A Personal Update
It’s been nearly a year since my last post. It doesn’t feel that long, although writing has been near the top of my to-do list for most of that time. I don’t have a lot to say right now, so I’ll just update on what’s going on in my life.
Still retired, although the things that have been done to the economy in the past few months have shrunken my reserves noticeably. Financially, it’s too bad I don’t have income right now, because we are definitely in the “buy low” part of the economic cycle and I would love to be getting in on the discounts. But there are still a few projects on my plate before I’ll feel ready to look for an income source (most notably I have some settling up to do with the IRS and the California FTB). After that I’ll feel much freer to consider the option of bringing in some additional funds.
Still coding. I have a personal Python project where I’m gamifying my Todoist to-do list (although I’m thinking I might replace the backend with something else for greater flexibility, the ability to self-host, and lower cost). I haven’t gotten into AI-assisted coding much yet, but I did ask Copilot to review my project and suggest improvements, and most of what it suggested was legit. Also, the AI autocomplete suggestions is provides while I type are exactly what I was going to type anyway about 70% of the time, and close another 20% of the time, so that may actually wind up being useful.
Not podcasting anymore. When the last season of Doctor Who ended, we went on hiatus after 11 years of regular episodes (weekly or monthly depending on whether we had episodes of the TV show to review) in part because we’re tired and in part because there’s no new Doctor Who commissioned at the moment. We’re not 100% done, we promised to come back and review the spin-off series The War Between the Land and the Sea if and when it ever gets a US release (it aired in the UK late last year, but has no US release date yet). Disney is dragging their feet and it’s fucking obnoxious of them. But looking forward to wrapping that up later this year.
Still gaming. I’m in three tabletop RPG games at the moment, two online and one in person. Two of them are on alternating weeks, so two games per week. Two D&D games and one Shadowdark game in an Ironsworn setting. Meanwhile, I played in a Nimble one-shot a while back and liked it enough that I plan to start running Nimble one-shots myself once in a while when my other games take a week off.
Still catching up on media. Years and years of missing most media that I’d want to consume is gonna take a while to catch up from. Almost done watching all of Star Wars, working on watching all of Stargate, as well as Orphan Black, a full re-watch of Red Dwarf, and several sitcoms, and I have a massive queue of other shows when I’m caught up on these. Ditto a massive queue of movies, of books, of comics, of video games…
My health is demanding more attention recently. My pre-diabetes escalated to regular diabetes and now I have to deal with Kaiser on a regular basis because of it. At least I’m getting my money’s worth since I have to pay for health insurance out-of-pocket now. They started me on pills for it a few weeks ago and sold me a finger-stabber this week, so now that’s a thing I have to deal with. According to the finger stabber, so far the pills aren’t doing much to keep my blood sugar in check, but they do seem to have improved my mood and executive function, so yay? Unless that was coincidental timing, but I think starting the pills is the most likely culprit.
Anyhow, I think I’ll leave this here. It’s been refreshing to write this because most of the thinking and small amount of writing I do these days are about politics, which is a topic which is completely exhausting recently (and also less recently). I will likely post something about that at some point, but for now leaving it aside feels better. Till next time (hopefully less than 11 months from now since writing something is on my to-do list for every month)…