Weeknotes 1569

Weeknotes

• We had another Bank Holiday, more time spent chilling in the sun. We've got the hammock out, it's great.
• Fringe shows galore this week; the best I saw was James Danielewski (reviews linked below).
• I finished therapy! I am now 100% sane.
• Seriously, though: I had in mind that I wanted to wrap up therapy this year and we felt like we'd come to a natural conclusion. The primary reason I started again, my anxiety, is now largely under control, and pretty much all the significant stuff that came up during my time having the sessions has been addressed and I thought you know what? I'm done with this for now! It felt good.
• Had another driving lesson, back on the horse; hoping to get another test booked in soon.
• I was meant to go to a food festival in Welwyn Garden City on Saturday, but a combination of train strikes and poor sleep meant I did not; after my (substantial) lie-in I spent the afternoon drifting around town bumping into various pals, which was a pretty good way to spend the day.
• Realised we're just under 2 weeks out from the 2ish months of no true night! I love looking at this graph.

Writing

• Finally finished my notes for Boys Man Man;
• Wrote about about LSmaker, which I mentioned on the podcast the other day;
• Reviewed some Fringe shows for Seagull, and also did a post-election wrapup, which featured my best pun headline probably ever.

I tried to write up my notes for How To Take Smart Notes but found I could not. Here’s the thing, right: there are some systems—productivity, note-taking or otherwise—which sound very time-consuming or tricky to do, but aren’t, or at least aren’t as much as you might think. There are some which are somewhat tricky but the reward is clearly commensurate with the potential cost. GTD, for instance, requires a bit of up-front work and so can seem a bit intimidating but is pretty light-touch once you’re in it. The system described in this book, however, is 100% mental. I think the fact that they have to keep insisting “no, this guy did do a lot of important stuff! He was just, like, German or something, that’s why you haven’t heard of him” says a lot. Seriously, though: I feel like this kind of system might be very useful to a particular kind of academic, i.e. exactly the person who designed it in the first place. I have literally no idea how anyone else would even have the time to do it. You know that line about the problem with socialism being that it takes too many evenings? The problem with this method is that you would be forever enslaved to that damn box.

Reading

• I've nearly finished the French academic's book about masculinity, and I am definitely ready to be done.
• Started reading some Aeschylus and even more than usual when I read plays I feel like there's something I'm not getting. Might have to have a Youtube trawl and see if I can find some performed versions.
• I read all of The Last Human (birthday gift from Shona, thank you Shona!) which was really fun and I'm midway through noting up.
• Made a start on Ninefox Gambit; I'm feeling "scifi books I can just smash through in an afternoon".

Playing

they've still not patched that jedi survivor enough 😠

Listening

why am I listening to Welsh carols in May? Who knows, but I've had this stuck in my head all week:

Also listened to the Desert Island Discworld archives; Al was one of the Good Comics Podcasters and has managed to get on a frankly bewildering range of people to talk about Discworld books. I think Discworld is one of those good vibes kinda things that a lot of people have a favourite one of so are happy to talk about. My fave episode is also about my favourite Discworld book, Going Postal with comic letterer Aditya Bidikar, who manages to reference Faction Paradox thus nearly completing a line of Adam Bingo.

keep it real! over and out.