Tags: routine

This year I decided I wanted to get better at speaking Irish.

Like everyone brought up in Ireland, I sort of learned the Irish language in school. It was a compulsory subject, along with English and maths.

But Irish wasn’t really taught like a living conversational language. It was all about learning enough to pass the test. Besides, if there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to put me off something, it’s making it compulsory.

So for the first couple of decades of my life, I had no real interest in the Irish language, just as I had no real interest in traditional Irish music. They were both tainted by some dodgy political associations. They were both distinctly uncool.

But now? Well, Irish traditional music rules my life. And I’ve come to appreciate the Irish language as a beautiful expressive thing.

I joined a WhatsApp group for Irish language learners here in Brighton. The idea is that we’d get together to attempt some converstation as Gaeilge but we’re pretty lax about actually doing that.

Then there’s Duolingo. I started …playing? doing? Not sure what the verb is.

Duolingo is a bit of a mixed bag. I think it works pretty well for vocabulary acquisition. But it’s less useful for grammar. I was glad that I had some rudiments of Irish from school or I would’ve been completely lost.

Duolingo will tell you what the words are, but it never tells you why. For that I’m going to have to knuckle down with some Irish grammar books, videos, or tutors.

Duolingo is famous for its gamification. It mostly worked on me. I had to consciously remind myself sometimes that the purpose was to get better at Irish, not to score more points and ascend a league table.

Oh, did I ascend that league table!

But I can’t take all the credit. That must go to Coco, the cat.

It’s not that Coco is particularly linguistically gifted. Quite the opposite. She never says a word. But she did introduce a routine that lent itself to doing Duolingo every day.

Coco is not our cat. But she makes herself at home here, for which we feel inordinately honoured.

Coco uses our cat flap to come into the house pretty much every morning. Then she patiently waits for one of us to get up. I’m usually up first, so I’m the one who gives Coco what she wants. I go into the living room and sit on the sofa. Coco then climbs on my lap.

It’s a lovely way to start the day.

But of course I can’t just sit there alone with my own thoughts and a cat. I’ve got to do something. So rather than starting the day with some doomscrolling, I start with some Irish on Duolingo.

After an eleven-month streak, something interesting happened; I finished.

I’m not used to things on the internet having an end. Had I been learning a more popular language I’m sure there would’ve been many more lessons. But Irish has a limited lesson plan.

Of course the Duolingo app doesn’t say “You did it! You can delete the app now!” It tries to get me to do refresher exercises, but we both know that there are diminishing returns and we’d just be going through the motions. It’s time for us to part ways.

I’ve started seeing other apps. Mango is really good so far. It helps that they’ve made some minority languages available for free, Irish included.

I’m also watching programmes on TG4, the Irish language television station that has just about everything in its schedule available online for free anywhere in the world. I can’t bring myself to get stuck into Ros na Rún, the trashy Irish language soap opera, but I have no problem binging on CRÁ, the gritty Donegal crime drama.

There are English subtitles available for just about everything on TG4. I wish that Irish subtitles were also available—it’s really handy to hear and read Irish at the same time—but only a few shows offer that, like the kid’s cartoon Lí Ban.

Oh, and I’ve currently got a book on Irish grammar checked out of the local library. So now when Coco comes to visit in the morning, she can keep me company while I try to learn from that.

Emily F. Gorcenski: How I Read 40 Books and Extinguished the World on Fire

I’ve found that there’s way more good people than bad. There’s way more people willing to help than willing to hurt. Some things are really scary but there’s way more people out there willing to guide us through the darkness than we think. The cynic in me wants to say that the “powers that be” want us to be endlessly doomscrolling and losing hope and snuffing out optimism. We shouldn’t give them what they want. There’s a lot of beauty in the world still within our grasp. We’re better when we’re poets, when we’re learners and listeners, when we’re builders and not breakers.

Blunder • Robin Rendle

Get out of my head, Robin!

I wish the structure of my days could be more like this though; more haphazard, more jumping from thing to thing with reckless abandon. There’s a punch-in-the-gut feeling I get when my days have too much structure to them. I require that feeling of jumping around whenever I want to, and I think it’s what gives me the energy to be a functional person.

It. Me.

Colin wrote about his typical day and suggested I do the same.

Y’know, in the Before Times I think this would’ve been trickier. What with travelling and speaking, I didn’t really have a “typical” day …and I liked it that way. Now, thanks to The Situation, my days are all pretty similar.

• 8:30am — This is the time I’ve set my alarm for, but sometimes I wake up a bit earlier. I get up, fire up the coffee machine, go to the head and empty my bladder. Maybe I’ll have a shower.
• 9am — I fire up email and Slack, wishing my co-workers a good morning. Over the course of each day, I’ve usually got short 1:1s booked in with two or three of my colleagues. Just fifteen minutes or so to catch up and find out what they’re working on, what’s interesting, what’s frustrating. The rest of the time, I’ll probably be working on the Clearleft podcast.
• 1pm — Lunch time. Jessica takes her lunch break at the same time. We’ll usually have a toasted sandwich or a bowl of noodles. While we eat, Jessica will quiz me with the Learned League questions she’s already answered that morning. I get all the fun of testing my knowledge without the pressure of competing.
• 2pm — If the weather’s okay, we might head out for a brisk walk, probably to the nearby park where we can watch good doggos. Otherwise, it’s back to the podcast mines. I’ve already amassed a fair amount of raw material from interviews, so I’m spending most of my time in Descript, crafting and editing each episode. In about three hours of work, I reckon I get four or five minutes of good audio together. I should really be working on my upcoming talk for An Event Apart too, but I’m procrastinating. But I’m procrastinating by doing the podcast, so I’ve kind of tricked myself into doing something I’m supposed to be doing by avoiding something else I’m supposed to be doing.
• Sometime between 5pm and 6pm — I knock off work. I pick up my mandolin and play some tunes. If Jessica’s done with work too, we play some tunes together.
• 7pm — If it’s a Tuesday or Thursday, then it’s a ballet night for Jessica. While she’s in the kitchen doing her class online, I chill out in the living room, enjoying a cold beer, listening to some music with headphones on, and doing some reading or writing. I might fire up NetNewsWire and read the latest RSS updates from my friends, or I might write a blog post.
• 8pm — If it is a ballet night, then dinner will be something quick and easy to prepare; probably pasta. Otherwise there’s more time to prepare something with care and love. Jessica is the culinary genius so my contributions are mostly just making sure she’s got her mise en place ahead of time, and cleaning up afterwards. I choose a bottle of wine and set the table, and then we sit down to eat together. It is definitely the highlight of the day.
• 9pm — After cleaning up, I make us both cups of tea and we settle in on the sofa to watch some television. Not broadcast television; something on the Apple TV from Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, or BBC iPlayer most likely. If we’re in the right mood, we’ll watch a film.
• Sometime between 11pm and midnight — I change into my PJs, brush and floss my teeth, and climb into bed with a good book. When I feel my eyelids getting heavy, I switch off the light and go to sleep. That’s where I’m a Viking!

That’s a typical work day. My work week is Monday to Thursday. I switched over to a four-day week when The Situation hit, and now I don’t ever want to go back. It means making less money, but it’s worth it for a three day weekend.

My typical weekend involves more mandolin playing, more reading, more movies, and even better meals. I’ll also do some chores: clean the floors; back up my data.

How to Predict the Next Big Thing and Ride the Wave of Innovation - Boagworld Show

Well, that’s a grandiose title for what turns out to be just a chat between myself, Paul, and Marcus. It was good fun.

I’ve huffduffed this.

100 days reflections | Clear Thinking - The Clearleft Blog

Two-thirds of the way through our 100 days project, Batesy takes stock of his journey so far.

(I should probably mention that I love each and every one of the pieces of hand lettering that he’s done …talented bastard.)

Today was a nice quiet Sunday. I did my usual weekly tasks—doing database exports and backing my hard drive. I played some tunes on my bouzouki. I probably should’ve played more. I posted over a half dozen links, wrote two other entries in this journal, and just one note. I didn’t post any pictures today, but yesterday almost every one of my eleven notes had a photo.

I was going to finish the day by stepping outside to watch the ISS fly overhead but the clouds have conspired against me. So instead I finish by writing one hundred words.