Monthly report: January 2018

Overall the month has been pretty good. One week of the month I was away from my desk, so that skews things a bit. The biggest upset was a knee injury that knocked my steps way down. The irony is, this came on after injections of hyaluronic acid, to lube the arthritic joint. Those worked so well I think I overdid things, as a result of which I did some sort of damage to the ligaments and tendons on the inside of the knee. The doctor advised ice, rest and elevation, and occasional use of a brace. Those helped, a little, but it wasn't until I turned to ingested anti-inflamatories that things really improved, and that was only a couple of days ago.

Other good things this month.

• I cobbled together a little script to make it easier to add daily entries to a journal log; this will be much easier to scan that the daily notes in exist.io.
• I resumed the effort to automate PESOS of my entries from Reading.am to my Known website; all this proved was that Known won't allow me to automate things it allows me to do by hand, which is very frustrating.
• We had a lot of good evening entertainments, including one movie: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
• A paper I offered (late) to the Dublin Gastronomy Symposium was accepted.
• Submitted podcast episodes to another couple of awards, these ones with no entry fee.

Exist.io

No huge new insights here. Rolling average of steps is showing the decline I know has been happening. I wish there were a way to change the timespan for displays. Seeing the last 30 days doesn't help me assess the past calendar month if I don't get round to it till the 6th. My fault, but still.

Work

There really wasn't much paid work around this month, but what there was I delivered on time and enjoyed doing. I lost one bid for reasons unknown, although the client has said that they want to meet up. That may take place.

Pomodori 4.86 (68 in 14 days on which I recorded any)

I think there were far more days on which I did a little recordable work, as opposed to doing a full day. I know I was probably better at recording these than toggl.

Toggl 20% admin, 10% ETP, 70% everything else

Very poor record-keeping this past month, especially with regard to ETP. Not sure why. Probably because there were lots of days on which I didn't do much worth starting the clock for.

Goals

My goal for this site is to write one new post and bring in five old posts a week. I managed eight new posts and 10 old ones; good, and not good enough. I did also manage to write a book review; I am going to add one a month to my goals.

The old posts (just to give them a bit of a boost)

• Potatoes, Pyke and an Internet Problem
• Kombu seaweed bread
• Whey hey; stoned sesame sourdough
• And all the boards did shrink
• Confused about confetti and coriander
• Blurring the news in my feed reader
• Nilsson, Newman and Parks
• Loss
• Garden News
• Wisteria in the 'hood

I added another goal for January: To get up from my desk by 5:30 or 6:00 and devote at least half an hour to reading a book. I managed that on 12 of the final 24 days of January.

Activities

Steps 62nd percentile

I can't seem to find the data on total steps over the past month. The percentile is a huge drop for me, from 84th in December. That damned knee.

Sleep 8 hours 45 minutes and 60th percentile

What I've lost in steps, I've made up in sleep, but I'm pretty sure the two are not related.

Itches

I got a lot of satisfaction from the script I cobbled together to record a daily journal. I might try and do something similar for a todo list.

Final remarks

That knee better stay good. And I hope that the new form of my daily journal habit allows me to review easily. It still isn't' as pretty as Day One, but it is way better than its predecessor.

This report required three pomodori; that's quicker than before.