I’m not sure if it was a good idea or not, but I found an old backup database of my very first blog and have now imported all the posts to my site. It’s now a complete archive of my ramblings going back to August 2005 when I first started.

Looking forward to a relaxing day watching sport. First the North London derby and then England v Wales in the Six Nations. ⚽️🏉

Quantity not quality

There’s an odd pressure when you’re trying to exercise the muscle of discipline, it’s tempting to want everything you do as a part of that to be the best that it can be. Sometimes you need to just push through and exercise that muscle. When you’re starting out, quantity is often more important than quality. You need to get used to doing something regularly before you can focus on doing it better, otherwise the fear of not good enough can hold you back and prevent you from making the progress you want to make.

Decided I’m going to spend a bit of time working on a new design for my blog this weekend. Time to restructure some things and, since I’m posting more often, have a design that’s more reflective of me and my design tastes.

I just discovered that WhatsApp can do bold and italic text with some basic Markdown syntax. Who knew!

Book Budget

I just added a new category in my YNAB Budget under Quality of Life Goals, it’s name? Books.

Since I started using Goodreads in 2013 I’ve read 104 books. That’s an average of just under 21 books a year with a low of 17 in 2013 and a high of 34 books in 2016.

Clearly I like to read, so it made sense to actually budget for these books financially since I’m already making time in my life to read them. There’s something very different about sitting down and relaxing with a good book compared to a film or boxset that I enjoy a great deal. Most of these books are fiction, I find they provide me with a good way of shutting my mind off at the end of the day by forcing me to use my imagination. I have to let my mind create the images that go with the words, converting the writers descriptions into visuals in my mind. The words on the page acting as the brush and my mind as the paint to create the large landscapes and cityscapes as well as the detail of the characters faces and the expressions they pull.

Until a few years ago I had gone a few years without reading a lot, I always had a novel on the go but the number I would read in a year was much less. Gradually as I got older and remembered how much I like reading the number would increase, but the intensity at which I devoured books became greater after I became ill with depression a few years ago. Throughout my recovery, and when I find my mood dipping again, novels become a great source of escape. Usually I find concentration hard when I’m battling a low period, but a good novel (often a familiar one that I’ve read many times) is able to provide me with some escape. Reading the prose of a good fantasy or sci-fi book allows me to find freedom from the circular thoughts and spirals of whatever I find myself fixating on. As a visual thinker letting my imagination build the worlds centuries away from today (in either direction) is a great way of exercising my creative muscles and preventing those unhelpful thought patterns take hold.

Whenever I’ve spoken to friends who have been struggling with similar mental health issues, I always recommend they read. It takes a bit of effort to start, but I’ve found it much more helpful than watching a film. The act of watching images develop on a screen is far less distracting than having to engage your mind with the words and story of a book. Reading, I find, is a form of active rest. I can let my body rest and recharge, while using my mind in a way that’s different from the work of my two jobs, and in so doing letting it refresh and recharge.

So here’s to books, to my new book budget, and to the many more hours of rest that they will provide.

After a long tiring week there’s nothing quite like flopping on the sofa with a good book. I usually have a non-fiction and a fiction book on the go, more and more I find myself reaching for the fiction to wind down. Currently reading Red Rising and Quiet. 📚

One thing about building discipline, particularly in the area of posting to a blog each day, is the need for ideas. There’s a similarity between ideas and discipline, in that the more you exercise those muscles the stronger they become.

Email to @culturedcode’s Things is possibly one of their best features yet. The fact it is able to create a link to the email in mail.app makes it incredibly valuable.