August 2018 – Page 2 – JAMES MICHIE

How to lose weight and get fit, the tl,dr version:

Drink four litres of water every day
Commit to portion control; cut back on carbs/fats/sugar
Exercise rigorously six days a week

A more in-depth rumination on this and how running has taken over my life is forthcoming.

Running has become integral to my physical and mental health. So much so, it has invaded my reading list. Can recommend the following so far:

Murakami: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Finn: The Way of the Runner
Finn: Running with the Kenyans

BTW, there is still time to see the Tolkien exhibition at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Jennifer and I had a wonderful time poring over Tolkien’s notes, sketches, maps and other objects. Tickets are free!

Currently Reading: Idylls of the King by Tennyson after devouring The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Her retelling of the Arthurian legends from the perspective of Morgan le Fey was captivating. It also lead me to The Camelot Project, which is worth checking out.

Hello World! Again.

Like all the cool kids seem to have done, I have added an archive of my tweets at ~~twitter.jamesmichie.com~~. I have not decided if I am going to delete all my tweets, but as you will see, I have been pretty close to inactive for some time.

Nor have I found an alternative social network to engage in. I had a brief dalliance with Mastodon but I was not enamoured with the format (in essence a distributed clone of Twitter) – unsure as to whether I could, or even wanted to, rebuild a close network of peers.

In fact, I am not sure that I need social media as it currently exists. I do not believe that I have missed anything over the last year or so by not being active on Twitter. Quite the contrary. I have read more books and actual news. I have grown a cultivated list of blogs in varying genres to read via RSS (yes that old chestnut). And I have focussed on my health and fitness (running has taken over my life!)

However, I signed up to Micro.blog, today, in the hopes that it encourages me to post more regularly in a shorter format. Sharing is important (IMO) and I feel there is space (once again) for writing to be a positive outlet for me. Micro.blog allows for self-hosting, via WordPress and other open source blogging platforms, which means that I will retain ownership of my data. It also offers a growing network and native MAC and iOS apps.

I hope the shorter, low-stakes format of micro-blog encourages me to post briefly and regularly.

We will see… I have promised a return to regular posting in the past and it didn’t happen. However, it’s been nearly two years since I wrote here, and a year since I engaged with Twitter in any meaningful way. A lot has happened and some of it is worth putting out into the world.