Weeknotes are - or were - pretty much off my radar for a while there, but they seem to be making a comeback through no especial effort on my part.
Summary
It's been a good week, despite my mood being a bit up and down.
Work has been frustrated (as opposed to frustrating) and I don't have much to show for the current sprint, but it's also really clear to me and everyone else that the reasons why are out of our control.
Home life has been good, on balance, and here's my analysis of why.
Diet
The diet is ongoing and is having visible benefits. Weird to be looking in the mirror and liking what I see for the first time in what must be several years at least.
I'm enjoying healthy food and it all feels sustainable in the long term, too.
Activities
I've managed to turn a bit of a corner in terms of having something to lose myself in when I get a bit of time to myself, and it's interesting to me that it's not ONE thing per se but little tangle of mutually supportive activities.
Retro gaming
This is the thing supplying the impetus for the rest. Although the RG35XX hasn't worked out for me it's rekindled my interest in retro games in a new way that's about quantity rather than quality.
Blog
Having something geeky to write about has caused me to resume development of my personal site which is its own rabbithole of design, UX and content decisions.
It also feeds back into the hardware / software tinkering pursuit; if I want to blog about obscure old games I need an easy way to get screengrabs so now I have a reason to setup cloud backup services on my handheld device.
Hardware & programming
In the course of the above I've stumbled on this new handheld with a square screen and so that's got me excited about Pico-8 again and the prospect of making wee games I can play on there... and it I'm doing that I have a reason to revisit my custom Pico-8 cab idea that involves some carpentry and product design.
Which will also be grist for the blog mill.
Non-nerd interests
Of course, all of this is very much on-brand in terms of stuff I like to do and have been doing for years, but I also have my roller skating and I'm still harbouring an intent to knit (if I can just get over the initial difficulty of it!).
Conclusion
My main takeaway from all this is that maybe the next time I'm feeling like I need a new thing to occupy my attention maybe I should try and think in terms of doing something to kick of a network effect within the web of my existing interests.
That's probably easier said than done, but it's worth thinking about 🤔.
END