Haven't Posted in Two Months

Hi all. I haven't posted or been on IRC for two months. Partly, I got a little busy. I decided I wanted to take my studies more seriously. I've started bullet journaling, and initially that took time away from writing this blog, but now that I'm getting more into the swing of it, it might end up helping.

### Updates
Some updates: my back and shoulder pain have improved to the point that I finally got to switch to compound exercises. I haven't done full squats in years. My legs hurt. I have pretty much given up on learning to handwrite better, which sucks because I'm embarrassed about my handwriting, but whatever. Zettelkasten ended up clicking with me and now it's the only way I take notes. As it turns out, the problem was not the zettelkasten itself, it's that I was taking Cornell notes and then copying them into the notebox. Now I just write them directly into the box instead of doing this weird two-step method that requires rewriting everything. I don't really know why I was doing that in the first place beyond the sense that more work equals more smarter. At this stage, I don't do "literature notes" or "source notes" or "bib notes" (whatever you want to call them), I just write my notes directly onto index cards. I don't worry about "overcollecting" notes as long as I'm pushing myself to deal with new ideas instead 
of just going over things I already understand, but that's a topic for a later post, if I decide to talk about it.

My dad has been building me a custom chalkboard for a while now, and the other week it was finally completed! We mounted it on the wall, and now I finally have a chalkboard good enough to justify using (and buying more of :^) the expensive Hagoromo chalk. Yes, I too use Hagoromo chalk[0]. I am not immune to brand advertising. It genuinely is really good chalk, though.

### Weekly Strikes and Gutters
I don't think I'm going to go back to writing daily - weekly check-ins seem to be more effective. As such, here are the strikes and gutters for this week:

My plan for this week was to work out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and go for a walk every day of the week. My goal here is to be able to hit parallel in squats, something I'm unable to do because I haven't done compound exercises in five goddamn years, as well as to just walk more often, since not walking places from the beginning of the pandemic is why I have issues. I worked out Monday and went for two walks on Thursday. It's like that sometimes, I guess. I also planned to do a little bit of cleaning and organizing every day, so that one area of the house would be done by the end of the week. I did this once. Finally, I intended to study a little bit every day, hoping to get to the end of some material by Sunday. I did about half of it.

The only thing I've fully adhered to is that I'm quitting coffee. I'm doing so slowly to avoid withdrawal, and I have the amount of coffee I'm allowed to consume written into each day's itinerary. That may seem a little silly, but explicitly writing it out was the only way to get out of the infinite loop of "I'll start tomorrow."

So, yay, I've already halved my caffiene intake! That's certainly a strike, considering caffeine seems to make me jittery and unproductive. Unfortunately, only following the schedule about half the time is certainly a gutter. That's fine, though. It's like that sometimes.

### Plan For Next Week
I've written the itinerary for next week. Similar to last week, I intend to work out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and go for a walk every day, along with some accessory work my personal trainer suggested. In the realm of studies, I have at least two things[0] to work on every day this week, and I'm going to try to get that cleaning done that I didn't do last week. I'm trying to complete the video games I play instead of just bouncing around between them forever, so if I find myself with free time, I will play The Elder Scrolls I: Arena.

### Grander Plans
Along with coffee, I also want to quit drinking soda. We have several litres of the stuff in the house for some reason, but we've stopped buying more. My plan is to just keep drinking soda until we run out, and then not buy more. This is part of a quest to cut down on sugar intake in general. In the long term, I want to become stronger overall, and be able to walk at least ten kilometres without pain. I also want to keep trying to take my studies more seriously. What is MATHPUNK without math?

[0] I too am in this blog post.

tags: notetaking, zettelkasten, chalk, workouts, bullet-journaling