Goal failures

Well, I failed in my goal of at least 6 outings in January including one daytime outing, and I'm well on the way to failing that goal for February too.

I took holidays until mid January, and as I mentioned about a fortnight ago, going back to work really put me off balance. My workload has been so bad that I haven't had time to sit down and write blog posts let alone getting out.

Another couple of weeks on and things have been even worse than I anticipated. A planned day off fell apart because a client had a vehicle break down and couldn't get to me until the following day. A paperwork backlog has forced me to spend many hours in the office, usually meaning that I'm so late getting to bed that I struggle to get up at a reasonable time in the morning. That's another goal failure - I've made no progress sorting out my sleep pattern.

Then there was this week. We had a fairly mild first half of summer, but the past few days have been more normal for here. Temperatures have been around 40C (about 105F) since about 26th January. On Tuesday this week, I had to drive to several places around town for work. Each time I parked the car, it got very hot inside. Each time I drove to the next place, there wasn't enough time for the car to cool down, so I got hotter and hotter through the day. By the time I got home, I had heatstroke and had to lie down in a cool room with the curtains closed to try to recover. A friend suggested that I should take a cold bath, but the water coming out of the cold tap was quite warm!

I'm sad to say that I missed my first Tuesday night cafe night in well over a year. Worse, I had to go to Sydney on Wednesday for work, meaning that I also missed the monthly Central Coast cafe night. We went by train there and back and I made the mistake of letting my travelling companion choose where we sat. It was about 2.5 hours each way and on both occasions he put me in a window seat on the sunny side of the train, which added to my feeling unwell.

After struggling though work on Thursday and Friday, I was looking forward to relaxing and recuperating on Saturday and perhaps trying to go out on Sunday. My mother has other plans for me, though. She rang me on Friday evening to tell me that they are doing a big clean-up at their place and that I have to go there over the weekend to sort some possessions of mine that have been at their place since I left home over a decade ago!

The weather won't be cool, and I can neither fit my car in their driveway nor park in front of their house, so I'll have to lug whatever I want to keep up the steep driveway and along the street in the heat to load it into my car. If I do that Saturday, I will probably spend the entire day Sunday trying to recover from heat stroke again. That makes 3 planned outings in a row down the drain. :(

On the upside, I may well soon be unemployed and have much more time to get out. :)