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Today (Tuesday)

• second day of uni - more focused. Met two other PhD students, and a said hello to another who didn't actually talk to me, so I'm not sure if they are staff or student (we are in a locked office space, because of research reasons, which is quite nostalgic. The card scanner makes the same beep as the ones at the Telethon Institute did)
• I'm kind of keeping up with other parts of my life, but not in any way that makes it look like I have my shit together. The lounge has a teetering mound of clean washing, there is a pile of stuff on the bed I need to sort before I can go to sleep (by which I think I mean 'dump back on the floor'). I've taken some of the necessities in to the new office, and tomorrow I'll organise a locked cubby for keeping things in, which means I can bring any books in that make sense.

Yesterday

• Didn't quite make it to bed before 11pm last night, but it was close. Awoke naturally at 6:50am, which meant that I could relax for a little bit and laze about until the alarm went off. I didn't, in the end, getting up after about 2 minutes, and getting in the shower.
• Past me had a work day morning packing checklist, which was greatly appreciated this morning, as there were a couple of things that I would otherwise have forgotten. There are a couple of items that I've managed to misplace, and maybe I'll have time to sort them tonight, but I'm not optimistic about that. I was enough slow getting ready that I missed the 7:45am bus, so artisanat dropped me at the train station. Youngest gave me two options for public transport from there--either the circle route (longer, relies on Leach Hwy not being clogged), or train to Canning Bridge and either the 100 or 101 bus. I did the latter, and once I found the right stand at the interchange, got the first bus that came past.
• Good meeting with supervisors, I have ideas of what is to come. I spent more time sorting out logging in to things than I had allowed for, including a trek to the library IT help desk, where it turned out that what I was assuming was one problem turned out to be four separate issues, one of which was solved by changing my password in Outlook. I also went and asked questions of the Library Helpdesk person, who gave me a personalised tour of all the things on the Library Webpage that might be of use to me, and pointed at things to follow up.

Sunday

• Went boating on the river with buggs_jenny, their partner P, and their parents (G, K). This was a somewhat last minute invite, they organised for there to be a kayak for me to use, and I had a lot of fun. I hadn't allowed for the timing of how it would all fit together with the fact that it was a recorder group Sunday so it was a bit of a rush to head off and I didn't help with the clean up. I now have to work out how to get involved and go more often (this is not an every weekend thing; I could at best do the off weeks from recorder) given that the car we are looking to sell is the one with the roof racks, but I can't get our kayak on to it on my own. Although, having said that, it is some years since I've moved that kayak and I have no idea how heavy it is relative to my current strength--it is possible that all the shoulder work that I've been doing would be enough.
• Recorder with G and ariaflame; L has injured their shoulder and P isn't yet back from visiting their sibling in the eastern states. G is now calling us the A minors; I gather this is a joke that is related to the name of another group they are in. We worked through several trios that I'm not sure that aria has seen before, with some swapping around of parts so that they were sight-reading the easier of the C recorder parts (ie. soprano or tenor).
• Dinner with chaosmanor. One of those weeks where it turns out that we have gone through the veggie stash much faster than usual, and I under measured the amount of cabbage to cut to fill the gap for the stir fry. Fortunately, chaosmanor wasn't all that hungry, artisanat was out dancing and got dinner there, and Youngest and Eldest are able to raid the fridge if they are still hungry. And I had had one serve of each of the options at afternoon tea at recorder - G had made two things, and aria had brought one, and I have no ability to resist that kind of temptation. Particularly when G had made a serving specifically for me, because they had made a Bakewell tart (which is similar to the version I make but didn't have coconut in, which might mean that I've conflated two recipes) but had realised at the last minute that their pastry wasn't GF, and had cooked a generous serve in a ramekin.

• working on Eldest's 21st quilt (yes, it is very overdue). Worked out what is needed, what I have, how the colours are going to be picked for the sections that I'm adding (because the original had a large square of white in the top left corner, so I've started the pattern at the third row, and have to add two rows at the bottom).
• today's goal was to identify pieces for four blocks (of the remaining 24), stretch goal to sew them, extra stretch goal to finish assembling that strip (combining rows 5/6 into a single piece). I stalled out at identifying what fabric was suitable for the current set of blocks -- there are so many pieces!
• Old Shanghai for the traditional post-con Wednesday gathering. There was some lamentation at the lack of pancakes, and conclusion that the last Pancake place had closed a decade ago.

I really haven't been putting much effort into tracking things here; my last post about it was 10th of May. At that point I had finished 2 projects of the 10 I'm hoping for, and made good progress on three. I've not finished anything else since, but I have made good progress on some

Previous good progress

1. towel rail - has not been progressed. I need a day a) without rain and b) that I have multiple hours available and c) (most importantly) that I remember this needs doing
2. door mat(s) - I've used up all the existing 'yarn' and I have half a rag rug. Every time I am surprised by how much 'yarn' it takes. I need to work out where I stashed the rest of the strips while we had a houseguest, and assemble more.
3. Teach myself to draw - this has stalled. I keep misplacing my drawing book or the sketch book I'm using, or the pencil. I need to get a better process.

Progressed since

1. pink / white / brown crochet blanket -- crochet finished, sewing in the ends. I think I'm half done on the ends?
2. brown / green knit -- this gets 4-6 rows roughly every second Thursday (when we game online) plus I've sat and worked on it while listening to podcasts.
3. T's jumper - a handful of rows. I need to make sure to do this every second day at least
4. blue / white virus blanket - I've finished the first of the two balls I had left, now on to the last one. It is just shy of 70cm square, and I'm on the 13th repeat of the pattern. I suspect this is the last repeat, based on available yarn. Hopefully I have enough to finish.
5. Eldest's quilt - I have laid it out, I have worked out what is needed to finish it. I have made and joined four blocks and worked out that I was doing something different from the book, and now those are going to be the front of a cushion, just as soon as they aren't attached to the quilt any more (basically, I'm adding 1/2" to each so the finished size is 9.5" rather than 9", but hadn't noted that down anywhere).
6. Knitting for Kitties - using up a couple of balls of yarn; the green one is done, and we have handed three squares over to purrdence

I'm reasonably happy with this progress. It is possible that either the knitting for kitties or the virus blanket will be finished next, because those are relatively portable. The former lives in my handbag; the latter is going to go in my uni bag (it is possible I will mostly stop carrying the handbag, because it doesn't fit a lunch or a laptop)

Today:

• 'tis wet. Very wet. be careful of water on the roads wet (not flood warnings, but the 'if you have a road that floods, it will' levels of wet)
• driving tour for G attempting to hit as many items from their wishlist as possible. Beach and Bell Tower were possible; Fremantle Markets, caves, and whatever I've forgotten were not. We headed for Woodman Point, which is one place where I know that there is a car park right on the beach, so that G didn't have to walk very far (say, 10m total). Then drove what could be an interesting walking tour of Old Fremantle (markets, oval, gaol, arts centre, 2 * high schools), a drive past Heathcote, up the freeway, loop the loop around the Bell Tower, and then out to the aeroport.
• relaxed afternoon, doing bugger all.

Yesterday:

• Having a somewhat lazy day, after the hectic pace of SwanCon over the weekend (by which I mean that I was in bed well before midnight, and in fact did zero carousing, including failing to go to the Dead Dog). Slept in, dropped G in Innaloo, had anniversary lunch with A in Gwelup.
• Other notable tasks of the day include bringing the washing in before it rained, running (and hanging up) two loads of washing, and setting the table back to 'every day' arrangement after having people to dinner on Friday. Every time I do that I think 'should do this more often' because there are so many fabulous people I don't get to catch up with nearly often enough.

I have made zero progress on The Artist's Way in the last, hmm, three? weeks (maybe four, maybe more? I have stopped tracking). I do intend to keep working through it, but I've been doing the cycle of find the book, put it somewhere to progress later, forget, lose the book. My general thoughts

• the morning pages are working. I'm doing them in 750words, and that makes it easier in some ways and harder in others. The later in the day I do them the more grumpy I am about doing them, because they really do work for me if I can clear my mind in the morning.
• the artist's date idea doesn't work for me. I suspect if I didn't already have space carved out in my life for me to just do my thing, it would make a huge difference, but as it is there is more stress in trying to Do The Thing.
• I hate the principles, I stopped reading them daily because I kept wanting to argue with them. Too culturally Christian, and too USian alien mind set (I have the same reaction to a lot of self-help type books out of the USA).
• I understand the point of the affirmations, and I have a document of them I can read whenever (I just keep it open, but I should do something more accessible with it), but I find doing that daily beyond tedious. I had it in my daily to do list; I'm taking it out as part of my going-back-to-study paring down (post pending, still making the choices on that)
• In the bits I've read, I've felt quite othered, because I don't have a strong feel of myself as a blocked creative.

Long term, I intend to at least read the rest of it. I don't think I want to try and do as many of the exercises. I did a decent job of the week 1, and I might have of the week 2, and I have a log document that I'll leave open. But I think that reading the book and ignoring the exercises might be the best way for me to get anything out of it now. Possibly stopping at the end of each chapter, looking at each question, and allowing max 5 minutes on each writing task (if I feel like writing at all) and then not trying to do a bit every day.

the tl;dr: I didn't like this enough to try and work on it daily.