🗓️ Monthnote 2026-M07

2026-08-05 20:49

Time? What is time? Is this a weeknote or monthnote? I don't even know anymore. It's a note spanning what my mind is willing. I've just read about shifting from operating in chronos time to kairos time, and it's sticking. Kinda hard when you're working. But I'm not, so I'm finding ways to apply it. Losing your weeknote mojo? Don't do it then, or do a weaknote, bleaknote, freaknote, focusnote, scatterbrainnote, whatever. Don't worry you missed a week. Mine is certainly spread thin. This is a procrastinote. I'm flying to Aus tomorrow and looking at my loungeroom floor with all my crap I should be packing.

🛠️ Projects

I finished the pergola build and stained that corner of the house (and pergola). Stoked with how it turned out. Did the whole thing on the cheap. Still got the DIY in me. Brought me back to my first home when I knocked down walls and rebuilt a kitchen. There's lots of failures, but you learn so much from doing them, and you also end up with a bunch of tools and materials you can utilise in future projects. With this one, anchoring to the house took some thinking and multiple missions down to the hardware store to stare at fittings, threaded rods, piping and whatever else, but I finally found the solution and rolled with it. The thing is rock solid, and with a lick of stain it looks like I knew what I was doing. Was a bit of a mish lifting the pieces up on a dodgy ladder, but no necks were broken, just freaked out a few neighbours.

Will enjoy this area on my return

My house is going on the holiday accommodation market some time over the next week. It's been a journey. I've sold a lot of stuff, dumped a lot of stuff, and donated a lot of stuff. I still have a lot of stuff. I have locked one room, which has most of my possessions, bar the beds and furniture, kitchen thangs and all my books I'm leaving out for guests to make it liveable. I have no idea if this will get me enough income while I disappear for a bit, but it's a good middle-ground while I decide if I want to keep the place or not.

Created a jungle when I bundled my plants together

Current projects keeping me busy via tree -L 1 ~/01-Projects/current/:

/home/zkbro/01-Projects/current/
├── 20251212-aus-trip-2026
├── 20260513-prepare-for-nz-exit
└── 20260531-just-a-thought-course

✈️ Travel

I flew up to the Taupo in the north island to catch my cousin K as she flew in from Leeds on her way to Brisbane. Uncle M and Aunty J put me up. We're all an active bunch so in the 4 days there we did a mountain bike ride, trail run, lake run, lake walk, tree planting, yoga class, bodybalance class, and finally a dip in the natural hot springs. It was quality fam time. I really enjoyed hanging with my cuz in particular and hearing about her endeavours in Leeds.

Tree planting with the school kids

🩸 Health

Last night was the first night since mid May I slept through the whole night. 8.5 hours of uninterupted sleep. You don't know how good that feels.

Gym classes are definitely not my thing, but going with cuz up in Taupo gave me a new appreciation for them. I was the only dude in both classes. Why? I don't know, because I got so much out of it. My shoulders, breath and core got some much needed attention. Will try and keep up similar sessions in Aus.

My running is progressing smoothly. My physio has set me on my way with a heap of exercises to help me maintain niggles and progress strength. This is the foundation to everything in my life. Without physical health I really struggle, so to be getting somewhere here is a very nice feeling.

Lazy snip from runalyze of my last few weeks
Back running with my mates
Beaut winter days looking up Ben Lomond
And the other direction over Lake Whakatipu
More mates. My running is so social
Found a trig at Lake Taupo. Tauhara in the background
Last jog in NZ around Lake Hayes before heading over to Aus

🖌️ Drawing

I drew some things.

Back of my eyelids, front of my eyeballs
You're tiny
Brain fog

💻📈 Trading

I haven't mentioned much about this interest because I haven't really given it much of my time over the last few years, but it is slowly creeping back in to my life. I absolutely hate what the financial markets stand for, and would gladly watch it burn to the ground to make way for a healthier way of sustaining iEarth and humanity, but I guess for now trading is a guilty pleasure of mine. I love reading about the psychology of trading. I lean towards systematic trading, so building systems, running backtests, analysing stats, managing risk. I use software that has its own programming language and runs reports. I journal. It is geeky and it fits me to a T. I have just never had time to make something of it. Now I do. I may end up with a separate website on this stuff. Would be interested if others do anything in this space. Currently working on my Trading Plan, with a focus on the education side of it.

💻 Website

I dropped my site off the web briefly so I could stay a little undistracted while I wrap some things up here in NZ. But hey I'm back because I had an urge. I just like the keyboard under my fingerlings.

💻 Tools discovered

  • helix modal text editor - Not a new discovery. Been using for a while. I just keep finding more features. I'm really enjoying the file picker (SPACE+f) and global search (SPACE+/) when in my notes folder. Combine that with hopping through internal links with Goto definition (gd) Goto last accessed file (ga) and I can navigate through my notes much quicker than any other software.

  • fitpub - self-hosting fitness data on ActivityPub.

  • dreeve - more self-hosting of fitness data. I'm still half-arsing my own fitness data, but I like these options as a fall-back.

  • runalyze - looking at this again to keep on top of my progression back to running. I particularly like the weekly table and "Last 10 Training Weeks" table to monitor my loads. The latter has % increase week by week, which is important for me at this stage. When time permits I'll dive back into my python coding, but this is a good service that pulls my data from Garmin and isn't a dogshit UI like Strava.

  • connman-gtk - Wanted a GUI WiFi connection manager for qtile so I didn't have to log into Xfce just to connect to a network. After installing had to let connman start the wpa_supplicant service, opposed to running on its own accord

    sudo systemctl stop wpa_supplicant.service
sudo systemctl restart connman

    Had to then restart the laptop, as despite it showing all connected, no data was flowing. Restarting straight after installation may remove the need for the systemctl commands. Anyway, I have a GUI WiFi manager now.

📺 Watched

  • The Bride! ***** - I don't give 5 stars lightly. Holy moly what ride. Loved this to bits. I'm not big on the horror classics, but this one intertwined the old with the new on the head. It was Frankenstein meets Bonnie & Clyde meets A Clockwork Orange meets pure fucking poetic mayhem. Jessie Buckley absolutely destroyed her characters as Mary Shelley, Ida and The Bride. She played all three at the same time for christs sake. Absolutely best performance I've seen for a while. Will be digging out more of her work. I also loved Christian Bale's (Frankie's) moans of love and admiration for her. I was jumping on my seat with joy on this one. I LOVED the inclusion of Mary Shelley.

  • I watched other things, but I'm not going to even bother. Just do yourself a favour and watch the above. I reckon most anyone would enjoy it. It's arty, funny, romantic, brutal, poetic, pituresque, sad, and joyful.

Reading

  • Finished First Things First by Stephen Covey ***** - Second time through this. Found it much more insightful this time around. Picked it up because I needed it. I put stickies all through the book and took a heap of notes. Might do a proper book review to refresh myself.

  • Started Virtual Light by William Gibson

Ok, I better pack.

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