Monthly report: May 2019

I began this monthly report on the first of the month, full of good intentions and excuses. That it took another five days is proof the excuses are real.

"Excuse" always seems to carry such a freight of negativity. They're not reasons for failing to accomplish what you set out to do. They just excuse you, and that's just beating yourself up. Myself. So, no more excuses. Reasons!

Onwards.

Here we are on 1 June, and although May was a good month I am feeling out of sorts. The reason, I believe, is because I let lower priority but doable things get in the way of higher priority tasks that would take longer, even though equally or more doable. So I got some good things done behind-the-scenes on my website but failed to move forward much on any of the bread stuff, book or courses

Towards the end of the month some new sources of paid work came in, and so naturally I wanted to give them plenty of attention but that’s not enough of an excuse (ahem: reason!) because they weren’t an issue in the first three weeks.

Highlights of the month:

• IndieWeb Camp in Utrecht. My third, and super fun.
• Flying visit to London, also fun.
• Took my keyboard apart and cleaned it. Not fun but very satisfying.
• Gradually remapping various keyboard shortcuts and thinking of new ones.
• Installed IBM Plex font as a trial for monospaced font in plain writing environments, and loving it.
• Started taking 3mg melatonin every night, and I feel as if I am sleeping much more deeply and my dreams are much more vivid (not that I can remember them).

Exist.io

Time asleep climbed by a couple of minutes. Weight may be a little bit down, but not by enough. Peanut butter is evil. Steps is bobbing along nicely at around 9500 average. I tagged Reading on 18 days, three times April's total, and finished a wonderful book that I have yet to write about. Started tagging Sticks, meaning Nordic walking, now that the weather isn't quite so dank and gray. What an awful spring it has been. But great for most of the plants.

Work

Logged 145 hours for the month and worked on 20 of the 31 days. That seems excessive, given that I was travelling for five days during which I logged very little. Last month's lack of time spent on Eat This Podcast suprised me; this month's is downright shocking. Must be because I am not logging reading, planning or even interviews that will be published later this year. The little bit of paid work I mentioned turned out to be around 15% of my time. No wonder things have slipped.

Month	Total	Daily	Admin %	ETP %	Other %
05	145	7.25	40	2	58
04	128	6.4	37	28	35
03	158	7.5	44	28	28
02	121	6.0	32	42	26
2019-01	95	5.4	39	13	48
10	100	4.2	41	34	25
09	131	6.5	45	23	32
08	185	8.0	14	85	1
07	68	5.25	25	63	12
06	96	5.75	34	9	57
05	151	6.0	36	20	44
04	159	7.5	29	29	40
2018-03	152	7.0	20	10	70

Goals

Seven posts published on this blog, and some elsewhere too. I think I brought in one or two older ones, but I failed to record them. listen ed to 53 podcasts.

Niggles

Having got my mapping posts working again, and at least one successful post with data collected by Overland and stored in Compass, I realise two things.

First, there is really no need for these little maps to be live. Static images would be just as useful, and doing that would eliminate all the grief currently associated with flailing around in JavaScript. Luckily, in addition to everything else he has built, Aaron has created Atlas, a service that will create image files of routes and much else besides. Making use of it will take plenty of thought and learning, but Aaron has provided what seem like very clear instructions, and in any case thought and learning is the whole point.

The second issue is the theme of this Grav website. The one I use has been deprecated in favour of a new default theme. Last time I looked at it, I didn’t much care for it, but in the meantime I have become a bit more proficient so this might be a good time to change. If I do, I want to think about consolidating my different types of post and instead making use of tags and collections to organise the way they are presented.

Final remarks

But not before I have updated the bread course notes.