Winter 2024 - The Playbook

Over the past six years I've tried a few ways of getting through winter - surgery, northern hemisphere holidays, global pandemics - with varying levels of success. Winter 2024 featured none of those and while I was still embittered about the cold a lot it was probably the most tolerable winter I can recall having. Though not as tolerable as hiking through forests in western Europe.

What was the trick to this?

Better warmth strategy. I bought an alpine-quality puffer jacket in May, and upgraded my old North Face jacket during winter as well. I bought gloves with mini heaters in them. You just need to recharge the batteries every couple of days.

I discovered the benefits of wearing pyjama pants under my tracksuit pants for extra warmth. I bought new socks. I wore beanies. There was a single morning it was cold enough to justify wearing all of the above at the same time. Most of the time I was able to coordinate a few of these together such that I did not feel cold while being outside. This resulted in less grumbling.

Indoors, I gave up on watching television in my freezing living room and spent every night at home in my study with the door shut and the heater running. Even that was still pretty chilly and didn't stop me from teaming the pyjama pants and tracksuit pants at times, but it was tolerable.

Good distractions - one technical project and one mindless pastime. The former was designing and building the quiz website. The latter was beating Breath of the Wild, which I actually completed around the second weekend of July and then I didn't play any games after. But it got me past the solstice.

Getting sun on my arms at every opportunity. Mostly by timing my lunch breaks for around 2pm on days when there were no clouds, and walking really fast to justify removing my jumper.

Also what definitely helped was not getting sick, other than the tail end of a cold in the first days of June. How I managed this is probably due to a lack of social activity and well timed vaccines, but it absolutely made the season way less shit. Also having most of August off when it was serendipitously quite sunny certainly accelerated the transition into spring.

All of that was good, but I think solid routines were the real key to getting through winter. Trips to the markets on Saturday mornings, walking Nash to the bakery on Sundays. Birthday month's daily desserts. Inviting myself around to Alex's fire on the weekends. Coffee and progressive trance between 9 and 10 each workday.

A paper titled Routine and the Perception of Time in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that a key factor of people remembering time as passing more slowly was "anchors of novelty", and by removing a lot of novelty from my life in Winter it certainly does feel like it breezed by.

Actually, considering I did work two major projects, changed jobs, had a colonoscopy and a two week holiday I'm not sure those enjoyable routines really did help that much, and maybe it was the pyjamas plus tracksuits that was the real MVP.

Or perhaps it was actually the new music.

Comments

Brad

Eli & Fur - Golden Eyes and Tears
Kygo, M83 - Wait - Kygo Remix (2024 Edit)
New Constellations - Hot Blooded
Kid Francescoli, Julietta, French 79 - Run, Run - French 79 Remix
Tourist - Blink
Charly Bliss - Nineteen
SHAED - Everybody Knows I'm High
NIGHTCAP - Wish You Could Stay
Swedish House Mafia, Niki & The Dove - Lioness
Boston Bun, Bag Raiders - SAVE ME
Kidnap, Gabrielle Aplin - Feels Like Home
Luttrell, Molly Moonwater - Something Right
Shuttle - December
LAUREL - Burning Up
Rainbow Kitten Surprise - Superstar
bby - hotline
Bay Ledges - Setting Free
Pearl Jam - Wreckage
Wilderado - Sometimes
Fanning Dempsey National Park - King Of Nowhere

September 5 2024 - Like
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Next Entry: Paris 2024

I have finished reviewing the photos I took in Europe in 2023 (for 2024 at least, I might go back one day). This last batch are all from Paris and didn't feature in my journal entries from the week I spent there last June.

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Previous Entry: A2

I "Brad, your journal entries are terrible but sometimes the last line is good." That was ten years ago, and at some point in my thirties I decided to set a reminder to write a sequel to that entry using only the last lines from entries from August 2014 - August 2024. They say every day is a gift, but I'm notoriously tricky to buy for.


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