Sauntering Vaguely Downward

Rejoice, friends, for it is finally the 185th of January, the last day of the month. 🫩

How many times a day do you . . .

1. Brush your teeth?
   
   Two, morning and evening. Also, before going to the gym, which is a weird quirk I've never bothered to unpack.
   
   
2. Shower?
   
   Once. Twice if I go to the gym.
   
   
3. Check your E-mail?
   
   I do not want to count. Near-continuously from waking until bedtime. I cannot keep up with it. It doesn't help that I have work email from two different institutions and multiple personal email addresses.
   
   
4. Check LJ? (or DW?)
   
   It depends on the week. In non-teaching weeks and during holidays, I can usually read through both once a day. During term time, I do all my f-list / circle catchup at the weekends.
   
   There are exceptions: camping holidays in remote parts of Wales result in zero signal, and grant proposal submission deadlines result in zero personal bandwidth.
   
   
5. Eat?
   
   I usually have two or three meals a day: just after waking, around noon (if I don't have back to back meetings all day), and late afternoon or evening depending on children's activities and exercise classes. If I have the latter, I'll sometimes eat quite late.
   
   

My last goal check-in was almost exactly a month ago. I stopped doing it because I was on holiday but now I reckon the advent of the pandemic has rendered most of the goals irrelevant. For a start, there’s no way for me to go to the gym for the next few months, and no way I’m going to get through this without the liberal application of booze. When examined in the cold light of covid-19, should any of them should be retained?

( Individual assessments behind the cut. )

In summary, the only goal I’ll be keeping is the one about reading more than ten books that are new to me. I don’t expect this to be particularly challenging, given that I have at least ten on my bedside table and I won’t be going anywhere for a while. So, sayonara, weekly goal check-in posts. Maybe I’ll give you a whirl in 2021.

This was the view over the River Tywi at around mid-day on Saturday. We were up on the hill above it for all of ten minutes and were soaked to the skin when we returned to the cottage. You can see the silvery river snaking through the centre left of the photo.



This is (almost) the same view 24 hours later. The river hasn't so much burst its banks as engulfed the entire middle section of the valley in a torrent of brown.



( Goal Check-in 7/52: Mixed success )

I got through January and didn't fail at every goal! \o/

( Goal Check-in 5/52: all success )

This was a busy weekend. Amongst other things, we went for a 6.6 km walk through a bog in Leicestershire (see photo).



( Goal Check-in 3/52: mostly success )