I had friends in town so I couldn't review week eight last Monday. Looking back on two weeks of albums today. Here are the albums I can still hear in my head:

• Nahida Akhtar Best of Nahid Akhtar 87 #playbacksinging
• Walter Franco Revólver #MPB
• Johnny Preston Rock #rock
• Joe Pass For Django #jazz
• Super Heroines Souls That Save #punk
• Terry Riley Shri Camel #electronic

What are you listening to? Point me to your list. Don't have a list of music you are listening to? The best day to start one is  today.

There are two things I like to do to keep in shape for drumming and for me in general. One is using a pair of light dumbbells that we found in an old box. The other is jogging in place because I can do it at my desk during pomodoro breaks or while watching a tutorial.

During one jogging break I thought to myself, "If I could only combine the weights and jogging then I'd be done with them quicker".

So I started jogging with the dumbbells¹.

Sometimes I do the normal running motion. Sometimes I just hold them in a position until I get tired then switch positions.

This rules. Less counting. Less routines. My muscles feel the same as the past dumbbell lifting. Perhaps ever more of a workout. The app I use to track jogging is telling me "way to go".

Also the moving the legs while keeping my arms out with the weight feels a lot like drumming. Bonus!

¹ This is probably a well known exercise but I really don't want to go down that rabbit hole.

One thing I love lately is generating a word cloud in Obsidian from my morning writing sessions. There is a plugin for it called "Tag & Word Cloud" that generates a word cloud of my most commonly used words.

I run the plugin as a treat for getting a morning writing session done. For example, my list today is "show, tasks, things, let, words, need, time".

It's kind of like having a personal oracle.

I am four months into the daily writing exercise. It started out as 750 words a day. That quickly changed to 200 words a day. I am noticing brain changes for sure. It is easier to write in general. Thoughts and words are coming out quicker for sure. 

The free writing morphed into a sort of morning brain dump session. Each morning the mental bucket gets emptied and there is space to let the ideas drip into for the day. Tasks, thoughts, and other ephemera are in a spot so there is less "trying to remember stuff" being wasted. That energy can be used in other places.

I think two months into it, it went from a scheduled event into a daily habit. If there is no text file for the day in the folder, I get a little annoyed. Missing a day is totally ok because my "next note" is to keep writing . I also think it took my brain a couple months to trust that this free space was a real thing. At about month three, I started doing things like signing up for a class and planning a podcast. Don't know if there is any connection or if it is just coincidence.

Start writing for no reason .

: “If you hit a wrong note, it’s the next note that you play that determines if it’s good or bad.” — Miles Davis

: The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second best time is now. (Chinese proverb)

You can add a token using the wysiwyg. That rules BUT watch out for one thing.

When you want to add your token, be sure you've clicked on the Source button.

If you don't click the Source button to add the token, the wysiwyg might add extra formatting code to the token. Which then makes the token broken. In my case, the wysiwyg adds a span tag to the token which breaks things.

Steps

1. Click Source.
2. Add your token.
3. Click Source again.
4. Click Save.
5. Stay rad.