July Hit Quick
Date: 7/4/24	Mood: Restless
Listening To: Diablo Rojo by Rodrigo y Gabriela

Been putting off writing a new update until I had more to say, but since today was a day off and I did most of the things I wanted to do and am putting off a bunch of chores I should be doing instead, I figure I should do a small update.

Both the reading list and album review pages are up. I'll update them as I have something to update about them. The album review page is nearly perfect, just nailed that in one. I really like the aesthetics of the reading list but I'm not entirely sure how practical it'll be long term. If I go on a reading tear I feel like it'll become unusable right quick. Problems for another day.

I'm still fiddling with a back end blog replacement for the current setup, but I'm constantly torn on what kind of compromises I want to make and this one does 90% of what I want (I'd kill for an RSS, is my one big complaint), so for now I'll probably keep using this as I try to figure out other options more slowly. I find I don't actually have much mental capacity for a ground up rethink of a process that works well enough. Truly I subscribe to the if it ain't broke don't fix it mentality. This is probably why I made a miserable fiction writer, I never wanted to revise anything. Once I got the idea out I was onto the next thing, I've never liked second passes.

I've been in something of a funk the last week or so, tired from too much work and with low morale due to health and mental affliction. Nothing especially out of the ordinary, but it has robbed me of a lot of my momentum from weeks prior. I was hoping the holiday today would rejuvenate me but I've mostly found myself agitated and aimless, not feeling up to tackling anything but more resentful than appreciative of all of the time to do nothing and feel, briefly, a little bit bored. Also I woke up at 6:15 in the morning despite not even setting an alarm because while I might be tired some aspect of my body seemed to want to tackle the day with the verve of a child on Saturday morning. It didn't really pan out that way, by noon I was flagging and never stopped.

I'm not a very good intention setter, but I would like to become better at this and hoping maybe writing stuff out on the blog would be a good way to help make ideas concrete. My main goal for July is to try to instill in myself a reading habit at home. I've made a lot of good strides in reading at work during my lunch breaks, getting treatment for ADHD helped settle me into the focus necessary for that, but I find that I'm antsy to read a little faster and 45 minutes (give or take) a day of reading just isn't satisfying me. So today I used a bit of that boredom to stop wallowing in self-pity this evening and read instead. It was easy today. It will be harder in future days when I have far less time. But if I can manage even a half hour three or four nights a week before bed it will be much preferable to my current wind-down habit of just compulsively refreshing my youtube suggestions until I get too sleepy to keep my eyes open before the screen.

A modest goal, but there's many things going on and I would like a win to make this new habit more likely to stick, so I'm going to start small this month and hope for the best. That's it for now, here's hoping that I burned off my Sunday blues early this week and the weekend isn't just a second, rougher wave of the same agitation. Sometimes it breaks that way. If it does, I'll just push on through, but I'd much rather just be happy.