Reading in 2017

At the start of each year over the last 3 or 4 I’ve created a list of books I want to read in the year. These lists are usually full of very worthy and earnest books – all things I want to read, but mostly because I think I should, rather than because I think I’ll enjoy them. There are always far too many books on the list and at some point I always break down and give up. And then I feel bad about my intellectual laziness and reading becomes a very much ‘not fun’ thing to do.

Last year I hit that point around about August. Having just gone back to work, I was tired – mentally and physically – and just could not get through Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road To The Deep North. I’ve read his books before and enjoyed them, even though they’re not easy, but this one defeated me. I did feel bad about it, but I was too tired to care for long. I wanted to, needed to, read something, but I wanted it to be easy and pleasant.

I noticed that Terry Brooks had some Shannara books out that I hadn’t read, so I turned to them. I’d read most of the Shannara books over the years and enjoyed them. I enjoyed these ones too, but it had been a while and I’d kind of forgotten what the world of Shannara was all about, so I set myself a bit of a reading challenge – if something so easy could be considered a challenge. I decided that I would read the Shannara books in chronological order using this list for revisiting readers (starts about halfway down the page). I initially thought I’d get through it by the end of the year, but I was wrong and I still have 17 books to go.

Reading my way through the Shannara stories again has revitalised my interest in reading and, being the start of a new year, I’m ready to set myself a new list of books to read. In amongst the earnest and worthy are the rest of the Shannara series and a the latest in a series I’ve been reading for a long time and may revisit after I’m done with Shannara. The complete list is here. There are 42 books on the list and I’ve committed to read 26 in the Goodreads 2017 Reading Challenge. That’s what I did last year, but I am studying again this year, so we’ll see how that pans out.

Playing Favourites

https://www.instagram.com/p/BO8MTfUlMfG/?taken-by=markomeara

 

I’m pretty sure Finn loves both his parents fairly equally. Leila, on the other hand, has had always insisted that I am her favourite and has often ignored, or even actively avoided Mark.

Mark has always spent a lot of time with the children – he’s hardly been an absent father – but, by virtue of him being employed and me being at home, he hasn’t spent a lot of large, regular chunks of time alone with them and Leila has almost always had me to go to. This has changed since I started working. On the days when I work Mark takes the kids to school and picks them up at the end of the day. He takes Leila to her dance classes each week and he’s on his own with them when I work during school holidays.

Over time I’ve noticed that Leila and Mark have become great collaborators and co-workers. They are both ‘doers’ and enjoy having company while they do things. When Leila wants to go to the park and play basketball, she almost always has a willing companion in Mark. When Mark sets out to put the tent up in the backyard, Leila is the one who wants to go out and do it with him. Finn and I are more likely to be inside with our heads in books or watching videos.

I don’t think I’m going to fall off my pedestal any time soon – I’m waiting for the teenage years for that – but I’m really happy to see Leila and Mark finding such pleasure in each other’s company. It’s time.

Always Forward

To say I post here infrequently is a massive understatement. It’s been over six months, and our lonely chook still doesn’t have any mates. What can I say? Life has been busy lately. But it’s not right at the moment and it seems like a good time to post a ‘year in review/look ahead’ blog post.

So how did 2016 go? While it was a fairly crappy year for a lot of the world, it was a pretty good one for our little corner of it. And, without an excess of self-pity, I think I can safely say that we were due for a good one. Mark hit the high points here and I don’t really have anything to add, other than to say that, as a family, we ended the year in much better condition than we started it – which is not nuthin’.

Onto 2017. What does it hold for me/us?

For a start, more work for me. My contract at the ABS has been extended to at least the end of May, which is very pleasing. The work can be boring at times, but it’s mostly not and it’s a good workplace. My aim is to work 3 days a week, which makes life easier financially and allows me to do other stuff.

Part of that other stuff will be returning to The Gordon to continue the Diploma of Community Services. In first semester I will doing 2 evening classes and one morning class, repeating 2 subjects I didn’t finish in 2015 and doing another which has been added due to a change in the training package. I’m also looking at doing some volunteer work again – possibly at our local neighbourhood house, which I might also be able to use for my placement in second semester.

This means that 2017 will be pretty busy. I think we coped pretty well with my return to work last year, so I’m not terribly worried. We’re very fortunate that Rhonda and Mum are living close to Finn’s and Leila’s schools, so the kids can hang out with them before and after school when necessary.

Having Mum and Rhon close by is be a big change for all of us. We’re already enjoying the fact that a trip to ‘Grandma’s’ is no longer a major expedition. I’m looking forward to being able to spend a lot more time with them both.

And, of course, Finn is off to high school! I’ve looked forward to / worried about this part of his life for a long time. I’ve always believed that Finn would come into his own as he becomes able to specialise in the areas he’s interested in and good at at school. But I also know that adolescence and high school can be tough and I really hope that he can remain his lovely, sensitive self through it all.

I have a fondness for mottos and aphorisms because I believe in the power of language (although the bogus quotes posted on Facebook have nearly cured me of it) and at this time of year I tend to look for one that fits the vibe. I saw a quote on Facebook the other day which seemed right for this year. It was attributed to Dalai Lama … maybe. I can’t find it again, but it was something like, “Seek satisfaction, not happiness”.  That works for me – regardless of who actually said it.

The other one that has stuck with me is actually a quote from the character, Pop in the Luke Cage TV series. “Always forward. Never backward.” And that’s the other one I’m keeping in my head this year.

A Flock of One

Twelve months ago we had a little flock of five chickens – Winifred, the bantam who ruled with an iron beak; Scrappy and Shaggy, the ex-battery hens and Sunshine and Rosie the younguns we bought when the old girls’ egg production flagged. Today we have a flock of one.

It started with Sunshine. She just died, as chickens are wont to do, for no apparent reason. Then Winifred became poorly and we took her to the vet. The diagnosis was cancer, so we let her go. Several months later Shaggy lost the ability to walk and seemed to be blind, although she showed no other signs of illness (she was actually looking ridiculously healthy at the time). Another trip to the vet yielded the verdict of a tumour that had progressed to press on her spine, so we let her go too. Finally, this morning I found that Scrappy had died.  Which just leaves Rosie.

Our flock of one presents a dilemma because I don’t want to get new chickens. Our set up requires an upgrade, which is not in the budget for the time being. On the other hand, I don’t like keeping a chicken on it’s own because they are a social animal. Re-homing Rosie doesn’t feel like a good option, though. She stopped laying after her first moult and I can’t think of anyone who will want an non-laying chook. Also, integrating a single bird into a flock is difficult and dangerous for the new bird.

I suppose we’ll wait and see. Once I’ve been working for a while, a new coop and some better fencing may find their way into our budget – you never know.

The Job

I’ve been quiet about this on social media – possibly because I didn’t want to tempt fate – but I think it’s time to come out of the closet. I’ve got a job. Yep, I’m back in paid employment for the first time in 10 years! I’ve joined the new Geelong office of The Australian Bureau of Statistics as an Interviewer. It’s a casual, part-time role, which means that I will work 3-4 days a week, as needed – kinda perfect for me at this point in my life.

As with lots of things in life, the job came about kind of by accident. Back in February I saw an ad for census jobs. I applied, thinking that some short-term work would be a handy boost to the family finances. While I was on the ABS Jobs Vacancies page I saw the link for their Non-ongoing Employment Register and figured that it couldn’t hurt to chuck in an application for that as well. I didn’t expect to hear anything back and promptly forgot about it until I received a call asking me to come in for an interview. That was a very exciting moment but, as usual for me, I didn’t expect anything to come of it. I find having low expectations leads to more pleasant surprises ;). The interview went well, but both my interviewers were well under 30 and I continued to expect nothing. Fortunately, I was spectacularly mistaken. 😀

I started a week of full-time training last Monday with a diverse bunch of people including some older than me and many younger than me – uni students, other mums, people who’ve run their own businesses and the nephew of a girl I went to Star of the Sea with (it is a very small world …). It was intense and very tiring, but I really enjoyed being in an office again (after all, it was my natural habitat for 20 odd years) and I’m looking forward to working.

The job itself is not really difficult. The interviewers in the office mostly follow up on surveys the ABS sends out, chasing uncompleted surveys after the due date. This can involve a bit of detective work to determine the correct contact person and phone number. Interviewers also take inbound calls with queries about surveys. The expectations around the volume of calls an interviewer will receive and make seem perfectly reasonable and we’ve been very clearly told that we are not expected to reach those levels for some time. The surveys I’ll be working on with mostly be business-related, with some small household surveys thrown in. We don’t do the population census – there’s a separate division for that.

The Geelong office is very much in its infancy. It opened in March with 40 staff imported from other states and they are recruiting locally at a rapid rate to reach the capacity of 300 by the end of the year. There’s been lots of discussion that, as the office grows, there will be ongoing full-time roles available that we are encouraged to apply for. A number of my fellow newbies were quite excited by this, but I’m not considering it for the moment. I’ve always maintained that I will only work part-time while Finn and Leila are at school (and family fatigue at the end of this one full-time week supports that) and I do still want to complete the Diploma of Community Services that I started last year. Given that the office is located within the Deakin Uni Waterfront Campus, I’m tempted to move my studies to an undergraduate degree there. That’s something I’ll think more about as I settle into the job. For now, I’m just happy to be back in a small part of the rat race.

By the way, if the ABS asks you to complete a survey, you are required to do so in most cases. The official wording is that the surveys are not compulsory, but if you refuse, you will ultimately be directed to do so by the Government Statistician. So you might as well just fill the damned thing in and get it over and one with. It’ll make life easier for you and me and my new colleagues!

Playing the Game

I wasn’t planning to work hard at decluttering this year. It’s something that has caused tension before and I had decided to let it go for the time being. But then, on the 1st of January, it just felt like the right time to play The Minimalism Game again. I’ve played the game before, but never managed to get through a whole month. This time, though, I thought I could. And I did.

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Day one of #minsgame 2016. Goodbye cheap, uncomfortable shoes. Hopefully someone with less sweaty feet will find and love you at the op shop. @theminimalists

A post shared by NickyP (@nickypelletier) on Jan 1, 2016 at 1:12am PST

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Day THIRTY ONE of #minsgame. One whole month of #minsgame completed! There's still MORE stuff that needs to go so I'll do it all again next month. @theminimalists

A post shared by NickyP (@nickypelletier) on Jan 30, 2016 at 3:18pm PST

As well as finding ‘fun’ things to do, my psych has asked me to do things that give me a sense of achievement. Completing a full month of the game did it for me. There were times when I had to catch up on two or three days at a time, and times when I was counting individual pencils or socks, but that’s OK. I also tossed out a huge number of kids’ drawings that I didn’t count, that was OK too.  Throughout the month I looked forward to looking around me and making explicit decisions about what stays and what goes.

The Minimalists talk about asking whether things ‘add value’ to your life. Marie Kondo talks about things ‘sparking joy’. For me, the questions were more prosaic:

1. “What is it?” This is a big one. I came across things things I didn’t recognise and had to identify before I could decide whether they stayed or went.
2. “Does anyone really need it?” The kids think they need a lot of stuff they don’t, so I didn’t ask them and I didn’t ask Mark. I just asked myself and tried to consider the others’ feelings.
3. “Will we miss this?” Thus far nobody has queried the whereabouts of any of the items I got rid of, so I obviously got that one right.

After these three I got into the more esoteric considerations of whether items added value or sparked joy.

I aimed to be more systematic than I have been in the past, focusing on one room at a time (which is not how Marie Kondo works) and I found this worked well. I started in the entry hall of our house and spent several days alone just sorting through and sorting out the stuff that had collected on and around our hat rack. It looks neater now than it has in ages – I wish I’d thought to take a ‘before’ shot. The were days, too, when it just worked out that I needed to work on a particular area. Finn’s and Leila’s wardrobes needed cleaning out to fit their new school uniforms in, so that became a couple of days of the game. It didn’t really matter where I was working, each day I just worked until I had the requisite number of items for that day and then stopped – even if I wanted to keep going.  This kept the work in manageable chunks and stopped it from becoming overwhelming. Of course, as the month goes on the numbers get higher, but that was alright. As the month went on I got better at making choices and developed a clearer idea of what I didn’t and didn’t want to keep, so the rising number wasn’t an issue.

I’m nowhere near finished – I barely started on the kitchen and the art and craft supplies and haven’t really touched the books or the kids’ toys (the latter will be a delicate operation) – so I’m starting again this month. Today’s item is the broken toy that Leila dumped on the desk yesterday.

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Day one of round 2 of #minsgame. A Christmas toy that's broken and been left sitting on the desk. @theminimalists

A post shared by NickyP (@nickypelletier) on Jan 31, 2016 at 5:33pm PST

The way I’m reading

 

Part of my work with the psychologist has been about identifying the things that are fun for me and making a point of including them in my days. Reading is very high on that list and I’m trying to build a little of it into, if not every, most days.

Over the last couple of years I’ve had a great time making a big long list of books I want to read for the year and then being upset with myself when I’ve failed to read all 6 million of them (only a slight exaggeration for effect.) This year, in the spirit of being kind to myself, I wasn’t going to make a list, or publish anywhere, but I really wanted to. Fortunately, I came across Goodreads – possibly through either Fiona or Bryan – and I joined their 2016 reading challenge.

This may sound like I’m setting myself up to fail again, but I don’t think so. I have a list of over 60 books on my ‘to read’ shelf, but I’m only aiming to read 26 of them. That’s an average of 1 a fortnight, which feels perfectly doable. The list is a mix of fiction and non-fiction and to break things up I’m alternating between them and trying to also switch between more and less challenging books, to avoid getting bogged down. I do tend to get carried away with the ‘worthy’ books I want to read and forget about the fun.

I’m also counting the books I read with Leila, which is cheating a little. She’s at an age now where we can read some longer stories together, so I’m hoping to re-read some old favourites with her, as well as catching up on some classics that I haven’t read before.

 

 

One Resolution

I wasn’t going to make any resolutions for this year, but I can’t help it. I have to allow myself one. It’s simple. It’s important. And it’s something I’m really, really bad at.

This year, in everything I do, I’m going to endeavour to be kind to myself.

I’m a bit of a self-improvement junkie, so I’ll still have my plans and my schemes. There’ll still be decluttering, budgeting, study, efforts to be creative and healthier and all of that. Those things contribute to my well being, so I won’t stop.

What I will try, try, try NOT to do is turn them into tasks with ‘should’, ‘must’ and ‘need’ attached to them. I will try not to attach unrealistic expectations to them. I will try, when things don’t go according to plan, to be kind to myself.

I won’t always succeed in this, and when I inevitably fail at it, I will just try again.

The down and the up.

It’s dawned on me recently that this year has been a bit full on. And yes, I am a bit slow on the uptake. Study, the operation, elderly pets dying, the young cat being hit by a car, the roller coaster of Mark’s work, the decision to change the kids’ school. It’s all been a bit much. Which is why the wheels fell of for me in October.

To move away from euphemisms, etc., I developed major depression and was unable to do much more than the basics of taking the kids to and from school. While a single event precipitated it, I think it had been coming for a while and I’d been running from it. In hindsight I can see that there were points earlier in the year  where I could have taken action that might have staved it off. On the other hand, though, it might not have, so I’m not wasting time on that line of thought. What I have done is talked to my GP, who has increased my antidepressant dose and referred me to a psychologist, who I’ve seen twice so far. So things are on the way up again.

I haven’t been able to finish the assessment work required to move onto field placement in February, but I am fortunate that the coordinators in my course are understanding and my enrolment in those subjects has been extended to the middle of next year to give me time to do the work. I’m hoping I’ll still have it done by the start of February, but have plenty of leeway if I don’t manage it.

I’m supposed to be focusing on the present and being mindful and aware of how I’m feeling in the now, but I can’t resist thinking about the new year. Keeping things simple is the way to go for 2016, I think. I’m aware, though, that I’m really bad at that, so it will be a challenge.

Cheaparse Grocery Shopping

I’ve been a bit intrigued by the Cheapskates Club’s $300 a Month Food Challenge. Our grocery bill is around $400 a fortnight and we don’t think we eat expensively, so the idea of reducing that by more than half seemed at once both very attractive and impossible without starving the children. Still I thought I might give it a bit of a shot.

Today being Mark’s payday and the start of the month, I decided to do a meal plan for the month, shop for it and see what it came to. I planned for 50% of our meals to be vegetarian (cheaper and possibly better for us), 25% to be red meat – lamb or beef – and the balance to be chicken or fish. Although some of the meals are definitely “budget” versions, eg. Chilli Con Carne, Tuna Mornay or Chickpea Curry, I didn’t particularly focus on that in planning and shopping. For some of the red meat and chicken meals I just bought what looked good on the shelf.

We always do our primary shop at Aldi and then pick up whatever they don’t have at Woolworths. This is mainly because they are both located in our closest shopping centre and this way all our shopping can be done in one trip. We also have a Tasman Meats close by and factory outlet chicken shop a little further down the road, so I can get meat quite cheaply from them, although I didn’t this time. I wanted to see what would happen if I just did the shopping the lazy easy way.

The combined total for today’s shopping at both supermarkets is $342.88. This is almost all people (ie. no pet)food. There were a couple of non-food items from Aldi, but I’ve already lost the docket, so I can’t deduct them from the total. This won’t be it for the month. I haven’t bought vegetables yet and we will need to buy bread and milk at least weekly. There will also undoubtedly be other bits and pieces we need to pop out for over the next four and a bit weeks, so our bill for the month is going to be well over the $300. We have room for improvement! I’m going to try – I’ve never succeeded before – to track our supermarket spending over the month to see where the money goes and what we can do to reduce it.

Now that we have only one small dog and a cat to feed, rather than multiples of both, I’m interested in tracking our spending on pet food, too. Cricket and Panther both needed food this week so I bought each of them a bag of dry food and a 12 pack of individual servings of wet foods. I used to buy Indi’s and Em’s food exclusively from the pet store, but at the moment Panther and Cricket are eating supermarket foods, so not premium quality. This is really just a matter of convenience, rather than anything else and I may go back to buying the premium foods for them if they seem to need the better quality food. In any case, the total for pet food this week is $29.50. The wet food will only last 12 days so they will need more then, but the bags of dry food should last quite a while.

Stay tuned for the riveting tale of our grocery bill …