text/gemini
# Checking in – Late September to early October 2021
This month has been a pretty rough one, and it's just a whole bunch of guff. Let's just have a look at this...
# Programming
Nothing of import. I have made some small improvements to my backup script and also made a quick data import script for something secret.
Otherwise all my programming work is done for work...
# Not programming
## Conlanging and conworlding
I have made some forward progress on my conlanging work. Book 38 is coming close to completion (page 50/60) and at this point I'll be able to burn through the backlog probably by the end of the year or thereabouts.
I've otherwise wrote a bunch, to the point where I recently split apart my creative work to include a new "write" category, which I colour forest green in my colour-coding system. One of these days, I'll provide a full colour listing on my combined digital-analogue agenda system, and that'll be nice. Things that I have written include emails to a Gemini user (a first!), and also some personal emails to ex-classmates from university and similar.
Finally I had some pretty nice metro maps on Inkscape, which is a great deviation from my usual pixel-art style. Interestingly one of the maps that I drew have managed to crash Inkscape repeatedly, and once even soft-locked my computer. I don't know how it happened, but it does remind me that this seems to have happened a lot more recently.
## The great offline
It's not just writing, I've done some serious reading for the first time in a long time. The book is "Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays", and I have borrowed it from the library because I watched a good video describing some key concepts in it:
=> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYj4NkeGPdM
I'm doing a very serious reading on it, in the sense that I'm taking notes and also trying to figure out some of the existing problems in it. I haven't been able to read it all in two weeks which is the deadline, but that's fine, I think I can extend the borrow period for a while. Worst that could happen is that I can secure some PDFs.
Speaking of agendas, I have also went on a whole shopping spree with stationery, capping off with a brand new page-a-day planner along with some accessories for it. I also learnt that the planner contains a small story in it – each year, the sample page of the planner shows three or so days in a (presumably fictional) Japanese businessman who lives in Tokyo. Tracking down the story, it appears that he got married in 2019, and had a child this year. It's pretty compelling, especially since it's just a small thing inside a planner and it's definitely not the focus of the thing! One of these days I'll also scan a sample page just to show to any interested readers what it is, and probably even name the planner despite it being like a marketing thing.
(Kind of relatedly: I definitely have changed my life a little to fit myself more amenably to what the planner has. Writing has that effect on me, and I think other people too.)
I've also built a shopping list for things that I eventually want to buy come the end of the year. There's another two kilobucks waiting for me and everyone else in Hong Kong to collect in terms of subsidies in a few months, which would go some way in cleaning up that shopping list.
# The world at large
## Family
So we've always had an amah, and now in a few weeks we won't have any longer. I've lived a long time with one, and also spent some years in uni without one, but I haven't had to face my family without an amah, and I think she's always been a pretty load-bearing component with how this family functions, and I'm not sure how things would go without one. Not very nice.
Tensions with family have been for a while. I don't know how to handle all of it.
There's miscellaneous other concerns that, along with these, I have which I have wrote about in an org document, but I think I'll keep that to myself.
## Uni applications
PhD applications are going to happen soon. I think I should write an email to ask how to get on with applying for one, and hopefully finding one. I'll be aiming for astronomy degrees in the UK.
It feels like a long shot, for several reasons:
* I really don't know if I have the chops to do it
* It's going to mean that I will leave Hong Kong, possibly for good. It has ups and downs, so I'm super conflicted
* Not sure how to handle much after a fairly difficult time at work which may or may not have damaged my brain a little
Anyway, I think I'll just charge ahead anyway and darn the consequences. I think it's honestly the only way I can get things done.
## Work
I think I had a severe case of burnout for a day. I have talked about it a little in one of my Station logs, but in any case it wasn't pleasant and I think it has changed me a little.
Even though Hong Kong has one of the most non-weekend holiday calendars in the world, I think the number of net days off is not enough for me. I think I might have to take some unpaid leaves to get my brain and life back on track.
# A postscript
Trying to write gemlogs like this is kind of weird, because with long lines I don't get to rhythmically press RET at the end of each phrase. It feels like writing a word processing document. Maybe I should try using LibreOffice to make one, for the laughs, and then downgrading it to plain text later.
This content has been proxied by September (ba2dc).