Strikes n Gutters 23 April 2025

# Morning
Good morning! I'm trying something a little differently today - instead of writing the post at the end of the day, I'm checking in throughout the day. I think that's called "interstitial journaling."

My morning has been going okay. I didn't sleep much again last night - my circadian rhythm is messed up from staying up late to catch meteor showers[^1]. I ended up walking in circles around the kitchen trying to decide if I should have a high-protein breakfast or just some toast. I need to be eating a lot of protein to recover from my workouts, but when you're just waking up, it's always so tempting to just stick some toast in the toaster and call it a morning. I thought back to yesterday, and how I managed to get started on the workout I was procrastinating by reminding myself that I'm fully capable of dealing with the urge to procrastinate, and I did a similar thing. I reminded myself that I am fully capable of dealing with the urge to not make a healthy breakfast, and then I had some skyr and blueberries. Which... isn't that difficult to make, considering I just mix some blueberries in a bowl of skyr. But first thing in the morning, even that little effort can feel monumental. So that's my win for the mo
rning.

Also, you may have noticed two things:
1. I've posted every day for 3 days despite claiming, in the introduction, that I won't post a lot
2. The post for a given day goes up the day after - as in, the post for April 22 was posted on April 23, and so on.

The reason I'm posting a lot is because I'm excited about the blog. It's a new thing, and resultingly I think about it frequently. I'm sure that eventually some other new exciting thing will come along and I'll start slowing down. What I'm committed to doing is still coming here to give an overview of my various struggles and successes on some semi-regular basis when that happens.

The reason there's a one day delay in these posts is because I sit on them for a day before proofreading, editing, and then posting.

# Afternoon

The afternoon started off a bit slow. I'm taking a rest day because I overdid exercise yesterday, and the disruption in my routine has left me a little discombobulated. I spent about an hour just fucking with my .vimrc with no real end goal. I can't really do any cleaning today, because it's fairly physically involved. I could have done some organizing, but honestly, organizing is kinda boring, so I find myself motivated to put it off. I thought about how the point of all the cleaning and organizing I have on my to-do list is specifically so there's nothing on my mind when I focus on my studies, and figured, if the whole point of it all is to study, might as well start now, right?

I ended up putting in 1 hour 11 minutes of studying. The entirity of that time was spent on *Write a Novel and Get it Published* by Nigel Watts. I've had this book since I was a pre-teen. I'm pretty sure I got it for Christmas one year. I never really made a serious attempt at learning the craft of writing, mostly because I used to have a very strong fixed mindset about things, but since 2023 an idea has been simmering in my head. It's reached the point that it **demands** to be written, but I don't really know where I would even begin on a project like that, so I've been trying to learn to write. This blog is part of my practice!

I wish I hadn't spent so much time just puttering around, but I'm proud of the work I've put in. I need to try to get some of that organizing done soon. I've noticed that studying leaves me with the desire to keep studying - it's enjoyable, once you get yourself to start.

# Evening
After dinner I ended up working on my notes for nearly two hours. I've been trying out Zettelkasten[^2] for a little while now, and I think there are some things it's great for, but so far I'm finding it tends to be a lot of work for not a lot of payoff, and truthfully I'm not very sure if I'll continue with it.

My shoulders are aching and my hand hurts. I'm remembering why I do all that exercise. The good news is, it definitely doesn't hurt as much as it would have a year ago. If I want to keep doing stuff like this I'm going to need to relearn how to handwrite, because apparently I do it wrong. That, plus I bought a $50 fountain pen and I need to justify that purchase. Fun fact about me: I've learned cursive on 3 separate occasions, and I still don't know how to do it. I just kept forgetting because I never really needed it. I went to school in the era where teachers would say, "next year you'll lose marks if you don't use cursive," and then next year the teacher would say, "I'm no longer allowed to take off marks if you don't use cursive, but next year for sure it will be mandatory." So there was just never any pressure to get good at it, and eventually I forgot. I'm going to learn it for real this time though, because for some reason I've decided I like fancy pens and shit now, and the way I write is rapidly bec
oming a problem.

Overall, today was not too bad. I probably could have done more, but I got a decent amount done, and I'm happy with it. I worry that I'm wasting time with Zettelkasten. I think I could get a lot more done in a day if I actually followed through on the morning routine and/or followed my planner a little more closely. I didn't do any yoga today even though I was supposed to, which sucks, but I got distracted. Hopefully I'll do better about that tomorrow.

Played a few games before bed. Rogue Legacy, Terraria, and Nethack. I'm noticing that I'm moving away from sinking a lot of time into a single game, and instead alternating between a few at once. Also, I'm very very bad at Nethack. If anyone has any tips, hit me up.

[^1] I use the 2025 Night Sky Almanac, from the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, to keep track of things like this. If you're not in North America, you'll probably need something different. Also, this entire footnote is just an excuse to try out footnotes in Markdown.
[^2] I do it with pen and paper, the old fashioned way. I also often treat it more like a commonplace book than how most people typically think of Zettelkasten.

tags: writing, zettelkasten, interstitial-journaling, notes, notetaking, handwriting