Why I Work Outside

It would be true to say that there are many pluses to working indoors.  It's usually dry and warm, and there's usually an endless supply of tea.  Unfortunately that isn't really enough for me.  I can deal with the wind and rain (and the lack of tea) much more than I can deal with the lack of natural light, only hearing human noises, and just sitting still all day long.  Working outside works best for me and here's why:

Constant Exercise

It's true to say that this is generally good for everyone, but for me and the way my body works, with PCOS, it's best when I'm constantly moving.  This constant movement allows me to be healthy and to keep the excess weight off.  Most of the time the work I do outside is very physically and basically like carrying out a gym section all day long.  I genuinely enjoy it and it does seem to be what is healthiest for me.  It's certainly what has allowed me to keep to a healthier weight these last few years.

Helping with the Hyper

I can get very hyper, and I mean hyper.  If I don't get most of my energy out during the day then my energy levels peak at around 9 or 10 pm (I'm naturally a night owl) and then my poor husband has to deal with what is essentially a manic cat.  Working in an office really didn't help with this, and construction work only slightly, but being active in nature all day helps me release quite a bit of this energy.  This means that my husband only has to deal with a slightly manic cat when he's starting to get sleepy.

Helping with Sleep

Speaking of sleep.  My natural state seems to be to not sleep very well, my brain just has trouble shutting down.  This got worse whilst I was working in offices.  Not only was I not exhausting my body, but not matter how hard I worked it actually seems to switch my brain on even more.  When I work outside not only do I physically exhaust my body, but it also seems to exhaust my brain too so it takes a lot less time to switch off.  I also find that being in natural light all day long helps keep my natural body clock in check so that I don't become too much of a night owl, and that helps with me fall asleep earlier than I might do naturally.

Mental Health

This is probably the biggest, and for me the most important, reasons for working out doors.  Being outside all day long has had a definite positive impact on my mental health.  This isn't going to be the case for everyone, especially when it's wet and grey outside, but to me it makes all the difference.  I feel better just by being surrounded by greenery, animal sounds, and a lack of people.  Having this as my work week has meant that I have felt generally much better all round.  Do I never get depressed now, unfortunately that's not the case, but it does happen less and I am able to deal with it a lot better, and that's a win as far as I'm concerned.

It Just Feels Natural

When it comes to work I'm happiest when my brain and body are working together.  Working in the office meant that I only got to use my brain, but outdoor work means I get to use both now and that just feels natural to me.  The final thing is that I just love being outdoors.  Even if none of the other things were true I would still be happier outdoors in the rain than indoors in the dry.  It just feels like that's where I'm naturally meant to be.

Now that I've had the opportunity to work outdoors I don't think I could ever go back to working completely indoors again.  Hopefully I'll be able to keep on mostly working outdoors now until the end of my working career.  What that career journey will look like in the future I don't know, but I will keep it mostly outdoors as much as I can and then I'll be able to carry on getting all the benefits I get right now.

Sustainable Diet

To cut right to the chase, I've put on weight.  Quite a bit of weight in fact, over the last two months.  It's not really much of a surprise to me as I have been unemployed for the last couple of months which means I haven't been doing the hard physical work I have to do on a daily basis to keep the fat off and I've been eating crap.  My diet hasn't been terrible, it's still mostly healthy, but I have been eating more processed food and sugar then I normally do and really I should have known better.  I have PCOS after all and I know how quickly I can pile on the pounds compared to a 'normal' person.

However, when I was thinking about my unhealthy food habits it occurred to me that it also meant I wasn't exactly doing my part for the environment either.  Now there is a bit of a debate about whether highly processed food is actually good or bad for the environment and I can understand the arguments for the good (seen as a way to reduce food waste, less energy used as the food is cooked together in a massive vate instead of separately by each person), but there are a few things that I find difficult to be okay with.  The first is the amount of packaging that comes with processed food a large proportion of which we can't reuse in any way, the use of palm oil in so many of the products most of which isn't taken from a sustainable source (it wouldn't be possible to supply for the demand that way anyway), and the fact that many of the companies just want very specific ingredients which means that farmers are forced to move away from crops that are more suited to their local area to grow other crops that usually need a lot of work and support (usually in the form of chemicals) to grow.  So basically my diet is not very good for me and not particularly great for the environment.

Back to my old PCOS diet it is then.  I'm still doing a big part of it, such as eating lots of vegetables, having only lean proteins (basically all vegetarian and vegan proteins are classed as lean), eating healthy fats, and having Omega 3 in my diet (plant based).  However, where I've slipped is eating a fair bit of processed sugar in the form of chocolates and cakes even if it's not daily, having fizzy juice (I might as well just have been eating a sugar cube), and having processed food with all that sugar, salt, and bad fats.  Some products that I've had that are processed can be perfectly healthy for most people, like bread, but unfortunately that's not the case when you have PCOS.

That means I need to either completely remove or greatly reduce a number of these not great food items from my day to day diet and keep them as just a treat now and then (at most once a week).  I also need to go back to replacing a number of my carbohydrates with low GI forms, like oats and quinoa.   I do feel like I need to do some in depth research into diet and PCOS again though as I've noticed that some of the information seems to have changed a little or is still being debated, like should you have carbohydrates at all and should you be able to eat things like tofu.

And that's it.  It should be a little easier once I start working again as I'll be back to doing all day physical exercise (I might also add some more exercise to do when I get home if I feel like I haven't done enough during the day) and I'll only be able to eat what I bring with me.  Hopefully it won't take me ten years to loss this again now that I have a much better idea as to what I actually need to do.  It'll also be interesting to see if being in my 40s has any affect on this as hormones don't normally follow the usual route when you have PCOS.  Regardless, for myself and a little bit for the environment it's time for me to eat more healthily.

Plans Afoot 2023

As you know we've moved........to Wales, and all the plans we'd made previously no longer applies.  So, it's time to make new ones.  We're still trying to save money though so that means that we need to find stuff that is either free or as cheap as possible.  I've already started making a list.

We still have our National Trust membership, which is a gift, and there are quite a few places around us where we can go and gawp at luxury we will never be able to afford and that I'm glad we don't have.  It also means that there will be a few places where we can park for free when we go walking.  Of course, there is a whole lot of historical sites that are not owned by the National Trust (some of which we saw when we were on holiday here last year) and it'll be interesting to get to explore them too.  However, as they will most likely cost money we'll need to space out our visits to them.

We're wanting to get back into wild swimming again this year and, to that end, we brought the Wild Swimming Walks book for South Wales to give us an idea of places we can go.  We're going to start local to begin with and of course there's always the sea as well which isn't too far away from us.

I've also been looking at some pre-mapped walks in the area to help get us acquainted with the area.  I've picked walks that are relatively long so that it's more of a day event and included locations like the Black Mountains as well.  Once we get use to them we can start to map out our own walks to explore the area more.  There's also some hill walks that start right outside our front door and would mean no need to drive anywhere beforehand.  I'm also trying to find some old books that contain possible walking routes (and by old I mean pre-1960s) to see if it is possible to walk them still.

And then there's the coastal paths all around Wales that would allow us to get back to the sea again.  I'll need to research this a little more but they should be very easy to follow.  Of course, it would be practically sacrilege to not be in this area of the world and not visit Pembrokeshire.  Summer is always good but some part of me would also like to experience it when the winter storms are rolling in as well.

There is a lot to explore here and it'll take us a while, but we don't want to make the same mistake we did in Devon by not properly taking the opportunity.  The biggest issue for us is that our work shifts won't always match up so we won't have as much time to do all the walks and activities we want to do.  We will also be visiting family on some of the days we have off together as well.  I'll do some exploring on my own, possibly to places I know my husband won't be too interested in like the wool museum, but it wouldn't feel right visiting all the sites without him.  Especially as his work involves him getting to look at mountains all day long, but not getting to walk up them. 

April 2023 Budget

April was a bit of a mixed month, but as we were expecting that this time round, what with it being Tue end of the tax year and our anniversary month, there were actually no surprises this time round.

Firstly, I did my tax self-assessment this month and, as it turned out that I didn't really earn enough to pay a large amount of tax, I was actually able to put some of the money I had been putting aside for taxes each pay day towards our sinking funds instead.  That has meant that we now have a fully funded Christmas fund, car fund, surf lessons fund, and my crafting fund (which I have now completely spent on products I need for the projects I have coming up for the rest of this year).  We were also able to put about £1000 into our three month emergency fund.  [A little side note on this, after looking at the additional costs we now have, such as paying off the car, and the rise in the cost of living we realised that our needed emergency fund has gotten quite large.  We decided that we felt a lot more comfortable putting it down to three months instead of four, which works out to be about the same as our original amount.  This is based on the months being five weeks long instead of the usual four to cover those longer months so that does give us a little extra leeway.]

Most of our general bills have now come out, though we won't see a council tax payment until May, and it looks like these are going to be roughly the same as to what we were paying in Plymouth.  Our gas and electricity is a pay as you go so I decided to just put in a lump sum at the beginning of the month and it seems to have lasted us quite well (possibly because we were away for a week).  If this turns out to be roughly right for us on a monthly basis then that means that our fuel bill has only gone up by £5 a month, which isn't too bad considering we're now in a house and gas is more expensive.

We actually managed to underspend on groceries this month, but we did overspend on take away/ eating out.  However, we knew this was going to be the case as we were celebrating our one year anniversary and were planning a meal out together and also with my parents.  The only thing really unexpected was that my mobile was a little high this month and I need to check why that is as I don't remember doing anything odd with it.  I also need to look at a way of reducing that a little it as well and I know that there might be an app I can use for that so that's something I'll look at in May.

We've also managed to keep our fuel within budget as well.  But, as expected, I haven't been able to put anything into my pension again as I haven't been earning any money.  The company I will be working for, starting in May, has their own pension scheme so I'll be putting money into that and then I'll transfer that over to my current pension plan when my contract is over.  Apart from the crafting items I brought using the money I had saved for taxes, we've managed to keep mostly within our spending limits on our own spending as well, which is good of us.  Hopefully we continue to get better at this habit from now on.

April does feel like a month where we've been able to reset our spending habits after March and get back on track for the rest of the year.  We'll see how things go when I go back to work next month, but hopefully things should get a lot easier and we'll be able to keep putting money into our savings account for the rest of the year.  It looks like our days off will be a little out of sink again as well and that means there will be less opportunity for us to spend as we tend to only really do that when we're together.