Enough time

I enjoyed today. It felt like the day stretched, I got up a little after 5, I did a little bit of study, I did some preparation for the day and the week which will follow, and then it just felt like I had plenty of time to do other things as well. I booked in a slot at the tip and while I was filling in the form I got a notification to say that my 10 AM slot had gone. I quickly booked in a noon slot instead.  I did contemplate going out for a Sunday roast but I then thought, why spend the money, I’ve already bought a bunch of groceries why not why not cook those up and enjoy myself at home.

I like the structure that comes from having an appointment. As I went about my morning I knew I had something to do around 12:00 and that would mean leaving the house and having the car loaded up with all of the litter and detritus I wanted to take with me to the tip. Excuse me, to the recycling centre. There’s an endless supply of things which need to be taken to the recycling centre. I have a stack of concrete blocks out front, I have bags of concrete dust and broken tiles and in the back garden I have bags of plant material from when my brothers came over a few weeks back. Just inside the back gate there is the broken down shed, some of which still needs to be taken away.

Come to think of it, I picked up some doors for free from Facebook marketplace and they were not as good as I thought they were when I saw the advertisement. I also need to take those to the tip as well. Those are more difficult because the doors are too long to fit into the car easily so really I need to find a few minutes to cut them into half and then I’ll be able to take them all to the tip quite easily.

It’s about 10 minutes each way to the Allington recycling centre from where I live and in a life where I spend a lot of time on my own, usually sat at the computer, it’s actually quite a nice little thing to get out and to go and do something and speak to some other people and drop the stuff off. I almost feel disappointed when it’s time to come home again, sometimes poking around the little second hand shop that they have on site just to extend the experience.

I felt like I got plenty done in the morning. This isn’t a huge surprise. There are about six hours between when I wake up and 12:00 in the Sunday morning. So there’s plenty of opportunity to get things done. I made myself a 2027 plan on a page, which is really just a calendar I draw out myself on a piece of A3 paper. I made one for 2026 and it’s been really nice to sort of see how that came together. In many ways it was a breaking up from L document.

I made the first one a few days after she and I separated. To give myself some sort of accountability for how I was going to use the time through to when I moved to the house, including the time that I was living at M’s place.

The afternoon went much the same as the morning, and I felt I had enough time to play some games and to relax a little bit, to cook some food, and I cooked three containers of vegetables which I can then eat over the next few days with rice and other staples. I spent some time studying for my class tomorrow morning. I’m really keen to improve the study time that I invest in between classes and to make sure that I continue to progress through HSK 4.