Weeknote 19+20/2025: Playlists and patience
Finding my way back through walking and music
Hello!
This last fortnight I’ve been tracking my recovery from the recent operation, overcoming setbacks, ploughing through playlists and reflecting on personal values in preparation for working on behaviours I want to change.
Health update
About four or five days after my operation I decided to try and get outside. At this point my movement was incredibly restricted so, even with the walking stick, I was shuffling around like I was in my 80s. The distance I could travel without pain was depressingly short as well, just over a 1/4 km on the first day. However I kept the goal simple: one walk a day, to a distance I could cope with.
I decided to track these walks with Strava and it was such a confidence booster. The improvements seemed tiny at first, but suddenly I was managing a kilometre, then two, then four. I also noticed that as I was racking up longer walks my body felt better than it had before the operation. I was moving more freely. This was exactly what I had hoped for prior to the operation and why I fought so hard to be referred.
Then, about five days into the daily walk, I had a setback. The pain increased, and the wound began to break down. A GP visit identified a potential infection, and I was back on the antibiotics. The distance logged each day dwindled. Within a few more days, I was back in the hospital for checks to confirm the infection and seek expert advice.
The advice I needed revolved around what would happen as the wound healed, what was considered normal, and what should send me running (metaphorically) back to a medical professional. This section ends with a chance meeting with one of the surgeons who performed my operation during my outpatient check-up mid-week. He answered almost all of my questions and gave me the confidence to choose to return to work the next day.
Playlist activity
In line with my increasing activity, my sedentary lifestyle unspooled. My partner and I finished watching The Residence, both completely overcomplicating the whodunnit and failing to pick the obvious culprit. I really enjoyed the series and hope to see more mysteries featuring the brilliant Cordelia Cupp.
We’ve since restarted our journey through The Rookie starring Nathan Fillion, after losing interest toward the end of Season 4. The first few episodes of Season 6 have fluctuated between excellent and poor, but we are sticking with it until the bitter (and it might be bitter) end.
There are only a few films to report on this week. Firstly, I enjoyed the premise and around three-quarters of Drop, where Meghann Fahy has to follow instructions sent to her by airdropped messages to keep her son alive. No spoilers here, but the denouement was a little obvious.
I finally found enough time to watch The Godfather. I know, I’m a little late to the party. I checked off the well-known phrases on my bingo card and lost myself in the life, love and struggles of the Corleone family. It’s an excellent film that stands up to the test of time, and I’m glad I finally managed to tick this experience off the bucket list. Of course, this means that friends and colleagues are now recommending that I watch the sequel, but what’s a guy gotta do?
I’ve also spent quality time diving into musical inspirations and creating mood board playlists for a future, if not entirely overdue, side project. Artists as diverse as Giorgio Moroder, Elderbrook, Lewis McLaughlin, Anna Mieke and Colapesce have been wound into a tight digital equivalent of a mixtape. Taking these playlists out on sunny walks around Stonehaven and Aberdeen has been wonderful.
Reflecting on personal values
Creating the playlists reminded me of the care and attention I’d pay to mixtapes or CDRs in my late teens and early 20s. I didn’t watch too much TV in those days, and the fact that my first paycheck was spent on a much-loved midi hifi might give you an insight into how downtime was spent. These were often constructed to capture memories of a moment in time. A segue from one song to another can recall a discussion, an argument, or an absent friend.
While none of the artists from my mood board playlists were on my radar 25 to 30 years ago, the process recalled a few conversations about values (although we didn’t label it as such in our teenage haze) and our attempt to understand how, as individuals, we had developed these.
Retrospect is sometimes easier, and there is no way I could have named all my values back then. If I hadn’t had significant time over the past few weeks, I probably wouldn’t have considered digging deeper into recognising much of my own. I won’t share them all here (I know it’s a weeknote, but I’m quickly approaching the border of too much navel-gazing), but I’ll share an example in case you are interested. I’d also love to hear about how you have identified your own values because, as usual, my brain seems to work best through stories.
When I first moved out of the family home just before I turned 18, I wasn’t very good at being self-reliant. For example, a few months before moving out, I had to borrow milk from a kind neighbour to make macaroni cheese (it was a Sunday, the shops were closed in my village and I had spent the afternoon playing guitar and/or video games instead of planning what I was going to eat). Even a year later, when my first real relationship ended, I remember a kind friend came round to show me how to cook a Sunday roast dinner as they were worried about my obsession with cheese toasties. As I developed that aspect of my life, small successes like budgeting, meal planning, getting the laundry done between work shifts, saving up for and making time to travel - oh and coping with gaining an education at the same time - all strengthened my confidence that I would be ok on my own if required.
When I became a teacher, it was essential (once again) to build up new organisation and planning skills to become self-reliant in my professional life too. I remember my student and probationer days when I was unable to see the bigger picture of course planning and addressing the needs of individual students effectively. Supportive colleagues helped, less supportive colleagues just knocked my confidence, but I needed to do the work myself. Without self-reliance, I wouldn’t have coped with a move to Italy, and I definitely wouldn’t have coped with a year in London (that one was tough though!). I suppose each experience builds a form of wisdom, and I needed at least fifteen years of hard work to get there professionally, but self-reliance remains a highly prized personal value that, ironically enough, took a community of others to grow.
I’ve mentioned this before, but the workload that comes with being a good teacher is immense. It leaves very little time for other considerations and, once you have squeezed in time for family and friends (and ladies and gentlemen, we’ve identified the attitudinal problem RIGHT THERE) there is no capacity left for improving yourself. I’m currently working on balancing these areas more effectively, while still being as good a teacher as I can.
I was considering the positive habit this weeknote has become over the past twenty months. I genuinely look forward to writing these, although sometimes events conspire to delay their release. Similar to increased confidence in my ability to live on more than just cheese toasties or teach lessons that are more valuable to students, digital journaling has been more valuable to my personal development than I thought it would be when I began in August 2023. At that point, I wrote to improve my memory (and I’m going to dig into why I was clearly so absent from my own life at some point, I think it’s going to be uncomfortable). Now I write for different reasons, to an unexpected and supportive audience, to try and inspire a bit more introspection and growth.
I returned to an old love - curating music playlists - to accompany my road to recovery and, through this, reflected on what is important to me. I plan to use this understanding to review some behaviours I want to identify, understand and possibly change over the coming months. It might mean being quite hard on myself for a while, but in the end, I am sure it’s going to have a positive impact.
And with that, it’s time for a coffee and an early morning playlist.
Take care and have a great week xx