Weeknote 32/2025

I'm lying in bed in our spare bedroom composing this on my phone in a sort of quarantine. It's my last day of holiday, so of course I've picked up my son's sickness bug and had, according to my Garmin data, 2h 41m of broken sleep. I've notched my worst ever 'sleep score' record: 21! FML.

Although I'm not feeling up to doing so today, I've been reading Don Quixote during my time off, as well as some of Montaigne's Essays. They're both incredible reads, for different reasons, and even more so when you think when each was written.

Other than that, I've been driving my daughter to training and pre-season friendly matches for her new football team, doing odd jobs around the house, and listing some items on eBay. I've also managed to break and then fix my Plex server, play a bit of EA FC 25, and welcome some visitors — including my sister, who I hadn't seen for a while.

Next week, I'm back to work, although I really don't feel like it. It's not just this sickness bug, which I'm sure I'll shake by this time tomorrow, but just the fact that it takes two weeks for me to properly unwind. This is why, for the last couple of years, I've taken three weeks off in April, August, and December. Otherwise, I end up going back to work just when I've finally started to chill.

This year has been tough, both financially — I had nowhere near enough work in the first quarter of this year — and, of course, due to my (still undiagnosed!) health condition. It's now over two weeks since I had my most recent test and I haven't got my results back yet.

Partly due to finances and partly due to the amount of driving I'm going to have to do to take my daughter to football-related things, I've asked to defer my place in the Barefoot co-op development course. Which is a shame.

I know a 'year' is an arbitrary construct, but I'm already hoping that 2026 is going to be a better one than 2025. I'd definitely like to do more writing, but find it increasingly difficult to find anything worth writing about.

One's early to mid forties are, according to studies, the subjectively toughest and least enjoyable period of one's life. My life is backing that research up so far. But perhaps I should stop whinging.