The Good

• 10k steps rolling on every single day – I have worked in a few jogs a week this month to get the heart rate elevated more regularly. It comes with the obvious benefits for doing so. My resting heart rate has gone down around 6 BPM which isn’t to be sniffed at.
• Calorie Calculator – I know what helps me to lose weight. My level of activity has been fine but really the key is to stop ingress of breaded or cakey items. In lockdown my cupboards suddenly got flooded with tonnes of food because the uncertainty of delivery slots made us guess what was needed for a week+ at a time. In the general meh mod alcohol went up, food went in, and the natural impact was weight gain. For the last week of July I went back to tracking calories. A process I find so dull it unilaterally stops me snacking.
• Bid on houses – I have always wanted a house with a garden. I was not fortunate enough to grow up with that and it is something I clearly aspire to. Lockdown certainly made me not want to wait anymore so co-incidentally when the market opened in Scotland again I went to view a property. I bid on it but it went for silly money beyond the valuation (50k or so more). The positives are that we got familiar with the process, someone came and valued our place, and I spent a long weekend cleaning and now love my flat more.
• DIY in the flat – With a house move unlikely it means I get to focus on the flat some more. I hung some blinds in the kitchen which stops the massive stream of sunlight in the morning taking the sting of the sun out. We have also sought some quotes to finally tackle the horrible part of our flat – the central heating plumbing. Since we will be here for a few more years most likely I don’t want to go into another winter with the kids bedroom being cold. Also finally being able to decorate after this would be amazing.
• Reading/Audiobooks #1 – I completed White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo over many morning walks in June and early July. The biggest revelation to me was how we allow “racist” to be so narrowly defined. It is conflated to mean “is a bad person” and to mean discrete individual acts of hatred which are both intentional and overt. Really we can deal with those incidents as being perpetrated by assholes. We pat ourselves our backs for not being those guys. While remaining oblivious to the underlying societal problems. Thought provoking read. Well worth an audible credit.
• Reading/Audiobooks #2 – Several people have recommended the subtle art of not giving a fuck by Mark Manson. It is entertainingly written. It however feels like “bro” science and thus far seems pretty obvious to me. Don’t care about the things you cannot change. Pick your battles. Rather than saying anything new it appears to be a love note to tell you to not bother with any self improvement techniques at all. But look at me. Accusing something of merely being snide by being snide. It has helped more people than I could ever hope to. There has been some bits encouraging me to think about some of my choices. Not an absolute train wreck, but I was not bowled over.
• Reading/Audiobooks #3 – Randevous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke. A legend of a friend of mine recommended it. I have been entirely captivated by this and it represents a triumphant first fiction book of 2020.
• Gaming – I completed the Last of Us Part II. It is hard to say you “enjoyed” it unequivocally. Because I think if you are doing it right this game is toying with you the player. The narrative arc has a few fixed set points where you MUST behave in a certain way. In an otherwise open world you simply MUST do some questionable things to proceed. They are not glorified though they are horrific. To survive the post apocalypse you have to develop emotional calluses which first means taking a few bruises. THIS IS AMAZING. Any thrill for vengeance was totally and absolutely wrung out of me before the final act.
• Gaming #2 – I fired up the original XCOM game from way back in 1994. This game has captivated me most summers since 1994 and I give it a play through in a couple of evenings. It is an absolute classic.
• Work – A customer project saw me do an architecture review. I really enjoyed it. It has been a while but I was just in love with the full adoption of Devops/Secops/Psyclopses/Containers etc. So many of the tools and technologies required to make something which starts secure are free and relatively easy to use. What a time to be alive?
• Music – I ordered a new practice amp from Positive Grid before lockdown. It took 4 months to arrive. The product has been fun and I have not had more than an hour to play with it. I can easily see how this would help me improve my playing by giving me automatic backing tracks to learn to solo over. I have put the day back but now it may be the time to learn scales instead of the “by feel” approach I have. Humans implicitly hear the bum notes. So you can cobble together what sounds right without formality. Just eventually I guess I should grow up and learn the instrument!
• Music #2 – as a satire on the need to run Doom on any device or it hasn’t been “hacked” I did this moments after getting it out the box :D. The tone is a default one on the amp I don’t think I used the app to get that. It makes some gorgeous tones.

The Bad

End of July blues. While the month was running along very positively it hit Thursday 30th and suddenly I was just completely “meh” about life. I didn’t get to sleep on time on Wednesday finally getting about 4h30m sleep according to my tracker. Add into the mix that I was calorie counting and it is probably just a huge energy dip.

I am not overly concerned since a day of being depressed when you are better at recognising why is probably a sign of progress.

Highlight of the month

Overall July was a blast.