Nina's Blog - Monday 26th January 2026

Monday 26th January 2026, 10:47

Today's excuse for going out is a bit more plausible than usual. While cooking yesterday's dinner I noticed that the gas seemed a little less effective than usual. Checked the propane cylinder and saw that it was so close to empty that there was no visible liquid. So today I'll get the spare refilled.

It's also a bright sunny day so I'll go for a walk too.

Coincidentally Google Photos has just presented me with a sequence of my pictures all focussing on sunrise and similar.

This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »

ninalanyon · 70-79, T

Monday 26th January 2026, 17:35

While musing on the failure of today's errand it occurred to me that at least this failure was not mine. This led me to think about all the things I have on my to do list and how I get so few of them done.

It further occurred to me that perhaps one reason for failing to get them done is that there are so many of them so I start every day overwhelmed with things to do.

Then I pick one of the easy ones, and do part of it. Then I feel guilty that I didn't do a more important one so I drop the first and start on something more important, but usually still an easy one. I feel briefly better and more successful but the feeling of not doing what I should be doing inevitably returns and with a feeling of discouragement I stop for a snack and watch a YouTube video. Of course one can't watch just one and I surface an hour later, if I'm lucky, feeling both foolish and that it's too late now to do anything useful today as I'm now feeling tired and out of sorts.

The next day I repeat the process.

So, as I have said to myself many, many, times, something must be done.

So now I'm going to try an experiment. Instead of confronting my to do list every day I will decide a day in advance which single item I will do and give myself permission to ignore all the rest for that day. I don't mean that the rest are forbidden merely that none are compulsory and even if I start one i am to feel no guilt at not finishing it because i will already have done, or at least made a real attempt at doing, that one item.

So I'll retrospectively declare that today's one item was the gas. I didn't succeed but I did make a reasonable try. Tomorrow I will answer an email from an old friend that I have been putting off reading for a couple of weeks at least. I might write up some of that here later as it is actually quite relevant to my life's journey, sadly.

If anyone is reading all this i do hope you don't find it too boring. Do feel free to weigh in with advice, criticism, ideas. I can't promise to heed any of it though, my to do list is already overflowing.