weeknotes #16: listening to vinyl again, probably hating jeans again 😂

As I write this, my uterus is giving me the absolute shits. 😂 It’s that time of the month and for some reason it’s left me pretty damn fatigued, and my appetite is shot. Some months are worse than others, and this one seems to be on the worse side. It doesn’t help that I seem to have, err, sprained my upper glute/lower butt yesterday while bending over to put shoes on. What gives. 🙄 I’m glad it’ll be over by the end of this week because we have a short holiday to Tasmania. I’m really looking forward to it!

I’m also drinking a Charlie Chaplin (one of my favourite gin cocktails) since I bought some sloe gin on the weekend. (Finally.) I love gin but I feel like I go through phases where I drink it every second day, and then times where I sort of forget it exists for a few weeks. 🍸

We started watching The Book of Boba Fett, and have watched two episodes so far. Something I’ve liked about it so far is how well it is executed, especially during the scenes where there is practically no dialogue.

Last week I did a Bread Talk at work titled Open-minded music discovery (probably also inspired by my weeknote from a few weeks ago), and covered a bunch of music that I’d either discovered or re-discovered by way of putting aside time to listen to new music, and to be open to listening to artists and genres I don’t often listen to. I sort of found myself inspired by my own talk, and I opened up my record player for the first time in a few years. I honestly haven’t played it very much since we moved into this apartment. I miss the whole experience of picking out a record and setting it up and waiting with anticipation for the music to start after the record is spinning. There is a feeling, that feeling you get when the record is spinning and there is silence just before the music starts, and the moment the music starts is just so quietly exhilarating. You don’t get that with digital. Press play and it’s on. It’s all just a bit… different. Chris shared a similar sentiment after my talk – with music at your fingertips through streaming services, you no longer feel like playing your latest purchase over and over again until you’ve gotten your $30 worth. It just isn’t like that anymore. And you can’t skip records (not in the way you can with digital, anyway), so you’re left enduring the record in real time, waiting for the song you like, while you listen to the song you like just a bit less.

I felt somewhat inspired to write about the whole “working 9am to 5pm” thing after a brief conversation with my friend Mitch about how the rigid 9 to 5 just doesn’t quite work with working remotely. I would like to dedicate a whole blog post to it… but my thoughts for now are that, frankly, I find it exhausting. The main thing for me is thinking about how much routine I had prior to the pandemic in 2020, and how I thought this pandemic would be a temporary dent in my routine, but it was not. It has not been. Even up to six months ago, I found myself trying so hard to cling onto some kind of consistent 9–5 or even 9:30—5 working hour schedule, dreading when I might return to the office and struggle to fit in going to the gym, eating breakfast, and travelling to work and trying to get all that shit done by 9:00, or arriving at 9:30. I found that sometimes, I really just valued the time I had to myself in the morning, and that accepting 9am meetings was a literal downer on my mood and my productivity. It became clear to me just how inaccessible it is. I may be the one with the least commitments and most advantage out of the average bunch of folks at my work – no family or kids, no conditions that hinder me from making it to a 9:00am meeting.

But the truth is that I just don’t like having meetings so early in the morning, and I doubt many other people do either. I would rather be productive in a meeting than scrambling to find my thoughts. I digress. I don’t even have my thoughts collected right now. 🙃

I managed to sell a bunch more clothes on eBay in the past few weeks. I’m glad there has been some interest in the clothes I don’t like anymore. It has been slightly tempting to fill gaps in my wardrobe, but I am being extremely conscious in this journey of consuming less and making the most out of what I have. I’ve been trying to put together new and interesting outfits with my existing clothes, and trying to wear what makes me feel good. Unfortunately, I probably shouldn’t have made the decision to buy so many jeans in the past year, because now I’m actually not happy with a couple of those. I really didn’t need that many. 🤦🏻‍♀️ I will learn. I will. The solution is not to buy more jeans. I will make do with the ones I have. I will make sure I un-buy them, and not just donate them.

I’ve been having just a little temptation to try different styles – namely the crop-top/bralette with a longer cover-up or jacket, and some more feminine blouses. The feminine blouse urge confuses me, though, because most times I’ve tried something feminine in the past year, I haven’t liked it. I must be selecting the wrong fabric or silhouettes that are too big and boxy. 🤔 I think the thing that works for me is semi-fitted but not super tight tops with some kind of feminine touch, like lace, or a feminine print. It is really difficult actually… recently I’ve been thinking about how some days I feel so ugly wearing feminine clothes, and some days I feel completely wrong in more masculine clothes. The way I differentiate these is: feminine stuff usually has something like floral patterns and softer colours and fabrics, while masculine stuff tends to be more structured, and – in my style – casual. This is why it’s important for me to have a wide selection of different types of clothes even while maintaining a minimal wardrobe. The creativity and the variety is important to me.

I’m currently sitting at around 77 items of clothing and shoes. Numbers are just numbers, obviously, but there’s a good chunk of items that I don’t wear often. So many of that is uncomfortable shoes, LOL.

I think that I’ll probably have some posts about our trip soon. They will probably somehow take the place of weeknotes for a little bit. 🥲