Friday March 31, 2017 @ 8:10 am
- Good morning. This is me. This seems to be at least a full week since we've written last. I better check that to make sure and to find what we've been missing. Hmm, it's been 8 days now ... the kind of stuff we were talking about the last time was first about the kids going to TN without saying anything before, during or after. Eh ... what do we care, right? Why would I be interested in my children (LIFE SUCKS!)
- OK, and then the next thing was that there was bleeding 3 days after the last note and that has continued ever since then - it is coming most likely from my uterine area and is most likely due to endometrial hyperplasia that I've had a couple times before. We have a gynecologist appointment on Monday morning - so we'll know more after that - just have to keep things on an even keel - maybe more about this later. We talked a little bit about the doctor appointments of Dr. Dorman And Dr. Marvin - and being able to see Juliana.
- Things were pretty normal with Rich and Linda and we were working on a newer project with bullet lists. I think we were still having problems with getting to the floors and we'd talked about health and fitness between the new carb diet and seeing Amie and Mark the nurse and PT relatively speaking. We had just made the appointment with the pain specialist on April 10th.
- and we were discussing our relationship with Evernote EN, Getting Things Done GTD, and a newer one starting the beginning of the month called Simplify Days SD. Bullet points or bullet journals was just added - and with that we had added our first tracker to keep track of the daily things, though we haven't when pushed been using it since - we've been instead trying to keep up with just EN. And, we've discovered if the books/journals aren't out, they are going to be forgotten about.
- And, that has to be wrestled with our new consumption habit of eating sunflower seeds ... more later. OH, and the last thing that had happened last time, was that we created a Master contents for the month. I think we're going to catch that up now, but we were happy with it ... and although the last several days missed, it is in a format to catch-up and be useful. ... so again maybe more of that later, but this is the general gist on where all things were and will start this blogging session. YAY!
- This is a summary we wrote, and then emailed Rich and Dr. Marvin. I think it's pretty good - though not REAL smooth. We comlpleted it after taking notes on capture from the master monthly notes.
- Ann is on her own on April 1, 2017 - Rich is gone fishing for the week, and we have time to look over what we were working on during the month of March, 2017. It feels as if it had been very busy, and the following is about the best written monthly summary we've ever done. I believe we had started being "in" Evernote (EN) again, so we were in the right zone, but we met "Simplify Days" (SD), and from there things took off. It was the beginning of a new month and we were very excited. We found through that system - regular templates for things such as 1) diet goals, 2) food journals, 3) Step routines, 4) Inspiration, 5) Self-regulation, 6) 30-day tracker, 7) w/trainer workout log, 8) Weight tracker, and others.
- We also found the notebook put out by SD called "Clarity Journal" with two sections. The first is a week to week "focus" including the many hats we might wear, and the other many pages are to "capture" written messages of anything you'd like - especially things that are inspiring, tasks and projects, calendar and references. As well, we had gotten a moleskin journal and eventually there was a lot of learning to use a "bullet journal" system to simplify and beautify our written work which would then get uploaded - mostly by phone and EN App to our EN program. After that things came like new pens, post-it pads, washi tape and our obvious staple of instructions on how to use EN and GTD and other ideas that utilize those two components better The most fun was learning about the more graphical interface of "pretty" journals.
- We utilized "brain dumping" to get a lot of tasks out of our head and down onto paper as well as routines, but after a while, we developed a better system adding a lot of information particularly through a EN notebook of "March-stuff," which helped us hold a better sense from our normal loss of time as a Multiple. Then, then later we became more pro-active in entering information from our various scripts of hand-written notes - as things coming in, that needed to be cared for. As well we went over the old EN listings and paired the old notes and notebooks AND tags with the new "next actions" with "projects" and "responsibilities" both in EN and our Mind Map (MM).
- The other lessons of the month included marketing/blogging, social media, coloring, webinars, health info - especially weight, carbs and diabetic, flipping through others' journals for ideas and meeting "systems" advocates like Boho Berry, Apsi, Steve Dotto, and Jim Scanno. We seem to be looking for "systems" again that will work for us all. Mostly though, we were following principles of capturing information, processing it, and then evaluating it's usefulness - in particular being mindful.
- We had other regular tasks, such quilting with the girls, IMing with Linda, writing to Lisa (a friend Multiple), following "The Mighty" (a source put together for the writing of people who are disabled), and we are reading not only health, but quite a bit of political information on a daily basis. We continue to see Dr. Marvin and have added visits by our new nurse, Amie and our new PT, Mark.
- We continue to make appointments and get things noted to our Google calendar. We did collect a special project folder and put in each (to be worked on later) a "Project Overview" template which includes the project title, purpose, main goals, project manager, team members, teams involved, project risks, materials, reference information and a few more sections for developing project ideas and planning, timeline, task trackers, closure and sign-off. This had been what initially got us started with SD. We wanted to incorporate the work, goals and imagination of all the parts being assigned to projects and teams within us. We wanted to know more about us and the things that interested us, and then adding regularity.
- We've got newer physical information on our one self, such as medical x-rays and MRI on the condition of our back/spine and we had extra problems with what is probably endometrial hyperplasia. Diabetes has also taken a lot of time and attention and has been worked through with Dr. Marvin, the nurse, PT, Rich and various other health care providers. Amie, the nurse, was the one that suggested a 60 carb diet. YAY! Everything has follow-up doctor appointments, AND there is a LOT of resting between things. We seem to nap once in the afternoon, and then we nap before bedtime between 7 pm and 8 pm. Sometimes our health really slows down our mental and written EN "system-building." We are still cautiously watching over the Tylenol 3 w/codeine, which is helping with pain, but making us more tired (probably) and making it difficult to drive long distances like to Dr. Marvin's.
- At times we got up to about 20-24 items in our EN inbox not cleared before we went to bed which is frustrating. Between the inbox on EN and our EN Daily reminders sorted and resorted by date), well this is what is keeping us afloat and not lost. We are excited about the Adobe part, but a bit fearful on the learning curve. We do enjoy getting younger parts like Anniemi involved in the doodling to even our pressures a bit. We were able to remember back to a time we'd practiced drawing over and over a French mouse with very big ears!
- Everything is helping us feel less forgetful, or maybe as forgetful, but less likely to forget stuff. One of the things we hung on to remembering was our own house. This is a familiar problem of losing ourselves in the house, other than, what can be seen of our life here at the computer - especially with Rich gone. Dr. Marvin is helping us get some physical things done like finishing the quilt to Juliana.
- We spent time on "Zillow" a real-estate site loading pictures and a description of the house as it now stands in about 32 pictures. This gives us a sense of comfort that we can take our house with us wherever we go, OR when we're just afraid to turn or walk around the rooms.
- We've found a good process and practiced the EN clipper, but don't know what use of all the information we're reading though it seems good to capture, so will be able to better situate ourselves later when ideas start coming in. Two newly learned ways of collecting or "gathering" information was that we discovered how to import all our book and e-book files from Word into handy separate notes for each chapter/e-book. We'll go back for more Word documents later, and will have to check into importing pictures. We also found a new system for collecting Amazon highlighted notes from all of our Kindle books - both a GREAT boon and very exciting in the future area of research - especially, when writing blog entries and doing more analysis and synthesis. Perhaps, we should go back here to Bloom's Taxonomy? Facebook has a newer service also put-forward, so daily, it offers past glimpses pushed forward into present time, and then, of course, we can share that info. We've been reticent of sharing some of this other information - basically, our MARCH PROJECTS. We want to get it down first.
- We've been trying to make it regular where we copy information from our old Blog, "Ayn's Multiple World" (1200 entries) over to our e-books at least once a day - we need to work harder here, and we had a couple of tasks following us all month - with both taking care of the hard floor, and getting paperwork sorted and filed along with getting our taxes out. We were better at keeping up with general housekeeping like picking-up, keeping a clean kitchen and dining table and getting the laundry through. We weren't able to get back into coloring or quilting after a few instances of both. The days that we can keep up with our TOAM (Things on Ann's Minds) through the blog writing are the best, but not frequent enough!
- Our purchasing at Amazon continues - this time especially for tools towards this journaling process through online processes like EN, snagit, Word, and Now the BIGGEST - Adobe! Adobe is being paid for out of Rich's business account. We would love to get a paper guillotine that costs about $100 and would chop the spine off our old books 300 pages at a time. We're afraid though that our scanner couldn't keep up with the need. The scanner was purchased about 5+ years ago and was about $500. People are still recommending using Fujitsu scansnap scanners w/EN. It still works, just fussy like our printer. Somehow, one day everything is going to be funneled to the e-books and our life will be pushed out there!
- We were also trying to work with Rich. He had a few tasks that came up such as revising his web site which took a long journey into getting Adobe Creative Cloud back on its two legs. We were successful, but Rich ran out of time to sit down before his fishing trip. We also have to switch something over so that his Google calendar matches both his computer and phone, and there were other tasks especial scanning business or fishing maps and him learning to use the Snagit program. His major areas continue to be home, health, fishing, his mom and work.
- He worked tremendously hard on all with the additional food concerns, we are both now on the carb diet (March 20th, 2017) and he's been learning how to shop and cook differently as well as come to agreement with us on how to process and eat. He continues to do other errands as well particularly driving us to appointments and taking care of pharmacy of both me and his mother. He still is working with issues of anger, but has been much more patient with us as to our health needs and us needing time to process "our business." His business is booming and we both managed to get out our taxes before the end of the month, YAY!
- The hardest part of Rich this month still isn't resolved. He wants me to work with him and his business 10 hours a week @ $10 an hour. A lot would be paperwork and marketing, and we feel we're worth more. Neither, I'm real interested in. I'm afraid I'd still never see the money and that it would return to Amazon like what he's already paying. He's trying to emphasize there would be less guilt, but we're worried about still not having enough time in the day. The fun part of Rich this month was that Jillian was here for a couple overnights! All in all - it's been a GREAT month!
- I would love to do more with Rich in life - both with play and work - and the fitness parts of our goal fit being more able with him. Maybe one of our goals of April will be not being so tired - and getting the meds down right so that doesn't interfere with our more lofty goals. I'm losing independence with Dr. M. I'm looking forward to getting started on the next new month! And, as overall goals, I would like to see the EN processes more locked down and less foggy, and less household clutter, and Rich would like to see me out more. Dakota is always game, and we will be seeing the boys and their families the day before Easter :)