I can't believe it's been almost a month since my last update!
I am currently writing from Finland where I moved temporarily. I love it here and I will stay until the first week of December.
I have made myself a cozy online nest at melyanna.ichi.city and even started a blog there.
Like this tilde over here, the other page and blog are maintained manually through good old GNU nano.
I am back.
I feel like in the past three months I have lived several different lives. Catching up on what I did not do in three years.
I am really, really tired today. It was a very productive day as I accomplished work stuff, went for a run, and found time for a personal project.
My brain is useless now though, so this is a bit of a rambly update. I have a dentist appointment on the 20th and I am very much not looking forward to it!
Time to curl up in a corner and do some reading or just fall asleep while trying to read.
It is still too hot to be productive. I have felt sleepy most of the day and have struggled to read or do anything, really.
I did improve my "now" script, thanks to pandoc: all I have to do now is update my finger files, then run the script and I end up with a nicely formatted now page and a gemini version of it too. I am sure I could do a lot more to improve it, but I made it and it's functional, so I am pretty happy. :)
---I was feeling very active and full of energy this morning. Went for a run, had a nice shower, planned my day out... then flopped on the bed and it got too hot to focus on anything. So I ended up just watching random things and napping.
My sinuses are still blocked. It has to be allergy at this point, it's so annoying!
First week of my no-buy month is done.
First day back to work after my annual leave. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be though after promising myself I would take it easy I clocked in 12 hours...
Still, I think going back on a Friday was a great idea: everyone's just wanting to get to the weekend so I had plenty of time to catch up on emails and stuff.
Had some nice pasta and beer for dinner and now I am completely knackered!
Today was especially bad: I cried and now I am on edge, as usual when I get really sad followed by an anxiety attack.
Anyway, check out my Links page: the three links at the top are new. It is three personal web pages by amazing people who share tons of useful and insightful content.
Tomorrow is my last day off! Whelp! I am definitely not ready to go back to work. I wish I was a character in one of those 90s sitcoms with their fancy huge New York apartments, fashion items, and loads of spare time. (Unpopular opinion: I really do not like "Friends". Sorry.)
I spent the day researching solar panels for the house. The govt is offering tax relief for eco-friendly interventions so it seems like a good moment to install them. I wish I was an engineer though as I have to basically trust the same companies who would install the panels so I doubt their assessments would be unbiased.
This entry is starting to sound like a Pearl Jam song... :D
Productive morning: I organised my desk, then worked on tracking my fixed yearly expenses which are now tracked and categorised per type and relevance (from 5 = inevitable to 1 = I could opt out of this one right away). I have very few 1s as a couple of years ago I cut most of my unnecessary costs, but I kind of want to cut even more if I can.
I kind of want to add a couple more pages to my tilde: something listing the tools I use and something with resources people might find useful. Perhaps later or tomorrow as I feel a bit "Meh" right now, kind of tired: I think I'll sit down and finish Stranger Things, finally.
And no fever at all today. I also feel a lot better. I think I know why: comes Friday I am back at work and my body is sensing that my holidays are over.
I woke up late this morning and I skipped exercise and other things that are part of my usual routine. I was also feeling very sad at some point. I thought the day was ruined, but then I tidied up my closet, read a book, and watched one episode of Stranger Things, so overall it ended up being an OK day.
I now only have three episodes left to the end of Season 4. I am quite liking it, more than I liked Season 3 (though it's been so long I don't ever remember why I was disappointed in Season 3.
There are certain elements of the show that I find very reletable: I was a kid in the 80s, I played D&D, and I loved heavy metal. Other things are very american though that I never really experienced: was there really such a great "Jocks VS nerds" separation?
Off to dinner now!
All fine and dandy except... I now have a temperature. So far I have been ill-ish 5 out of the 10 days I have been off work. LOL.
I keep testing negative and I wasn't concerned until my temperature went up earlier today. A higher temperature isn't a good sign, though it could still be because of my cold. I might call my doctor tomorrow and see if I can arrange a PCR test: it would make me feel a lot more relaxed to know for sure if it's a cold or covid.
I have not seen anyone for *days* - literally the only contacts I had were my 5 friends at D&D on July 1st, the same people on June 30th, and before that nobody since the previous Friday. They are all doing fine so if it's covid where the heck does it come from?
Anyway, I finally started watching Stranger Things, I watched episodes 1 to 4 so far. I was a bit sceptical initially, but I am liking it so far.
Still fighting with my cold. My morning was OK: I went out for a short and easy run, did some laundry, blogged about running in my more high-tech blog, updated my now pages, ironed my laundry, etc... Then in the afternoon I just ran out of energy and spent the rest of the day watching videos and napping.
It's going to be pizza + an early night this evening, and I am looking forward to it.
Uneventful day. I slept very poorly last night, so I took a super easy day today: painted some abstract landscape, took a nap, listened to some personal finance podcasts...
I just wrote, and then deleted, a long rant about the self-help movement and its bogus science that makes gurus rich. If I am going to write about it, it can't be a couple of ranty sentences in this journal, as it wouldn't really help anyone.
I am using habit tracking and journaling as a coping mechanism for my anxiety, but that's where it all stops: my brain is a little happier when I have structure and a routine in my days.
I feel like Wap and I are basically going through the same experience: be on holiday, also be ill. Though I actually have it a lot easier as I am only dealing with a very annoying cold (I think, anyway. No fever, negative tests, little contact with other humans...). I am staying home and in isolation anyway, just in case mine is just one of those cases where the covid virus isn't detectable in the areas where the swab goes. It's an interesting parallel anyway: two random strangers on the internet who happened to start writing journals, be off, be ill at the same time.
Hope you get to feel better soon! It's so annoying to really want to do something, but somehow don't have the right energy level. I'm mostly a night owl, but those days I can't stay up past 10pm, after what my eyes close by themself. Which really annoys me because what comes after is my favorite moment of the day!
Thank you! And likewise! Hopefully you'll get some energy back now thay you are feeling better! Take it slowly though, most friends I have who had covid are reporting getting tired very easily. I like to wake-up early so when I am ill I still do OK in the morning, but after lunch I am basically useless. That said, I did get some sleep last night, and I already feel miles better. I kind of want to write a couple of things, but the forced mouth-breathing and the fact that my ear is completely clogged are breaking my concentration a bit. I am sure by the time my annual leave is over I'll be good as new. XD
I don't have a lot more to report. I am reading a lot, watching videos, doing some very light training. That's it. :)
I have this massive cold that doesn't seem to want to go away, and that is really annoying me, because I feel like it's preventing me from concentrating. It is also causing me to sneeze suddenly and violently - I almost fell from my chair earlier!
Outside of fighting a cold, I've spent this day off going for a very easy run and... I am not sure what else I did actually. -_-' I fell into this rabbit hole of reading all sorts of interesting, weird, and very indie web pages most of the day.
There are a couple of projects I want to work on, but I am thiking it will be tomorrow after a good night of sleep and if the cold tunes it down a little bit. At the very least I'd want to be able to sit at my laptop and not sneeze so hard that I get propelled to the other side of the room...
I have been feeling "off" all day today. At first I thought my workout had made me really tired, but it doesn't make sense as it wasn't particularly intense. I am having other issues now too though, so it sounds like it's something else. My stomach gets upset quite easily, so it could be any combination of: too many cherries, sweating directly under the aircon, too big of a difference between outside and inside temperature, etc... Nothing I have sounds like covid, and I've not left the house except for D&D night last Friday with a small group of friends. I will test anyway if this continues.
I have now updated the journal to meet the new standards, with h2 now replacing h1 for post dates. I think the updated standard makes more sense in terms of hierarchy and I quite like it.
I am surprised by how low effort updating the journal actually is, even considering all I am using is GNU nano, so no fancy tool to output the html file.
I have picked up "Why America Fights: Patriotism and War Propaganda from the Philippines to Iraq" by Susan A. Brewer but I found it hard to concentrate on reading today. The book is excellent though.
Update: just read this bit in Wap's Journal on my previous entry:
This made me chuckle! I generally love when websites have those 90s vibes, but when you mix "government websites" and "90s" in the same sentence, the pain gets real!
Yeah, it's the bad type of 90's internet experience XD. It's the type where everything is so slow it feels like swimming in honey, you click on something and it takes 10 minutes to know if clicking on a link did anything, and it takes an entire overly-complicated website to load stuff for 30 minutes to send you a one line email with a confirmation code.
I went for a walk this morning, it was really nice. It even rained for a bit, which is great given it's so hot where I am right now. I then came back and had to get to work on some paperwork for some tax deduction. Took me ages to do as the govt website feels like it's the 90s again. I remember having more fun last month when I had surgery. Getting my teeth deep cleaned by the dentist is also a more pleasant experience.
I am reading a terrible book I picked up just because I was curious. It is, to put it nicely, a whole loads of bollocks. I don't even want to mention the title as it's worth any attention.
I have a few scripts I made and some other stuff that isn't really documented or stored anyway - I wonder if I should just put it here in this tilde?
Hello World! Here is my first journal update. :)
I am following m15o's specs and will add this page to the Neon Kiosk soon.
I have added a now page to this tilde! It users my finger project and plan, and I can update it with a script.