Week 10 of 2026: running out of time

This week marks a bit of a turning point – I hope – in my tendency to fill my week to the absolute maximum with work, runs, volleyball, RPGs and even some other social activities. It is all a bit much and I should prioritize a bit more, which I think I started doing already.

As usual when this happens to me, I turn towards a new task manager. I usually oscillate between paper, Things and Omnifocus, with periods of using my brain as my todo-list in between. We’re ending a “brain after Things” period and enter a new Omnifocus period. I know I’ll inevitably end up running things from my brain again, but hey, there is still value in the process of sorting your tasks and commitments every once in a while.

The recurring mentions of reading in this series are still providing value to me, as reminders of my aspirations.

Played

On Tuesday, I played the second episode in my ongoing open campaign of Brindlewood Bay. This time, it was the All Hallow’s Scream mystery, in which the Murder Mavens visit a halloween party of a famous retired Hollywood horror movie director. It was a nice cozy session with only three players, and I do think I start to get the hang of how the system works. Now that the players (and I) understand the Crown mechanic a bit better, I think I might push the next session slightly darker and riskier. Looking forward to that though: it will be the Great Brindlewood Bay Bake Off, and several players have expressed their intentions to bring real life baked goods.

On Wednesday I went to Utrecht to play Kids in Capes at Queer Arcana. I own the Kids on Bikes book and own and played Kids on Brooms, so I was familiar with the system – just not with this specific flavor. I love how the GM made a full half hour space for character creation, as the inter-character relationships are really what make these games so much fun, in my opinion.

Ran

I played volleybal twice this week, as my club introduced a new training day, but that also meant I had to puzzle even more than usual with my runs. I’ve decided that it’s just too much: I can’t run four times and play volleyball two times each week, so until the Venloop half marathon in the end of March I will keep it to one time volleyball for now.

• Tuesday: 11.3km, 8 sets of 300m at 4:05/km and 300m at 4:50/km. Due to the many constraints (such as no shower being available at the office) I took the metro to therapy and then ran back. I think this is the craziest run I’ve crammed in my schedule so far and I am trying to better my life now.
• Thursday: 11.5km easy, I ran to the office. There was still no shower, but I just accepted the sticky feeling (sorry coworkers).
• Saturday: 21.2km easy to the AH in Breukelen. I kind of have a goal to run a half marathon every month this year (not sure if it will stick), and on this last day of February there was one on my training schedule. One thing I like about running is the fact that you can cover such long distances, so this was a way to underline that. Unfortunately, the train I wanted to take home was cancelled, so I had to take the bus back. This bus, however, took me over most of the same route I had just taken, and given the fact that I ran on the left side of the road, and I sat on the right side of the bus, it was pretty accurately the exact route on many kilometers.
• Sunday: 11.2km easy. I had difficulties with getting my shoes on after yesterday, but I am glad I went. It was a nice easy run in daylight and past the lake in Abcoude where I had not been before. It’s also astounding to me that I can apparently run an average pace of 5:14/km with a reasonably low heart rate. I see the benefits of all this work.