Alarming
I read something the other day which sounded like a good piece of advice. Every day, write down something good that happened to you that day, or that you did for someone else, and put it in a jar. At the end of the year you can take them out and remember all the good things that happened during the year. I suppose I do a similar kind of thing with the blog, though not every day. Maybe I well keep a jar, or a diary, and jot things down once per week and see what I have at the end of the year. If I remember to do it.
Which reminds me, I must go and buy a diary. I was going to get myself one before Christmas but then thought, ‘No, last year I bought one in Prague and then received four for Christmas, so I will wait.’ Of course it was the one thing I was not presented with this year, so, next time I am in Yialos, I will see what’s available. I assume you are all set with yours and your Symi Dream calendar (see over there on the right).
New Year’s Day, the feast day of Saint Vasilis (and his mother, Emmeleia and others), was observed on Symi with people having their own family days. There was a party at Georgio’s and some fun and games afterwards at the Sunrise Café. We were with the godboys and family for fun and feasting, games and mayhem as usual, and wandered home in the very chilly air around nine in the evening. Morning came far too quickly. We have this new alarm clock that I’ve not yet figured out. The time was set for 6.30, the usual time for getting up when not on holiday, but it only went off once, before Christmas, and then with the snooze set to repeat three times at five minute intervals. I fiddled with it the other day and got it working again – I’d plugged the mains cable into the earphone socket and the batteries were starting to wear down. Yesterday it went off at 6.30 with some music from a memory card we’d plugged into it and that was fine, except it wasn’t. I’d wanted to get up at 7.30 for a kind of half-day, but no, at 6.30 there we go with a few bars of a song, turned it off, five minutes later it’s back again, three times until it silenced and I went back to sleep. An hour later my other alarm, set on my tablet, started up with its Vienna Boys’ Choir singing me a Good Morning very cheerily and the cat wishing we would let him in, very loudly. After two repeats of that one, I gave in and leapt from my bed into the eight degrees of the bedroom.
So, later today, I will find the alarm clock instructions and see how I make it work properly and prepare myself for ‘back to work’ time – 6.30, Monday to Friday. Even when you are self-employed, or especially when you are self-employed, a regular routine is the thing. It’s the only thing that keeps me on track; leaving it for later, with no boss wielding a big stick, is always a temptation. But no, from now onwards it’s back to 6.30, work, writing, blog, lunch, walk, writing and then chilling out (literally in our north-facing sitting room) for the evening. Let’s see how long I can keep that routine going.
