1634: new format new me

It took me a while to get around to changing my weeknotes format—so long, in fact, that not only did I not manage to do so fully, I managed to lap myself by taking two weeks.

I was talking to CM the other day about how I think about things "positionally"—I could tell you pretty much everything in the fridge, but I don't have an image of what's there in my mind, I just think of the thing that's in the top-left and then from that where everything else is in relation to that falls in place naturally.

Anyway, another way I naturally think is chunking things up: I went so far over on last week's weeknotes that I didn't want to do the blogs for the following week (because I'd already fluffed that week's posts, even though logically one has no bearing on the next) but instead to 'start over' this week.

Nobody else cares about this stuff or notices, but I spend ages thinking about it, and it feels like the most natural thing in the world. Like eating a multipack of crisps of different flavours such that you maintain the same number of different kinds of crisps but eat each 'cohort' through in order of preference, something that I have also spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about.

Anyway: I'm trying incorporate some stuff I read from Tracey Durnell whose blog Jay linked to in the post that inspired all this—her website is smashing, I really like the stuff about 'big questions'. Considering a blog refresh now (of course) to move in that direction myself.

Status:

Feeling: good! I have been pretty emotionally level recently, which is nice. I've found myself a nice groove with things. It's not that everything is going well all the time, but rather that I feel far better able to handle difficult situations that might otherwise have thrown me off.

Goals: I'm currently rejigging these, so mark this one up as Coming Soon. I think I've realised that year goals are a bit big and distant so I'm going to try some things that have a closer time horizon.

Experiment: Morning Plank. I don't know if I've talked about this before but something I got from (I think) Designing Your Life is doing life experiments. Often these are little habits or things I can integrate into my routine. The current one is planking in the morning because my current gym routine doesn't have a huge amount of core exercise to it and I need that core for BJJ! Going well so far, I'm probably going to keep it after I end the experiment but I want to have another experiment to move on to so I'm keeping it for now.

Streaks: My habits are the strongest they've been for a while; I'm keeping things up and while order's getting tweaked a lot the core habits are in place. I'm happiest with my exercise routine—I've been going for a month now with daily exercise (bar Sundays), meditation and parts work, and I don't think it's a coincidence that I've been feeling really good!

Throughput:

Our pal Aisling had a lovely picnic with a whole bunch of her friend out at Preston Park, and it was a smashing time! We played some rounders and I had to restrain myself from trying to impose baseball rules on the thing.
Bea's clutch broke, and it turns out that we were insured but didn't have breakdown cover. This hubris cost me a lot of money, and the replacement of the clutch looks like it'll cost me more. I'm just glad CM wasn't feeling well for our planned trip to Dorset a couple of weeks ago and we turned back—if we hadn't, my rough guess based on mileage is that it would've given out on the motorway! As it was, we were on a dual carriageway but thankfully CM was able to spot the issue in time to pull into some services.
CM went to see Taylor Swift; I got a lot of pictures and enjoyed myself in the hammock.
We've changed our patterns at work so we have our daily standup/catchup thing at the end of the day rather than the beginnning and honestly it's been amazing! For us, at least, it works so much better; breaks up the day less... just an all-round better solution.

Output:

Blog:

Wrote about systems for running your life—I'm not sure I got this one quite right but it's been in my drafts for so long that "friend staying with us" (it was Amber, fact fans) has now moved to Brighton, so I thought I should just hit the big red button. I really liked David Cain's "short book" approach for How To Do Things (see below) and I might try and spin this out a bit more into one of those. I have been threatening to try some things like that for a while, so that might be a good shout.
Wrote about a method for snapping out of mopeyness—inspired, I think, by David MacIver's stuff about spells and my friend Ruth's stuff about spells which is similar but not published anywhere.
Wrote about the far-right kicking-off inspired mostly by getting very annoyed at the media.

Podcasts:

Good Memhaz; I really enjoyed this one, particularly the thing about significance, something I want to spin out into a blog post soon.
We are doing a new episode of Calendrical Rot soon but Shona and I have had a bad run of each of us alternating being ill and busy :(

Input:

I have been reading:

all the Imperial Radch books for the next episode of Calendrical Rot—we were only going to do the first one but Shona got Covid again and ended up having a lot of time on their hands. They still bang, the This Gun Is The Best Gun Ever stuff still owns. Nearly started on the 'non-series' books in that universe but even we had to draw the line somewhere.
How To Do Things, which I remembered I had bought after I got a promo email for a course based on it, and then when I checked it turns out I bought it a year ago and never actually read it! I think the fundamental useful insight for me here (something I feel like I 'discover' for myself repeatedly but need to be reminded of!) is that "little and often" is very, very effective when tackling big things and the results can be felt sooner than you'd think.
Become Who You Are, which is proving mildly frustrating in certain ways but not without insight.

I have been watching:

We went to see Totoro which was rereleased in cinemas recently! CM had never seen it before and it remains absolutely delightful. It's very sweet how almost nothing happens in it, and all the possible Bad Stuff also doesn't really happen?
Only Connect is back! We were better than either of the teams competing for . We'll enter one day.
We're nearing the end of Gilmore Girls S4, and so far while I'm enjoying it, I think that there's a lot more... sitcom characterisation, which I don't think is the best the show can do.
Rewatching Band Of Brothers and it is still a remarkable show. Certain parts of it, mostly the use of CGI, look a little shonky, but it remains emotionally resonant.
Started watching Severance on Geeta's insistance. It feels very Control (2019). Only one episode in but enjoying it so far.

I have been listening to:

the new King Gizz album on Ruth's recommendation and it's amazing. I like the one about Mirage City, I like the one about being a silly billy.
bouncing between "I should listen to fewer podcasts" and listening to chunks of the backlogs of old favourites. "No podcasts" is definitely going to be an experiment one of these days.

I have been playing:

mumble mumble pretty much just Balatro mumble mumble
My brother's got me on the Deadlock prerelease so hopefully I'll be doing a bit of that.

I have been eating:

spanakopita, which is really tasty and really, really easy to make! Sadly not vegan (we've not been full vegan for a little while for various reasons) but I reckon you could probably make it vegan fairly easily?

Pinboard Highlights:

More nonsense of this nature can be found on my Pinboard.

Jumbo edition there, there just kept being more of it! This is definitely isn't the final version of the new format; it's probably gonna be a work in progress over the next few weeks. I also want to give things cool names like Jay does. That's it for now, though.

Keep it real! Over and out.