but it's so far been a normal-arse January with no rain (we got like 3mm two weeks ago and that's been it) so I'm not holding out hope. Filtered tap water it is, ew. Anyway. The garden's happy it gets water at regular intervals now so that's good. The dichondra (ground cover) is already starting to spread out so I'm particularly excited to see how that goes.
I've discovered a feature on my Garmin wherein I can set a fitness target and it'll give me fitness to do so I can achieve it. My ultimate goal is running jetty to jetty in an hour, currently takes me about an hour and 10 mins and it's just shy of 9km round trip. So I told the watch I want to do 10km in 1hr 10mins (it's 5km or 10km then it goes up to a marathon. HAH) and it said you'll be struggling to do that in the time frame. So I went to 5km in half an hour. You'll be struggling to do that in the time frame. 35 minutes? You'll be struggling--SCREW YOU. So it's at the longest possible time it can train me for, 37:30, which I'll be doing on ANZAC Day (25 April). I can currently do 5km in 38:40 so yay, I'll be carving off a whole minute 10 seconds in three and a half months. See if it'll let me try for 5km in half an hour after that .-.
I've finished my first short story, 4000 words about a guy in a Kazinian prison where the cells aren't walls and cages, but deep pits which you get out of by growing a tree from a seed. Not yet entered cos I want to read it again with fresher eyes before the deadline and see if I can improve anything, so if anyone wants to join me on this journey of short story competition entries please let me know! I'd love all the concrit I can muster 💚 The next one is proving difficult. 1000 words about alchemy. I've got something in my brain about an alchemist losing their license because they're making dodgy gems but it's just not happening. It's been a looooong time since I've written anything short. 1000 words is like one scene. Maybe two at a stretch. Fleh.
Garden continues to thrive despite heatwave. It's not attrocious (aside from the 39 on Sunday, that sucked) but it sure is lasting. My tank ran out of water yesterday so we're on tap water now, boo :< Adelaide tap water, ftr, tastes chlorinated and bad. There's a cyclone going on off WA so cross fingers we get dumped on at some point, but it's so far been a normal-arse January with no rain (we got like 3mm two weeks ago and that's been it) so I'm not holding out hope. Filtered tap water it is, ew. Anyway. The garden's happy it gets water at regular intervals now so that's good. The dichondra (ground cover) is already starting to spread out so I'm particularly excited to see how that goes.
no subject
Sat, Jan. 11th, 2025 08:57 pm
Happy new everyone! 🥳
I keep meaning to do more of a retrospective every year but it just never seems to happen. Sitting down to actually go through everything is a lot, y'know? Maybe if I actually keep up with making entries this year it'll happen for 2025, hah. Not for 2024 cos I~ can't be arsed. Instead, have some 2025 plans.
Holidays were lovely 💚 I made a big effort in getting the garden back up to snuff, which has been suffering from lack of water, so I did a proper rehydration of all the dirt, cut back all the dead bits and bought a bunch of new leafy things to fill in the gaps where stuff died. Also bought new little dichondra for the lawn, which did really well last season until I sucked at watering it, and even then it still lives around the edges. So this year I'm going to make a real effort with the garden, get the dichondra looking gorgeous and lush, hopefully cover the area by next summer. It was really fast growing last time so I'm hopeful.
Also, chillies! I want to get into Mexican cooking, but every time I look at a recipe book they always have like three different chillies in them. In Australia, we have big ones, little ones and green ones. If you have an awesome supermarket like my local, you can maybe get jalapeños. Our exoctic foods are very much geared towards Asian, so if you want galangal or Vietnamese mint or Thai basil, you're good. Different chillies? Not a chance. SO. I asked the Discord of Tasting History for some recommendations of chillies to plant in a Mexican-targeted garden. They gave five different ones, so I bought seeds to grow those last year annnnnd haven't yet planted them. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow >> But yeah, wanna get into Mexican X9
Last garden thing, I want a desert lime. I've tried growing finger lime but keep killing them because I don't water them. I have a regular old Tahitian lime but the sodding thing's biggest season has been to produce six limes. I dream of producing enough limes that I can make a mojito out of the thing, but after 11 years in the ground it's done next to nothing. So. I'm trying to source a desert lime. Surely I can't kill something that lives in the desert.
I know I say it every year, but fitness every day. Ideally lose 25kg but that'd just be the icing on the cake. I want to at least be able to fit into the clothes I bought last time I lost weight, cos I've got some really nice stuff and I can't get it on anymore, which sucks. So yes. Fitness every day. After work is easy, just drive to the beach instead of to work, but doing something on weekends is hard. Motivating to leave the house and take like two hours out of my day for it is effort. That'll be the challenge.
I want to save enough money to finally do up the kitchen next year. I think this is doable? Signs are that interest rates will drop next RBA meeting, which would help. It's not like I spend a lot anyway so I'm not sure what I can do about that, but that's the plan. Kitchen next year.
Also, on the house, I want to sort out the studio. Since Amanda moved in, she has a lot of hobbies that take up a lot of space: beading, sewing (three sewing machines and so much fabric), knitting/crocheting (HEAPS of yarn), a lot of painting and art supplies. All of this is awesome except that everything's literally just dumped in the studio right now. Piles and boxes and boxes and it's just a nightmare opening the door now. Used to be my favourite room in the house, now it's all but unusable with my tiny little corner for my computer. So this year that's getting sorted out. If it means installing a wardrobe type effect for storage, then so be it. I just can't handle it the way it is.
Writing I already went into so won't touch on that here.
I want to try posting on Insta daily, and here weekly. Not a bad start, but if I drop a day here and there, try not to let that get to me and just keep up with it.
That'll do :D
I keep meaning to do more of a retrospective every year but it just never seems to happen. Sitting down to actually go through everything is a lot, y'know? Maybe if I actually keep up with making entries this year it'll happen for 2025, hah. Not for 2024 cos I~ can't be arsed. Instead, have some 2025 plans.
Holidays were lovely 💚 I made a big effort in getting the garden back up to snuff, which has been suffering from lack of water, so I did a proper rehydration of all the dirt, cut back all the dead bits and bought a bunch of new leafy things to fill in the gaps where stuff died. Also bought new little dichondra for the lawn, which did really well last season until I sucked at watering it, and even then it still lives around the edges. So this year I'm going to make a real effort with the garden, get the dichondra looking gorgeous and lush, hopefully cover the area by next summer. It was really fast growing last time so I'm hopeful.
Also, chillies! I want to get into Mexican cooking, but every time I look at a recipe book they always have like three different chillies in them. In Australia, we have big ones, little ones and green ones. If you have an awesome supermarket like my local, you can maybe get jalapeños. Our exoctic foods are very much geared towards Asian, so if you want galangal or Vietnamese mint or Thai basil, you're good. Different chillies? Not a chance. SO. I asked the Discord of Tasting History for some recommendations of chillies to plant in a Mexican-targeted garden. They gave five different ones, so I bought seeds to grow those last year annnnnd haven't yet planted them. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow >> But yeah, wanna get into Mexican X9
Last garden thing, I want a desert lime. I've tried growing finger lime but keep killing them because I don't water them. I have a regular old Tahitian lime but the sodding thing's biggest season has been to produce six limes. I dream of producing enough limes that I can make a mojito out of the thing, but after 11 years in the ground it's done next to nothing. So. I'm trying to source a desert lime. Surely I can't kill something that lives in the desert.
I know I say it every year, but fitness every day. Ideally lose 25kg but that'd just be the icing on the cake. I want to at least be able to fit into the clothes I bought last time I lost weight, cos I've got some really nice stuff and I can't get it on anymore, which sucks. So yes. Fitness every day. After work is easy, just drive to the beach instead of to work, but doing something on weekends is hard. Motivating to leave the house and take like two hours out of my day for it is effort. That'll be the challenge.
I want to save enough money to finally do up the kitchen next year. I think this is doable? Signs are that interest rates will drop next RBA meeting, which would help. It's not like I spend a lot anyway so I'm not sure what I can do about that, but that's the plan. Kitchen next year.
Also, on the house, I want to sort out the studio. Since Amanda moved in, she has a lot of hobbies that take up a lot of space: beading, sewing (three sewing machines and so much fabric), knitting/crocheting (HEAPS of yarn), a lot of painting and art supplies. All of this is awesome except that everything's literally just dumped in the studio right now. Piles and boxes and boxes and it's just a nightmare opening the door now. Used to be my favourite room in the house, now it's all but unusable with my tiny little corner for my computer. So this year that's getting sorted out. If it means installing a wardrobe type effect for storage, then so be it. I just can't handle it the way it is.
Writing I already went into so won't touch on that here.
I want to try posting on Insta daily, and here weekly. Not a bad start, but if I drop a day here and there, try not to let that get to me and just keep up with it.
That'll do :D
no subject
Mon, Dec. 9th, 2024 07:40 pm
OKAY had thoughts while running. Cos it was 49 minutes and I can't help but think and plan and plot and whatever.
SO.
I'll edit the Silent Harmony two chapters I've got written, then I'll call it done*.
Next year, I'll enter some competitions and hunt down some publications and such, write shorts and have fun.
Then I'll do Novelember again, this time something with the aim of actually getting it published. I'm thinking something with a fortune teller, cos I really need to properly nut out how all that works and that'd be helpful. Then spend a good chunk of time getting it looking gorgeous and tight and fling it around at every publishing house I can think of and see if I can get it published. Maybe art for it through the year and get a following on Tumblr/other arting places? idk. Hard when I'm not an arteest.
Maybe then, by 2026, I'll be ready to make a call on SH. Cos shit knows I can't write it while nobody's reading it. I can't express how much my hope just fizzled and died when I opened the file at lunch time today.
* for now
SO.
I'll edit the Silent Harmony two chapters I've got written, then I'll call it done*.
Next year, I'll enter some competitions and hunt down some publications and such, write shorts and have fun.
Then I'll do Novelember again, this time something with the aim of actually getting it published. I'm thinking something with a fortune teller, cos I really need to properly nut out how all that works and that'd be helpful. Then spend a good chunk of time getting it looking gorgeous and tight and fling it around at every publishing house I can think of and see if I can get it published. Maybe art for it through the year and get a following on Tumblr/other arting places? idk. Hard when I'm not an arteest.
Maybe then, by 2026, I'll be ready to make a call on SH. Cos shit knows I can't write it while nobody's reading it. I can't express how much my hope just fizzled and died when I opened the file at lunch time today.
* for now
no subject
Mon, Dec. 9th, 2024 02:31 pm
Since the last post, I've read a couple of books, written a porny Novelember* and generally taken a break from SH. Novelember was so much fun, omg. Loved watching those boys develop from not knowing them to suddenly having a relationship after a month. I just finished editing it over the weekend, nothing major, just some typos and fixing of clunky sentences but nothing wholesale.
Lunch today, finally opened up SH again, scrolled back to chapter 19 where I'm up to just the last read-through before it's ready to go... and my shoulders slumped, eyes stinging, brain wondering what's the point.
So yeah. Distance ain't cutting it.
* Replacement for NaNoWriMo since that went down the toilet this year. Same concept, no arseholes involved.
Lunch today, finally opened up SH again, scrolled back to chapter 19 where I'm up to just the last read-through before it's ready to go... and my shoulders slumped, eyes stinging, brain wondering what's the point.
So yeah. Distance ain't cutting it.
* Replacement for NaNoWriMo since that went down the toilet this year. Same concept, no arseholes involved.
Silent Harmony Soul Searching
Tue, Aug. 6th, 2024 12:38 pmtl;dr I give up. Silent Harmony is as done as it's ever going to be. I finished the first draft and at least made it to chapter 20 of the rewrite of Rust, which was categorically the worst bit of the whole story, so I'll just have to be happy enough with that. I'm not, but I'm done. I'm so fucking done.
( Soul searching goes here )
Will I even participate in NaNoWriMo this year as planned? Honestly I don’t know. I’m extremely down right now and can’t honestly see that changing before November, but… that cynical optimist in me will still keep hoping. Not that this is a cry for help anymore—I did that in May and got crickets—but hey, maybe someone’ll read it that way and throw me a life saver.
( Soul searching goes here )
Will I even participate in NaNoWriMo this year as planned? Honestly I don’t know. I’m extremely down right now and can’t honestly see that changing before November, but… that cynical optimist in me will still keep hoping. Not that this is a cry for help anymore—I did that in May and got crickets—but hey, maybe someone’ll read it that way and throw me a life saver.
