The 2019 plan - Second-quarter review

At the start of the year I blogged about my plans for 2019. For those who don't want to go back to read that post, in summary they are:

  1. Continue to lose weight and get fit. I'd like to reach 80kg during the year if I can
  2. Begin a couch to 5k and give it my very best
  3. Focus my software work on finishing projects I have already started
  4. Where I join in other projects be a net benefit
  5. Give back to the @rustlang community because I've gained so much from them already
  6. Be better at tidying up
  7. Save up lots of money for renovations
  8. Go on a proper holiday

At the point that I posted that, I promised myself to do quarterly reviews and so here is the second of those. The first can be found here.

1. Weight loss

So when I wrote in April, I was around 88.6kg and worried about how my body seemed to really like roughly 90kg. This is going to be a similar report. Despite managing to lose 10kg in the first quarter, the second quarter has been harder, and with me focussed on running rather than my full gym routine, loss has been less. I've recently started to push a bit lower though and I'm now around 83kg.

I could really shift my focus back to all-round gym exercise, but honestly I've been enjoying a lot of the spare time returned to me by switching back to my cycling and walking, plus now running a bit. I imagine as the weather returns to its more usual wet mess the gym will return to prominence for me, and with that maybe I'll shed a bit of more of this weight.

I continue give myself a solid "B" for this, though if I were generous, given everything else I might consider a "B+"

2. Couch to 5k

Last time I wrote, I'd just managed a 5k run for the first time. Since then I completed the couch-to-5k programme and have now done eight parkruns. I missed one week due to awful awful weather, but otherwise I've managed to be consistent and attended one parkrun per week. They've all been at the same course apart from one which was in Southampton. This gives me a clean ability to compare runs.

My first parkrun was 30m32s, though I remain aware that the course at Platt Fields is a smidge under 5k really, and I was really pleased with that. However as a colleague explained to me, It never gets easier… Each parkrun is just as hard, if not harder, than the previous one. However to continue his quote, …you just get faster. and I have. Since that first run, I have improved my personal record to 27m34s which is, to my mind at least, bloody brilliant. Even when this week I tried to force myself to go slower, aiming to pace out a 30m run, I ended up at 27m49s.

I am currently trying to convince myself that I can run a bit more slowly and thus increase my distance, but for now I think 5k is a stuck record for me. I'll continue to try and improve that time a little more.

I said last review that I'd be adjusting my goals in the light of how well I'd done with couch-2-5k at that point. Since I've now completed it, I'll be renaming this section the 'Fitness' section and hopefully next review I'll be able to report something other than running in it.

So far, so good, I'm continuing with giving myself an "A+"

3. Finishing projects

I did a bunch more on NetSurf this quarter. We had an amazing long-weekend where we worked on a whole bunch of NS stuff, and I've even managed to give up some of my other spare time to resolve bugs. I'm very pleased with how I've done with that.

Rob and I failed to do much with the pub software, but Lars and I continue to work on the Fable project.

So over-all, this one doesn't get better than the "C" from last time - still satisfactory but could do a lot better.

4. Be a net benefit

My efforts for Debian continue to be restricted, though I hope it continues to just about be a net benefit to the project. My efforts with the Lua community have not extended again, so pretty much the same.

I remain invested in Rust stuff, and have managed (just about) to avoid starting in on any other projects, so things are fairly much the same as before.

I remain doing "okay" here, and I want to be a little more positive than last review, so I'm upgrading to a "B".

5. Give back to the Rust community

My work with Rustup continues, though in the past month or so I've been pretty lax because I've had to travel a lot for work. I continue to be as heavily involved in Rust as I can be -- I've stepped up to the plate to lead the Rustup team, and that puts me into the Rust developer tools team proper. I attended a conference, in part to represent the Rust developer community, and I have some followup work on that which I still need to complete.

I still hang around on the #wg-rustup Discord channel and other channels on that server, helping where I can, and I've been trying to teach my colleagues about Rust so that they might also contribute to the community.

Previously I gave myself an 'A' but thought I could manage an 'A+' if I tried harder. Since I've been a little lax recently I'm dropping myself to an 'A-'.

6. Be better at tidying up

Once again, I came out of the previous review fired up to tidy more. Once again, that energy ebbed after about a week. Every time I feel like I might have the mental space to begin building a cleaning habit, something comes along to knock the wind out of my sails. Sometimes that's a big work related thing, but sometimes it's something as small as "Our internet connection is broken, so suddenly instead of having time to clean, I have no time because it's broken and so I can't do anything, even things which don't need an internet connection."

This remains an "F" for fail, sadly.

7. Save up money for renovations

The savings process continues. I've not managed to put quite as much away in this quarter as I did the quarter before, but I have been doing as much as I can. I've finally consolidated most of my savings into one place which also makes them look a little healthier.

The renovations bills continue to loom, but we're doing well, so I think I get to keep the "A" here.

8. Go on a proper holiday

Well, I had that week "off" but ended up doing so much stuff that it doesn't count as much of a holiday. Rob is now in Japan, but I've not managed to take the time as a holiday because my main project at work needs me there since our project manager and his usual stand-in are both also away in Japan.

We have made a basic plan to take some time around the August Bank Holiday to perhaps visit family etc, so I'm going to upgrade us to "C+" since we're making inroads, even if we've not achieved a holiday yet.

Summary

Last quarter, my scores were B, A+, C, B-, A, F, A, C, which, if we ignore the F is an average of A, though the F did ruin things a little.

This quarter I have a B+, A+, C, B, A-, F, A, C+, which ignoring the F is a little better, though still not great. I guess here's to another quarter.

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