Weeknote 2026-W35 - late to work, and little else

• # weeknotes • 1144 words • 6m to read

So, this week was fairly boring. I've been a bit late to work the past week or two, and my colleagues make it well known!

From next week I'm going to try to be a bit more consistent and disciplined. I've been getting up late this week - around nine on the days I'm not going into London, and about half six when I am (where normally I would wake up around six). The reason why is basically bad phone use, where I've been using the phone late at night. I've started playing a lot of Bloons Tower Defence for instance.

Taking of...

Screentime and phone use

Last week (W34) was bad - 1d 11h in total. What about this week?

1d 03h. Better, but still not great.

This breaks down into 10h 45m of Brave, 8h of BTD Battles (it's a fun game...), apparently 3h using the Clock (from snoozing through alarms I guess?), 1h 30m from Proton Mail, 1h from VLC (music), 1h from Notepad, 45m Breeze, 35m Sheets (when I was tracking calories, see below...) and a mere 30m from Whatsapp.

The day breakdown is:

  • Mon 24th: 6h 26m
  • Tue 25th: 3h 04m
  • Wed 26th: 1h 57m
  • Thu 27th: 3h 05m
  • Fri 28th: 5h 06m
  • Sat 29th: 5h 23m
  • Sun 30th: 2h 22m

High... Lower on Tuesday and Wednesday I guess. Next week I hope to be more disciplined, notes below. Let's see if it means a lower screentime.

Diet / Calorie Tracking

I didn't do it consistently this week, and I think part of the issue is that the spreadsheet is very difficult to maintain. Much as I want to be proud of my work, I think I might need to get a better system. Still will be good to do something, after all, what gets measured gets managed...

Also, I have been eating badly. Ice cream and bourbon creams and the like. Ugghhhh I wish I could just be unhealthy and despite that fit and thin!

Reading

I finished Pursuit of Love by Mitford this week. It was quite enjoyable. I liked the sort of understated-clumsy aspect of it which was very true to life. I didn't entirely enjoy the writing style but the events were interesting enough, and was very human. I also liked that the book didn't drag on at all - the diary kind of style can drag on very easy, as there isn't really a natural way to close it. I think it was handled quite well here, with the (spoilers!) sisters pregnant and Linda dying in the childbirth. Without it, as the book itself makes very aware, it would just be dragging on into old age. Also, despite what the blurb makes out, the book is not very sexual at all, with really only a few allusions to it, e.g. where they discuss Frenchmen being good lovers. Otherwise fully tame, which is greatly appreciated.

Anyhow, well worth it as a read, even if it didn't initially grip me fully.

Next I would like to read Murakami's ~it~End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland~~it~, but as I don't have it yet and will have to wait for it arrive, I think I will read Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd. I have read his ~it~Tess of the D'Urbervilles~ and ~it~A Pair of Blue Eyes and thoroughly enjoyed both; as such I would imagine this book too should be a pleasing read.

The Website

On the website, I wrote ...

Georgian

I decided to try start learning a bit of Georgian. I've been fairly interested in it because of its grammar and interesting script(s) for awhile, but decided to actually make a start. I'm still at the early stage where I don't really understand how it works, but it'll get there. The nouns don't seem too complicated at all, and the main thing is the verbs.

Moved things about in my room

I do this occasionally for a change, and now I think I need it. I've moved the bed and the desk mainly, which hopefully will help be a bit of a "reset" for these purposes. I'm also going to disallow phone use in the bedroom from tomorrow onwards. I'll use the alarm clock instead. Going forward I need to get a better alarm clock as the cheap one I've got isn't very good. I want a nice metal one that goes brrrrrrrrrrinnggggg.

There is now room above my (first and primary) chest-of-drawers to place a screen, and the extension cord and cables atop it. This keeps the cabling relatively out of the way, however also has the benefit of granting me use of the screen, for the chest-of-drawers is directly behind my desk now. As such I can watch movies or the like using the screen, and it is not so close as to be difficult to see, as the desk itself is more of a writing desk, and is not large enough to allow for a screen itself.

Were I to get a small box in which to place a computer (with small CPU, RAM, etc.) I could well envision that I could use it as a proper desktop computer of sorts. Only small but still performant enough I guess I'd want - a proper AMD CPU, 32GB RAM, either see if I can take my 1650 out of the laptop and put it into that or just buy a cheap GPU, some SSDs for a few TB of storage, etc. That would solve my computer worries a bit. But of course, expensive what with all the AI nonsense that's going on.

Next week and going forward

I want to be a bit better mainly about sleep. I'll have mandolin again from the 1st, and we will be doing our new repertoire. I need to start practising a bit more regularly too. Wake up at a good time, don't use the phone at night, etc.

Also, I should start going to the gym again! It's been a few weeks, since I didn't go when I sprained my ankle, and then was on holiday, and then haven't gone for I think two weeks after. I need to rebuild that routine.

I've also bitten my nails rather too heavily this week, and even gone so far as to peel a layer of skin from my left thumb which is quite painful. I do really need to kick this habit again.

I think that's about it for now.

No pictures this week, sorry. I didn't really do much.