2023 WEEK 38: Achievements of the year (so far)

The year is 3/4 over. Have I achieved anything at all? I always feel like I haven't, but we all know how unreliable feelings can be. So let's see. This year, I have...

1. Limited time spent on housework and cooking. In my new year's resolutions post, I swore to spend only one day a week on domestic tasks. This has been bastly successful. I hardly spend two hours a week on housework now.

2. Run and expanded our pet boarding and grooming business. My spur-of-the-moment idea to board rabbits, conceived in the middle of The Artist's Way, has turned into a serious side hustle. And I love it.

3. Started two new hobbies: drawing and reselling rescued books. 

4. Read 48 books so far! This has been progressing far better than I had imagined. I have discovered new favourites: Robert Louis Stevenson, Jane Austen, George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh, Paul Theroux, Franz Kafka, Bram Stoker, and Ursula K Le Guin.

5. Completed a huge bucket-list trip to the UK with Jon. It has been life-changing, opening up new vistas as to where we want our lives to go.

6. Survived a sudden drop in freelance work and income. Although it was difficult to adjust to, it gave me the freedom to move on from my former identity. And I now feel more financially secure than before, even though I make less.

A big area where I've fallen short: taking care of my physical body. I've been falling sick a lot more than I did last year. Plus my eyesight, hearing, and temper have suffered a lot this year. Both diet and exercise slightly neglected, but I'm on my way to fixing these. (I am getting older, there's no doubt. Some days eating proper meals can feel like a chore rather than something I look forward to.)

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This week has been more of a writing week (see the 3 blog posts I shat out...) than a drawing week. But I've been enjoying drawing with colour pencils and in a tiny notebook instead of my usual one. 

I particularly like the drawing of Eeyore with his legs stretched out. It's hard to capture him in stillness, but when I do, I notice such beautiful gradations of colour on his fur. I'm also getting better at sketching Miaou3 quickly.

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Highlights of the week: reading The Woman in White (so good), writing on the blog, cooking, doing food delivery (forces me to cycle farther and faster - endorphin rush), and setting up an extra bookshelf for my books for sale.

Mon: yoga, book shopping, 2-6 work, reading
Tue: swim, 2-6 work, dinner at in-laws'
Wed: cycled to Bishan North, had neighbour over, write, walk, The X-Files
Thu: run, lunch with dad, read at McDonald's!!!, BFG
Fri: yoga, write, lunch with ex-colleague, 2-6 work, (felt ill from bad water and puked)
Sat: Roo, write, mid-autumn festival
Sun: Roo, 2-6 work, dinner at home, BFG