Underheard

Today (Tuesday)

• second day of uni - more focused. Met two other PhD students, and a said hello to another who didn't actually talk to me, so I'm not sure if they are staff or student (we are in a locked office space, because of research reasons, which is quite nostalgic. The card scanner makes the same beep as the ones at the Telethon Institute did)
• I'm kind of keeping up with other parts of my life, but not in any way that makes it look like I have my shit together. The lounge has a teetering mound of clean washing, there is a pile of stuff on the bed I need to sort before I can go to sleep (by which I think I mean 'dump back on the floor'). I've taken some of the necessities in to the new office, and tomorrow I'll organise a locked cubby for keeping things in, which means I can bring any books in that make sense.

Yesterday

• Didn't quite make it to bed before 11pm last night, but it was close. Awoke naturally at 6:50am, which meant that I could relax for a little bit and laze about until the alarm went off. I didn't, in the end, getting up after about 2 minutes, and getting in the shower.
• Past me had a work day morning packing checklist, which was greatly appreciated this morning, as there were a couple of things that I would otherwise have forgotten. There are a couple of items that I've managed to misplace, and maybe I'll have time to sort them tonight, but I'm not optimistic about that. I was enough slow getting ready that I missed the 7:45am bus, so artisanat dropped me at the train station. Youngest gave me two options for public transport from there--either the circle route (longer, relies on Leach Hwy not being clogged), or train to Canning Bridge and either the 100 or 101 bus. I did the latter, and once I found the right stand at the interchange, got the first bus that came past.
• Good meeting with supervisors, I have ideas of what is to come. I spent more time sorting out logging in to things than I had allowed for, including a trek to the library IT help desk, where it turned out that what I was assuming was one problem turned out to be four separate issues, one of which was solved by changing my password in Outlook. I also went and asked questions of the Library Helpdesk person, who gave me a personalised tour of all the things on the Library Webpage that might be of use to me, and pointed at things to follow up.

Sunday

• Went boating on the river with buggs_jenny, their partner P, and their parents (G, K). This was a somewhat last minute invite, they organised for there to be a kayak for me to use, and I had a lot of fun. I hadn't allowed for the timing of how it would all fit together with the fact that it was a recorder group Sunday so it was a bit of a rush to head off and I didn't help with the clean up. I now have to work out how to get involved and go more often (this is not an every weekend thing; I could at best do the off weeks from recorder) given that the car we are looking to sell is the one with the roof racks, but I can't get our kayak on to it on my own. Although, having said that, it is some years since I've moved that kayak and I have no idea how heavy it is relative to my current strength--it is possible that all the shoulder work that I've been doing would be enough.
• Recorder with G and ariaflame; L has injured their shoulder and P isn't yet back from visiting their sibling in the eastern states. G is now calling us the A minors; I gather this is a joke that is related to the name of another group they are in. We worked through several trios that I'm not sure that aria has seen before, with some swapping around of parts so that they were sight-reading the easier of the C recorder parts (ie. soprano or tenor).
• Dinner with chaosmanor. One of those weeks where it turns out that we have gone through the veggie stash much faster than usual, and I under measured the amount of cabbage to cut to fill the gap for the stir fry. Fortunately, chaosmanor wasn't all that hungry, artisanat was out dancing and got dinner there, and Youngest and Eldest are able to raid the fridge if they are still hungry. And I had had one serve of each of the options at afternoon tea at recorder - G had made two things, and aria had brought one, and I have no ability to resist that kind of temptation. Particularly when G had made a serving specifically for me, because they had made a Bakewell tart (which is similar to the version I make but didn't have coconut in, which might mean that I've conflated two recipes) but had realised at the last minute that their pastry wasn't GF, and had cooked a generous serve in a ramekin.

With the dramatic change in how I spend my weeks upon me, I'm revisiting Habitica to see what needs doing. I did a bit of a tweak last week, working through my habits list and deciding what was good. I haven't posted that here, because it needed editing, and at this point it is unlikely that I will. However, what do I have in dailies, and how am I going to change it?

• Daily journal - this is going just fine, and it is important to my daily process for getting things done; keep
• progress at least one to-do - I haven't been making good use of the to-do list, so this has been an issue. Making it optional, possibly to delete.
• Tuesdays: weekly update on annual goals - I miss this as often as I achieve it, but it is a useful reminder; keep
• read things 'today' list - I haven't been doing this consistently, but it is useful when I do; keep
• update the 100 days document with today's small tasks - useful reminder; making it optional
• Minimum progress on current project; list of craft projects - delete; make a habit* for 'craft'. I want to keep it, I have a 67 day streak, but I just can't guarantee that I'll be doing it daily, and having it as an intermittent habit is better than beating myself up.
• read a book (physical, ebook, doesn't matter) - another one with a good streak, although only 36 days, but can't continue to commit, so moving it to habits.
• check notes files for anything I can progress - this is a valuable reminder; I don't want to move it to a habit, making it optional. This is because I have a long term goal of getting everything out of notes and into more sensible locations -- I use the notes app for whatever I need to record Right Now.
• Delete anything out of DW inboxes -- useful reminder, but I now at least look at the inbox every day, so deleting
• read three emails - useful reminder, does help a little. 53 day streak. Keeping for now, might make optional or delete if it is still too much
• update email and safari tabs spreadsheet - the spreadsheet was working as a motivation for while, but now it isn't. I still have it open, and maybe I'll update, but this isn't important. Delete
• read at least one page of a drawing book (optional) - I've kind of abandoned this at the moment. I might take the drawing journal to uni with me, and take it places on my lunch break, but I want that to be more relaxed. Delete.
• blog post (optional) -- I don't think that aiming to post daily is a good idea going forward. While I wasn't working/studying, it kept me focused on what I was doing, but I'll have other things for that. Delete.

That leaves 7 daily activities, of which journal, reading the to do list and checking emails are required. My notes suggested adding a zotero related task, but I think I'm going to put that in habits instead.

* The advantage of moving things to habits is that on days that I do a lot of whatever, I can tick them off multiple times.

This anonymous comment over on fandomsecrets made me laugh:

"But we didn't have cable growing up, just 4 or 5 channels on the TV and kids shows were only on at certain times, plus we just didn't watch much."

I grew up in the city. There were three channels (ABC, 7, 9), until 1986, when SBS launched here. The addition of channel 10 in 1988 brought us to 5. Cable television wasn't a thing for most of that time. I believe that the regional areas had two channels. I presume that most of the remote areas had none.

I have no idea how old that commenter was, but the idea of 4 or 5 channels still feels like luxury. Even though I've (yet again) been reminded about just how long ago 1988 actually was.

ETA: also, the part of the city I grew up in was really close to the transmitters for at least two of those stations. Because of physics, some of my school friends couldn't get at least one of those stations at home, because they lived too close to the transmitters (and sometimes because there was terrain in the way)

We've had a bit of rain - nearby weather station recorded 10.2 to 9am yesterday, and 21.6 to 9am today. I haven't looked attotal for the last week, but in terms of June rain, that is good, but not unusual. It is, however, still raining.

ETA: From http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_009172.shtml mean June rainfall is 151 mm while median is 156 mm, usually 13 days of rain. It is the second wettest month.

I have made zero progress on The Artist's Way in the last, hmm, three? weeks (maybe four, maybe more? I have stopped tracking). I do intend to keep working through it, but I've been doing the cycle of find the book, put it somewhere to progress later, forget, lose the book. My general thoughts

• the morning pages are working. I'm doing them in 750words, and that makes it easier in some ways and harder in others. The later in the day I do them the more grumpy I am about doing them, because they really do work for me if I can clear my mind in the morning.
• the artist's date idea doesn't work for me. I suspect if I didn't already have space carved out in my life for me to just do my thing, it would make a huge difference, but as it is there is more stress in trying to Do The Thing.
• I hate the principles, I stopped reading them daily because I kept wanting to argue with them. Too culturally Christian, and too USian alien mind set (I have the same reaction to a lot of self-help type books out of the USA).
• I understand the point of the affirmations, and I have a document of them I can read whenever (I just keep it open, but I should do something more accessible with it), but I find doing that daily beyond tedious. I had it in my daily to do list; I'm taking it out as part of my going-back-to-study paring down (post pending, still making the choices on that)
• In the bits I've read, I've felt quite othered, because I don't have a strong feel of myself as a blocked creative.

Long term, I intend to at least read the rest of it. I don't think I want to try and do as many of the exercises. I did a decent job of the week 1, and I might have of the week 2, and I have a log document that I'll leave open. But I think that reading the book and ignoring the exercises might be the best way for me to get anything out of it now. Possibly stopping at the end of each chapter, looking at each question, and allowing max 5 minutes on each writing task (if I feel like writing at all) and then not trying to do a bit every day.

the tl;dr: I didn't like this enough to try and work on it daily.