2025 w47 sunday review

well, it froze. it's been around zero all week, we had some squalls of sleet & hail, there's been some sun but the air temperature drops to freezing within minutes of sunset.

the girls are small enough that indoor exercise will do instead of walks - there has been a lot of 'oh no! don't steal my cardboard tube! now I have to chase you around the dining table!' & suchlike.

we're in our thermals. the space-heaters are on. I've ordered new curtain rails so the curtains can sit closer against the walls above windows.

what were my intents? take no damage, one errand outside, one gov web form, open and stare at the second assignment.

ah. well.

this isn't new damage, but remember how I got ulnar nerve entrapment in my phone-holding hand from staying informed? & I downloaded an appblock app about it? & my arm was starting to get better from not phone-holding? well, then I figured I had broken the habit & could manage without the appblock. so my arm hurts & my wrist is feeble again now & it's absolutely my fault. but at least this time I know it's definitely the phone-holding & not irreversible skeletal damage & I can simply not hold my phone about it.

I was grumpy & sour enough about the errand that would have taken me outside the village that on Wednesday they came to me instead. reader, tell people when you dislike their demands upon you. louder than that. even louder than you think. no, really, it works. people literally have no idea what we find difficult. we have to tell them. they will not figure it out. they are not looking at us. we have to say.

the gov web form met my expectations.

and the assignment... [scroll to the picture of Neptune to skip a rant]

every time I opened the assignment document for the last... two weeks? i got angrier & angrier about the structure of the course. I was trying to grit my teeth & plough through it & answer the stupid badly-formed questions that test your ability to look at the stupid badly-formed course matter & not your understanding or your interest, but i got as far as gritting my teeth each time & no further. it's such a poorly-made course. there's no arc. they seem to deliberately avoid arc or consequence - like, if you were naturally having an impromptu conversation about rock formation, there would be more linkage between sentences than there is in the course matter. & then the assessment is about forum participation & table formatting instead of your understanding of the content.

so I was spiteful like this in the assignment document itself, uploaded it through the assignment interface, & then sent my 'tutor' an email that was like "just a heads up: hating the course! don't worry about giving detailed feedback on the assignment!". she didn't make the course so it isn't rude.

I'll probably get two marks for having headers & indentation.

but it worries me. This module is described as preparing people for level 2 study but the actual content (volcanoes, water cycle) is presented for a nine-year-old. A mildly concussed nine-year-old. If it does adequately prepare people for level 2, then I don't think level 2 can be worth my time either. If it doesn't, who benefits from my pretending to engage with it?

I'm not paying for it, the state is. I am not on this course to make myself more employable, or a more valuable member of a multidisciplinary team, or a better science communicator. I wanted real, modern information about the earth & environment but this module in particular feels like reading CBBC Newsround. I wanted the free journal accesses / institutional logins but I haven't had the energy to battle the library services website in the second half of this year.

Oh. Maybe that's the pivot I need. Focus on the journal access. Within a block of study time, spend an hour reading the real work being done & then gear down to reading the course matter & answering questions.

See, this is why we need to be bitter & grumpy about things. If I hadn't let myself rant about the module, because I was afraid of being rude or ungrateful, I wouldn't have realised that there was an actual action I could take. Positivity will never get you out of a situation.

Anyway, after uploading, I did a post of notes about the ecosystems section. I think it was because if I was doing self-study or the 'personal curriculum' trend I would be making posts about that. I think I was thinking 'learn in spite of the course'.

(Do you suppose Unsplash pay NASA? Am I microdonating when I use a NASA image? Nanodonating? Picodonating?)

I'm still at 1mg/ml nicotine. The floatiness has passed. I have considered the possibility that my irritability is related to the nicotine tapering; I don't actually think it is. I think smoking (for many years) gave me a way to walk away from irritants instead of engaging. I always thought this harshly.

I forgot about the November writing project entirely. The disconnect from time last week, & then this week's irritation & the cold... I haven't even had the 'oh, I ought to be writing' feeling. Is that even on the list for next week?

A couple of clock mechanisms arrived in the post (for 5p because of vouchers), so I want to see if I have AA batteries in the prepper stash & paint some cardboard clock faces.

intents for w48:

• take no damage,
• phone screen time under 7hrs,
• set up wall clocks,
• read & make notes on one journal article;
• read & make notes on part 7 of 20 of module;
• use the treadmill as well as pretending to chase the dogs,
• if town: fetch library books, buy C6 envelopes