By Jasna in musings —

Retrospective: Sept - Jan.

Follow-up from August 2018. Reflecting on the fall and early winter: new job, Spain, San Diego, running, social media, and more.

Last one was in August 2018. What has happened since then?

  • I went to Spain for a conference and to tour with my husband. I practiced a lot of Spanish.
  • I went to San Diego with my husband for his conference and to tour around.
    • I went outdoor rock climbing for the first time
    • I went power hang gliding for the first (and maybe last?) time
  • I visited family more
  • I hung out with or communicated better with my friends (and family)
  • I beat another escape room with my friends for one of their birthdays
  • I ran another ten-miler
  • I ran another 5k
  • I continued to get a lot better at functional programming
  • I became one of the unofficial leaders of my team at work. This seems to happen a lot in my life.
  • I kept up v2 bouldering and got a couple of v3s down
  • I continued to better furnish my house with a new desk, new monitor, new dresser, and new sofa
  • I improved some house things with the help of family and friends: added insulation to the attic, upgraded the guest bathroom vent, upgraded the blinds, and added or replaced some weatherstripping
    • And coming up is a scheduled heavy-up!
  • I accepted a new job offer
  • I still haven't finished a new photo album yet
  • I had a somewhat nasty fall from bouldering, injuring my left arm, and it took about two months to fully heal

And specifically in starting the new year...

  • I have not been studying Spanish every day
  • I have not been sleeping enough most days
  • Regarding Internet shit
    • I have been completely free from Facebook for 14 days
    • I have only once in awhile lost myself in Instagram, and even then, briefly
    • I have infrequently lost myself in LinkedIn, though
    • Youtube is bad, pretty dangerous
  • Regarding exercise
    • I'm keeping better track of my heart rate when working out so that I don't go past my max heart rate. I notice I am a lot less winded. I wonder if I've been pushing myself too hard all these years. Not that I have ever been a fast runner, but perhaps I have never properly trained my cardio system to go faster in the first place.
      • BUT it was interesting to see in my old old Facebook history that I used to be able to run at a pace 2 minutes faster than what I run now... That would be amazing to get to again....
    • I've started P90. We'll see how long I last and if it does me any good.
    • I was relatively good the first week or so, but got sidetracked with job interview prep and other things. I'm trying to get back into it.
    • I seem to have lost my small bit of winter holidays weight gain, so that's good.

Regarding Internet shit

Leaving Facebook has so far been pretty liberating. Once in awhile I'll get this twitch to log in, but I stop myself. I briefly uninstalled Instagram, but I don't remember why I reinstalled it... I guess I like to have some kind of social media connection that isn't strong enough (for me) to get out of hand. I have a lot of friends from far away who post things, and it is nice to see what's going on with them once in awhile. I still don't really post myself, though.

With my freed-up time, I end up wasting it on Youtube or LinkedIn, or I end up doing something more fruitful, like exercising or organizing the house. I also like to tell myself that the Youtube and LinkedIn stuff isn't *so *terrible since I typically watch self-improvement stuff on Youtube and scour career stuff on LinkedIn.

Things to improve or address

I hope to be more consistent with my exercise so I can get a better ten-mile time for a race in the beginning of April.

I want to get back to studying programming-related stuff more regularly. Specifically I should start getting familiar with Play and Akka Streams.

I want to be better at reviewing Spanish a little bit each night.

I want to visit people more often.

I want to get my name changed finally.

I need to start preparing for taxes soon.

I want to play more games with my husband again. We were pretty good about that for awhile before, but my life got busy again.

I should sleep better.... Actually, I'm mentally ok with how much I get most of the time, but common knowledge says 5.5-6.5 hours of sleep a night is not enough... 😦 I guess it'll help with me wanting to read more in the morning during my commute instead of sleeping through the train ride.

I want to get rid of some jewelry. I have too much that I rarely use.

I want to get rid of my random junk boxes.

Things I'm ok with

It would be nice to be a better climber, but I'm not really concerned about it. I like climbing the things I can climb. Perhaps I'm still shaken up by my fall a few months ago.

It would be nice to be a faster runner. I'll keep trying, but I'm ultimately ok with being slow. The health benefits of being a regular runner are still amazing.