We got that attitude! – 7th May 2021

I am so happy and grateful to be able to message my old friend Echo in L.A. It was good to catch up with her briefly and find out a little more about her life. I messaged her because I remembered her original online photo and wondered if she still had it.

13th June 2023 – She didn’t, unfortunately. In the photo, she was in an Asian squat, outdoors somewhere with her chin resting on the palm of her open hand and her elbow on her knee. We met originally through a website called Asia Friend Finder, where I made many contacts that helped me travel in China in 2001.


OK, back to school – and with nothing really to do, I did some research and preparation for teaching Maeve her IELTS class this evening. It felt good to be back into this routine, even though nothing exciting happened.

Even though I have less free time, I will value what I do have more. Why is it so difficult to do that when I have whole days and weeks free!?

We got that attitude! – 6th May 2021

I am so happy and grateful to talk with Jochen for an hour and a half yesterday. It was great to catch up with him – someone who knows where I’m coming from. We talked about our lives since we last met which must be more than 3 years now (?). I should call some of my other friends sometimes too.


I just looked back to last year’s entries around this time and see that I am feeling much the same way now as I was then. I should be learning something form this!?

I’m looking forward to everything – once I get my head straight!

We got that attitude! – 5th May 2021

I am so happy and grateful that I got another two days off school. Only found out in the morning, before leaving. Felt good.


My brain and body are fried. 3 or 4 weeks of constant weed brownies and binging on TV series. It was getting me down.

When I found out a couple of days ago that school starts again today, I got over the initial shock and started to prep myself mentally. Last night, I became very anxious and restless just thinking about it – especially as we would probably be at school for a whole month before any students return – meaning we would likely end up sitting around doing nothing the whole time. My negative brain was kicking in.

So it was with some delight that a message came through this morning that our return was delayed a couple more days until Friday. Now, I’m trying to straighten my brain out a little more and psyche myself up for things.

I remind myself that I was getting lots done when I was in a routine and even if I didn’t enjoy the actual routine of working, I did enjoy all the benefits of some regularity. I’m coming back together.

We got that attitude! – 3rd May 2021

I am so happy and grateful for the long month off work. I have been enjoyably lazy and caught up on some TV watching. It has made me realise that I enjoy having a routine of going to work and that I build other habits around it. It has also made me curious about us being able to start our own business here – I think it would be enjoyable to do a restaurant/diner on our land.