Winter is coming to Queensland and I can feel it. In the new place I live, the flooring is wood and there are a lot of windows, and that chilly winter breeze in the morning is divine. I love the cold, because I love the feeling of being warmed up, and I find the winter air so refreshing—invigorating.

The household is starting to settle, and once the end of the lease comes up from my previous place and all the end of lease things are done, I’ll be free to de-stress. I love this new place. It’s amazing. But I haven’t been doing a lot in terms of writing and reading just yet. I knew moving was going to be stressful and busy, but I also hadn’t prepared myself enough. Emptying a house I’d been living in for eight years took time. I also had some medical issues in the past week, and the stress had my mind and body taut. But I can feel it unravelling, and I’m looking forward to making my new workspace as productive as possible.

FINALLY—I have a second job sorted. It’s at the same place that my original agreement fell through but another store (retail). I’m not overly excited to go back to retail, but I am excited to return to a workplace I’m familiar with and to be earning more money.

Now, to what’s actually on the agenda for this week.

Work

I start my second job this week, either Wednesday or Friday. They’re trying to get me in as early as possible, but it depends on how quickly they can rush HR on the matter. I don’t quite have my uniform together, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there. I also don’t quite have my physical health together, but that’s also something that I will improve with working there.

I now have a contract with my primary job, which is great, and my roster with both jobs looks like it will be Tuesday–Saturday.

Household

As the person of the pair who like maintaining the household and spends the most time at home, I will also continue to find my groove in routine for keeping our place clean and organising food etc. It’s satisfying and fun having control over all the spaces of the house—and by control I mean freedom to organise really—and thus far I think I’ve been doing well with it. There are a lot of things I want to do (like cooking and making cleaning and cosmetic products from scratch etc.), which I think I’ve covered before, and so I’ll just talk a little about them on here in future posts … if they’re successful.

Reading

I have a stack of novels on my bedside table (now that I have one) and have been trying to figure out the best time for me to read, and also which one I want to continue with. I have about ten or eleven ongoing, but just want to pick three I can stomach to rotate through right now. The stress and anxiety has made it hard to really do anything, including reading, and so I’m trying to gauge what will be easiest to get back into.

I have started writing my book reviews—like I said I would, for once—and am using those little reviews from books I’ve read a long time ago to try and grease my writing wheels so I can get back to where I was at around March. I think it’s helping to start with the little things like that. Maybe I need to put the bigger novels aside for a moment and read some smaller books.

Writing

The amount of writing I have done in the past month or two has been abysmal. I’ve really only been writing for work, and drawing up shopping lists. I’ve started trying to get back into writing by completing smaller tasks (like with reading) but I’m hoping that once I’m done with my previous house, the stress and anxiety will ease a bit faster, and I’ll be able to become a better, more productive writer. Especially now that I will be working almost full-time across the two jobs.