Newsletter #3 Feb 2024

Hi! It’s been a few weeks since my last newsletter, and I really feel like I need to catch up with myself!

The whole of February as been a bit of a blur to be honest. I feel quite strange about it. We actually did get a lot done, but for some reason I feel like I’ve achieved very little.

📱 Habitica updates

I was going quite well with this app until the last couple of weeks when my sleep became disturbed and, as always happens, my whole life just fell apart as I ceased to function. It remains to be seen if I get myself back on track!

I have been hitting a bit of a wall with what to do. I think I might need to join a party to get the most out of it and participate in challenges but I’m having a hard time finding ones that sound useful for me. There are a lot of “do this thing every day” ones which just is not what works for me for longer than a couple of weeks, and then when as I fail I get demotivated.

I would like in March to spend more time on motivation and maybe rethink how I want to approach feeling more organised and taking better care of myself. Which I suppose brings me to how I’ve been feeling for the last couple of weeks.

😞 A February Failure?

I’ve felt quite low the last week or so. In the front of my brain I know that this is because of hormones, and most likely because I’ve neglected the things that give me the deepest sense of achievement (blogging, reading, embroidery).

I also have not got back into an exercise habit or eating particularly healthily lately (we ended up with a lot of Wagon Wheels in the house because we’ve been playing Ticket to Ride Legacy .. and man I forgot how good Wagon Wheels are!). I am not feeling good in my body. And now have a giant floor to ceiling mirror in our new wardrobes that show me a full view of how much my body has changed over the last couple of years.

I did not consider how that was going to make me feel. I might write some more about that at some point.

A huge reason why I’ve been so terrible at exercise and diet, and everything else, is because of getting our bedroom redone. We had to empty the room, sleep on a mattress on the floor (even without curtains for a couple of nights, that was a bad idea), and generally live in chaos for a couple of weeks. I have been exhausted.

But, I have still done a lot! So I’m going to list it all out to tell my brain to shut up about how “I got nothing done” in the last month!

1. Redecorated the bedroom and now it looks amazing, and our new wardobes are a daily joy! This is a huge improvement for our home.

1. Caught up with a couple of friends I’d not seen in a while!
2. Organised and participated in a super fun escape room with a group of friends.
3. Learned a lot of complicated new stuff at work and can now do two new things!
4. Went out for my first ever after work drinks.
5. Learned how to do Sudoku!
6. Played 4 more games of Ticket to Ride Legacy, almost weekly.
7. Sowed some seeds for my spring/summer flowers.
8. Somehow “trained” the cat to tolerate being carried for cuddles (I kind of regret this, now she gets all over me even more while I try to work!).
9. Wrote all the blog posts and read the books I will list below!
10. “Finished” Skyrim with an OP mage which is actually an achievement, and I’ve historically been awful at building mages.
11. Started Hogwarts Legacy which is giving me joy so it makes the list!
12. Read some non-fiction which I hadn’t done for quite a while!
13. Arranged a holiday to Carcassonne for May!

I don’t know if this list worked since my watch just told me I still need to “relax!”

📺 I’ve been watching

• In our Doctor Who re-watch we’re now up to Series 6, a full series into the Matt Smith and Stephen Moffat era with Amy and Rory, and (unfortunately) River Song. The writing is markedly different and I’m not sure how I feel about it to be honest. I was very glad to see the back to David Tennant’s Doctor. By the end he was such a drama queen it was exhausting. However, I’m not so keen on how the focus has shifted from the companion’s perspective to focusing heavily on the Doctor and how he is so brilliant and super special and basically the centre of the entire universe. And the writing for Amy is weird (so many horrific traumas that just get brushed off!), and River Song is the worst. She feels like Moffat’s personal fantasy and it’s just a bit gross. There are sex jokes in every episode which feels quite jarring, I am not a fan of the Doctor being a creep! I do love Matt Smith otherwise though, so it has me quite conflicted.

• I just started Elementary. Never seen it before, and its brilliant! A hundred times better than Sherlock (bloody Stephen Moffat again!). I love the dynamic with Watson and Sherlock, and the modern day New York setting totally works.
• I watched One Day on Netflix and was blown away by it! I had low expectations because I knew nothing about the book, or rather my impression of the book was formed entirely by the trailer for the Anne Hathway movie that came out many moons ago. I was not expecting to have my heart wrenched out. A huge part of that is down the casting, Dex and Emma are flawlessly performed as flawed and deeply real people. Matt Haig wrote this great review on instagram. I might even read the book one day now!
• Of course I also loved Carol and the End of the World! Again, exceeded all expectations and I was thinking about it for days after.

🎮 I’ve been playing

• On the PS5 I finished the Dawnguard DLC and decided to declare Skyrim “finished.” I’ve done as much as I wanted with that now! I have had a great time replaying it, and finally figuring out how to be an insanely over powered mage. Nobody stops me and my Dremora “lads.”
• I then started Hogwarts Legacy! We were loaned it by a friend so no guilt over giving money to JK Rowling, and no worries if the game is crap. Turns out it’s great and I’m obsessed with it. In fact we both are, and have to negotiate time to play! I’ll write more on it at some point.. haven’t got far enough into the (apparently problematic) Goblin plot to have a handle on that yet but loving the Hogwarts vibes, brooming about the Highlands and the combat is very fun (even if I’m rubbish!).

• We’re still playing Ticket to Ride Legacy! Just two games left in the campaign.
• We also spent a nice afternoon at our local Boardgame Cafe with family and played Ticket to Ride Europe. I found that it was harder than the original version, some tricky new mechanics, but I still won. My partner’s family think I’m some kind of TTR genius now but it’s mostly just luck!!

📰 New on the blog

Since last we Newslettered

• If you missed it Reading Roundup: January 2024
• Book Review for Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
• WIP | Vacation Picard (Part 2)
• Carol & the End of the World
• Drinks after work
• Sudoku is actually quite easy
• Books Review and thoughts on I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn’t) by Brené Brown

📥 In the processor

I am still wanting to muse on motivation, that is definitely the topic on my mind at the moment. I have had a little flurry of new comments on my Atomic Habits review from last year (I guess because it’s the start of a new year!) which has also stoked my mental flames on the subject.

I’ve been learning a little more about this idea of “intuitive movement” recently rather than “push through it”, which I like as a gear change that might help ease my shame around not doing “enough” but I haven’t figured out what that would look like for me.

Of course I also have read and reviewed I Thought It Was Just Me by Brene Brown about shame, and I actually have finished the audiobook for Daring Greatly which I want to get around to reviewing. I have mixed feelings about it, and I don’t think I’ve found it particularly helpful.

🧵 Work in Progress

I haven’t worked on Picard properly for a few weeks, with everything going on and also Hogwarts Legacy eating my time! However some small progress was made, as I shared in: WIP | Vacation Picard (Part 2)

Here is a little look at his book, but I did also finished his shiny silver crotch!

📖 Reading

I am in a bit of a jam with reviews at the moment. I finished a few books:

1. We Spread by Iain Reid. I have been stuck on review this basically all month! It’s a tricky one that I kind of wanted to do a deeper dive on but haven’t had time, and then as the weeks faded maybe it didn’t excite me enough to go full analysis so you’ll probably get something in the middle of that once I finally figure out how I want to express my thoughts!
2. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë is reviewed. This was not the book I thought it was going to be!
3. I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn’t) by Brené Brown also reviewed if you click the link!
4. Daring Greatly by Brené Brown on audio, thoughts to come on that.
5. I just finished Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier last night! Review to come.

I started the audiobook for The No-Show by Beth O’Leary just because it was available with unlimited copies for the month and I couldn’t find anything else! It’s fine so far, but one of the three narrators one has some terrible mouth clicks on the audio which I’m finding challenging to listen to.

I bought a few 99p eBooks.

1. Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut
2. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
3. Children in Time by Adrian Tchaikovksy

I haven’t picked a new book for tonight but I might go for Children in Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky because my partner is reading that at the moment.

💡 Inspiration

I haven’t had much time for reading blogs lately but I did save in my daily notes a couple of posts enjoyed:

• Tangled Up with Madame Web (or Who Wants to Know the Future?) almost had me wanting to go to the cinema … but I’ll probably wait until it’s on streaming!
• I just enjoyed this little musing on blogging by Veronique. She has one of my favourite personal blogs.
• A handy list of fantasy books with an older female protagonist, makes a good bookmark!
• Food for thought on how social media negatively impacts creativity in The Pornification of Art.
• I love Winnie Lim’s sketchbook journal.

I aim to get better at saving these!

Instagram Inspo

In the embroidery/crafty world I want to share @the.fairybeam because her pieces are such joy. Bright, sparkly and packed with cute whimsy.

❤️ Highlight of my month?

It’s been a few weeks so I have a few candidates! Going for drinks with colleagues was a huge social anxiety breakthrough for me! Learning how to write and apply XSLT at work has also been very gratifying! Both things are exactly why I took the leap to change jobs.

But also the Wardrobes 💖 I can’t believe how nice our room is now and how organised my clothes are!

If you made it all the way down here, let me know how your week was! What was the highlight for you?