I’m back! Sorry for the lack of posts over the last couple of weeks. A severe lack of sleep due to a period of high pain with the old CRPS has kept me from my usual routine. It’s still kicking my erse (Scots spelling), but screw it, routines and schedules make me happy.

The point is, I’m back. Well, I was actually back at my desk with a journal post all written up and almost ready to go last week. But, I didn’t have the goal section completed. The reason? I didn’t know what I wanted to achieve this past week.

Hiya folks! Here’s this week’s journal entry, and it’s going to be a swift one. It’s my birthday today (Friday); there’s cake and an obscene amount of washi tape and journal stickers waiting for me to get stuck into (awesome gifts from my beloved Jez).

It’s the last entry for August! Where the hell did the time go? I’ve spent most of it deep underground in the word mines. By the way, the canary down there uses swear words as punctuation fuck it’s contagious.

Two weeks have been and gone by since I last posted. Last week’s post was in my planner, I even used one of my snazzy stickers, but I decided against posting. There were no extenuating circumstances–aside from a severe lack of sleep brought about by reading writing craft books in bed 🤦‍♀️ –I was just spent.

This spent feeling extended to posting word count updates, hence the lack of those. I’m still writing, but it’s been a struggle to get the big word count days in. Daily life can sometimes, unfortunately, push writing to the backseat.

It’s a new month! And that means it’s time for a quick look at my goals for the month, plus a review of how I did with July’s goals.

I mentioned last week that I’d be getting my Kanban board all set up for August. Kanban is Japanese for billboards or signs. The planning system I use was developed by an engineer at Toyota.

Quick explainer: It’s a simple planning method that splits a board into three horizontal sections (to-do, doing, and done). I’ve heard that it’s supposed to be for a whole year, but noooooo–a month does me just fine). Anyway, once a task progresses to the “done” section, you move the next “to-do” card to the “doing” section. It’s great if you are visually motivated.

If you saw yesterday’s word count update, you’ll have noticed that the last week was a bit rough health-wise. I mentioned in the post that I was freaked out about getting the COVID jag (Scots word for injection), but I didn’t go into detail as to why I was soooo freaked.

When I initially went for my second dose in May, the woman put the absolute fear into me. She declared that I needed to go to a specialist allergy clinic to get the jag. Quote: “You need to have a crash cart right there beside you.” Add that to the fact that since the first jag, I’m now allergic to medicines I’ve never had an issue with before. 😬

Yeah, so that put me on edge for almost two months. And then, the kicker, if you see signs everywhere (that’d be me), my journal water tracking and work stickers ran out on the day of my jag. 😱