February 2022 Summary

Day 18 of  #100DaysToOffload

Books I Finished

Admittedly, I didn't read as many books as I did last month. I think I chalk this up to the fact that I didn't go to the library until the very end of the month. I find that I can finish reading physical books much quicker, even though I have an e-book reader. The main reason why  I didn't go to the library was because it was often too cold and  I didn't want to take the train.

Out of all of these books, I think I enjoyed You Exist Too Much and All My Mother's Lovers the most. They both seemed a little bit similar but they both made me not want to put them down at all. I think I'll have to write about both of these books in future posts!

Books I finished:

• Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki
• The New Queer Conscience by Adam Eli
• Saving Montgomery Sole by Mariko Tamaki
• The Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie
• This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki
• All My Mother's Lovers by Ilana Masad
• You Exist Too Much by Zaina Afarat
• The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende
• Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe
• This Is How I Disappear by Mirion Malle
• The Handmaid's Tale (Graphic Novel) by Margaret Atwood and Renee Nault

Books I started but gave up on:

• Gender Swapped Fairy Tales by Karrie Fransman and Jonathan Plackett
  • This was a rather great idea but I've heard the fairy tales so many times now. It feels like they could have been a bit more creative instead of literally just changing the genders of the characters. It stayed a little too close to the source material and I just got bored.
• The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
  • I did not jive with the writing style in this book. I tried to read it in "Phoebe Judge's voice" and it did get me through more of the book than I would have if I didn't but it was too exhausting.
• The Imitation Game: Alan Turing Decoded Graphic Novel by Jim Ottaviani and Leland Purvis
  • The art style did not capture me whatsoever. It was a slog to read through and I really wanted to finish it but I put it down around halfway through.
• Orpheus Girl by Brynne Rebele-Henry
  • This storyline was just not engaging enough for me. I might try to read this again in the future.

Books I'm still reading but haven't finished:

• Disability Visibility by Alice Wong
• A Very Punchable Face: A Memoir by Colin Jost
• The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katharine Green

Top Songs of the Month

I use ListenBrainz to keep track of all the songs I used. It can be connected to Spotify and other players like Strawberry Music Player.

The bolded and italicized songs are songs that showed up in this list last month. Admittedly, I like to listen to the same things over and over again.

1. Sore Eyes by Braids
2. IF YOU by Seiho
3. Honey by Kehlani
4. STAY by Seiho
5. 君に夢中 by Utada Hikaru
6. SHANTI by Seiho
7. Weekend by TAEYEON
8. Love Is In the Air by Stella Donnelly
9. 人間を被る by DIR EN GREY
10. HATE YOU by LADIES' CODE

Top Albums of the Month

TAEYEON, a K-Pop idol formerly of SNSD/Girls Generation, recently came out with her new album, INVU. I've been listening to the title track over and over and I really like it. My first few listens of the entire album though have been kinda meh. Now that it's been a few weeks I'll have to give it another shot.

I just found out about Fennel, an indie band from Japan. The project is led by the bassist from the math rock band, tricot. I really enjoy their debut album a lot, it was a nice discovery.

1. CAMP by Seiho
2. Deep In the Iris by Braids
3. slow down by Fennel
4. I SAY MAMAMOO : The Best by MAMAMOO
5. INVU by TAEYEON
6. Honey by Kehlani
7. 君に夢中 by Utada Hikaru
8. The Insulated World by DIR EN GREY
9. Good Apollo I'm Burning Star IV: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness by Coheed and Cambria
10. Weekend by TAEYEON

Top Artists of the Month

1. Seiho
2. Braids
3. Utada Hikaru
4. Coheed and Cambria
5. TAEYEON
6. MAMAMOO
7. Fennel
8. The Weeknd
9. L'Arc~en~Ciel
10. Kehlani

Screen Time

I use ActivityWatch, which is a free and open source app that automatically tracks the time spent on devices. It's cross platform so I use it on my desktop (Pop!_OS), my phone (Calyx OS), and my laptop (Manjaro).

Screen Time Usage Per Day

This chart below shows the hours per day I've spent across all my devices, not including work hours. While I wouldn't definitively say a higher number is worse, the real metric is whether or not I spent my time on the screen doing some productive or useful.

Some observations:

• February 5: I did a lot of (virtual) socializing this day. I streamed a movie (In the Mood for Love, I highly recommend) for some friends over Discord but didn't touch my computer the entire time so it didn't register screen time.
• February 11: I don't know why it's so low here exactly but according to my journal I had a "productive day" and did a lot of studying on my course.
• February 19: A lazy day, I spent most of the day on Discord with friends.
• February 20: This was the day before a holiday in Canada and I spent almost the entire day with family, hence the low screen time usage.
• February 22: I felt guilty about the binge the previous day so I tried to limit myself. It only lasted so long.
• February 24: A global news event made me skyrocket in terms of screen usage.

Just for comparison's sake, here is the previous month (January) alongside February. February was mostly better than January.

Top Apps Used Across All Devices

Once again, web browsers and Discord reigns among all the apps I've used.

Top Websites Visited on Firefox

• Last month I spent 20% of my time on Reddit. This month I managed to lower the number a little bit to 14%! Still quite a lot, though.
• I spent less time on Fosstodon as well.
• I used YouTube a little bit more, just by 1%. Literally yesterday I watched a long video essay.
• I use my personal Nextcloud instance to write fiction, hence the high number. I'm part of a writing group and I have to paste the finished product into Google Docs and then  read everyone else's submissions on Google Docs.
• I also use Pomotodo to keep track of pomodoros.