Status:
After waking at 5am from a typically weird dream (the house was being attacked by a dinosaur/crocodile which I scared off by waving my arms around, which woke up Fiona, though she doesn’t remember it) I slept well enough to try some prescribed pottering today. This is to figure out my baseline of activity with chronic fatigue that won’t trigger a crash. In essence, I do small things with plenty of breaks, making sure I’m not just on the sofa all day but not pushing myself too far.
The main activity was based around a couple of large sacks of flour which needed decanting, then making space to store them a shelf, then tidying up, a job that should take 10 minutes but which I spread over a couple of hours. I also shaved my head because it’s going to be warm for a few days so I shouldn’t get a chill. Along with cleaning out the rabbits that was my activity for the day. If there’s no notable crash tomorrow I’ll try that level again.
On going out to clean the rabbit run tonight I called out “housekeeping!” and I’m astonished I’ve never done that before in the 13+ years we’ve had rabbits.
Overnight listening:
- In Our Time: John Keats - I usually skip the poetry IOTs because poetry (no offence, poets) but sometimes the life of the poet is more interesting than their work (see Coleridge). This one, not so much. But it did help me get to sleep, which is supposed to be the point of listening with comfort headphones at 1am.
Reading:
- Cory Doctorow: Six Years of Pluralistic - Cory reflects on his massively productive blog, how and why he runs it and what effect it’s had on him. Cory often seems like a blogging superhero, doing an unimaginable amount of reading and writing that seems impossible to replicate, but he breaks it down nicely here and makes it feel doable as a practice. Lots to think about here with regard to what I’m doing with this site.
- Ah shit! We let pedophiles decide our beauty standards. - Jameela Jamil says what has been said many times before but still needs saying again and again. Society needs to stop making straight men feel weird for fancying grown-up women.
- An Unknown Woman: how I discovered a hidden tragedy tied to Russia’s most famous painting - more interesting than the headline makes it sound, but also I’d struggle to write a headline for this as it goes all over the place, in a very good way.
- Ian Dunt: Can we extract the Reform nonsense from Labour? - on the proposed changes to achieving settled immigration status. I find this shit infuriating, but then I start with the truism that all people are equal and should be treated as such, not due to accidents of birth and ethnicity. More fool me.
- ‘Viking’ was a job description, not a matter of heredity, massive ancient DNA study shows
- Research into hedgehog hibernation patters and how they’re being affected by climate change.
Watching:
- The Greek Mythology Family Tree, Explained (14:40) - I know this stuff in bits and pieces from a myriad of comics, movies and stories, so it’s good to have it laid out like this.