Instructions Not Included

Back in December, I was lucky enough to learn a bit of poi juggling at work, for part of the Christmas carol service at York Minster. For those of you not familiar with poi, think juggling balls, but with long strings attached, which you fit to your fingers. It's great fun, and looks beautiful when you do it right. But if you don't? Well, you'll end up whacking yourself all over the place. Especially when you're learning. Which hurts a lot of the time. 

At the moment, things really aren't that dissimilar. I've been somewhat distant from a lot of things that I'm normally so engaged with. Forums, twitter, blogging here, and it's not because I don't love being invovled with social media - if it were up to me, I'd be able to devote a lot more time to it - thoughts of whether I could actually find work doing diabetes advocacy has crossed my mind more than once, believe me. But the problem is that I'm torn between all my commitments. I know that I'm not the only one - we all lead unbelievably hectic lives these days, and I know we'd appreciate the chance to just press the pause button for a few days, and slow the pace down. 

I work full time. I study part time for a Master's degree, which means time on campus, as well as all the work outside of classroom time that goes with it. I'm part of the university's Dancesport society, which means I have lessons, and team practice for competitions. And of course, D always has to have its say on everything.

I'm extremely lucky, in that my work are very understanding about my MA. I've been allowed to rearrange my hours to allow me time to take my lectures, which all fall within the working day. Of course, when I'm not there, I'm in the office. Which means that time to use the library, etc, is all in the evenings. Despite the ridiculous price of it, I do own a  bus pass, so I can get the bus to and from university. On foot, it would take me about an hour to walk between my flat and campus, and then obviously another hour back. So I get the bus. But because buses stop being frequent after a certain time, if I miss one, I have to wait another half hour. And they only go into town, which means I still have to walk half an hour back to my flat, usually with a stack of books. 

So what's a girl to do? If I go to the library after work, the earliest I'll get home is about 20:30, but it's usually more like 22:00 or later. Trust me, by that point, I'm hungry! I've still not really got the hang of reducing my basal rates, and since I'm high an awful lot of the time, I'm not 100% comfortable with reducing them anyway, as I'd probably carry on being even higher.

I knew that when I signed up for the MA it was going to be a lot of work. I'm not complaining about that, because I knew it was part and parcel. Trading off things in order to not completely burn out though? That's a bit more difficult. I'm glad I chose to do this part time, because there's no way I could manage it full time. 

I'll be completely honest. My control has not been great at the moment. My 14 day average on my meter is way higher than I would like it. I'm probably not paying as much attention to things at the moment as I should be, and that is unsettling me a little bit. I don't like taking my eye off the ball, but giving myself some slack in one place is the only way I can think of handling things at the moment. At the end of April, all my assignments for the year will be handed in, and I can think of other things as well. 

Until then, I guess I'm just going to have to try and avoid hitting myself with the various balls in the air.

I'm pretty sure I've made it clear in the past that I have a bit of an issue with the whole New Year thing. If I haven't, well then, I do. New Year's Eve? An anticlimax if ever there was one. New Year's Day? Well that's when the pressure starts. 

A New Year, a new you! How many times have you heard that, or seen it on promotions? If you're anything like me, then it's far too many. Lose weight, get fit, stop smoking, eat healthily, start a new career, make every day count. Ugh, come on. Let's be honest here. This month's star buy diet book, or fitness DVD is March's bargain basement fodder.

I don't do New Year's resolutions. I believe I brought this up last year, but I made one a few years back that I've managed to stick to really, really well. It was not to make any more New Year's resolutions. Ha, ha, very funny, I hear you go. Well, I mean it. I used to do them, but when it got to a week or two in, and something had gone horribly wrong? The sense of guilt and failure. It's because there's far too much pressure associated with the whole 'resolution' madness. You're setting yourself up for a fall 99% of the time, and why do that to yourself? 

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for trying to make changes in your life. I just don't like the whole label of 'resolution'. I mean, by day four of January, I got to work and realised I had my knickers on inside out. That's a low point, right there. What hope have I got of managing to keep something that has the pressure of 'resolution' attached to it?

So there are lots of things I'd like to do, to change, to achieve. But how to go about it without the stress, without punishing myself if it doesn't all go as well as I'd like? Well, as it happens, my attention was drawn to a tweet by the lovely Jenni Prokopy of Chronic Babe, in which she was linking to a post by Dannette of FibroHaven. What was it about? Well, that's what I mean by 'going camping'. 

It's about living with intent.

I have Basil Brush going 'Boom, Boom!' in my head. Yes, I know it's a truly terrible pun, but it makes me smile. It's like a really bad joke from a cracker. But I do think this is brilliant, and as of Monday, I'm going to be keeping a notebook to write down my intentions. 

This is better than resolutions. This can be flexible, and fit with where you are day to day. It's realistic. Each day you make and write down and intention, which is right for you on that day. Make it more ambitious when things are going well. Keep it relaxed and manageable when they're not.

A way of making changes that is actually do-able? I know I'm in. What about you? Fancy coming camping?