Swim 7, getting cooler, faster, and later

6:25 pm. I repeat the same swim as reported last time, and more or less the time before that. We've had a cooler day, sort of overcast at times, so I wasn't expecting crowds of people on the bank.

Fresh earplugs in really tightly (don't want waterlogged ears any more than necessary), goggles on and wade in. Noticeably colder! I emit a sort of a hooff-hooff-hooff effect getting started, but there's no profanity. After five minutes the internal register goes from cold to cool, as I generate some heat.

There are a few ducks, which take off during the initial splashing. After that it's just me and the midges. There may be people on the bank, I don't know. Firstly I'm concentrating on the stroke (alternating breast stroke and crawl) and secondly my earplugs are too effective for chit chat.

Despite the slightly autumnal feel, it's a pleasant atmosphere. The sun tries to break out now and again, and illuminates the eastern bank with pale gold. Some of the trees have golden tinges anyway, rather than green. If there are fish, I can't see them. A few insects bother the water, but no birds are feeding on them tonight. Other birds get ready for bed. It's good to think about not much except flowing through water, the breath, and the passing of time. Daily thoughts from the inbox try and cling to my mind, but I'm adept at letting them float behind me.

Passing the Manor Inn beer garden slash play park, a gaggle of small kids laugh and wave. I wave back. I make Trowers bridge at 28:30. Back down to the start in 19 minutes or so. I wave, but not talk to quite a few joggers, some in large clumps (I think it's Waverley Harriers), plus a few other random walkers, runners and cyclists. All moving along at speed, going places, no Pokemon gathering, blackberry picking or loitering tonight.

I had the fish tied up on the side. 16 degrees C.

So that's another 1650 m, total now 7450 m. I might have to borrow a few days from September to make the August 10 km target!  Busy work week coming up. The next swim might have to be the morning, or even closer to sunset.

As I pedal home, I have the lights on. Another sign of the season starting to turn.

Hate November

For some reason, I hate November. The alarm rings, D springs out of bed and I don't. Can I just have 10 more minutes?Immediately turning on the bright lights and jolly radio doesn't change my mood. The kettle goes on automatically, for yet more tea, which I don't tend to need in the summer. I take up to two hours to coax my self out of the door.

Driving the twisty lanes, after the rush, musing and moping, I arrive at the village square, with its simple cross. Poppy wreaths lie there from the Sunday service. Fog hangs on the trees. Here I am again. Sigh.

Or, if it's a London day, I briefly escape on the bike, then sit on the train after the one I should have got. Musing and moping makes me forget things, like phones and keys, so I'm invariably late. Staring at the little houses as they go by, I arrive at the big station, again. Sigh. Another brief escape riding, then the office. Piles of paper.

It's not the season itself, which is delightful. Mists playing in the folds of the land, artfully shaping the landscape. Berries glowing in the thinning hedges. Bouncy little animals going about their little Autumnal businesses.

I don't even mind the cold and damp. I have socks and other stuff, so I can cope with all that. Even if it gets bitter I can usually free up a bit of Chi for the fingertips. So let's have a bit of left-brain attack on the problem shall we?

Theory A: It's Natural. A bit of SAD-syndrome probably, left over from the Neolithic. Go to the back of the cave, chew on some reindeer fat and wait it out. Work on the wittling and the verses. Don't drink too much.

Theory B: You've got far too much on. Term 1 is generally a bastard, and you've got it about three ways, plus all the admin crap. Sort it out, or jack it in for fecks sake. Take some leave, at least. You're owed about a year.

Theory C: You're actually depressed. See A or B, possibly, or something else. Whatever X is, you shouldn't be dragging it around on top of everything else. Maybe you are still upset about the deaths, or Some Shit You Were Meant to Do But Didn't, or The Future and Stuff. Anyway, either (pace A) forget about it – it's just misdirected Desire. Or (B), sort it out: see a nice person with a couch. Who might well tell you to forget about it, or jack it in and do something you actually like, or permutations thereof.

Dear Diary and List Anxiety

So, last week, our long-suffering Mandarin teacher let us have an easy-to-do homework, since we were all so bad at producing anything like a regular series of essays for the last lot. So, "why not just do a diary?" Fine, that's easy then!

I did actually Think About It for a little bit, but nothing actually got done. Poor teacher! Worst class that she's ever had, I expect. This week, a new, hopefully easier to use, variant of the task.

Write whatever diary entry you want and send it to me.

I will interpret this rather liberally, and start plugging basic diary entries in this blog, in Mandarin. If I want to actually talk about something in more than a sedated toddler way then I may drop into English.

五月二十号

天气更好一点儿。上自行车到火车站。有很多人排队着。没有时间买车票、咖啡、报纸。

担心一点儿， 因为工作前进得不太流利。因为我有许多的设计，所以我慢慢进步。 今天下午有再一个会议，是e-learning的。太无聊了。我真忙，可能不去。

See, so many things to do. I have the usual trouble of being distracted by things off-stage, that is, projects other than the one I'm supposed to be working on. To-do list anxiety. Probably exacerbated by remembering the many times when tasks I'd forgotten about have suddenly become super-urgent.

At one time, I was using OmniOutliner to list everything, and to total the Number of Things. This got into the 300's quite easily, and was plainly ridiculous. It doesn't help that I've got about 5 jobs.

For the last month or two, I've switched to OmniFocus, and I'm trying to implement a Getting Things Done approach. This doesn't seem to be capable of adding up the number of open tasks, but I'm taking that as a Good Thing.

You can't drink the whole river, why should you know how many cups there are?

Monkey Monday

Flickr blog talks about personal projects as a way of keeping going. They're talking about photo creativity, but given this is a blog, then let's stuff it into a metaphor shaped sock with motivation on the side.

I think I've having an extended Monkey Monday myself. Except it's been going on for weeks now.

No running. No practice. Missing classes of all types. Stress. Not much laughing.

I was intending to post this as a gee ain't that funny cheer up post but it's gone the other way. Hmm.