vital functions
Aug. 15th, 2021 11:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettReading. The Bullet Journal Method, Ryder Carroll. I would not recommend this book, I don't think. Carroll's absolute earnest sincerity about trying to write an accessible and welcoming guide is (for me) undercut by both the pop psychology (filtered through enough thinkpieces to render it at best homeopathic) and the... very definite target audience, which, well, Carroll's bio describes him as "a digital product designer living in Brooklyn, NY", and that is honestly Exactly the demographic this is aimed at. For that audience, the introduction to mindfulness might (might) be pitched about right, but I found that the examples ("planning a vacation to Hawai'i"; "my first start-up was successful but it wasn't fulfilling because I don't actually care about paint-by-numbers"; "I feel like paying rent [in Brooklyn] is a waste of money... but actually I live in a nice area and I like the sunbeam that warms the carpet by the bed in the morning") grated. There's a bunch of He Means Well But unintentional sexism and racism. I learned a couple of New Facts, and the purpose of the "Event" bullet was better explained in the book than anywhere on the website, but if you want an introduction to Bullet Journal® then I'd probably point at the official overview, Stationery Nerd, and Diary of a Journal Planner. I read this mostly because I was having a completionist Special Interest itch, that was not sated by reading Every Single Blog Post on the official website in spite of the amount of shrieking I felt the need to do about how facile many of them were, but that drive is now (thankfully) sated.
This Will Not Happen To You, Marissa Lingen, as linked by... one of you lot.
I also disappeared down a pharmocological rabbit hole for a day or two in there.
Watching. We watched Leverage: Redemption S01E04. They so nearly did something interesting with the "we're not heroes, we're just necessary" line, in terms of engaging with both their collateral damage and squaring "necessary evil" and "means to an end" with the concept of "redemption"... and then it was the set-up for a punchline about the target of this episode's attentions [content note: suicide] jumping off a roof after they severely triggered his trauma about building collapse... into a completely nonsensical (on multiple levels) "emergency" "fire exit". :|
Listening. So one of the things Ryder Carroll did was quote Anthem (there is a crack in everything/that's how the light gets in) on a section entitled "Imperfection", as the lead-in to an anecdote about a time he screwed up cooking dinner for an ex. I took this extremely personally, and have therefore worked my way through a bunch of the Live In London videos on YouTube -- including, importantly, fucking myself up with Tower of Song ("Now, I bid you farewell, I don't know when I'll be back/they're movin' us tomorrow to the tower down the track/but you'll be hearin' from me, baby, long after I'm gone/I'll be speakin' to you sweetly from a window in the Tower of Song") -- which, of course, I knew In Advance was going to absolutely wreck me long after he was gone and which, unsurprisingly, does precisely that.
(I sat on the sofa crying gently and made A listen to a bunch of his songs including actually paying attention to the lyrics -- remembering, of course, that by-my-understanding Leonard Cohen only ever really got into the music biz because he wanted people to pay attention to his damn poetry -- which I think also served as a reminder that the reason I don't actually listen to music much is that I care about it A Lot and it completely hijacks my brain.)
Playing. Okay, so, Solitaire: Grand Harvest annoyed me by letting me build a farm and then taking it away again... but this does not, alas, appear to have put me off it entirely and I am indeed still going.
Also a bit more I Love Hue.
Cooking. Another round of Vanilla Black Cook & Learn, this time Not Mushroom Risotto! Write-up to follow (maybe).
Elsewise of note: potatoes parmentier (freely adapted, including massively increasing the quantity of garlic) with caramelised fennel (from the Ottolenghi cookbook Plenty, see e.g. a classic food blog post on the topic); and lasagna, for the first time in a very long time, which involved using up some dubious vegetable protein Stuff from the cupboard (it was a gift), and the (remarkably edible) basil soy "ricotta" left over from the Vanilla Black adventure, and indeed the rest of the bunch of basil. The fennel seeds in particular (added liberally) were Very Good.
Making & mending. I disc bound my thesis and I am grinning every time I look at it(s exterior
).
Growing. Victory of the day: giving most of the strawberry runners pots with coir in.
Elsewise we have eaten four blueberries and I have just-about managed to keep on top of the watering.
Observing. A NOCTULE.
This Will Not Happen To You, Marissa Lingen, as linked by... one of you lot.
I also disappeared down a pharmocological rabbit hole for a day or two in there.
Watching. We watched Leverage: Redemption S01E04. They so nearly did something interesting with the "we're not heroes, we're just necessary" line, in terms of engaging with both their collateral damage and squaring "necessary evil" and "means to an end" with the concept of "redemption"... and then it was the set-up for a punchline about the target of this episode's attentions [content note: suicide] jumping off a roof after they severely triggered his trauma about building collapse... into a completely nonsensical (on multiple levels) "emergency" "fire exit". :|
Listening. So one of the things Ryder Carroll did was quote Anthem (there is a crack in everything/that's how the light gets in) on a section entitled "Imperfection", as the lead-in to an anecdote about a time he screwed up cooking dinner for an ex. I took this extremely personally, and have therefore worked my way through a bunch of the Live In London videos on YouTube -- including, importantly, fucking myself up with Tower of Song ("Now, I bid you farewell, I don't know when I'll be back/they're movin' us tomorrow to the tower down the track/but you'll be hearin' from me, baby, long after I'm gone/I'll be speakin' to you sweetly from a window in the Tower of Song") -- which, of course, I knew In Advance was going to absolutely wreck me long after he was gone and which, unsurprisingly, does precisely that.
(I sat on the sofa crying gently and made A listen to a bunch of his songs including actually paying attention to the lyrics -- remembering, of course, that by-my-understanding Leonard Cohen only ever really got into the music biz because he wanted people to pay attention to his damn poetry -- which I think also served as a reminder that the reason I don't actually listen to music much is that I care about it A Lot and it completely hijacks my brain.)
Playing. Okay, so, Solitaire: Grand Harvest annoyed me by letting me build a farm and then taking it away again... but this does not, alas, appear to have put me off it entirely and I am indeed still going.
Also a bit more I Love Hue.
Cooking. Another round of Vanilla Black Cook & Learn, this time Not Mushroom Risotto! Write-up to follow (maybe).
Elsewise of note: potatoes parmentier (freely adapted, including massively increasing the quantity of garlic) with caramelised fennel (from the Ottolenghi cookbook Plenty, see e.g. a classic food blog post on the topic); and lasagna, for the first time in a very long time, which involved using up some dubious vegetable protein Stuff from the cupboard (it was a gift), and the (remarkably edible) basil soy "ricotta" left over from the Vanilla Black adventure, and indeed the rest of the bunch of basil. The fennel seeds in particular (added liberally) were Very Good.
Making & mending. I disc bound my thesis and I am grinning every time I look at it(s exterior
).Growing. Victory of the day: giving most of the strawberry runners pots with coir in.
Elsewise we have eaten four blueberries and I have just-about managed to keep on top of the watering.
Observing. A NOCTULE.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-08-16 10:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-08-17 12:14 am (UTC)Also Leonard Cohen was an artist for the ages.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-08-20 07:53 pm (UTC)So, are you doing the Bullet Journaling, despite the annoying book you just read? Sorry if you already mentioned it in your post - these days my mind can’t easily hold more than one point or 2 by the time I get down to post a comment
(no subject)
Date: 2021-08-20 08:40 pm (UTC)Yep! I have been since mid-December last year, and the irritating book notwithstanding I'm actually finding the method really useful -- particularly in terms of having a glorified sticker chart for my physio exercises, and having a formalised approach to Updating Todo Lists Where Not Everything Got Done. Analogue is working much better for me than digital, in part because a lot of my work is digital and having the todo list analogue means I can have it permanently open next to me, without getting buried in a drift of windows...!