Medium doesn’t suck, actually?

Yesterday, I made a Medium account and started importing stories from here onto it. I was listening to the Writer's Well, one of my favourite writing podcasts, and J Thorn from the show was talking about his recent blogging project, where he writes articles on living the author life and distributes them to various platforms - a podcast, YouTube, Medium, Soundcloud etc. He noted that Medium had been the most successful, and that thanks to Publications, which are essentially curated collections of articles that boost visibility, he'd done pretty well there. I was hesitant before, but with his recommendation, I went home straight away and made my account.

We are cracking

I had a breakdown this morning. I was planning on marking some work, before going in to teach two new 2-hour classes, followed by another 3-hour class. I'd been bubbling with anxiety over the fact that it was new students for over a week, and it all overflowed in a fairly pathetic crying fit.

Thoughts on teaching kids

I'm exhausted, and I've never felt more motivated in my life. This morning, I taught a group of 10-11-year-old French students who are visiting Bath, and taking classes at my school for just two mornings. We were given prepared materials, but being my stubborn self, I steadfastly insisted on my making my own, with the intention of using Comprehensible Input and TPRS techniques to teach in a scientifically-rigorous way.

Novelling is my keystone

A while ago I came across the idea of keystone habits. Basically, they're habits that have a positive knock-on effect on other areas of your life, and instead of focussing on introducing ten small habits at once, you should focus hard on the keystone. Mostly it's things like sleeping well, running daily, intermittent fasting etc. But I think I've cracked something recently; that for me, novelling is a keystone habit.

Queer and single, with haunting piano music

Today I discovered a beautiful article by Brandon Taylor titled On Being Queer and Happily Single - Except When I'm Not. It mirrors and contrasts the post I wrote yesterday about loneliness, and it resonated with me a great deal. At the same time, thanks to the machinations of YouTube's suggestion algorithm, I chanced upon Ryuichi Sakamoto, a musician and composer of thoughtful, stirring classical pieces.

Lonely birthday thoughts

I'm 26 today. Birthdays have always been intensely loserish for me. There used to be a video of teenage me eating a whole slice of pizza in one mouthful at my friend's birthday party in Pizza Hut. I wanted to start the blog post off with this, but unfortunately it appears to have been deleted off YouTube. So I'll regale you with some past memories instead.