Once again I missed a few weeks, but I got a lot done and posted a few blog posts, so I don’t really feel bad about it. For the past few weeks, I had a lot of extra-scholar activities that kept me busy. Most of them came to a conclusion this last week.

Running Clinic and Track

Last week I ran 20k with the good people at Fit First that I mentioned in a previous week update, which marked the last week of the running clinic that I joined in January. Additionally, I’d joined a group with whom I ran track every Tuesday night. While I truly enjoyed the running clinic during those Saturday morning (not so much the running part as the shared coffee and snacks that came after), this track class really helped me run faster and more efficiently. After years of running either on my own or in group, it felt good to try something new. That being said, I can say with confidence that I absolutely hated ladder runs¹.

I’ll be running the BMO half marathon on May 4th (if you’re in Vancouver that day and want to cheer…) with no real goal except to finish without any injury and enjoy the view. I would love to shave a few minutes from my time last year (2:18) but I’ll see how I feel on the day.

That said, I’m thinking of slowing down on running once I’m done because I’ve been dealing with shin splints for a little while now. I want to give myself time to heal properly and try something new, ideally something less “high-impact”. I’m thinking of taking swimming lessons, but who knows.

ADHD Bootcamp

I got my diagnosis for ADHD in autumn of 2023, where a doctor told me I had both attention deficit and hyper activity (might as well commit fully to the craft). I didn’t do much with that information, but it helped me recognize phases where I was clearly overstimulated at the office and needed to take a break and self isolate if I hoped to get anything done. This year, my therapist heard about this 12 weeks “ADHD bootcamp” and I decided to sign up, hoping to learn more about the condition and hopefully find mechanisms to get it under control. I don’t know if I could call it “under control” yet, but it’s helped for sure.

First, my life is now mostly driven by Todoist, which I really like. I don’t think it’s that much superior to OmniFocus, Things or other tools and methodologies that I tried in the past, at least not to the point that I’d be willing to debate about this. I just think I was in the right mindset when I started using it and I tried a little harder to commit to it.

I’ve also been trying to stick to the mantra “if it’s not in the planner it doesn’t exist”, which means that I throw a lot of things into my Inbox. Like, a lot of things. From cleaning the litterbox, to booking a meeting with a coworker and throwing links that I wanted to read the next day. My Inbox sees a lot of traffic now.

Most importantly, I met a bunch of people dealing with similar situations as me, which helped me finally acknowledge this diagnosis. I don’t know if I’ll write a longer review of that bootcamp, but feel free to reach out to me if you have questions you feel I could have the answer to.

Writing

I wrote 3 posts since my last week update and a total of 14 since the beginning of this year, which is more than I wrote in 2024. I’m really happy about that. Not so much about the number itself as the fact that I’ve found a good rhythm and decided to stop wondering what people expected to see here. Instead, I’m just writing about what I feel like and it’s been very freeing.

For example, I saw a lot of cool stuff that I could add to this blog post, just like I started doing in the previous note posts, but I don’t feel like it today so I won’t. It doesn’t even bother me.

Header Photo by Ann H, Photo of me running by my wonderful partner and Hocus Pocus Wizard Cat Art Print Illustration by MossyPine.