Life Circle 2012 - Taking Action

This took me a bit longer than it should have but its done now, have to move onto the next task now :-)

This weeks task was to identify areas of our lives that need attention as a result of the Wheel of Life exercise, to analyse them and then come up with actions to commit to doing. Here's my four and what I plan to do over the next few weeks with regard to them.

Developing C# Programming ability

I'm a software developer in my day job and I did a C# programming course back before Christmas. Despite my best intentions and starting to work through exercises from the course and a book on C# programming I got a bit too busy and ended up not carrying on with either. Improving my skills in this programming language is important to me as it means that I have additional skills which would be useful for other jobs within my current company and if I decided to venture to pastures new.

This is something that I know that I need to do in order to make my skills more marketable.

Its not a crucial goal as I do have a decent skill-set, I've spent the last 13 years of my career testing computer systems and between my day-to-day experience and picking up the odd qualification along the way I'm pretty decent at it. At work I've always known that I'm appreciated as I've never had a problem finding a new project to work for when an old one has come to an end. I'm easy to get on with and I will put in the effort needed to get a job done.

Having a good understanding of an up-to-date computer programming language would be a bonus.

Over the next few weeks I'm going to set aside half an hour a day to work on the course material and the book that I bought. Once I've worked through them then I'll find myself some small project to work on at home to further develop my skills.

Get fit

I've currently got a gym membership and had set myself the challenge of working through the training required to complete an Ironman triathlon. I haven't been to the gym since before Christmas and my running and cycling has ground to a halt ever since I began to transition.

This week I've got to work from lunchtime through until 10pm which means that I can get to the gym early mornings and have plenty of time to get ready for work. 

To achieve this goal I'm going to aim to start going to the gym for 6:30 on a Tuesday and Thursday morning, get a run and bike ride in on a Saturday and Sunday and if I get a chance to add in extra runs or bike rides during the week then that will be a bonus.

In addition to that I've got a weekly burlesque class at the moment which will help with my fitness and need to do a bit of practice in the week as it looks like I might be taking part in a show in February.

Decorate small bedroom

The walls have been stripped, the built in cupboard knocked down. The room needs to be redecorated so that it can once again be used as a bedroom.

Having a room that has been stripped of wallpaper and is sitting waiting to be decorated is really frustrating. It means that we are restricted on who we can have come to visit at the moment as there isn't any room for visitors.

During the coming week I'm going to get the remaining boxes out of the bedroom and bring them downstairs so that they can be sorted through and anything that people don't want, and there's bound to be a lot as we've very rarely gone into those boxes, can be thrown out.

Before I go into work this week I'll do some of the preparation work like filling holes and sanding down so that the room is ready for painting and wallpapering. I'm going to aim to do at least one task each week, filling and sanding, painting, wallpapering. That should mean that the room has been decorated and is ready to use again within about a month.

Tidy garage and garden

There is a large pile of rubbish that is waiting, and has been waiting for quite some time, to be taken to the local recycling centre. In addition to that there are about 20 bags of rubble that are currently stored in our garage and need getting rid of. The pile of rubbish stacked to one side in the garden is really bothering me, its been there for ages and we never seem to find the chance to get rid of it.

The rubble in the garage bothers me because it takes up space that could be used to house the car during the really cold whether that we've had recently.

Next weekend I'm going to make sure that all of the rubbish that we have in the garden ready to go to the dump is bagged up. Either Saturday or Sunday morning I'll load the car up and get there for when it opens. Once I've got rid of all that then I'll move all of the bagged up rubble and stack the bags out of the way ready to be taken to the dump in a separate trip.

This post was written for as part of Kate's Life Circle over at her The Five Fs blog.