It’s been a bit since my last full on blog entry.  Working translation every week is still a bit draining as I do my 4 or 5 hours in the mornings.  Then I allow my afternoon/evenings to be devoted to normal work.  I shouldn’t really be drinking coffee this late in the day, but once the sun goes down I find it difficult to concentrate otherwise.

Lately life has been very stressful for the FlamingLunchbox crew.  Holidays have a tendency to do that, it seems.  Visiting family, not actually able to focus on work for a while, both accentuate normal stresses beyond regular levels simply from the change.  In total we were unable to work for about 5 days.  As we left with some still unfinished projects hanging over our heads, it was perhaps a bit less relaxing than it ought to have been.  It’s difficult when you hope to get particular goals finished by a certain trip date, and unexpected complications crop up.  

To help us to continue to strive and be productive we have defined a couple of New Years resolutions for the upcoming year.  The best part is the moment we returned home we started working on them.  We’ve instituted a work-schedule.  We have to be at our desks at 8 am, even if the work we do is crap for that first hour.  We must stop all work at 7pm.  That makes us focus more on actually getting work done during the time we’ve allotted ourselves.

I briefly discussed that we had started running on a regular basis together.  Breaks always tend to mess with your routine, and it did so with ours.  However we are back, and we started running again today.  We’re only running a mile, but we make sure to do almost every day of the week.  Our New Years resolution is to run everyday, at least a mile and work up as we want to.  It’s not a long distance, and we’re not necessarily pushing hard, but there is something to say about completing a short run each day.  When you look back at what you did, you can always say to yourself...I ran...and then you can smile.

Our last mutual New Years resolution, is to do all of our dishes every evening before we retire for the night.  This may not seem like a lot to those of you who own a microwave or dishwasher, but we have neither.  This means many pots to clean by hand.  If we both simply make sure it happens each night it won’t feel like as much of a chore anymore.  This was greatly inspired by Robey’s parents, as they really have a system down when it comes to cleaning their kitchen each evening.  

I feel like a lot of my own stress was coming from continuously feeling like I wasn’t getting enough done, that the house never seemed clean, and I was never working enough to stay fit.  Add on to that my worry-wart tendencies and I’ve got cancerous sores everywhere....you get the picture.  Cutting it down to three categories that both Robey and I can work on together is going to help us both make the changes we want.  Working from home it’s very difficult to separate your job and play sometimes.  It’s even more difficult when parts of your job is to play.  Oi!