21 May - 27 May 2018
Kettlebell near miss
Now the light is lasting longer and the weather has been getting a bit better I’ve been experimenting with doing my kettlebell training in the evenings instead. I’ve found that having a day of movement and some meals in me have helped to push a little harder. I’d decided to defer Tuesdays session until the evening but decided that indoors would be better. I’ve enjoyed having the extra space for the get-ups outside so I felt a bit cramped indoors. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could confidently push and do several reps of quarter get-ups with a 28kg kettlebell on my right-hand side. My left is my stronger side but I somehow didn’t quite set up right and pushing up I teetered over. I managed to protect my face with my right forearm but I smashed it rather hard. I aborted my workout and put my arm on ice. Fortunately it’s not bruised too badly and I resumed my workouts on Saturday again.
Reading progress
I finished reading Willpower doesn’t work. Some interesting ideas but I don’t think I got as much out of it as I’d perhaps hoped. I didn’t really get on with his writing style and a number of the examples he chose to illustrate his ideas I felt were weak. For an academic there was little to no citations to all the research that he was referencing. Not even a bibliography at the end. I probably wouldn’t have been quite so picky in the past but since I’d just read How to have a good day any book was going to be compared against that. To be fair to the author I haven’t worked hard enough at the book to at least think about the challenges and thoughts he set out.
Stormy weather
I didn’t sleep so well on Saturday night. I allowed myself some momentary pleasure of late-night video-gaming and paid the price with more broken sleep, further not helped by the 3am thunderstorm and heavy downpour. I’m noting this primarily as another reminder that evening routines should be sacrosanct as much as possible. Certainly writing this up has been harder than it needed to be to push past the tiredness and headache, as well as the other tasks that needed doing today.
And I finally finished building Ninjago City. A truly fantastic build with some lovely build techniques and finishing touches. It has definitely inspired me to want to build more oriental themed MOCs.
A week in Stoicism
Stoic joy is considered to be worthy of practice every day. As opposed to our usual definition of joy being a light-hearted momentary pleasure, Stoic joy is a deeper sense of satisfaction at work well done and freedom brought through our reasoned choices.
”Joy for human beings lies in proper human work. And proper human work consists in: acts of kindness to other human beings, disdain for the stirrings of the senses, identifying trustworthy impressions, and contemplating the natural order all all that happens in keeping with it” Marcus Aurelius
”Well-being is realised by small steps, but is truly no small thing” Zeno
weeknotes