a week in review and some such.

March 28, 2020, 10:15 AM

This week, I've formalized my "week-in-review" thing by calling it... "Week In Review"!

So for this week's Week In Review, here's what I have. And it somehow just turned into a list of two things: things I did, and things I should have done. So here goes.

Things I did:

made an ordered list for my morning / evening routine. I mentioned this to myself while I was reflecting during my Five Minute Journal. Basically, while I have a set time for my morning / evening routine, I had a checklist with no ordering. Which made me do things just however I wanted, with no order. It made organizing and getting myself ready more of a cognitive load than it should be.
have been doing back stretches in the morning. I supposedly have a good mattress, and I've been trying to vary my sleep position. However, I still wake up sore almost every day. Some days are worse than others. So I started doing some back stretches in the morning, and it feels pretty good.
counting calories. Part of the habit of getting a fitbit is that I've been logging my food, and sticking to a calorie deficit of -750 calories per day. Since I burn about 2000 calories, this limits daily food intake to ~1200 calories. It's a little bit of a challenge, but not too bad. Just right, I'd say.
quality carb vs bad carb. I've been reading so much about what's good and bad when it comes to carbohydrates, and that they're not all treated the same. I used to feel bad about eating oatmeal and fruit, only to find that they're consdered, "good carbs.". So yay for that.
A week in review. Here we are!

Things I should do:

make a menu for myself. Weekly? Monthly? Definitely been making more meals, but they've been a little "haphazard". It might be good to make a "menu" for myself, so that I don't have to think about what to cook.
need to walk more. Definitely.
incorporate Anki into my studies. I downloaded Anki again, after all these years. Seems like a useful tool for remembering things.
schedule Japanese conversation practice. I've been really slacking on this.
Make a system for focusing. Pomodoro timer definitely needs more use.
stay focused during my evening wind down. Lately, because my "wind down" evening routine has relatively few items, I've been taking liberties with what I do. Most times it's just random googling and research, and it fills my head with ideas. Definitely not what I need when I'm trying to get to sleep at night.

So it finally happened. My company did another round of layoffs, and I once again find myself in the precarious position of "last man standing." I'm not technically the last person (there are four of us), but I'm the last "technical" person standing.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. But I suppose there are only a few possibilities:

I have a job
I don't have a job.

There's much more nuance here, but that's pretty much what it boils down to. In the first case, it's business as usual. The latter case... well, it's time to put myself on the market again. Hopefully the habits I've been cultivating this past month or so will continue and prepare me to for this eventuality.

I've been meaning to reach out to old friends, and people are haven't been in touch with. Since social distancing seems to be the topic of the hour. I reach out to Alan and Phi, and that was actually nice. Of all people to get contacted by, Tomomi actually sent me a message too. I definitely did not see that one coming.

One thing I've taken noticed while following my routine is: I've begun to enjoy my hobbies a little more. That's kind of an odd thing to say but....

... it used to be that, "I want to do << this thing here >>", and I would never get around to doing it. So with my discovery of time blocking, I started blocking out times when I would actually do those things. Not just things I need to do, but things I wanted to do. Sounds good at first.

At first, I was like, "Eh, I don't feel like doing this", and I would excuse myself by saying, "this is my free time, I can do whatever I want" -- which I think is okay, to an extent because I don't want to be too strict with this.

Then I started buckling down and doing things. Things I didn't have a habit of doing. And I actually enjoy myself each time. It's kind of weird thinking this way, consdering:

these are things I supposedly want to do.
these are things I know I will enjoy
these are things I shouldn't need to time block.
and yet, historically, I've just never done them. Until now.

Weird.

Dating.

Eh.

One day, I've git a try again.