hello, 2017.

January 7, 2017 • by kerri

Hello, 2017. Hello, blog.

I want to blog more this year. And read 50 books and watch 17 movies and write more things and learn Braille and also find more work (yay!). So I don’t know where the time for the blogging will come, but I’d like to post weekly. We’ll see how that goes.

January 1. As usual (except because I was sick last year and we delayed New Years Eve partying) I started 2017 at the Epp’s. Trish gave us pie before they went out, which we ate after midnight. We played Say Anything and Cards Against Humanity and Tom and I read parts of books that he got for Christmas. Because we are nerds?
As usual we also went to Jack Pott’s on New Year’s Day. Sadly, Dean won the annual air hockey game.

January 2. My mom and I went to bingo but apparently Share the Wealth bingo is weird. Anyways, we played penny slots after so of course I spent some quality time with Groovy Louie. I only ended up spending $19 of the $25 I put in so I consider that a win for like an hour and a half of entertainment.

January 3. Well, that’s a good mail day (after a fun day with Dean and Jackie at Kawaii Crepe and wandering the Village.)

I got a 3Doodler for Christmas but it jammed and was super terrible to get the maintenance cover back on so I took it back and got a Scribbler.

So I made Dean and Jackie things. Yay!

I also got a package from the National Foundation for Transplant regarding Steve’s lung transplant fundraising. (More to come!)

January 4. Dean and Jackie and I went for lunch with my mom, aunt and cousin Alyssa. Dean and Jackie and I went to visit my grandma. Here are pretty trees down her street that Jackie and I stopped to take a picture of.

Then that evening I used my new donut pans from Lindee to make chai donuts. They were delicious.

January 5. I did some work (what is work?!) and then went to get Dean’s oil changed with him and Jackie (exciting details, I know). Lindee made dinner including some of the best mac and cheese ever. EVAH.

These darn kids are going back to Minneapolis and I think they should just stay here.

January 6.

After a bunch of really cold days, -16 feels like a heatwave where I just about like, melted in the mall en route to work. I was tempted to take my jacket off but I settled for unzipping it and my hoodie. After work, we went to the light show which, like last year, was rad.

January 7.

First cupcake of 2017 only took 7 days. And it’s basically the prettiest damn cupcake I’ve ever had. And, it was from Save On Foods at that.

Miguel also threw a surprise party for my cousin Jenn’s birthday tonight, and while I was too busy eating that cake (Jeanne cake = best), but the cupcake really symbolizes that pretty well, too.

See ya next week! (Maybe even tomorrow, but… maybe.)

writing

NaNoWriMo: Finally.

December 1, 2016 • by kerri

Andddd… There it is.

I don’t like it as is. That is what editing is for, I’ve heard. I think—and this is the point of NaNoWriMo—the non-editing thing helped me. So the half of No Plot? No Problem! I got through before and in the first two weeks of this thing helped me, for sure.

I don’t know when I’ll edit it. I don’t know when or if I’ll ever share it. But it happened. 50,034 words, 78 pages in 11 pt Helvetica (and some in Dyslexie because use one font, ha!)

(Can you tell when I went to Toronto in the middle of the month? That’s another story for another day…)

Add on another 25,083 words for work and… Yeah, I’d say that was a pretty productive month. (And, probably explains why I was not here at all.)

And, on to December!

ADHD + learning disabilities / ADHD/LD Awareness Month / life / writing

[catching up] tips + hacks thursday: bullet journal

October 28, 2016 • by kerri

Last Winter, Nikki and a lot of the other Smart Girls with ADHD were discussing Bullet Journaling as a planning method. So by March I finally caved and tried it.

I’ve stuck with it, which is a shock for my Google Calendar-ized self who has previously been rather planner-phobic due to mostly forgetting them at home and whatnot. Hello, I couldn’t maintain control of a pencil actually being present in my backpack throughout school, how could I be expected to have not only a thing to write with but also a corresponding notebook? I still forget it sometimes, but, it’s with me when it needs to be more often than not. Being a freelancer now, I’m pretty sure the Bullet Journal system is my number one tool for being organized. (Thanks Nikki and the Smart Girls for finally making me curious enough to try. Because I NEVER thought it would work, never mind that I’d keep it up for eight months.)

What’s a bullet journal?

Mine’s a half grid-half lined journal that cost $8 at Staples. There’s an official Bullet Journal but look, I can’t even keep up the index on my non-official one and you know what? That’s the joy. IT DOES NOT MATTER. There are no pre-set thingies to make me feel guilty when I don’t fill them out. Here’s an awkward picture so you can see my washi tape tabs.

The bullet method is what actually matters (which there are a thousand variations for and that are super customizable so hey, no rules!)

Here are some snaps I took of my Bullet Journal on Wednesday.

My system is circles for events, fill them in when they’re done, and boxes for to-do items: half filled when they are started, totally filled when they are done. It’s month end so all the invoices are due and such.

Here’s all the shit I have to do that is slightly more checked off now but not actually as much as it should be probably. I guess it’s only Friday as I write this…

Zooming out, this is half of my monthly view and my work stuff that I had to get done and whatnot. I made a goals section that I realized didn’t really work because you can’t jut fill in a checkbox for a goal. Which is nice because the Bullet Journal system is all live-and-learn-y. The other page has the numbered days of the month down the left side, and then what I have to do on them but there’s not a whole lot on there because I tend to just put it into the weekly view when I need it there. Which is kind of not the point but whatever.

Clearly, it works well for me because I’ve actually been using it since March. Which is pretty cool considering I’ve never stuck with anything paper that long. I like that there’s no special notebook needed—although my interest in the Passion Planner has been piqued…

Challenge Update – Day 28

Plank
175 seconds people. That is 2:55 which is almost three minutes. Nonsense.

Meditation
Bitesize Self-Compassion on Smiling Mind. Which is maybe one of my new favourites, we will see. Also I really have to try to not just do the bitesize ones but I am not made for getting up at normal times and I’ve been super sleepy. Yes, the morning meditation thing would help.

ADHD/LD Awareness Month / mindfulness / writing

[catching up] self care sunday thursday. [24ish/31]

October 27, 2016 • by kerri

Seriously, I am not doing particularly well at this blogging challenge thing anymore. They say it takes three weeks to make a habit—I take 3 weeks to get out of what’s becoming one. I guess maybe that’s where the ADHD comes in: the novelty wears off, and so does the motivation.

I think I might be mildly more successful at this if I didn’t spend the majority of my work life writing. Which is great and I love but sometimes, you know, I don’t want to think about putting words together anymore. Or I want to go to bed at a reasonable hour to get up at a normal-people-time three days this week. (Which is super overrated by the way. Just saying. Like yes I am getting up for decent reasons, like coffee and business seminars or meetings but you know, bed is nice. Especially when it’s still dark out.)

So, yeah, I totally lapsed on this blogging thing. Which was, I suppose, possibly a bit of a self-care type move to not start seeing the world in white and black like a text composer window. And I’m almost at the end of the month, so here it is… The catch-up. Maybe November’s self care will look more like practicing self-care rather than just writing on it half-assedly. (Is that a word even?)

Challenge Update:

I can’t even catch up on the challenge update. Meditation’s been going the best but I still haven’t integrated a morning meditation—maybe a goal for November…

Planks = so hard, but so good.

ADHD/LD Awareness Month / life / mindfulness / writing

observations: google word usage trends [06/31]

October 6, 2016 • by kerri

I didn’t realize until tonight that Google had little word usage graphs under dictionary entries. When I was searching for a synonym for relax just now (to plug into the Mindfulness Pebble app because I might as well try it for 43 hours), I saw this and was kind of floored.

Case in point: in the last 2 minutes I’ve forced myself to drop my shoulders three times. Three times.

It is hard to tell with the scale of the graph but to me, it looks like there’s a pickup around the second World War, and then a pretty freaking steady incline from like 1970 onward.

And maybe people weren’t as stressed about Y2K as we thought?

Here are some other interesting observations:

We worry more…

And we’re happy less;

We give less…

And we need more…

Increasing pretty constantly.

Okay so those are some pretty broad generalizations, but interesting regardless, no? I’m curious to start paying a bit more attention to some of these words in my own world and see where those observations lead…

And what does this have to do with ADHD Awareness Month? Well, I was going to write you a post about my whiteboard, and you see where that went. 😉

Challenge Update Day 6:

Meditation: Exploring Movement (not at all following the instructions) on my walk to the bus stop today. Last night I think I did something like Listening Mindfully.

Plank: 75 seconds. I think my form completely sucked, as well. Just putting that out there ;).

Kerri on the Prairies

Seeing life differently.

writing

hello, 2017.

NaNoWriMo: Finally.

[catching up] tips + hacks thursday: bullet journal

[catching up] self care sunday thursday. [24ish/31]

observations: google word usage trends [06/31]

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