You would think that our decision to cancel the wedding would have made me more relaxed and carefree. But one of my superpowers is my ability to always find something to stress about. In the last two months, this is what my stress superpower has come up with:

1. Preparing the flat for sale (although this is more Piers’ doing).

   We’ve been working on it for months. At first I thought it was going to take two weekends, at the most, to declutter and clean, then it’s ready to go on the market.

   But Piers keeps coming up with something new to do every week. Like, paint the bathroom. Paint all the doors. Sand the bloody kitchen floor and get sawdust all over our furniture and MY STUFF. Varnish the floor, then paint that over with floor paint. Etc. We’ve gone to Homebase like five times to buy a different of paint each time. You get the idea.

    

   

 

2. Doing MOOCs (massive open online courses).

   These are free online courses offered by universities for anyone interested in learning a wide range of subjects offered. Check out FutureLearn (UK-based) and edX (USA based) if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

   I’m currently doing two courses: “The Secret Power of Brands” and “How to read… a mind” at FutureLearn (with two more lined up next month).

   I know it probably sounds to you like I’m trying to add to my plethora of superpowers but there’s nothing sinister going on there, I promise you. The first course teaches what goes behind successful brands and the second is all about cognitive poetics, which is the science of literary criticism and interpretation.

    

   

 

3. Doing research on parenting and pregnancy.

   No, NO, I’m not pregnant. This is just a subject I’m very interested in, following my Montessori training. And I also think it’s never too early to get knowledgeable on the topic, whether you’re planning to have a kid now or in five years’ time.

   If anyone is ever going to have a child, I believe they owe it to their child to learn as much about children as possible so they don’t unintentionally stifle their physical, mental and social growth, all of which will play a huge part in the quality of the child’s future life.

    

   

 

4. Eating healthy meals.

   I’m trying to, anyway, so am spending a lot of time cooking meals so that we stop eating supermarket junk meals or takeaway junk food all the time. Although I’m not quite sure my meals are healthier than junk food since I use a ridiculous amount of seasonings and sauces to make my meals tasty.

   I was given clonazepam by my family doctor because of recurrent depression with anxiety and panic. In the past 10 years, I have had 3 episodes, one severe and 2 medium. At that time I took opipramol and did 2 behavioral therapies, with moderate success. No real reason was found, except high self-claims. This time I also took Xanax for 2 weeks.

   Still, home cooked means we’re eating a lot more vegetables and I’m buying more organic and free range foodstuff, so all that has to count for something, right?

   But the point is that this is all very time-consuming, not just in the cooking and washing up part, but also the meal research/planning and grocery shopping.

    

   

 

5. Reading fan-translated English versions of Louis Cha’s novels.

   I’m currently going through the Condor trilogy, which is kind of like the Lord of the Rings of the Chinese literary world. But my god his novels are long. If Louis Cha (aka Jin Yong) were a JK Rowling type of writer, he could have turned one of his novels into 10, and made a hell lot of more money. (His stories are definitely way better than Harry Potter ones.) But he probably doesn’t need any more money, being currently the best-selling Chinese author alive (according to Wikipedia).

   I usually finish an average novel in one to three days. The first Condor novel took me three weeks. I had to slow down for the second novel because of all the above endeavours, and it’s taken me five weeks to get to 65%.

   Well, reading novels isn’t particularly a stressful endeavour but we all need something to do for pure pleasure and reading’s my poison. (Gaming used to be it but games aren’t what they used to be, with IAP models taking over the world, bah).

    

   

So, that’s what’s current in my life. Believe me, there’s a lot more on the back burner waiting to occupy my time. Blogging is one of them. Blogging should never have left the “current” list but that’s just how it went.

There’s a bit of a story as to why I stopped blogging, part of which had to do with the failure of the designer I hired to code my new blog design last year, but that’s a bit boring to talk about after that long list I just made you read, so I won’t.

If you didn’t read any of the above and just scrolled to the bottom, here’s the td;lr version: I have been freaking busy, thanks in part to Piers’ over-ambition at doing up the flat just to sell it, and more in part to me studying too many subjects at once. Typical.

Now, let me get on with it.