– the first week of a fresh new year! a quiet week, with lots of planning and also lots of catching up for work. there’s always so much to do, and too few hands to do it… so one of the mottos for the year is to try to get better at delegating.

– doing wordle in bed with the boy in the morning. :)

– back to doing exercise… mostly in the form of riding my bike to the salt ponds and shooting some photos of birds. still counts, i think!

– taking notes on this unexpectedly nice list of 100 ways to slightly improve your life without really trying.

– i received a really nice and unexpected gift from a postcrosser, a set of cyanotype kits to make prints. i’ve been meaning to try these for years, but never got around to it. on the parcel, the person included a quote by writer iris murdoch: “one of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats”. sounds like a brilliant idea, and i plan to make an effort to dispense more small treats throughout the year.

– last summer, i collected seeds from carob trees that had fallen by the sides of the road. i soaked and put these on a tray before going north, and they are now sprouting. the guerrilla reforestation project is on! 💪

– i’m reconsidering my participation on the volunteering group, after some haughty interactions this week. what do you do, when faced with attitudes that you cannot stand for? do you leave, or do you stick around and try to improve the group? on one hand, i think life is too short to put up with this and i should just quit… but on the other, how are things going to improve if everyone leaves? so in the end i stayed and spoke my mind, but the whole thing left an unsavoury taste, and cast a shadow on the experience. :( i’m not sure where to go from here.