Text to R this morning:
I don’t want to go run in this freezing cold.
I just want too snuggle up with the warm bachcha, hot chocolate, hot samosas and watch Gilmore girls.
After a good interval running session in freezing cold:
I’m the next Kipchoge. I’m the new Mary Kitane. I can beat Shelly Ann Fraser Price. David Rudisha is me. Mo Farah wants to be me!
Hormones and all that stuff … :)
I’m missing Cristina Yang.
She’s absolutely the best character (and actor) in the early seasons of Grey’s Anatomy. Outshines everyone else put together.
We have a lot of lovely rose plants in our backyard. The flower beds in the front are largely empty. In early November, Paul and I planted a few rose cuttings from the back yard roses in the front yard flower beds. He advised me there was very low likelihood that any of them will survive or take root.
I read somewhere that roses like acidic soil; mixing coffee grounds in the soil around them is good for them. So I’ve been doing that occasionally.
Today when I went to distribute some coffee grounds around the roses, I noticed a few fresh leaves sprouting out of a few of those cuttings.
They’re alive! They may even take root! We may have successfully added new plants (without buying them) to the yard!
I’m happy :)
Woke up before 7. Took care of the boy’s morning business. Meditated. Worked. Stretched. Practiced French. Ran. Stretched. Now working again.
I just discovered that the regions map used by Google Analytics doesn’t yet differentiate Telangana from (rest of) Andhra.
*whisper* It doesn’t differentiate the regions of erstwhile J&K either. Supporters of an unmentionable political party may start burning Sundar’s effigies if they find out.
Shaved. Walk with the boys in beautiful, freezing sunshine. Chatted with parents. Posted a few photos1. Wrote notes for Running with Sherman. Gritted the front drive. Made lunch. Ate lunch. Didn’t work2.
Can’t sleep.
All day I worked to stay away from the trouble in the head.
Now the head is too tired to work, and too troubled to rest.
Can’t sleep.
It’s three hours past my bed time. I’m still awake.
The day started with a slow lazy morning. My head was awake but the body was tired, so I stayed in bed.
I did a good day’s work, and had the boys and R for company. I stretched often, though not enough. I drank enough water, maybe too much.
Got a call in the evening that dampened the mood a bit. Received a rejection email that dampened it a bit more.
I must stick to the rule of not checking email after 6. Any wrong messages just knock the head off. I can take the knocks in the morning when I have work to dissolve the head in. In the evening they just ruin the sleep. Then the lack of sleep ruins the work, the run, and everything else in the next day.
In the last two hours, I finished reading Hemingway’s A movable feast. Then I read his Wikipedia page. I also read Scott Fitzgerald’s Wikipedia page. I read a few articles of the Economist. And now I’m writing this (on the phone!) while eating the Coffee & Walnut cake that R baked in the evening. It’s long past midnight, so it isn’t no-carb Wednesday anymore!
One of my tweaks for 2020 is to restructure my working week, with Monday and Tuesday dedicated to one kind of work, and Wednesday-Friday split between work and app dev. This new tweak starts today.
A trouble with this split, as I’m realising sitting here, is that this new work is still a blank sheet, and unstructured. And I’m new to it. When working or doing app dev, I can be deep in focus within minutes of sitting down, because I know what I need to do, why I need to do it, and, often, how I need to do it. With this new work, I’m unsure of both the what and the how. I don’t even know where to start. (Answer: start with why).
This blank sheet is unsettling. So I’m quickly discovering other things to do. Like realising how the work desk needs dusting, or that an unrelated spreadsheet needs updating, or that I should write this post. I guess the first few days of this work will be a struggle of sticking with it, learning more about it, and creating a structure—a mental model in the head and a workflow on the table/computer. And a struggle of avoiding all the suddenly alluring distractions—like practicing French instead.
