Monthnotes: August 2024

August was another month of catching up with myself. Rosy was mostly away, so the house was very quiet – althought I did have Rosie the puppy to stay for a week. It’s been an odd month – I was doing admin on my own life which feels like a waste of time – but I am on a more even keel. August just didn’t feel as exciting as it should have done.

I spent a week at a writing retreat. Spending my leave messing around with old notes rather than adventuring was a waste of time – but I feel better for clearing that clutter. Being looked after for a week and not having to worry about meals freed up a lot of time. It’s become obvious that my writing has bogged down in big ideas when I work better by building things up from sentences, so I deleted a lot of notes. So, I’m glad I did it, but I’d rather not do it again. The danger with having a writing practise is turning your entire life into homework.

But then, reading through some old blog posts, I see this isn’t the first time I’ve done this: in November 2008 I was also struggling with too many accumulated notes. This is why journals like this blog are so valuable – you can see where you’ve failed to change, where you are lying to yourself. So the question I need to ask myself is: how will things be different this time?

Scheduling two gym visits a week continues to be stressful, but the exercise routine is paying off. I’m more flexible after a few months of feeling achy and decrepit. Calorie deduction is helping me lose weight. While the weight loss is slow (5 pounds in August) I’m happy with the gentle but consistent pace. As part of getting fit, I’ve been doing at least 10,000 steps a day, managing 404,323 over the month for an average of 13,040 a day. My highest total was 27,390 on a day where I walked from Todmorden to Hebden Bridge. I’m still feeling unengaged with walking and would be doing less if the steps were not in my training plan.

With Rosy being away I watched a lot of movies at home – 27 over the month. Some I hated, such as a rewatch of Dead Poets Society where it was obvious John Keating was an utter prick. I did see some excellent movies – 11 at 4½ stars or more, including Lawrence of Arabia, The Vanishing, The Fly (such body horror), The Banshees of Inisherin, The Cook The Thief His Wife and Her Lover and We’re All Going to the World’s Fair. The Big Short was remarkable for taking a somewhat dull story and finding a compelling way to tell it. I worried that Amelie would be bad on a rewatch but found I loved it as much as when I first saw it.

I went to the cinema a few times over the month. catching up with a couple of movies I had missed – Longlegs was interesting and creepy (review) and I Saw the TV Glow was one of the best films I’ve seen this year (review). Muffy took the train from Blackpool to Hebden for the evening to watch the latter with me. I ended the month watching Midsommar at the cinema with Rosy and our friend Jay. I was delighted that Rosy liked it as much as I did.

I find it rewarding to write my movie reviews on Letterboxd – the way it builds a record of what I’ve experienced – but I’m also aware of how mundane many of my reviews are. I’m not as interesting as I think I am. Or, rather, these accounts fail as criticism as I don’t have a critical point of view – some movies are dull or fail to work for me, and I have little to respond to on those. But overall, I enjoy keeping that journal.

Work has been dominated by preparations for the annual performance reviews, which involve an incredible amount of paperwork. I’m always convinced that I am doing terrbily – which objectively cannot be true – and I feel a sense of dread about the whole thing. I know it’s not justified, but I will be glad when this is over. That said, I am still loving this job as I come towards the two-year mark, which has not happened before.

I use my kindle for reading articles, which means it’s been clogged up for a while, but I finally cleared everything (more admin!). I abandoned Stephen King’s Fairy Tale halfway through – the mundane plot was incredible, but the fantasy bit bored me to tears. In Esquire’s ranking of all 77 books, this book came 14th, which surprised me. Maybe I’ll try again some time – I’ve read almost all of King’s works, but I’m apparently not a completist.

Otherwise, I’ve been enjoying some comic books. Keiron Gillen’s Power Fantasy is superheroes as nuclear diplomacy, and the first issue was good enough that I’m paying to read it as a monthly. I’ve also been re-reading Nailbiter through the compendium. I finished the first nine volumes of Saga which I’d picked up cheap. It was entertaining but a little too much melodrama and ‘edgy’ language for me to continue.

We had a tech conference in Hebden Bridge. I enjoyed my day at Wuthering Bytes (write-up here) and saw some great talks. My favourite was Libby Miller’s Poking holes in reality with prototypes. It got me thinking about the opportunities for doing more with my writing and being more playful.

I am very lucky to live near a wonderful second-hand bookshop. Jay and I went to Lyall’s in Todmorden, and both came out with a pile of weird and wonderful books. I filled a rucksack with my haul, which included books on Antarctic art, mazes, sock puppets and more. I then had to carry eight kilograms of books on the four-mile hike that followed. But it was worth it.

• News seems to be happening so fast right now. It’s hard to believe that August started with a series of riots.
• Warren Ellis’s new podcast Department of Midnight has launched, and the first two episodes were superb. I find audio drama difficult to get into, but these stories were compelling.
• I finally tidied the garden enought to want to sit out there (just before the weather turned).

That’s August done, which means another summer over. I feel like I’ve been a little complacent with this one. Next year, I think should be more ambitious with my planning. I’ve also promised to provide myself with more space to play, keeping fewer tasks on my todo list app. The days where I float a little, seeing what I’m in the mood for, are days that take me by surprise and where I do interesting things. I want my life to feel less like a job.