Thursday 30 April 2015

Finish This Book: Document Your Day

We’ve reached the end of the A to Z Challenge. You can see the final post here.

Remember how I mentioned getting stuck on one of the pages in my Finish This Book. Well I got all caught up and then came across the Document Your Day page and realised that I’d have to stop and wait again before I could continue.

The directions on this page tell you that you’re to make a note of what you’re doing on the hour, every hour, from 8am until 11pm. I realise I could have documented this on virtually any day of the week, but I knew that if I did it on a work day then my day would look something like: 9am – at work, 10am – at work, 11am – at work, which wouldn’t be particularly interesting.

I did kind of hold out on it, hoping for an exciting day, like a trip off the island to write about. But in the end I was really keen to get on with the rest of the book, so I just documented what I was up to on a fairly average Saturday:


And this is what I wrote (in case you’re struggling to see on the photo):

FIELD NOTES
Date:
7th March, 2015 – Saturday
Background: Suffering from a cold, Tara had a sore paw, needed to do stuff around the house & for blog.
8:00 am – In bed dozing, dreaming about chasing a cat up some stairs.
9:00 am – Sitting in bed, just finished breakfast, reading ‘Lastnight’ & stroking Tara.
10:00 am – In the spare bedroom, cleaning out the big rat cage.
11:00 am – Living room: watching The Producers & writing a blog post.
12:00 pm – Kitchen: Moving laundry around on the airers.
1:00 pm – Living room: Watching The Jungle Book & writing another blog post.
2:00 pm – Bathroom: Just in the bath, look at some websites on my phone.
3:00 pm – Bathroom: Still in the bath, reading ‘Lastnight’ by Stephen Leather.
4:00 pm – Living room: Watching Inception & writing review as I go.
5:00 pm – Living room: Checking Facebook & pouring glass of lemonade.
6:00 pm – Living room: Still watching Inception & writing review.
7:00 pm – Living room: Gathering up my knitting supplies to sew up a teddy.
8:00 pm – Living room: Sewing up & stuffing the body of my tiny teddy.
9:00 pm – Bedroom: In bed, working on next page of this book.
10:00 pm – Bedroom: In bed, under covers, reading ‘Lastnight’.
11:00 pm – Bedroom: In bed, under covers, trying to get to sleep.
Fairly easy/relaxed day but got quite a bit done.

I just wrote what I was doing exactly on the hour, so I didn’t spend a full hour checking Facebook and pouring lemonade. I also wasn’t feeling too good that day so I spent much of the day not feeling like doing very much. There was also a walk in there somewhere, but it was just a short one and we were back before the hour so I didn’t get to add that into my log.

It kind of makes it look like I spend a lot of time watching films, which I kind of do, but this was an exceptional sort of day as I had stuff to do for blog posts, hence watching Inception. That was also the day when I started sewing up my teeny tiny teddy, which I finished the following day.

Finish This Book also suggests that you can draw sketches of your day. I decided against this. I try to avoid drawing unless I absolutely have to. It’s not one of my strongest skills.

2 comments:

  1. Interesting exercise. I sort of do that daily, but don't take notes by the hour. :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I keep a journal (most days, sometimes every other day) but I don't normally go into this much detail. It was quite a fun exercise though I wish I'd picked a more interesting day to do it on. ;-)

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