Continuing on from [my introductory post]({{< relref "/personal/2019-09-10-28-hour-days-project.md" >}}) about the 28 Hour Day, the experiment has finally begun! I'll try and write one of these posts a day and give a quick, basic recap of how I used my time and any issues I ran into.

Feels weird starting this project mid-week, but let's see what "Satellite" the day, has to offer us (the 7 day week equivalent, Thursday, is normally my "breakdown day").

## Waking Up

I fucked up!

Last night I was supposed to go to bed at 22:00 but ended up crawling into the sack at 00:15 because I'd been organising and backing up my ~5GB ebook library. What else is a pal to do when they don't have a steady job?

I was supposed to then wake up at 06:00 but when my alarm went off I ended up resetting it for two hours later. I really needed the sleep though. So I guess that makes today marginally shorter since I plan to stick to the [xkcd schedule](https://m.xkcd.com/320/).

## Daylight Activities

I surprised myself by pulling my crap together quickly (after some leisure time) and heading down to [Officeworks](https://officeworks.com.au) for some replacement pens. I'm really finicky about the pens I use and have a love for a particular brand of rollerball at the moment.

Not long after getting back home, I went back out to town for [Nando's](https://www.nandos.com.au) and then came straight home even though I'd meant to check out a local bookstore and buy a book I wanted as a reward for finishing organising my ebooks.

I got back on my bicycle and did [15km around the river](https://www.strava.com/activities/2701064019), matching my workout yesterday (and only the second time on the bike since June).

## Evening

After getting home I pretty much got stuck on a project to turn the ScorpInc [Intern Choose-Your-Own-Adventure](http://interns.scorpinc.solutions:70/) game into a zine. While I made a bunch of leeway I kept encountering huge problems which left me stranded for up to two hours at a time. Part of it is because the medium I'm working with, [LaTeX](https://www.latex-project.org/), isn't easily optimised for this task and part of it is my lack of familiarity with LaTeX and it's arcane, mysterious ways.

## Last 4 Hours

After about 22:00 I realised I'd tackled most of the major problems in my LaTeX project and it's just about marking up the bulk of the work. If it was a normal 24 hour day I'd have had to go crash out but I've got an extra 4 hours, which is time to make some dumb memes for Twitter/Facebook groups, keep marking up my zine, and also write this blog.

I know it doesn't sound super productive right now, but all the work I'm getting done now while I'm in the zone I don't have to put off till tomorrow when I'd inevitably have to context-switch back into it.

## Mental State

I'm feeling pretty alright. I'm frustrated by the slow progress with LaTeX, but glad I've now solved most of the major problems. I also made a pretty heartfelt post about [R U OK Day](https://www.ruok.org.au/) on [my Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/judges119/posts/10162086065600398) and got a really positive response on it which felt heartwarming. On the downside I've had some kind of terrible, unstoppable, phantom itch all over my face which makes me want to flense my skin off, but I get this occasionally and I think it's related to some mental health stuff/medication withdrawal.

## Tomorrow

Uprising! I'll be awake at 10:00 Friday and am expecting to be active till about 06:00 Saturday. This gives me a good mix of day/night time in which I hope to achieve the following:

* Buy that book
* Cycle
* Do some cleaning
* Finish the LaTeX project
* Maybe upgrade the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure project a bit
* Check out [Aftershock](https://www.facebook.com/events/371388243771256/) @ The Sewing Room