Cancelled

I canceled my Chinese class today. I’m not very happy about it and yet at the same time I feel I am appropriately focusing on the things I need to get done. Work is kind of important. On second thoughts, I think I’m OK with cancelling class. I went to bed early last night to make sure I would wake up this morning feeling refreshed and ready for the day. Ironically my watch thought I only slept for two hours but that’s because I slept from 8:00 until 10:00 PM and then I got up, pottered around a little bit and then went back to sleep.

Felt really good in the morning and immediately started working, cranked through the documents I needed to produce and then switched to thinking about the rest of what I needed to do.

I’m procrastinating and putting things off. As much as I engage in procrastination I also feel a sense of terrific joy when focusing on a task, making sure it’s getting done in good time, and that feeling of satisfaction that comes from spending enough time on something you feel that you’ve done it well and properly.

I would say I generally don’t feel this way about Chinese study. Every time a class rolls around I feel like I should have spent more time preparing for it. My teacher indicated she has other students who simply pass everything she tests them on. When she assigns them work, perhaps “learn these two dialogues” they learn the two dialogues when she says “learn these 30 words” they learn the 30 words when she says “write these characters until you can write them when they’re dictated to you” they write them and write them until they can do it.

It’s always humbling to hear her say this sort of thing “you’re spoken Chinese is terrible” “your grammar is non-existent” et cetera but not hurtful enough that I change my habits.

I think the reality is I have to earn enough money to pay the mortgage, not even the rent anymore, I have to pay my mortgage and I have to feed myself, I have to pay the money towards the children, and I need to pay for another few years, I need to rebuild some kind of savings, and that’s months away because there are so many costs to pay down at the moment. I do appreciate these things are self-inflicted.

I didn’t need to replace the heating system, I could have left the house completely alone for a few months but I think I wanted to get on with doing something to it, so so far I’ve removed the wall between the dining room and the kitchen, I’ve knocked down the wall in the bathroom, I’ve knocked down the wall in the downstairs bathroom. Most of it these are things I didn’t need to do but I have done them so I should at least recognise that a lot of the pressure I put myself under is self-generated.

The same can be said of my relationship status. L said she would be willing to come with me to live in this house in Kent and I’m the one who broke up with her anyway. Every time I complain to myself about being alone or being lonely or feeling isolated or wanting to have somebody else to share life’s experiences with I should remind myself I’m the person who asked to be alone. Oddly this doesn’t stop me missing L anyway.