Author Journey (September 16, 2024)
I’ve shifted my focus a little of late to getting back into shape. After a year of inactivity thanks to numerous injuries, I’m finally starting to get into the swing of things… but just as I get settled, a new challenge appears!
Author Journey (September 16, 2024)
Favourite Moment!
In 2023, I broke my knee and then herniated a disc in my spine which left me unable to do any exercise for the entire year and a good chunk of this year. Anything that I’ve done has to be slow and steady. Thankfully, however, I’ve been able to push things a little harder of late and it feels great. Earlier in the year, I started by watching Bastard‼ Heavy Metal, Dark Fantasy as I walked on the treadmill. I did this two or three times a week and while I didn’t exactly enjoy Bastard!! it was a good way to get started. After my summer vacation (and getting over laryngitis) I decided that I was ready to push on. This time, I chose Hell’s Paradise: Jigokuraku as my treadmill entertainment and started watching two episodes daily.
My goal was to walk/run ten kilometres a day, including my regular walking which averaged about five and a half kilometres daily. On a good day, two episodes on the treadmill would get me over eleven kilometres, however, there were days where I fell just short of ten despite getting in my two sessions. So, I needed to up it again. So, for the last two weeks, I have been cramming three sessions into my day as I devoured Delicious in Dungeon. That’s seventy-five to eighty minutes on the treadmill daily, and I love it. I’m already starting to crave it and am busily trying to squeeze in a run whenever I can. As a result, I just finished Spy X Family part one and will have to find a new show to begin this week… or I might just start the second part.
The Week That Was…
I started the week with the day job infringing on just about any spare time I had. I even had to get a couple of treadmill sessions in after everyone had gone to bed. Luckily, that didn’t continue all week. I finished Delicious in Dungeon on Wednesday and then began Spy X Family the next day. Meanwhile, I continued to catch up on the Spring 2024 lineup by watching An Archdemon’s Dilemma: How to Love Your Elf Bride which was a lot better than I was expecting.
I changed things up a little on the blog, making the home page cleaner by removing a bunch of things. I also decided that since I was getting too far ahead of myself by watching seasons faster than I needed to write the reviews, I decided to delay my next series of episode reviews so that I could force myself to catch up with the season reviews. That’s why there were three season reviews last week and will be again this week. Maybe even the week after that! I don’t think watching three seasons a week is sustainable, so there will come a point where I will resume some episode reviews (not seasonal though, I’m not falling for that just yet).
I read three books and reviewed two of them. One was the other doujinshi that I bought, although I won’t be reviewing that one. It was fine, but there really wasn’t much of a story and that’s kind of the point with this site. I want to look at stories and learn from them. This was just a single scene that was basically an elaborate sex scene without any build-up or purpose. Like I said, it was fine. I also wrote more posts as I tried to get my season reviews back under control. I’m not quite there yet – just four to write at the moment, but I’m getting there. I had five last week, so the backlog is going down…
Anime!
- Hell’s Paradise (Season One) – Jigokuraku
- Keijo!!!!!!!! (Season One)
- Mysterious Disappearances (Season One) – Kaii to Otome to Kamikakushi
- Chillin’ in Another World with Level 2 Super Cheat Powers (Season One) – Lv2 kara Cheat datta Motoyuusha Kouho no Mattari Isekai Life
Manga!
Doujinshi!
Goals
| Tasks | Goal | Completed |
|---|---|---|
| Anime Watched | 3 Episodes | 37 Episodes |
| Manga Read | 3 Books | 3 Book |
| Posts Scheduled | 7 Posts | 8 Posts |
| Chapters Written | 2 | 0 Chapters |
| Chapters Edited | 2 | N/A |
| Artwork | Cover | N/A |
Aspirations for the week!
I had a couple of slow weeks from a blogging perspective so it was nice to get things a little more in order. There’s still some work to do, but I feel like it’s manageable. Another thing that has been really good about the exercise is that it reminded me how good I am at sticking to a routine once I get it going, especially when I break it down into chunks. I need to apply the same principle to my writing and drawing. Start small and build it up.
And here comes my latest challenge. The day job has decided that from the middle of October, I will need to return to the office for two days a week. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s going to be a big change to the daily routine on every level. The most annoying thing about this is that it hasn’t been done for productivity. If anything, I will be less productive on those days as they will no doubt schedule more and more pointless meetings. At least, when they are virtual, I can listen while continuing to work, especially as most office meetings are a huge waste of time. Then, they are going to make me dress up like an office worker again, despite the proof that it has no impact on productivity. As you may tell, I’m pretty annoyed.
So, that’s going to be impacting me soon so I’m trying to work out how this will fit into my current life. One thing that I’m pretty certain of is that they won’t see me working late at night anymore. If it can’t be done during office hours, too bad! I just don’t understand what they can possibly gain from this. Anyhow, I’ve got stuff to do. As always, thanks for reading!
Great journey 🌹🌹
Thank you!
I’m two days a week in the office, and yeah it’s a pain as like you said it’s not for productivity. There is nothing at the office that I don’t have at home, and many days I go in and don’t interact with anyone from a productivity standpoint. I actually listen to music most of the time. But it can often feel demoralizing, like it’s just a company ritual designed to waste my time and money by making me spend ~40 minutes each way driving just for seemingly no reason other than for the company to exert control over their employees.
Yeah, they’re saying it’s to maintain the workplace culture… and have already begun scheduling more meetings for those days. So, not only am I losing time by having to commute, but I will be working in a lifeless cubicle and losing more time to pointless meetings. I’ve always said that if there was a good reason, I would have no problem with it, but there really isn’t. I’m already looking forward to the next staff satisfaction survey… lol!
RTO used to mean (to me) Recovery Time Objective — it’s a DR thing. Now, Return to Office is the new meaning. I prefer the old DR meaning!
It’s going to hit me in January. It absolutely won’t help my productivity. I actually have a better virtual lab at home than I have available at work at work, so any documentation I need to generate will have to wait until I get back home. Plus, most of the people I interact with are in different states. I wonder how much of the industry’s trend toward RTO ties to tax base/real estate valuations? I wonder if we looked at the legislation if we could find a way to preserve the tax base without requiring RTO? I hesitate to deprive cities and states of tax revenue — they’re already starved for basic services.
Granted, there are some teams that do, in fact, work better when they’re physically together. I can see this being a benefit for them. I just don’t happen to belong to that demographic.
And I’ll never get back the commute time. It’ll have to come out of my sleep schedule — there’s no other flex in my schedule.
Yeah. I’m the same. My home office is infinitely better, plus it’s a place that make me feel happy with all my stuff in it. Obviously, I can’t wait to get into a tiny grey cubicle once more with less screens. I used to go days without speaking to anyone in person except when making a cup of tea. There is absolutely no benefit for me going back to the office.
I’m sure it has to do with real estate portfolios too. Pressure has to be coming from somewhere and they are the ones who are losing when we are comfortable and happy working at home.
I’m waiting to have the argument about office attire too. I’ve not worn a collared shirt in years and never missed a deadline. I’m tired of this old fashioned management BS. My commute isn’t long, but it’s still longer that it was, not to mention all the things I’ll lose such as being able to throw a load of laundry on during a break. The more I think about it the more frustrating it gets.
I feel I am more productive working from home, but work the traditional 8-5 from the office. I would love a WFH job. I also agree with you about the attire. I would love to have mermaid-colored hair, but it isn’t really appropriate for a law office. Adulting can suck sometimes!
It only sucks because of the out-of-date policies and approach to work. There’s no reason we can’t dress the way want providing it doesn’t impact our ability to do our job. I work with computers. They don’t do more because I have a collar on. A tie isn’t going to make me more professional. It all boils down to trust. Either they trust me to do the job they pay me for or they feel like they need draconian rules in place.
I do a lot of work out of hours because I felt like they trusted me to get the work done and I didn’t want to betray that trust. That’s gone now.