I Paid My Dues With Every Bruise

The Seven-Month Change My Life Challenge, Week 13

New Taylor Swift album! New Taylor Swift album!!! My verdict on it is that, as many others have said, it’s an album for white wine drinking, white-girl dancing, cringe millennials. And as a cringe millennial who loves to white-girl dance, I’m enjoying it. I queued up the title track for my run this morning, and then Spotify shuffle followed it up immediately with The Other Side from The Greatest Showman, which, yes, perfect thematic match. Who says algorithms don’t have a sense of humour? (I do, I say that).

1. Training for the half-marathon: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
   After being sick in bed for a full week, and then gradually re-emerging into the world, I made it out for a couple of easy, slow, short runs towards the end of last week. Today, I picked back up on the training plan generated by my Garmin watch - it’s adjusted my paces up (i.e., slowed them down) quite significantly, but it feels nice to be out again.

2. Master’s dissertation: N/A - Complete!

3. Look after the space I live in: ⭐️
   One of the downsides of living alone is that when you’re sick, there’s no-one to help you put your life back together. There was a good week there where my dishwasher was entirely bowls and spoons, and the end-of-week laundry was essentially all pyjamas. Gradually regaining some sense of order now, but, boy, if that experience hasn’t been another lure towards a more minimalist way of living…

4. Screen time below 3 hours: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

   

   Ironically, 2 hours and 42 minutes would also be an excellent half marathon time for me.

5. Read the books I already own: ⭐️⭐️
   I have a confession: I bought some books last week. A bunch of ebooks on 99p offers (one of which I’ve already DNF’d as it was pretty crap), and Clayton Aldern’s The Weight of Nature: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Minds, Brains and Bodies (ad - commission link). I dug into it immediately, and it enabled me to say in full seriousness “I’ve been reading about mercury poisoning,” when mercury came up in last night’s pub quiz. Which is really what we all want from our non-fiction reading, right?

6. Draft 1 of the Unhinged Fiction Project: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
   Still searching for a project codename for this, but I’m really enjoying living in the cosy, magical world I’m creating.

7. Knitting progress: ⭐️⭐️
   I now have a date in the diary when I’m going to meet Baby G, so I need to get my skates on…

Best

Lily