📖Reading: I started a Book Club read which is a Norse-Mythology-Viking inspired fantasy. The tone is not really appealing me: it is a dark and gritty world with bloody vengeance themes. Maybe I won’t finish it. I’m also reading Scott Pilgrim and a couple of romances.
👟Running is going well. I’m being able to increase my distance without any physical pain or bad side effects. It has been awesome! And I did the 10K Run for Women on Sunday, I broke my record! First time running 10K in a long time !
May 29, 2024 => 7.22 km – Pace 6.53 min/km
May 31, 2024 => 5.87 km – Pace 6.51 min/km
June 2, 2024 => 10 km – Pace 6.42 min/km (Race – Run for Women)
I discover so much about myself when writing, so even when I have stopped blogging for months at a time, I was always writing. The moment I stop, the demons creep in.
The main reason is that writing has a cleansing effect on me. When I’m not writing in one way or another, it’s like a clogged drain pipe on the verge of bursting.
📆 I’m being consistent with my Monthly Plans using the Rocketbook Fusion Plus. It’s nice to note down all the events and deadlines coming up. It makes me feel less anxious.
Goblincore is an internet aesthetic and subculture inspired by the folklore of goblins, centered on the celebration of natural ecosystems usually considered less beautiful by conventional norms, such as soil, animals, and second-hand objects. — Goblincore – Wikipedia
Some images from the run: it was a nice location by a lake; a beautiful day and I’ve never noticed this sculpture on the right before, so I had to take a picture!
—-
Post 11/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!
😊 This week just flew by! I thought about how well I'm feeling now if compared to the weeks after I got COVID back in March. My energy levels are back to pre-pandemic levels and I'm sure getting my iron infusion has helped a lot.
📝 I am still not sure what got into me that I wanted to change my to-do app to Todoist. I had this plan that I would use it for 90 days to really test it out, but I couldn't stand it more than a couple of days. I think it was the whole overhead of setting it up and wanting it to behave like Nirvana. Lesson learned: it's easier to just use Nirvana than bend something else into being Nirvana-like.
🔔 Still on the productivity tools arena, I realized that I was neglecting the Reminders app in iOS. Sometimes I want to set up a reminder and doing it with the Outlook Calendar is not quick and easy. But using the iOS Reminders app is way simpler!
👟 Next Sunday I'll do a 10Km race “Run for Women”! And talking about running, this is my log this week:
May 20 => 5.15Km
May 23 => 7.15Km
May 26 => 9.15 Km
🎧 I listened to this Cal Newport podcast: EP. 299: OUR LOVE/HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH PERSONAL PRODUCTIVITY and in the Deep Dive segment he talks about the 20-year personal productivity history and what were the books that captured each “trend” throughout the years. From Stephen Covey's “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, to David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” to Jenny Odell's “How To Do Nothing”, among others.
🎮 I'm still playing Stardew Valley very deliberately and I've made a breakthrough! I finally managed to get a furnace, to turn copper ore into copper bars and finally get a copper axe! Now I can cut down trees, expand my chicken coop, and open some areas for more crops, getting ready for my first winter. I also now have mushrooms in my cave.
🧩 Made some progress on our Ancient Map puzzle! All the decorative borders are done!
—-
Post 08/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!
🏝️ I got 2 days off work and had an extra-long weekend with Monday 20th being a holiday here! 🥳 I didn’t have anything planned, I just took the time to relax and slow down. Reading, journaling, playing Stardew Valley, long walks, yoga and running. That’s about sums it up!
📖 I finished reading “A Closed and Common Orbit” by Becky Chambers and I absolutely loved it! I also had lots of fun reading “Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life” by Bryan Lee O'Malley.
✈️ We finally booked our flights to Brazil. We will travel in December, so we wanted to guarantee the best rates because we know prices will only go up from now on. Excited to go but also not too excited to be there in the high of summer (it’s going to be 40C ! ).
🎒 I’ve decided to upgrade some of my daily gear: my old backpack and my wallet. I’ve been using the same for quite some time now. The wallet could easily be 20 years old, the backpack maybe 15+ years? I’m not sure. I got myself a tote bag that turns into a backpack and a wallet that has a pocket for a phone and can also turn into a mini cross-body purse. I was inspired by the upcoming trip, and I wanted to be prepared with versatile gear.
📒 And talking about changes: I’m rethinking my GTD system, more specifically the app I use every day for tasks. I’m feeling less anxiety overall and I feel ready to explore other options. I want to be able to capture things more easily across my devices reducing ALL the friction. Also, I miss reminders and being able to customize a few lists. I feel I’m in a good headspace to spend time tweaking and testing with no rush.
📝 So, I decided I will test out Todoist for 90 days and see how it goes. It will require some time to set it up, test it, tweak it. Nirvana gives me structure and boundaries. Todoist a highly customizable app and I feel I’m ready to dive into something less structured. I’m in an adventurous vibe now!
—
Post 06/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!
📒I stopped time blocking hour by hour with Cal Newport's planner, and I'm doing a more “focus of the day” type of planning with the Rocketbook week spread pages. I'm liking it. It gives me a different perspective. Stil testing how it goes.
🚄I finally booked my train ticket to Scintillation 5 in Montreal. It’s a small literary convention where we geek out about sci-fi and fantasy, mostly.
👷♀️I went to a job site visit with my estimating team. It’s always nice to see in full scale what we measure on paper.
Me and my partner went the Tulip Festival this weekend. It was an hour bike ride to get there, and it was very busy! The tulips were in full bloom, it was a nice day.
🏝️I’m taking 2 days off work this week for the Victoria Day holiday. Yay!
—-
Post 05/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!
📒I've been using my Rocketbook for a week or so now, and I'm enjoying it! I didn't like the pen that comes with it (a 0.7mm black Frixion) and got 0.5mm Frixion Synergy pens in assorted colors and I love them. I've always liked smooth paper, so it wasn't hard for me to adjust to the polyester paper.
✏️After getting an executive size Rocketbook I got a letter sized one, which is bigger for planning and time blocking. I still don’t know if I want to use both at work or use one for personal notes and the other for work notes/planning. I’ll experiment more this week.
📅I used my big Rocketbook to plan the month. Even though I have all the events on my digital Calendar, writing them down manually helps me become more aware and less anxious about the future. It just makes things more tangible if that makes sense.
🎈I’ve been thinking about better organizing my blog ideas. I have a list in Standard Notes, but I forget to look at it. I’m thinking if I should have them in my to-do list, in a separate Areas of Focus in Nirvana. And then, how to I get down to write? I’ve been not feeling very wordy lately. Some food for thought.
📺I started watching the Fallout Series on Amazon Prime. I never really played the games (I can’t remember why it was never on my radar) but the show is really good. I like the dark humour/satirical tone in it and the 50’s aesthetic.
🎸Had a good time re-listening to the first Black Sabbath album from 1970 on the radio. Every Sunday night my city’s local rock station plays a classic rock album non-stop. It’s called the Sunday Night Vinyl Series. With music streaming services I spend way less time listening to full albums.
—
Post 03/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!
📒I got a reusable notebook: Rocketbook Fusion and some blue and colored Pilot Frixion Synergy pens in 0.5mm. It comes with a black 0.7mm and I prefer writing in blue. I really like the feel of writing on it, it's exceptionally smooth. I haven't had much time to use it, I'll test it more in the following days.
✏️I realized (not surprisingly) that handwriting makes me slow down, it's good for me! And my handwriting got worse over the years. Gotta practice more!
🚲Me and my partner went for our first bike ride of the year after the winter. It was a total of 37km, I was completely exhausted after the ride but feeling great! It was 21C, perfect weather. I anticipate some post-exercise muscle pain tomorrow.
📺We got 30 days of Amazon Prime (trial) and we caught up on the “The Grand Tour: Sand Job (S05 E03)“. Just fun with cars and gorgeous visuals, this time they start in Mauritania and drive all the way to Dakar in Senegal.
—-
Post 01/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!
🤯I've been having less and less headaches since I got Covid-19 48 days ago. I think it's timely progress!
🩺It's been a bit more than a month since I got the iron infusion for my anemia. I started to feel less tired this weekend, which I think is a sign it’s doing its thing. The doctor said it can take at least 3 to 4 weeks to increase the iron levels.
✅I had a small crisis regarding my to-do list, but it's all good now! Crisis averted! I did some experiments only to realize I still like my current setup with Nirvana.
🌹I finished a fantasy romance that was fun and silly 🙃 called “That Time I Got Drunk And Saved A Demon” by Kimberly Lemming.
📖And I finally started reading “A Closed and Common Orbit” (Wayfarers #2) by Becky Chambers. It's one of those books that gets me in the first paragraphs. I don't know why I took so long to pick it up! It's really good!
📖I’m also reading “Slow Productivity” by Cal Newport. Got to the part where he talks about Jane Austen’s writing routine, and how there are misconceptions about it.
💪No runs outside this week, it was too windy and cold, and wet. I went to the gym instead.
📺I watched the documentary “Raccoons: Survival Warriors” at Curiosity Stream. People usually hate them, I know, but they are so cute!
⚒️It was a busy week at work. I went to 2 different construction sites for meetings and a site visit. I didn’t have much time to write this week. I focused on getting exercise and rest after work.
📚I skipped my local Bookclub meeting this week because I haven’t finished the book and, again, I was super tired so I decided to just go for a walk and go to bed early.
📖I finished reading this cozy fantasy “Bookshops and Bonedust”. I really enjoyed it. It helped me get out of a mini book slump this week.
🧩Lots of progress on our ancient world map puzzle this week. It’s my favorite type of puzzle! All borders are done, the 2 spheres borders are done, latitude lines done!
🏃♀️It got cold, and we had some snow in the middle of this week. But it cleared up over the weekend and I went for a 7km run outside. It was 15C, nice and sunny day.
❤️The post COVID headaches are still happening every other day. Sometimes I feel tiredness as well, it's a fatigue that seems to come out of nowhere. Anyway, I've prioritizing rest and sleep.
📅I finally planned and added to my Calendar all my vacation days for this year. I will use most of the days on our trip to Brazil at the end of the year, and the rest of the days are all spread out around holidays so that I can have longer weekends.
🎬I watched 2 out of 3 episodes of the miniseries “Rebuilding Notre Dame” on Curiosity Stream. High quality images (with the help of drones) and the details about the restoration.
📌Interesting Online Reads This Week
Goodbye Lenna: the story behind a scanned image that is being used to test the quality of image processing algorithms since the 70's. I never knew about this image, and this post got me into the Wikipedia entry. Interesting! I feel bad about the female model who didn't get any royalties of people using her image for decades.
⚕️ The post-COVID headaches are getting less and less frequent, so that's satisfactory progress!
🎮 I'm still having fun with Stardew Valley. I can play one or two in-game days at a time, no rush, no stress. It's been great as a rote activity that refreshes my brain a little bit.
📚 I got into a reading funk this week. Some books that I thought I was excited about were not grabbing me enough, so I finally decided to let them go. I wrote about one of them here. I started reading Bookshops and Bonedust by Travis Baldree because I loved the first book and because it is the definition of cozy fantasy.
👟 On the Good Friday holiday me and partner went out for a walk by the river, and we crossed a pedestrian walkway that was once an abandoned railroad bridge. It was recently rehabilitated as a muti-use walkway. It was sunny but very windy (windchill of -5C)! I was glad I got out with my puffer jacket, beannie and gloves.
🧩 We started a new Puzzle! This one is an antique world map with 2,000 pieces. Map puzzles are my favorite! The top border is done.
✅ I had a day this week when I wanted to try out Microsoft To Do again, just to realize I still love Nirvana (again!).
📌Interesting Online Reads This Week
The power of 15 minutes (and other ideas) – The Imperfectionist Newsletter by Oliver Burkeman: The idea of doing something for 15 minutes and then slowly increasing that time to work longer. It's useful in so many areas of life: reading, running, writing, cleaning the house, etc. He also mentions a book called “Deep Freewriting” by Stephen Lloyd Webber, which is a practice of free writing with a timer, similar to what Natalie Goldberg describes in her book “Writing Down the Bones”. Timers are so useful! I love using them. That's what works for me to journal every morning.
Librarian in the Wild shared their reflections on abandoning books and reading for pleasure in this post “In Addition To...”. I'm glad for the mutual inspiration and reflection. Thanks! ❤️
Why I write: another great post on reasons why to write online. It ends up being a self-discovery experience. I totally relate to his reflections here, great post!
