vivdunstan

These have been on hold since Christmas, as I've just slept so much, and have been phenomenally wiped out as my neurological illness flares again. Then I had to focus my extremely limited awake time and energy on a time critical academic journal paper revise and resubmit. But I think I can restart these fun things next week. I enjoy doing them a lot. Initially I plan to alternate the two weekly, so a Benny audio listen and review one week, a Sherlock Holmes short story reread and review the next week, and repeat. With luck I may be able to switch both to a weekly rate again, but this initial alternating plan looks more sustainable for now. I will be resuming with the "The Adventure of the Stockbroker's Clerk" story from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and Bernice Summerfield Big Finish season 6 story number 3 The Lost Museum.

Trying a new to me oracle cards deck. Which is gorgeous. Even has shiny red gilt like edges to the cards! Just using for a bit more personal reflection. This deck is autumnal equinox themed.

Sticking with my usual 3-card past/present/future spread, in a really loose form.

The cards are Foraging / Mead and Wine / Autumn equinox.

I can also relate these roughly to where I've been / am / am going.

Re "Foraging" I've been spending the last few weeks gathering together thoughts on my personal strengths, interests and goals. All within the limited context in which I need to operate. Figuring out what I want to do in the coming 6 months or so has been productive, and rewarding, and should be able to translate into fun activities. Including things I can work on from my bed. So that's been a productive process.

As for "Mead and Wine", well we've had a lot of celebrations recently, which are ongoing! September is a double birthday month for us, and also marked our 30th wedding anniversary this year. We had to postpone our big celebration meal (takeaway, but still huge!) for erm reasons. So that is still upcoming. And this week we treated ourselves to a postal delivery of gorgeous brownies and cookies from Norfolk. Coming today ... We are going to be so plump by a week from now! But yes, that card is on point.

The autumnal equinox card might seem to have been more appropriate a couple of weeks ago, but it's not really. It's only now that I'm really feeling autumn kicking in properly. To be fair I can't get out much to see the gorgeous changing colours around. But it's in the last week or so that I've really felt the chill kicking in, and autumn is well and truly upon us. And will be for another couple of months. I do need to get out to enjoy some of it. Will add that as an urgent goal! I am also writing a new IF game set around the changing seasons, starting with autumn. So I need to soak up as much of it as possible. Thanks to the card for the reminder.

So an interesting deck. I will continue to use it from time to time. It is especially gorgeous to handle. There are others in the same range for different times of the year. But I like autumn, so picked this one for me.

Preparation / Self-Interest / Memory.

Another three cards. Which in some ways connect with where I am now.

Autumn is my favourite time of year, and I’ve been getting things in place and making plans for the coming months. Especially the next month and a half, before my inevitable latest post Covid vaccine neurological flare. I’ve already been thinking an awful lot about this, but still need to sit down, with pen and paper, properly brainstorm, and make a list. I’m also planning very soon to blog about my plans on my academic musings blog.

Self-Interest is something I can focus on too much at times. But it’s also important, given how limited I am now, to focus on things that give me joy. Which ties in with the previous paragraph.

This year sees many big anniversaries in my life. Very big ones, like 30 years since both our graduation together and wedding. But also fandom ones, including the 40th anniversaries of Robin of Sherwood, The Box of Delights and even Murder She Wrote! I’d like to dedicate some time to looking back. Including remembering my undergraduate years. Before the end of 2024! So soon.

So more to ponder. But, yes, I need to formalise my musings re plans just that bit more. Writing a formal public blog on the subject should help encourage that.

Drawing up a to do list of things remaining to code in my IFComp 2024 game. Relieved that it is just 30 items long, though a lot of the items are really multiple thing entries e.g. there's a single item in the list that just says "Fill out descriptions of objects/scenery - see individual locations comments for details". But at least with the list laid out it feels tackleable! And avoids me staring blankly at a mass of source code wondering what to do next 😜

I use the Pocket app to save articles (web stories, newspaper articles etc) to read later. A year ago I had 7000 unread articles saved in Pocket, after being so extremely ill for so long, unable to read stuff, but still saving interesting things I wanted to read later. Now I’ve nearly cleared my Pocket backlog. I’ve been blitzing it since just before Christmas, when it was about 6000. I only have 2 unread articles currently saved in Pocket now. One is an Ars Technica history of roguelike computer games. The other an in depth look at Infocom’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy text adventure. Good articles to have saved to last! I will keep saving new articles to Pocket in future to read later but hope to keep my unread count fairly low. And not the almost 10,000 it was once.