Reading – Page 4 – whiskybaker

Trying to focus

How do you pick what you want to focus on? I mean, seriously – there are so many things I want to do, and help Q with, and I have no idea how to fit it all in.

Right now I’m trying to fit in – in addition to working-from-home-mostly-full-time:

improving my French – mostly this involves the Duolingo app. My French is pretty abysmal for someone who took it for 13 or so years through elementary and high school;
reading more – like actual books. I’m doing the Toronto Public Library’s reading challenge again this year and while I’m doing okay, I’d like to be more consistent with it. For example, I haven’t read anything not work related in the last two weeks. I’d like to work it in;
cross-stitching – it’s fun and calming. Mostly it’s calming. I found an awesome group on facebook to stitch with and they have little games and competitions and while that helps me stitch more it also sometimes ups my anxiety. Thankfully they’re pretty laid back and chill and if I have to drop out of something there is no problem. I’m also VERY careful to follow through on the ones that actually require preparation and participation though;
helping Q learn Morse Code – I’m not sure how much he wants to do this but we’ve worked our way up to E (and also SOS and the letter T);
2 x 10 minutes of my mindfulness app a day – why twice a day? The app is Calm and it has a “daily calm” of about 10 minutes on a different topic each day. Then it has different series that you can work through – right now I’m listening to a series called “relationship with self.”
moving more – hard to do when we’re in a state of emergency I think; but we’ll try.

One of the benefits of not being at home right now is I can at least ignore most of the “housekeeping” stuff – no cleaning, no yard work etc. I am still doing laundry but less really. Also no piano to make me feel guilty for not practising!

So let’s see:

10-20 minutes for Duolingo;
20-30 minutes for Calm;
30-60 minutes for reading;
30-60 minutes of cross-stitching;
30-60 minutes of moving more;
30-60 minutes of helping Q with school, games, Morse Code etc
6.5 hours of work (M – F)
7 hours of sleep (ideally)

At the high end of everything and assuming some buffer for changing activities and that equals 19 hours. Plus eating and showering. I’m gonna try this schedule for this week or two. It has the decided benefit of being easily marked down as “yes or no” – isn’t that the hallmark of a “SMART” goal?

Specific – yes
Measurable – yes
Attainable – not sure
Relevant – well, relevant to me
Time-bound – trying for a week, hopefully two and then I’ll see how I’m feeling about it all.

Wish me luck!

What are you choosing to focus on? One or two things or 50bazillion like I’m trying to do?

Periodic Tales – and an intro to the Toronto Public Library 2019 Reading Challenge

In February I stumbled across this page on the Library’s website: 2019 Reading Challenge. I thought it sounded like so much fun! It would definitely make me choose some books I probably wouldn’t otherwise have picked. Or at least pay attention to who writes the books, where the book (and the author) are from etc.

So of course, it’s me, I made a spreadsheet. Some books can easily go into different categories! For example – one of the advance challenge categories is “a book from The List: Great Reads for Youth”. So I scrolled through the list. And stumbled across this:

Yep – that’s Robin‘s name on that book 🙂 So it obviously goes in the Great Reads for Youth category but it could also go into the “a book by a LGBTQ+ author” or “a book by a Canadian award winning author.” Also if there was a “book written by a family member” that would work too lol

Most recently I finished Periodic Tales by Hugh Aldersey-Williams for the “a book that’s related to the periodic table of elements” advanced category. And yes, I am almost always this literal 😉

I learned an awful lot and I like how Aldersey-Williams comes across as a very smart, very friendly person just sharing his own little obsession with the world.

I loved reading the very elementary (hahaha) explanation behind the choice of gold, silver and lead chests in the Merchant of Venice – something I’m sure I just glossed over in high school. Oh and I enjoyed learning new words (hoicks for example) and loved the description of Eugène-Anatole Demarçay as “a gaunt, severe-looking man whose chief glory was his florid moustache.” My dad’s mustache is awesome so I had to go look up Demarçay’s!

There are lots of references to movies, to cars, to art, to architecture and so on. In fact, I was drawn so much to a passage on artists’ colours and the art supply store L. Cornelissen & Son that I went and looked it up – it still exists in London and Q has agreed that we should go check it out when we visit in August! You can do a tour online here. How cool is that?

So, what are you reading?