w36 sunday review

scoring the week from my habit tracker

my daily scores from the ten dailies on sunday morning were 4, 7, 4, 6, 5, 6.

EVEN IF I have a ten today that would lead to a week score of 60%. that's an illustration that you cannot make a good week with a good day, you can't pull it out of the bag last minute. that's what the 12 week year is trying to tell you. it's got to be consistency.

[ETA: sunday score was 8 in the end, making the week 57%]

And none of the ten things is difficult! Only one of them even requires trousers! (Why, yes, that is the daily that I only did twice in the week. How clever of you to ask.)

I journalled a lot about childhood messaging and self-messaging and internalised messaging.

• Why was it important to the adults that we think that if we acquiesced for several hours we would be permitted to have a specific amount and type of fun as a reward?
• Why was it important to the adults that we think that if we acquiesced for several decades we would be permitted to have a specific type of peace and comfort and agency as a reward?
• Why was it important to the adults that we think that trying too hard was embarrassing to us, and also that not trying enough was a personal insult to them?

I did not reach conclusive answers on these points.

things that will only need doing once

my phone number completed its switch from monthly contract £17 to pay-as-you-go £9, for which I get more data, the same unlimited texts, and a number of phone minutes that is still about 100x more than the amount of time i have ever spent on the phone in a month.

the ghost blogging platform upgraded effortlessly to 6.0, from which the only difference I can see is that there's a little box on my 'dashboard' offering me the chance to see web analytics. No, thank you!

went to see the vibes of a local auction. will not need to do that again. call it research for if i ever have a story character with a profit motive.

finished reading Doppelganger (Klein). finished rereading Debt (Graeber). read the paper stack of London Review of Books. read the week's Private Eye the same day it came through the door.

things worth mentioning

Switching my news feeds from a refreshable app on my phone to that calibre concatenation and sending that to my kobo has absolutely worked and is an immense difference. I don't feel invaded by the stupid news stories about ghastly people any more. And yes, privilege, etc, but it was hurting my eyes and brain and wrist and soul and sleep.

I have absolutely not studied enough. I don't have an internalised idea of what 'enough' would be. I know the final assignment has to get 30%, and I have translated that to 'it needs to contain thirty sentences that are relevant and supported'. They have given a rubric. I am following a rubric. But it feels... unlikely? that doing precisely what they tell you to do should lead to success. it doesn't in any other area of life.

Using the study discord's accountability channel to make a list of my dailies like everyone else has absolutely worked. The girlies (gender neutral term) on there are adorable about the hyping and boosting and emoji-reacting. And it's easy to be adorable back, even though I don't identify as adorable.

Using the little dumb camera (instead of my phone) to take the daily video clips of my hand touching grass has been fun. Because the viewfinder is so low rez, I don't get caught up in the 'but is this the right sun angle' anxiety, I just capture it and move on.

How do I feel about my interaction with the 12 week year, here at the end of week one?

• I feel that it is trying to help. I feel that it is addressing problems I really do have (reacting to incoming tasks instead of doing what I set out to do, losing sight of what I am doing for myself, overwhelm at the backlog instead of keeping only today's tasks in view).
• I think that if I stick with it it will work. I feel that I can stick with it if I keep journalling about my responses to it and why I have not previously stuck to things like this. I feel resistance, absolutely, but I feel that it knew that would happen.
• What would a 100% week look like? I would have [redacted the specifics of the dailies] and when I looked around on a Sunday everything would be clean enough and tidy enough and in its correct place. I would be uploading a completed story (to no readers). I would be confident that I had properly learned what the course offered me that week. I would be confident that I could show the marker that I had learned it. I would be mildly amused at the tasks I had actively decided not to do that week, and probably discarding some of them forever.

And I feel embarrassed about posting this! I feel embarrassed about the 'ooh i could have a life in which i only do things i find important' because it feels syrupy, it feels like toxic positivity, and it ISN'T about presentation, I swear. It's about getting out of my own way. Unlearning ways I got in my own way for a really long time.