Garden stage 1, hat, publishing.

Social media is one of the things in my life that I feel like I need to monitor and be aware of how I use it and how it affects me. Like food, or like exercise, or how much rest I get. I think the stuff I like about it is interaction: conversations, jokes, comment threads, the feeling when I say something and it resonates with others and they click Like or make a pun about it. I also like interesting articles that some people share, and sometimes joke memes. Apart from that stuff, I'm not into it as much. It's kind of due to boredom, but also I want to remember how to do things in real life without publishing them. I've now had a smartphone for 18 months, and basically I want to go back to more what it was like when I had a nokia and no internet at home. I wasn't cut off from the world, but I published less.

For some reason, the SM place I like the best currently is Pinterest. It's full of the shallow, beautiful stuff with none of the interaction or relationship, but I don't go there too often, I enjoy it in moderation, and it serves a useful purpose for when I'm saving things off the internet. It's a big, communal, craft and cooking and gardening magazine. For me, anyway, because the content algorithms have improved dramatically and I no longer get fitspo or quotes about living a beautiful life; I get how to make chicken wings and how to pave a garden path.

Speaking of gardening, I've met my mortgage goal for the year, and I've got an offer of help from a friend from work, so I'm going ahead with garden building! Denise helped me measure and mark out beds, and I showed the plan to DB, he approves it, so once the rain is over I will poison the grass in the marked areas, ready to dig up for the edging.

We also did nice weekend things like cafe. And we found a Christmas shop in Maitland.

We went to the nice nursery on Sunday. One of many plant photos I took. Didn't buy anything except gifts, but made a mental list.

I bought two vases at an op shop, for flowers/smoothies.

I decided to have a go at a whole food diet for a month, and then realised that I'm not good at eliminating chocolate. And also, I very strongly believe in being hospitable and polite, instead of rejecting food that others have prepared just because it fails my arbitrary food rules. Everything in moderation, including the whole food diet. So instead, I'm doing "Healthy Alternative Month", so that I am still challenged to replace certain food for healthier food, but I can just enjoy chocolate for what it is, which is chocolate and there is no alternative. And at the moment I don't have a problem with how much chocolate I eat.

Here is my Melbourne Cup Hat for work. It's my normal hat, with some clumps of flowers I picked off a vine in the garden at work. I won a box of chocolate which I will save for a special occasion in the office.

Heres some lichen, because I love it.

Here are jacarandas and a blue house in Maitland. This would look nice as a drawing. I wish had the skills to stop on the street and do a good sketch in 10 minutes.

And in the spirit of not publishing everything on the socials, what I do publish lately I am attempting to be real. So instead of perfect sweet pea blossoms, which I certainly see and enjoy, here is my very first tomato.

I've been thinking about how "How are you" irks me: I understand that it's just a friendly social glue, but personally I feel pressure to answer honestly and yet usually that's not the point. I'd rather we just say "Hello" or if we want to, we could add a comment on the weather, "Hello, it's muggy isn't it?". And then, there's the flip side, when we DO ask the question, it could be more meaningful. Like RUOK Day. I happened to listen this week to the manager tools podcast on employee retention https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/mt-2006-employee-retention/id74198801?i=356097992&mt=2 because this is a podcast I enjoy while I work, it sets a good tone and there are useful tips. Anyway they like one-on-ones rather than team meetings, and they want managers to build into their 1/1s the question (once a month) "How are you, overall?" which they think will get a considered response not a meaningless "well thanks", and listen and build up a picture of people they work with over time. That's one way of asking with interest.