I am removing unnecessary structure from the work logs, so there's no prelude and afterword. I'm hoping to weave through narrative instead
Today I come again to the gym to exercise and plan the day. This morning, once more, I had a spontaneous work session of Project Arete:
Work session 1 (90min)
I completed one of the tasks for Arete that I had set out to finish yesterday. Project Arete can now go to the icebox, I hope. I will use it inbetween sets to see if what I did indeed resolves things for me.
I find it interesting that, no matter what I do, I can't work at home except when I'm working on Arete. Not only that, but I can't prevent myself from working on it. I may think "I want to be out of home at 10am" and then go down rabbit holes for hours on end.
It breaks the myth that I made for myself: "I can't work from home". So now I have to say "I can only work from home when working on a specific project". Perhaps here lies the answer: allow Arete to be done at home, and take it out of the work sessions because it happens spontaneously. Indeed! I'll stop thinking about it as work. If it were work, I wouldn't be able to do it at home.
Let's lift some weights now.
I think, now that I give myself permission to work on Project Arete from home and outside the worklogs (now, this sounds suspiciously like a side project) I can focus on where I was going with "real work" (if I were to express this in person I'd be very emphatic with the air quotes).
What needs to be done? I'll probably know after the next set.
Two active projects: Notebits Flow and Bézier Game. Notebits Flow is very close to being completed, but René is on vacations, so even if I complete it it will sit completed for an entire week. Better to come back to the Bézier Game.
Next exercise.
I remembered something I know from years of exercising: don't strength train every day. It's not that I will feel exhausted today, overtraining manifests when the body gives out, and in my case this happens after a week of daily training. I shall throw in calisthenics and cardio at the park. But will I be able to plan my day there? I don't see why not.
Next set
I'll begin the day at the pool. The first work session will have no intention except to understand and simplify. In this way I can stir the codebase once again, as it's oils and waters have settled separately.
Next set
What do I need? Last week I was carrying a huge load on the cargo rack and I progressively made it lighter. It is not a hassle to bike around, but it is a hassle to secure it and then unlatch it when I get to my destination. I can either use my laptop backpack and sacrifice cargo space, or attempt to use my hiking backpack, which is much larger.
Next exercise
I'm done at the gym. I'll take the hiking backpack simply as a matter of experience. I won't know if it's useful until I try using it.
So the hiking backpack is not compatible with the bike. I was hoping it was, because I wanted to do a combined hiking and biking trip in the near future, but the ergonomics of something that was designed for walking is very different from biking. I'll figure out how to combine biking + hiking later, at this time it's biking + working. The simple solution would be to purchase a larger backpack, but at this time the constraint is to do it with little or no money, so I'll figure out something else.
On my way to the pool I realized that I didn't bring my bathing suit, and I was almost glad, because this meant I didn't have to bike around with a hiking backpack latched on to me. So I came to the park and hung the hammock for a work session, with the intention of going back home to change the luggage.
Work session 2 (1h)
So I revisited the Bézier Game code, I fiddled around and then compared to the older version I had. I'm afraid I understand my older code better. This left me a bit deflated, one week of wasted effort? But continuing working on this direction would incur in sunken costs fallacy. What is more likely to get the product out of the door? The older code for sure. I will try not to fret on wasted time, the lessons that I learned in this incursion into paperjs are my reward.
After the work session I exercised a bit and wrote an opinion piece on the state of gender language policing. I'll let it simmer a bit before publishing, but it has already taken the topic off of my mind. When thoughts aren't carried away by meditation, creation usually does the trick. Now, let's get back home.
After getting home I fixed myself a quick lunch and had a short nap. In the nap I dreamed that I was meeting up with two of my friends from high school. I was wearing two hats, one was a panama hat and the other was a more feminine hat with flowers. I put both on and went to the meeting place. One of my friends called me as he couldn't find me, and I saw him go right by me, but he didn't recognize me because of the hat. He entered a building. As I was following him, my other friend came out of the building, looked at the hat, then looked at me strangely, and then asked for my computer. I opened my backpack to pull it out, but the laptop seemed stuck. My friend pulled hard and broke it.
Now I'll have a work session at the pool.
I fooled around, but I wouldn't call it a work session. I tried to simplify the code, to no avail. Frankly today I'm feeling hopeless, it's like climbing a mountain through another face, finding that the face that you were climbing was easier, and now I'm drudging the way back. I stretched in the sun, completed a lap underwater, and then came to the library closest to the pool, in hopes of having better luck in a setting more appropriate for focused work. Let us try.
Work session 3 (1h)
I warmed up to the codebase and fixed some things that had broken in my last foray trying to add segments to the Bézier Game. Not feeling as hopeless as I was feeling minutes ago. The library is closing, so I better get back home