I've been going to more of these small get-togethers. I finally got around to hosting one here, too! I'm curious about this process of getting to know people better. I think I'm now more comfortable with conversation than I used to be, particularly if I preempt the “What do you do?” question by asking “What are you interested in?” This often leads to conversations about cooking, gardening, philosophy, and so on.

I used to feel slightly odd about small talk as something that didn't really move forward–slight variations on a theme, again and again. Something is changing. Maybe I'm becoming more patient? Better at appreciating the little things? Worth reflecting on.

In other news, I made Japanese curry from scratch today, following this recipe. Mm! I've been making progress in terms of runinng and exercise too.

My consulting client needs some extra help over the next month or two, so I might nudge the balance a little more towards work. I want to keep writing, exercising, cooking, reading, and spending time with people, so I'll probably try ~21 hours, but not ~40. Last week was about 25.5 hours and I felt like my brain was a bit fuzzy. Reading and writing feel like they expand my time; biking, too. Less time reading blogs, then. Time to tweak things…

Blog posts

• Weekly review: Week ending July 18, 2014
• Planning my next little business
• Learning from things I like: Books about applying advice to your life
• Becoming the sort of person I want to be
• Don’t worry about your tools in the beginning: Avoiding premature optimization
• Learning from frugal lives of years past

Link round-up

• 13 Tasty Recipes For Homemade Hummus: Neat. Will try.
• The Year Of Conquering Resistance: Mid-Year Review: I like the way he tracks the different roles he plays.

Focus areas and time review

• Business (34.0h – 20%)
  • Earn (25.6h – 75% of Business)
    • ☑ E1: Train TR
    • ☐ E1: Finish transition video draft
    • ☐ E1: Work on second video draft
    • ☐ Earn: E1: 2.5-3.5 days of consulting
  • Build (2.0h – 5% of Business)
    • Drawing (0.0h)
    • Delegation (0.0h)
    • Packaging (0.0h)
    • Paperwork (1.5h)
  • Connect (6.3h – 18% of Business)
• Relationships (8.8h – 5%)
  • ☑ Attend Paul's party
  • ☑ Attend potluck
  • ☑ Discuss F2
  • ☑ Have coffee with Andrew
  • ☑ Host party
  • ☐ Attend Nadia's party
  • ☐ Make ratatouille at Hacklab?
• Discretionary – Productive (11.4h – 6%)
  • Emacs (1.4h – 0% of all)
    • ☑ Record chat with Harry Schwartz
  • ☑ Fix website
  • ☑ Follow up on Canadian citizenship
  • ☐ Call CIC to find out what's going on with my citizenship application
  • Writing (1.5h)
    • ☑ What's in your handbook?
• Discretionary – Play (14.3h – 8%)
• Personal routines (23.1h – 13%)
• Unpaid work (14.6h – 8%)
• Sleep (61.8h – 36% – average of 8.8 per day)