It's a Sunday update - but I had better rattle my dags or it's going to be Monday before I know it!
A year ago this week I came back to live in New Zealand from Australia. It's been a long, strange, often sad year. Yesterday driving around Auckland, I think I'm over all that. I was driving around the city doing errands. Busy in my life, making all sorts of changes - some of which are my business and others none of it - but feeling pretty good about most things.
Somehow I've become the caretaker of five rabbits. They're interesting little creatures. Very smart, quite cheeky, and more than able to take care of themselves if the scars on my arms are anything to go by. I've cobbled together three hutches to make one complex, but it really needs to be a bit bigger. Apparently one square foot of space to one pound of rabbit is the rule, and each of these rabbits is easily half a dozen pounds each. They've burrowed out of the hutches and forming a warren under the lawn. It's fascinating and hilarious.
When I'm not feeding, cleaning, rebuilding and relocating rabbit dwellings, I'm pulling off wall paper. The house I'm living in is very old and after years of watching the Living Channel, I think it's time to put my money where my mouth is. So far, one wall has been stripped back to the gib board, and the window frames primed and undercoated. Every day I'll do a bit more until it's ready to paint and re-carpet. It's quite fun and hard work which is the right antidote for my laziness. The only way is through, right?
Seems I'm surrounding myself with blue. Trademe.com purchases are all these colours - blue platters, enamel pots and billys - apart from a new old bedroom suite which is aged oak. A few months ago I bought a dressing table and tall boy, and today the original owner sold me a bed head. I never used to like oak but this stuff from the 1930s has such a great feel to it.
It's time for more photos too.
Work is weird, but then what else is new. I'm finding a way to navigate around the limitations to find my own path by working on strategies to ensure I have interesting targets to meet. That might sound strange, especially with so little details about what it is I do, and why it is I need to navigate anything - I might write a more detailed post soon, especially if I see that my solution (to this unspoken problem) looks like it's having a positive outcome.
Part of the change at the moment includes my sleep patterns. I want to shunt my day back a few hours. I really enjoyed going to bed at 9:30pm (well 'enjoyed' might be too strong a word) to rise at 5am while I lived in Australia and am trying to instigate that same routine here. Those morning hours, when they're not needed for train travel, could be really helpful for me to get a lot of personal things done. Things like writing, and thinking, and moving, and breathing. My goal is to minimise the impact work has on my life here in New Zealand, the way it was in Aussie.
While in Australia what I loved best was that work was only part of every day. There was always something to do, somewhere to go after work. Or before work - like go out for breakfast, or walk etc. The idea of waking, working, sleeping is the only thing to do on a week day makes me feel anxious. So I want to fill those hours before and then after normal work hours with interesting and meaningful activities.
Are you a morning person naturally? it's not a natural state for me - I'm more happy staying up really late at night - but when I do get up early and get going on things I want to do and get done, I feel fantastic for the entire day. It makes the weekends feel much longer too, as well as knocking lots of items off my to-do list.
I talk a lot, and it doesn't materialise to much of anything. Maker's gotta make - so think maker's going to talk less, and do a lot more.