#WeekendCoffeeShare. In Careful Measures

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Welcome to my Weekend Coffee Share, hosted by Allison at eclecticali.wordpress.com!  You may have whatever you like, me, I’ll only have half a cup.  I’m trying to be healthy by cutting my coffee intake, you know, to help myself fall asleep at night and keep calm during the day and to relax when I want to.  Last week I had a screenplay deadline just because I wanted to do something new.  The end of last week involved catching up on editing that I’d missed and trying to de-stress.  No matter what, I could not turn my brain off.  This week, I tried some adjustments.  In true Bridget Jones fashion, (Minus the musings over men and the quirky, partying friends) I’ve recorded my self-analysis daily.  Here’s how it went:

Day 1, Sunday:  Drank- 1/2 cup.  Felt: Normal, but I went to church and had forgotten my offering on my dresser.  😦  Still, I felt quite normal once I got there.  At lunch, I felt fine.  Thoughts were a little calmer.  However, this was not a workday.  Let’s see how tomorrow goes.  By the way, I went grocery shopping that evening, and they didn’t have my flavor of the V8 energy juice 😦 (Fueled by green tea).  I was beside myself.  Still, we’ll see how it goes…

Day 2 Monday: Drank- my last V8 green tea energy juice with a little cranberry and half a cup of coffee.  All I could see was a half-empty cup.  Still, I felt fine during the day, but I sure felt tired at 8 p.m.  However, I got at least 30 minutes of editing in before that!

Day 3 Tuesday: Drank- Less than half a cup of coffee.  However, I had bought a Starbucks refresher drink made with green coffee.  So in the morning, I felt good. I’m a person of set routines, but I did plan ahead for this one.  Unlike finding out my favorite yoga class was moved forward an hour, so I can’t eat dinner until 8 p.m. on yoga night.  Must adjust…

Day 4 Weds.: Drank- 1 whole cup of coffee, my gift to myself. Or, maybe a crutch.  I was up late the night before, since my son, who rarely has conversations with me, wanted to talk.   Then, he put on a movie, Point Break.  I said it was okay, but I’d likely fall asleep.  I did, but later than usual.  My bedroom is the closest to the living room, so t.v. and movies can be heard from there and we normally have all of that off at 10 p.m.  This was an exception; I plan to be back to the 1/2 cup goal tomorrow.  Being there for our kids is what mothers do.

Day 5- Thurs.: Drank: 1/2 cup of coffee, and a little bit of Energy V8 with orange juice.  This was a rather carbonated V8.  I do not prefer that; still, it is certainly better than drinking too much coffee.  My energy level was fine all day, though I did feel tired when I got home.  I felt like it was 90 degrees today.  One thing I am noticing with the decrease in coffee is that I seem less tense in my body.  That could be a motivation to stick to the decrease.

Day 6- I subsisted on just half a cup of coffee and some V8.  I figured by Friday I would be pooped and need more.  I felt tired in the afternoon, but it could be due to the very light lunch and lack of time to finish off that apple.  😦 Don’t worry, I made up for it by having beef with my Thai Ginger Stir fry.  Yum!  I stayed up at least until midnight because my boyfriend and I were watching Hostiles.  Man, that movie was great!  Conflict main character, morally slippery supporting characters, trying to love your enemy.  It really reached me.  That, and I love Christian Bale.  I also think Rosamund Pike plays shock and grief oh, so well.  That just may be her niche.  Do you see how I snuck in a movie review?  If you can handle blood and violence in gritty Western style, you should check Hostiles out!

Day 7- Sat.:  I had most of a Starbucks bottled frappucino, because, well, it was free.  My boyfriend had it left behind by his visiting cousin and gave it to me.  Oh, they are tasty.  Caffeine-wise, I am probably off of the wagon for the day.  Perhaps I’ll get more editing done for my sequel, Undercurrents in Time.  I have forty-five pages left to do, so maybe I’ll channel the extra caffeine energy.  It’s all good!  Going forward, I am not going to measure my intake.  Still, I plan to have more half-a-cup days and will let myself drink the whole cup when I feel I need it.  Perhaps this will calm my 20-open-computer-tabs tendencies.  Maybe? 🙂

How did your week go?  Am I nuts to try to decrease caffeine intake?  My mind is still pretty active.  Caffeine is a friend to me that I sometimes need to distance myself from.  Where do you stand with caffeine?

Visit other coffee shares and share yours at Eclectic Ali May 5th

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Weekend Coffee Share. Delayed Rush

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Welcome to my Weekend Coffee Share, hosted by Allison at eclecticali.com.  I normally would be drinking coffee right now, but I’m putting it off since I want to maximize my relaxation today.  I really need to relax, (spoken with a nervous tick in my eye).

Do you know what middle-schoolers are like in the springtime?  You do?  Okay, multiply that by twenty.  Add in a dash of test anxiety and total relief when it’s all over.  I mean, nobody wants to learn anything right after taking an hour and a half test.  That describes my week.

Add  to that my participation in a screenplay contest that required me to learn a whole new format for my story ideas.  Formatting in Word?  Not my forte.  I am thinking short stories are more for me.  But I did it!  I finished and sent it off.  Now we wait for feedback.  I don’t expect to win anything.    At any rate, I’ll be editing a novel in the meantime, so I guess these two months will go by quite quickly.  I have a crick in my neck and a tick in my eye.  Hence, the reason I am delaying my coffee.  No, you go right ahead.  I really don’t mind.

I can delay my coffee need; I have an appointment at noon for ninety minutes in a float tank!  I remember how much better my stressed shoulders felt after the last time.  Except, last time, I kept coming back to my thoughts and observations.  I had a cup of coffee before I went.  I don’t need to be so alert.  Maybe I just need to slip a way for a little while…

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It’s worth a try.  I feel like a mermaid in the tank, and while it’s not as stylish and roomy as the one pictured here (plus the fact that my face is above water), I love the feeling of floating.  Either way, it’ll be good for relaxing my body.  I’m sure, when I’m done, I’ll head right for the coffee shop on the corner.

That’s my life lately.  I still have half of my editing to do on Undercurrents in Time.  Have you read Detours in Time yet?  The sequel is coming…

In the meantime, I’ve listened to Lana del Rey a lot lately.  Do you have any suggestions for inspiring music?  I always like something new.

Have a great week!  How are things in your corner of the world?  Please send your suggestions for music to inspire and help me kick back.  Not the kind to put me to sleep, but to take me away from the day’s frustrations and checklists of what is undone.  It’ll all wait.

Thanks to Allison for keeping the #WeekendCoffeeShare going.  Visit her and see other coffee shares or even submit your own at Eclectic Alli

Weekend Coffee Share. “What I Can Plan and What I Can’t.” 1/20

Coffee, Pen, Notebook, Work, Book

Photo via Pixabay.

Welcome to my Weekend Coffee Share, hosted by Allison at https://eclecticali.wordpress.com/

Oh, I’m feeling a little tired today.  Last night I got a message that my beta-reader’s notes and suggestions were done, but I didn’t have time to view it yet.  I am giving myself the weekend.  I have one more beta reader who should be available the end of this month, and then I’ll revise, edit, and send to a professional editor the draft for my sequel to Detours in Time.  This is hard work, and my full-time work isn’t getting easier.  That’s okay, I’ve given myself the right to only publish one book this year if that is all that gets done.  Meanwhile, I have other ideas hopping in my head that I’ve outlined or just typed into summary form to flesh out later.  After years of giggling at my own ideas and losing them an hour later because all I could do was dream, I decided to start putting those dreams on paper.  Thank God I did!  This is such a wonderful mind exercise.

As I said, the editing/revising process is hard work, and it at times requires a good amount of sequestering.  I found beta-readers in writing groups and plan to find an editor online who can give me a good turn around time.  I’d like to get this book out over the summer when I have time off, so I can give it the nurturing it needs to grow a readership.  Still, I like the sociability of blogging, so, right now I am tending to do one Weekend Coffee Share or reflection and one Flash Fiction challenge a week.  We share them in one central place as well as on our blog so that we can see each other’s work and comment.  There are frequent posters whom I know by name and I like to keep up with news from their parts of the world or see what sort of fiction they spit out based on the photo prompt.  That is the sociability that keeps me writing when those reading my book won’t leave reviews and when I have a slow book week.  It happens.  I am in the acorn stage.  Maybe one day I’ll be a tree.  🙂

The home front is not too bad, I must say; my son is working steadily and has been for 7 months.  He had a few troubles last year.  The biggest one, the alcohol issue, seems to be resolved.  His moods are light.  I see him smile at the dog and play with him, whereas he wouldn’t do that before.  I don’t feel like such a caretaker where he is concerned; it feels like he is now an adult who gladly gives me a portion of his paychecks.  Albeit, one who lives at home and can’t afford to move.  After what we went through, I like having him close by for now.  As I was thinking such positive things, my mother texted me last night that she fell near the doorstep and a friend took her to the E.R.  Her arm is broken; she had broken the other one last year.  I met her at the E.R. last night.  She’s hurting.  I hate to see this.  I know it’s part of getting older.  Everything I see in her is me in twenty some years.  I myself deal with muscle pains when I get up in the morning.  Yesterday I joked about suiting up with Ben Gay under my layers. (Yes, it has been in the 20’s and 30’s in Jacksonville, Florida several mornings this week).  I feel like I am getting a ‘poor me’ tone here, and I hate that.  We survived the E.R. though, and no one seems to have caught the flu.  Visions of Sheldon in the hospital episode kept dancing through my head.  I did abstain from restroom use while there.  She and I talked about exercises that strengthen the bones.  “Weight-lifting,” she said.  I do yoga, and that involves lifting your own body weight, but really, not often enough.

Time to add a ten minute arm weight routine to my morning stretches.  The challenge is just beginning.  I shall greet each new year with humor and laughter, just as my mother has on her best days.  Why, she even cracked a joke last night about not being able to drink wine. 🙂

Join the Weekend Coffee Share at https://eclecticali.wordpress.com/2018/01/19/weekendcoffeeshare-sushi-cheese-and-being-brave/ by reading others’ posts and/or adding yours by clicking on the blue InLinkz button.

Have a great week!  -Pam

 

 

 

 

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