January 2018 Diary

As if 2018 is a real year, and not something that was in a Dan Dare comic.

Somewhere towards the end of 2017 I started to slow down and started to rush home. I cut short my gym routine to make sure I caught a certain train from Waterloo. But once I got home, I had no energy to focus on doing anything useful.

So I started 2018 with the intention of hitting the gym Tuesdays and Thursdays, going to a Meeting Wednesdays, and working five days except when I need to be home for workmen, or perhaps just need a break from commuting. To make myself do that, I decided I’d have something to eat after the gym as a reward and an incentive, to help build the habit. Also to dodge the 18:00 - 19:00 trains and to lose that hour at home when I’d just mooch around. So when I get home, it’s around 20:00, and I set up for the next morning and climb into bed by about 20:45. All those meals may sound expensive, but, I’m not going to the movies at £16 a shot, nor do I drink, smoke or go out. And I’m just having a main and coffee. Okay. A dessert when I try somewhere new. So frankly I’m not going to beat myself up about it.

I’ve been busy on a project, and the long think-piece posts I’ve done recently. Those take way more time to write than it takes to read. What takes the time is setting down all the junk thoughts, the easy thoughts and the confused thoughts, and then getting rid of them.

I’m almost at the end of S2 of House, which I’m enjoying. Movies - phut! Haven’t been in the mood for novels, but I have been scanning through a book on p-adic numbers now and again. And reading three or four pages of Hegel’s Aesthetics at bedtime. I’ll be done by the end of February.

It’s too damn cold or wet at the weekends, so I’m doing very little. The advantage of going to the gym on Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon is that it gives me the sense that I’ve done something active both days. Which of course I have.