💾 Archived View for rawtext.club › ~winter › gemlog › 2023 › 5-09.gmi captured on 2023-11-04 at 14:39:23. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-05-24)
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As I wrote in my more-informal outlet on midnight.pub, I joined the hordes of people doing free language learning via Duolingo. If I were smart (and I'm not smart), I'd get back into French. I started that language late, relative to my classmates - the city I was born in didn't offer French classes until much later, so when I moved and started French in grade four, my classmates had already been learning it for years. It took a while to catch up, but, I kept at it, even doing an undergrad course. I wasn't particularly good at it, but still managed a B. In the years that followed, lack of use meant it faded. The last time I seriously used it was in Switzerland, a dozen years ago.
But I'm dumb, so I'm using Duolingo to learn Irish, a language I have no reason to learn other than the sort of faintly romantic attachment I've always had for it. The sound of it, the wildly unintuitive pronunciations, the desire I had years ago to do an immersive summer in the Gaeltacht. Never happened. Life got in the way. But, the phone's right there. You can always just start. So I did.
We'll see how it goes. Right now I have a two-day streak. I'm good at small, daily commitments - see my Wordle stats. And in the meantime I'm also tending to a few more things. My passport expires next year, so I'm working on getting that renewed. With the weather warming up, I've started working out more. Did push-ups and dumbbell work throughout the winter, but now I can run, so I am. Taking the dogs, going for 30 or 40 minutes at a stretch, slowly finding my endurance, and theirs. One no longer young, but still game. Watching him carefully regarding pace. Making sure we never run two days in a row. Time for muscles to recover.
While drafting this gemlog: signed up for my usual fall half-marathon. This will be my 13th half. I've done more halfs than I have all other distances combined. Having that date on my calendar keeps me running. Or used to. Now the incentive is to tire out the younger dog.
But, I may as well sign up. It's a glorious race. Rural, down grid roads, up some absolutely brutal hills in the first half. Every year I have reverse splits.
I'm not young anymore. I'm trying to get slim again. Trying to stay fit. I'd like to get back to where I was in my twenties. This is doable: the first time I put on weight was at the tail end of university. The same weight as now, but none of it muscle. Chocolate bar and Coke weight. I wasn't running, wasn't lifting. So what I've got now is healthier, but I'd still like to slim down.
Plus I write. Work on software projects. Do my music. Keep my mind active, keep my body active. I have friends whose bodies are starting to break down, badly. In my early 30s, I lost an old classmate who'd had muscular dystrophy his entire life. It's so easy to take one's health for granted. I'm grateful for what I've had so far. I'll try to keep it going as long as possible.
That goes for everything. Keep writing (got a rejection today). Keep plugging away at projects. Learning pieces well, then putting them aside, and learning something else. Keep reading. Anything but the small death of TV, exceptions made for baseball, this being the season where it's on in the background all evening, as we work on our things, glancing over periodically. As with everything, win or lose, tomorrow's another day.