A week of coming back, a bit of setback (foot hurts more than I want) and a lot of reading and thinking, but also a new beginning.

Happened

• On Monday I few back from Gran Canaria to Amsterdam. I wrote a little about how returning to the Netherlands was very alienating to me, probably also because the traveling was really tiring. The days after I tried to recover from it all.
• Thursday I went to Utrecht to go to the barber (yes) and also visited Subcultures again. This resulted in me buying the Mothership RPG box set, for which I didn't really have budget anymore but hey I love it. Especially the Warden's Operation Manual contains good GM advice for pretty much any game, I can see why this won prices. Can't wait to plan a session (it has been too long).
• Friday 1 November I started by new job at Atleta. It was mostly installing the laptop and getting to know the team and codebases and then it was already weekend, but it was a good start. Looking forward to dive in more on Monday.
• Over the week I noticed that every morning, my left (previously broken) foot was hurting. It was fine, as it went away during the day, but by Saturday I noticed that the morning pain did increase. Next week I'm going to make an effort to not walk too much. Mountain climbing on barefoot shoes in Gran Canaria was fun, but maybe not the smartest.
• Saturday I also visited Eindhoven for the belated birthday party of Henrique, which was at an "All you can eat" restaurant. Since Tuesday I also started to track calories and this made that pretty much impossible for Saturday. But it was a lot of fun!
• I started the calorie tracking because I suspected I am probably eating too little again. And indeed: this week I really struggled to hit the calorie counts that my Apple Watch said I burned (bearing in mind that "active energy" and "resting energy" are different metrics which you should add up together). I also noticed that in the beginning of the week, I would feel hungry at around -900 kcal, meaning the moment when I burned 900 kcal more than I ate that day. Later on in the week, I started to get hungry when I hit 0, which feels to me much healthier.
• The other point is that I've been slowly dipping into more and more calisthenics over the past month: I've bought a small notebook and I have been tracking push-ups and other body-weight exercises in it. I can now finally do full push ups: Saturday I did three times three (a month ago I could not do a single one). Eating enough calories and enough protein seems to be important for this. (Thus I should revisit my earlier post about protein chips?)
• Also did some inner searching by starting to read Polysecure by Jessica Fern again. I don't consider myself poly-amorous, but I have been the loose part of other people's non-monogamy. The "secure" part of the title refers to attachment theory, which I delved into a lot in January and February of this year. It's nice to re-read it in the face of my holiday crush and analyze my reaction to that. Maybe I should write a separate blogpost about it, but before that I need to decide how much of it I actually want to share.
• Finally: I reduced my time on Youtube significantly compared to pre-Gran Canaria and I try to keep that and replace it all with reading (and writing) more. Honesty makes me confess though: my Instagram time has a bit of an uptick. Nothing is perfect I guess.

Read

• The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (chapters 57-67 on the plane; 68-70 at home)
• Polysecure by Jessica Fern (started again, introduction and chapters 1 and 2)
• Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG: Player's Survival Guide (full) and Warden's Operation Manual (half)

Listened

• a podcast about Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach but I can't remember which episode