2023-05-08
Today was another long day, however I am quite proud of the meal I cooked: it tasted good and I used up some veggies that needed to be used ASAP. I also managed to clean the kitchen, do some laundry, and get my stuff ready for tomorrow's commute to the office.
My domain now points to my Smol Pub page. I am quite happy about it as I finally have a Gemini first home that is mirrored automatically on the www.
With my tilde, this place here, the domain page, etc... my stuff is all over the place! I'll have to tidy it all up at some point and maybe even cancel accounts I don't really use.
This will also help with publishing more quality content that could actually be useful or interesting for those stumbling upon my sites.
2023-05-07
I have added a contact form to my page! It is powered by Riku, another amazing project by m15o.
2023-05-03
Today I had a really *long* work day. I finished so late I didn't even take the trash out on time, when I went downstairs it had already been collected (it's paper recycling day today).
I also am on a low fiber diet for tomorrows check up, so no pizza or beer (my usual on Wednesday evening), and had really sad news about a coworker. A crappy day overall.
2023-05-02
I've been doing better recently, so I took the opportunity to go to a new store for some extra groceries - I know it sounds easy enough, but because of my pesky brain I actually have to push myself to go outside my comfort zone, even for something so small.
I have a medical exam this week which requires eating low fiber-food and this is harder than I thought! I had no idea my diet was so fiber heavy! I am actually quite nervous about this test, and am torn between wanting it to be cancelled for some supernatural causes, or wanting it to be over ASAP.
My work day has been intense, but I managed to do some cleaning and some exercise, and I will spend some time reading later today. So overall this was a good day.
2023-05-01
Today is Labour Day here in Italy and I took a nice day off, which I used to pick up again some of the things I had put on hold due to being tired, burnt out, and worried about moving out of my parents house.
I turned on my personal laptop again after a long pause, and looked at my journals and notes. So much stuff I wanted to do that I left lingering!
I want to get back on track with my personal projects, ideas, but I especially want to get back on track with my health, as I've been neglecting it. This is the only body and only life that I have, I should know better!
It is really hard though to find resilience when one is burnt out and feeling tired, and even if iI focus on how good it feels to take care of your own health, it is sometimes difficult to find the required resilience and not give up.
I also need to get out of the "all or nothing" mindset where I only consider a day "good" if I have done absolutely everything: that's how you get discouraged.
Anyway, thanks to the National Holiday, today I was actually able to read, exercise a little bit, and get a good amount of rest.
I also cooked my own food and it was delicious and healthy (one of the best perks of being in Italy is the easy access to fresh veggies and great food that tastes amazing).
I would like to add some more self care steps to my days: drink more water, stretch, massage, deep clean the house.
I would also like to revisit my goals now that I have reached my major one, and laser focus on the others I had left behind.
Just need to make sure I take this one step at a time and push myself when I feel down.
Starting small, I want to get up a bit earlier tomorrow and spend some time exercising and reviewing my past journal entries before my work day starts.
I also want to take a full lunch break (this doesn't happen often!) in which I get out of the house a bit.
2022-07-18
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.
---
2022-07-17
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. :)
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2022-07-16
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.
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2022-07-15
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!
---
2022-07-14
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.
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2022-07-13
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
---
2022-07-12
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.
---
2022-07-11
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!
---
2022-07-10
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.
---
2022-07-09
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.
---
2022-07-08
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.
---
2022-07-07
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. :)
---
2022-07-06
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...
---
2022-07-05
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.
---
2022-07-04
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?
---
2022-07-03
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.
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