Background

Just over a month ago I decided to start learning Italian. I have previously studied French and Spanish and can speak both languages fairly confidently (though French perhaps more so than Spanish), so I began studying Italian with an idea of what works for me when it comes to the study of Romance languages.

I had previously written of my desire to compare my experience learning Italian in 2017 to my experiences learning other languages, particularly Romance languages, in previous years when I was still trying to consolidate something resembling a coherent language learning strategy.

I spent much of the first half of the this month plugging away at what was my first sizeable piece of technical writing, my previous post on using Terraform to set up a new Hugo website on AWS. It took much longer to write than I originally anticipated, and the longer the post remained unfinished, the harder it became to continue working on it.

While a piece of writing taking longer than originally anticipated or intended is not really a problem in and of itself, I found that the unfinished state of the post acted as a blocker preventing me from writing regularly, which in the context of my overall goal to improve my writing skills, is indeed a problem.

Over the weekend it was decided that this year’s wedding anniversary would be celebrated somewhere in Italy.

It has been a long time since I last had any extended exposure to Romance languages. My French and Spanish are still fairly strong, though I rarely have the chance to speak either at any great length these days. I’ve flirted with the idea of learning Italian many times over the years, though I have always ended up deciding not to. This is largely because I felt any professional edge it might offer me would be outweighed by the effort required.

At some point over the last two weeks I came across a subreddit about ’non zero days’. As far as I can tell, the community on Reddit sprung up in response to a comment made by ryans01:

Rule numero uno - There are no more zero days. What’s a zero day? A zero day is when you don’t do a single fucking thing towards whatever dream or goal or want or whatever that you got going on. No more zeros. I’m not saying you gotta bust an essay out everyday, that’s not the point. The point I’m trying to make is that you have to make yourself, promise yourself, that the new SYSTEM you live in is a NON-ZERO system. Didnt’ do anything all fucking day and it’s 11:58 PM? Write one sentence. One pushup. Read one page of that chapter. One. Because one is non zero. You feel me? When you’re in the super vortex of being bummed your pattern of behaviour is keeping the vortex goin, that’s what you’re used to. Turning into productivity ultimate master of the universe doesn’t happen from the vortex. It happens from a massive string of CONSISTENT NON ZEROS. That’s rule number one. Do not forget.

Working in the technology sector as a consultant means that I sometimes find myself working with public figures in the tech community. I can’t think of many points in my life where I have found myself working with people whose talks I have watched on YouTube or whose writings I have read in various publications on a regular basis.

Naturally the process of following public figures primarily through the lens of the persona that they expose to the world results in expectations being formed which are rooted in the images that those people aim to project of themselves.

Making time is getting harder as the years stack up.

The things that I wish I could make more time for are not particularly extravagant. Reading. Exercising. Preparing lunches and dinners in advance. Writing music. Studying foreign languages. Revisiting video games from my childhood. Diving into the history of cinema. Listening to lengthy post rock records without interruption.

I had a routine that I really liked towards the end of this summer. I woke around 06:00 every morning and began my daily bodyweight workout while listening to a non-fiction audiobook. After my workout I would work through the next section of my Japanese textbook, with some vocabulary and kanji drills before and after. I wouldn’t even think about food until noon, because I was practicing intermittent fasting, and I was amazed at how much time in my day had previously been taken up by thinking about food.