I ran far, I ran long

These are the areas of my life that are important to me, or that I’m working on. Each month I review where I’m at and check in. I’m mostly happy with how February went. My main regret is too much time gaming, but I had some good achievements to balance it out.

Reading

This month I finished 4 books. I generally read a lot of books at once and switch between them depending on the situation or what I’m feeling. I read audiobooks and ebooks and I read on different platforms. I use Libby to borrow ebooks and audiobooks and sometimes these can stay in my in progress list for a while because I don’t finish them in time and then have to wait to borrow them again.

In general this is how my reading system sits:

Bedroom kindle - I did have three books in progress at the start of Feb, but I’m trying to whittle it down to one. This is what I read before I go to sleep, generally it’s a fiction book.

Bag/lounge room/bath kindle - More likely to be a non-fiction book, but is currently a fiction read. Usually this read is a long term investment as I don’t often read on this kindle.

Libby app ebook - a book for when I don’t have either of my kindle’s handy.

Libby app audiobook for running - a non-fiction audiobook that I listen to when running.

Libby app audiobook for sleeping - a fiction audiobook that isn’t going to keep me awake, but is still engaging enough to keep my attention.

Libby app audiobook for enjoyment - usually another fiction audiobook that I listen to mostly when travelling when getting a kindle out is difficult or I want to enjoy the scenery.

FINISHED

• Just Babies by Paul Bloom. This was a running audiobook. It was quite interesting but maybe a little too long and I started losing interest by the last couple of hours. Some interesting ideas, maybe someone unfamiliar with the constraints of psych testing may have found some of it quite boring, but for me it brought back a lot of stuff I studied in uni so found it interesting from that perspective as well.

• The Innocence of Father Brown by GK Chesterton. I’m not sure what I was expecting from this, but it wasn’t Sherlock Holmes. Crimes happen, Father Brown figures out what happened by preposterous deductions and jumps of logic that the reader would never have been able to figure out.

• After the Count by Stephanie Convery. I’m really glad I read this book. It’s got flaws, but for me these were overshadowed by some of the realisations it prompted. As someone who has participated in numerous martial arts, including boxing, and competed at the same level as the author, I had expectations going in. I thought I knew ahead of time what the conclusion would be - boxing is an inherently dangerous sport, but we accept that danger when we participate, and sometimes it ends in death. I just accepted that as being fact. I thought that by participating in boxing I was accepting that head injury is a risk. What reading this book made me realise is that head injury is an inevitability. I will think long and hard before I spar again, and if I ever do compete again I will be much more aware of the organisations involved and the safety measures they need to have in place to limit danger to their fighters.

• The Passion of Marie Romanov by Laura Rose. I wish I’d DNF’d this book, but I always have this hope that it will redeem itself in the last chapters. I was hoping for some historical fiction, but what I got was a teenager’s diary. I don’t know how much historical accuracy was in here.

STARTED

• Mythos by Stephen Fry. Picked this up as my sleepy time audiobook and it’s doing the job nicely. I wonder if this was published before or after Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology? I find the switch between dry recount of the tales to dramatisation a little jarring at times, but otherwise it’s fine.

• 2666 by Roberto Bolano. This monster has been on my TBR for a long time and I was glad to finally get stuck in. It seems like a slow burn so far, but still engaging enough to keep me hooked. I’m a good way into the second book now and keen to see how everything fits together.

• How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X Kendi. This is my running book. I think it’s an important book to read and I’m looking forward to what new ideas it can teach me.

IN PROGRESS

• The Path of Daggers by Robert Jordan. Haven’t made much progress on this one. It’s my bedtime read as was the Marie Romanov book and I was pushing to get that one finished, so now this one might get a bit more attention.

• The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. No further progress on this one, still waiting for my Libby hold to come up again. It’s a popular book, but the looks of it. It’s also quite long, so I imagine most borrowers are taking the full allotment of time to read it.

• The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. Only a little progress here, another chapter or two. Still enjoying it though.

• Flatland by Edwin A Abbott. This is also a bedtime read so was put aside for Marie Romanov. I’ll probably try and burn through this one before I get into Path of Daggers again, so hopefully I’ll finish it next month.

• An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir. Not much progress as my Libby loan was up and I’m waiting for my hold to come through again.

Health

This month was my 10k race and I”m glad to report that I smashed it! I really took my foot off the pedal when I decided to divert from the program and finish training on my own. But in the end I was able to beat my goal time by 3 minutes, so I’m really happy with how it went. Part of me now wants to try the next stage, which would be a half marathon. I feel like it’s a very achievable goal, but the sheer number of hours it would require me to be on the road and running is just too much.

I’m looking forward to having more time for other fitness endeavours, like weights training again. I train best when I have a competition to train for, so I’m considering looking for a powerlifting or a strongman competition to sign up for . Last year we accidentally came across a stone lifting comp and jumped in, just for fun. I surprised myself by lifting a whole lot more than I thought I could. Unfortunately we’re not going to be here for next year's event, otherwise that could have been my goal.

No change in my weight, which in a way is good. Stability is better than putting weight back on. I’m trying to cut back on evening snacking still. It’s difficult.

Mental health has been good this month, feeling generally motivated and energetic.

Writing

I completed my short story quite early in the month and had intended to maybe do some revision of older stuff, but it didn’t happen. I’m happy with my short story this month though, I like how it turned out.

In general, I think writing took a back seat in February, but I have so many things to juggle that I can’t always be pushing everything. It’s ok to coast in some areas sometimes.

I’m considering putting my short stories up here on Vocal, too.

Study

Language study has been meeting the minimum benchmarks I’ve set for myself, but no more.

Last month I mentioned that I’d been playing with coding and had found it a lot of fun and it was something I’d do more of if I had more time. So enrolled in an online course that I thought would allow me to do some more coding, as well as bolster my resume. It’s a 6 week course called Data Analytics using SQL. It has been useful, but there’s been very little coding. I already had a passing familiarity with SQL so this felt more like a refresher than teaching me anything new. The report and portfolio section have been helpful though, quite practical in that it’s something you might get asked to actually do in a real job. It’s just not what I thought I was getting when I started the course. It’s also true though, that the report writing side of things is more likely what a job in this field would spend most time on. So it’s been both a good and bad experience. Once I finish, I think I’ll just continue with the free coding resources I’ve found.

Business

I wanted to spend some time learning about Google Ads for the audiobook business, but I just keep hitting a wall. It makes me feel so dumb that I can’t understand it, and that makes me avoid it. I have to just go back to basics and try to get my head around how it all works.

This month two of my cross stitch patterns were included in a zine put together by another cross stitch creator. I hope it might lead to a few more follows, maybe even some purchases. I also hope it gets me into the right cross stitch communities, start getting my stuff seen by the right people. I think there’s two main barriers to me being successful here though. The first is my lack of charisma on social media. All my posts sound like their written by robots, and not the new AI kind. Hmm, maybe I should get AI help to write my posts, there’s a thought. (Side note - AI is a touchy subject and I certainly do not know enough to have an expert opinion. I think AI should stay away from art, but I’m happy to use it to do things like help me write a resume and cover letter, draft an email, give me suggestions on what to cook for dinner, etc. Using it to help me write social media posts is ok with me too.) Anyway, I want to make a concerted effort to post more frequently and to make more. I have been very slack with this the last month because I have been playing WoW again, and that tends to take over my life when I’m playing it. I need to make a concerted effort to limit my time playing.

Finances

No real change in financial situation, and generally there won’t be until we leave Japan and then I’m a little terrified of how we will be able to manage. I would love just a tiny bit of extra money coming in from Etsy sales to help chip away my remaining debt. Even $10 a week would be a huge help.

Work

Work has been fine this month, because I haven't had to do anything. It's the end of term time so I’m basically desk warming. That’s why I picked up that SQL course now, because I knew I would have time to do it during work hours. I also spend this time writing and starting prep for the NZ move. Basically there’s nothing more I have to do for this job before I leave. When classes go back it will be another round of Self-introduction classes, and then I’ve got a stockpile of lesson plans that I can pull from to fill the rest of the time before I leave.

The Big Move

This month I started to contact real estate agents. I sent out an email (written with the help of AI ;)) saying who we are, when we’re coming, what we’re looking for, gave some examples of the kind of thing we want, etc. I think I worded some of it badly because they thought that the example properties I linked were the actual ones I wanted. As in to start renting them now for August. A lot of the responses were ‘sorry, can’t help you’, but there were a few who were ok and one who was really nice. They all pretty much said to start looking in May at the earliest.

My next big to do is my resume and start contacting recruitment agencies. I had already made a list of places and updated my resume. I was about to start on a cover letter when I enrolled in the SQL course. So I’ve decided to wait until I get the certification from that to add to my resume to start those applications.

I contacted a bunch of international shipping places to check costs and it seems as though it’s going to be pretty expensive to ship things to NZ. The cheapest is about $600 per 30kg box as far as I can find. So we’re going to have to be a lot more selective about what we take with us than I anticipated. In a way, it’s freeing. I’m already starting to detach myself emotionally from a lot of the possessions we’ve gathered here.