That’s the challenge I’ve been facing up to this morning. My ever-growing semi-retired need to give my life routine and purpose has got me thinking.
I’m convinced the lockdown will continue – might even get more severe – throughout all of the 30 days of April. That combined with the ever more depressing news about coronavirus deaths and infections could make next month the worst ever, so far. The weather forecast doesn’t look great either!
Then, after that, there’ll be probably be more lockdown, still no sport to look forward to, no Wimbledon, no Euros football, no Olympics. What a great start to the 2020s this has been!
Here’s a few things I’ve decided to do to keep my spirits up:
- The 30 Day Ab Challenge. With my bad hip pausing my outdoor running campaign it’s time to once again focus on that elusive six-pack! I’ve downloaded an ab app which will “get my body in shape, build muscle and burn fat.. and… 30 days is just about the right amount of time to add a new habit or subtract one.” Roll on April 1st!
- Cycling – you are allowed out to go outside once a day to exercise so I’m getting on my bike. To make it interesting I will need to give my daily trips a bit of focus. I’ve decided I’m going to 30 village churches – they’ll be shut mind you – over the month. I’ve got an old OS map and think that’s just about feasible within the distance I can reasonably cycle in an hour or so from home.
- Perfect three dance moves – last summer we spent an evening at a French beach dance club. There, dancing on a podium was the coolest guy I’ve ever seen. He wasn’t that young or that good looking but he had confidence, style and the most rhythmic, economical way of moving. He looked amazing and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I wanted to be that man, Mrs Jones wanted me to be the man! I vowed then to learn a few dance moves to debut at my 60th birthday party in June. Sadly now I’m going to have postpone it which should give me the extra year I need to learn them. I’ve found a YouTube video to get me started.
- Eight new meals – With restaurants closed we’re going to be cooking at home more than ever. I’ve made it my mission to come up a couple new meals each week to add to the dozen or so we just endlessly rotate. I’ll be scouring those dusty old recipe books later today.
That along with my usual activities such as gardening, office work, reading, keeping in touch by phone with my dad and daughters and maybe doing a bit of NHS volunteering should just about get me through!