Day 10...

We've been talking a lot about structure and routine around here in the last few days. In a situation like we are in currently, when we have relatively little control over the shape of our everyday lives and all usual kind of structure may have been blown out of the window, it can be more important for many people to either form routines, or where possible to stick to the bits we can of old ones.

From next week our "usual" structure will be taken apart even more as MrEH will be dropping to a three day week. Usually of course it is me on the short week, and I continue to take my Friday off as usual, in part because this does help me to stick to a bit more of a usual routine - indeed last week I got up as usual, went for a run as usual, and allowed my day to more or less follow the same path it might usually.

I have decided that for the time being I am going to aim for 4 specific outcomes from each day - those being that I do:

- Something for exercise
- Something productive
- something constructive
- Something just for me

Now the first thing was that I had to work out for myself the difference between productive and constructive, because as a friend said "I tend to use them quite interchangeably!" - she's right too, so do I! In the end I concluded that productive would be something that had a physical result so perhaps taking the camera out, baking or even writing this blog post, while constructive might be planning things for the future or making best use of my time during the day. The "Something for me" might be anything from epilating my legs to taking an hour to just sit and read a book.

One thing that these aims are not going to become is some sort of stick to beat myself with if I don't achieve them. The only one that is a bit of a "must do" really is the exercise one - but beyond that I think it's really important to be kind to ourselves at the moment - there is a lot to adjust, and get used to, without making things any tougher. Having some "pillars" in place to shape the days can't hurt though, and may well make things easier.

Robyn