JAN 20, 2026

weeknote 2026-w02

Happy week 2!

I found out recently that some friends of mine actually read my blog ^[1]

what happened

• Did lots of catching up from everything I missed due to JMM last week. This was slightly hampered due to a health situation, but we lived and made it through. (proud!)
• Switched up some supplements re: the health situation.
• Quit some things that were not serving me, cf. year of commitment. This week was a lesson in accepting that I cannot make myself care about things I do not care about. I realized that much of the avoidance I describe comes from not wanting to do the thing, and that spending effort to overcome it is just not worth it.
• Spent a lot of time doing fun things and hanging out with people!

media

• Finished Culinary Class Wars! It was a pretty good watch, but I do think that it was slightly worse than the first season, mostly because of the obnoxiously explicit narration that I mentioned last week.
• Started watching Severance. For a speculative fiction/dystopia via big tech kind of show, the aesthetic gives a very 1980s kind of vibe, which I found really interesting. Also, the cinematography is incredible, especially when it comes to disorienting shots. One of the choices I particularly enjoyed (that I can mention without spoiling too much) was the way the focal length was adjusted in the elevator scenes.
• Watched Marty Supreme. I did not like this movie.^[2] Fundamentally, it came down to the fact that I couldn’t be bothered to care about the main character. Timothée Chalamet made a great Marty Mauser, don’t get me wrong…but was I asking whether Marty going to succeed or fail? win or lose? live or die? Reader, I was not. I just did not care.^[3]
• Read Everlost by Neal Shusterman. I got the sense that the novel is aimed at the younger end of YA, but Shusterman still addresses deep themes around childhood, death, and purpose, and skillfully weaves them into the world of Everlost. In particular, Shusterman’s signature epigraphs were, as in the Arc of a Scythe series, wonderful backdoors into the in-novel universe employing the eyes of an in-universe character. I can’t say that Everlost dethrones any of the Arc of a Scythe series novels,^[4] especially because of its relative narrative simplicity, but I don’t at all regret the time I spent reading it.

things i learned

• My friends are so nice ;-;
• You should take breaks when your body wants a break. I skipped a climbing session this week because things had gone from “oh I’m looking forward to climbing” to “ugh I have to climb today,” and I wanted to respect that feeling. And it was worth it! When I came back, I had a great session full of effort and fun.
• Taiko is actually fun if you have a physical drum.^[5]