Juneathon Day 6: A Busy One

Compared to all of my other posts you're going to be shocked by how productive I've been today...

I got out of bed this morning and actually started tidying my room, which includes unpacking and doing more washing (shocking, right?) although I still have my dumping-ground-desk to organise (that's for another day). Afterwards my friend Alice popped over and I took a break to enjoy the sunshine with her.

When she'd departed my plan for the rest of the day was something like this: reply to emails, do some Her Campus bits, look for and apply to jobs, complete Juneathon for the day, shower, head to meet Hajera and then go to Digibury together and depending when that finished go to Jive. What actually happened is in replying to emails I ended up organising more Macmillan related things, the Her Campus bits took a little longer than planned, I didn't even get round to the jobs or Juneathon but managed the shower and Alice ended up driving me down to the station to meet Hajera. Sometimes I'm too busy for my own good!

I didn't really know what to expect with the Digibury event but was quite looking forward to meeting Hajera and finally seeing a copy of her book. Hajera is a lovely lady who I have been doing some work experience with (writing her some content for press and online), she quit her job to pursue her creative passion (which I really admire her for) and founded her own publishing business and with it has created the world's first Islamic interactive pop-up book.

After meeting Hajera we did something which I could have used as my Juneathon for the day - we walked (in the heat!) from Canterbury West train station to the Gulbenkian Theatre on the University of Kent campus on roads that never seemed to end with Hajera dragging luggage and me dealing with fat thighs rubbing together. It seemed to take forever with the endless roads and hills, and we conquered about 1.5 miles which I think isn't bad...

We made it in one piece to the Digibury event which featured talks by Hajera and another lovely lady I met called Emily who has started her own business too, Reading Fairy, as well as a panel discussion at the end.

I got home at about 11pm (no time for jiving) and quickly remembered I hadn't done a Juneathon task as the walk didn't seem like enough. I had decided to give my legs a rest today (even though I ended up walking) and focus on my arms which after the attempted and failed push-ups I have realised aren't as muscley as I liked to believe.

A friend had commented on our Facebook post requesting suggestions that I should go and find some monkey bars and do some pull-ups! Even if I did have the muscle to attempt this I have not had the time. Especially since I am writing this as it heads to midnight. Instead I decided to mimic something Alice had taught me previously where you do 8 counts of moving your arms in each direction - upwards, forwards, downwards and backwards - but as usual I decided to make this harder for myself (fool) and filled two Oasis bottles with water and held one in each hand as I did it. 

I decided the best way to do this was to time myself, and optimistically set a goal for 5 minutes which didn't sound like a lot until I neared two minutes and started to fear my arms were going to drop off. At the halfway point I paused the stopwatch, lowered my arms and had a short breather, then carried on. Considering my arms ached before I'd even gotten halfway I think I've done quite well on this! 

Now that my arms ache, as well as every other limb, I wonder if there'll be a day in June I'm not in pain? Time will tell...

I am now well and truly knackered and will be going straight to bed after posting this, but please do remember to sponsor me for all of this and make my pain worthwhile not just to me (potentially) but to the wonderful Macmillan nurses. Follow this link to reach my JustGiving page: http://www.justgiving.com/Shelby-Juneathon