Lately, I've been noticing more and more that everything in life happens exactly when it’s supposed to. Very often, I come across a topic that interests me, but I pass it by. And every time, I return to it precisely when all the circumstances align in the most suitable combination.

This mostly applies to learning since you gradually accumulate knowledge and experience in different areas. After that, it feels like a "new level" unlocks, and what once seemed incredibly difficult now feels almost obvious and always logical. And the best part is that all the knowledge from different areas connects!

I thought about this because, by the time I was ready to start doing weeknotes (a week ago), I had already been practicing journaling for several months in exactly the format that makes it easiest to transfer data into weeknotes. Earlier, the idea of writing a post every week seemed daunting, but now all my ideas, thoughts, tasks, and routines are perfectly structured and laid out, making the task of creating a weeknote very simple and joyful.

This week has been pretty lazy work-wise; I’m still trying to pick up the pace after the holidays. On the bright side, I spent a lot of time working on my website, which makes me very happy! For the past 4-5 months, I’ve struggled to find a job, which caused me to almost stop dedicating time to the site - my thoughts were entirely elsewhere. Now that things have stabilized, I hope to dedicate more time to one of my favorite hobbies this year.

Here're some recente website changes, check changelog for more details.

• Rebuilt about me section. Added recent posts and "readmore" function.
• Side panel, welcome back (I missed you)
• Added webring section to the side panel
• Repaired Atom & RSS feeds
• Added a bunch of new bookmarks
• Embed guestbook
• Simplified CSS (and merged to one file)
• Cleared code a little (checked with W3C HTML Validator, and it was a total mess. Main sections inside of another main sections and so on)
• Added manual theme toggle
• Added emojis to blog post titles for better visual representaion

I’ve once again changed the site’s layout. I kind of like it overall, but here’s a thought I’ve stumbled upon: due to my lack of design skills and love for minimalism, I always make the design as sterile and plain as possible. In general, I like this approach - it makes websites load faster, improves compatibility, and enhances user experience. However, every time I visit the websites of my web neighbors (like Princess or Nerucom), I feel, by contrast, how much more soul and individuality their sites have. Every time, I come to the conclusion that I want to make my site more messy and chaotic, but with my design skills (or lack thereof), I don’t know how to achieve the desired result. I think this issue is also closely tied to my tendency for order and control. I’ll be thinking about what I can do about this.

🏋️‍♂️ Gym

I didn’t go to the gym this week because I needed to get used to a new approach at work and finish up some old tasks. But I did create a new workout plan! Last year, I followed a program that was too complicated (though effective) - 2-hour sessions, 3 times a week. After such workouts, I had no energy left to do anything at all.

This year, I’m trying out a more minimalistic approach: still a 3-day split (chest + triceps, back + biceps, legs + shoulders), but with 40-minute sessions, each including 3-4 sets of 4 basic exercises. Starting next week, I’ll log my exercises and progress. This week is for rest!

🛏️ Sleep

Kinda messed up my sleeping schedule again, but it’s not that bad. Gonna try to permanently move my wake-up time to 6 a.m. next week.

📺 Consumption

This one is the real pain in the ass! It’s so hard to just sit and do nothing when there’s a whole world of interesting tutorials and video essays... Maybe I need to repurpose some of that time for other stuff or just cut my internet cable, idk. Content era sucks; I miss the good old Paleolithic era. Also, I hate how necessary smartphones have become for even the simplest things these days, but that’s a whole other topic.

👁️ Visual

Did some simple motion graphics at the new job - it’s a really cool process, but I’m still not used to it taking 4 times as long as regular editing (skill issue). The idea of taking five motion graphics lessons a week was horrible! The best approach is to learn the basics and then practice, experiment, and implement techniques one at a time. Why do I always forget this?

Anyway, I’ll try to include some examples of my work in upcoming weeknotes. I think it would be fun to look back on my progress over time.

📜 History (2/2 lessons)

The invasion of Persian forces (500–449 BCE):

• The Battle of Marathon
• The Battle of Thermopylae
• The Battle of Salamis

I love bringing back weekly history lessons! They take so little time and bring so much joy. I’m taking casual paper notes but thinking about transferring them to my Markdown system so I can have more detailed articles on my site. I’ll think about it.

⌨️ Touch typing (7/7 sessions)

• Time: 20 + 20 min daily (2 languages)
• Letters: ~ 50%
• WPM: 30 → 40
• Accuracy: ~ 95%

One interesting thing I’ve noticed after two weeks of touch-typing practice: words have a vibe. You’ve probably heard of synesthesia (when person associates certain letters or numbers with colors). I’ve started noticing that words feel like they carry a certain emotion or sensation - not because of their meaning, but because of the sequence of finger movements. Some words are typed with just one finger; some have a concise, even logical sequence of movements; others feel awkward and clunky. I find it amusing how the brain attaches associations to physical sensations while forming new neural connections.

So far, learning has been going smoothly. In two weeks, I’ve learned the first half of both the English and Russian alphabets and increased my speed to 40–45 WPM with fairly high accuracy. It’s nice to develop new skills!

🎵 Music

Relistening to some melancholic, moody stuff this week. Amnioverse by Lapalux is even better than the last time I listened to it! I’ve had it on repeat almost the whole week while tinkering with the site and practicing touch typing. Highly recommend.

• Lapalux - Amnioverse (2019)
• Ichiko Aoba - Windswept Adan (2020)
• Loukeman - Sd​-​1 (2021)
• JFDR - New Dreams (2020)

🎞️ Films

• Airplane! (1980) by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker & Jerry Zucker | 75/100