Tag Archives: Life

Thawing April 2026, Ink & Life & Space Dragons

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We’re in the tail end of winter according to the birds, though there’s still chunks of snow in the shade and every time we think it might be warm for good we get a little bonus freezing rain.  Still, it’s nice to feel the change of the seasons even when it feels like only a tentative moment of warmth.

 

Three sheets of stickers: cute dragons, large botanicals and weather icons, an ivory covered MD notebook, three ink swatches (Diamine Tundra [grey], Diamine Mint Twist [green with blue shimmer], and Pennoia Selyempezgo [peach]) and fountain pens (Kaweco Liliput, Pelikan Pura, Pilot E95S).

Three sheets of stickers: cute dragons, large botanicals and weather icons, an ivory covered MD notebook, three ink swatches (Diamine Tundra [grey], Diamine Mint Twist [green with blue shimmer], and Pennoia Selyempezgo [peach]) and fountain pens (Kaweco Liliput, Pelikan Pura, Pilot E95S).

Stickers

  • Cute dragon-y creatures by Heather Sketcheroos
  • Botanica pop-art by Maggie Chiang
  • Weather related icons by Neko Mori Arts

Inks & Fountain Pens

  • Diamine Tundra (grey) – in my Pilot E95S <M> (although I had the pens arranged differently before I filled them)
  • Diamine Mint Twist (green with blue shimmer) – in my Pelikan Pura <B>
  • Pennoia Selyempezgo (peach) – in my Kaweco Liliput <BB>

The pennoia ink was a random sample from a fountain pen order a while ago, the other two are both last year’s inkvent.

New Notebook Month!

After many months, I’m bidding farewell to my Leuchtterm notebook, which I started back in October with the plan that it would see me through the move.  It saw me through 6 incredibly stressful months with medical emergencies on top of the expected move, but we’ve made it out the other side and that’s worth celebrating!

Green Leuchtterm softcover notebook with a bee sticker from The Latest Kate that reads "It's enough to bee here just as you are"

Green Leuchtterm softcover notebook with a bee sticker from The Latest Kate that reads “It’s enough to bee here just as you are”

I liked the Leuchtterm notebook better than expected — it was nice not having to write my own page numbers, and it packs a decent amount of pages into a small size.  I did eventually get used to the ghosting but I didn’t love it.  Still, it’s a relief to go back to something smaller so my journalling setup is considerably lighter.

The new notebook is an MD Paper grid notebook.  Cheap and 40-some pages instead of 120-some.  I usually prefer dot over grid but I wanted to try this because the lines looked light enough that it would be pleasant, and so far it’s working nicely and they don’t feel in the way.  I don’t think I’ve shown a monthly spread in a while so here it is in the new notebook:

April 2026 spread in my journal, showing tracking for my yearly creative goals, fountain pens, a calendar, and a set of todo list spaces.

April 2026 spread in my journal, showing tracking for my yearly creative goals, fountain pens, a calendar, and a set of todo list spaces.

My monthly spreads have gotten fairly utilitarian since most of my smaller tracking and notes go on the monthly calendar now that I have space for that.  I still find doing a monthly tracking of the creative goals is useful, and I’m so-so on the todo lists: I use this page so I don’t forget things that I should do this week but don’t have to be done today.  Sometimes everything goes on the day’s todo list and gets done within a day or two so this page isn’t needed.  But other times it’s the only way important-but-non-urgent tasks get done, so it’s staying for now.

I don’t keep a separate commonplace book of quotes and instead just write down quotes in my journal.  Here’s the one from the book I finished this morning:

A quote which reads, "The galazy is big & we are small," I said. "It makes sense to help each other, when we can." - Space Dragons: Cosmic Survivors by Veo Corva

A quote which reads,
“The galazy is big & we are small,” I said. “It makes sense to help each other, when we can.”
– Space Dragons: Cosmic Survivors by Veo Corva

I love Veo Corva’s Space Dragons series.  Book two feels especially in the moment, since a lot of it is about trying to figure out what the right thing is that you should be doing, and then doing it even if you’re scared or angry or not ready or don’t know how to make it happen.  And as is a common theme across these books, it’s about finding your people.  But also it’s about a society where space ships are pulled by dragons and if that’s not enough of a pitch I don’t know what else to tell you.  Plus there’s crochet in this one!  https://veocorva.xyz/books/ for more.

 

And speaking of crafts and space travel, here’s how my latest knitting is going:

Time of the Doctor Scarf, a Doctor Who themed scarf with Gallifreyan style circle-text. It has been knit in ivory and dark teal yarn, and there is a a bright orange/yellow batik project bag and a pom pom sitting beside it.

Time of the Doctor Scarf, a Doctor Who themed scarf with Gallifreyan style circle-text. It has been knit in ivory and dark teal yarn, and there is a a bright orange/yellow batik project bag and a pom pom sitting beside it.

I’m getting close to the end of chart 3 out of 10.  This is going to be a gift for John but I’m not sure it’s even going to be ready in time for *next* winter at this rate!  It’s one that nees a fair bit of attention so it’s a bit much if I want to read, but it’s been okay for work meetings when I don’t have to participate much (we have a lot of talks on how to use new internal tools).

Notes from March

Ink Swatches from March 2026 (described below)

Ink Swatches from March 2026 (described below)

Three of these inks were new last month so here’s some notes:

  • Inkebana Cowslip (Yellow) – This was quite usable in good light but not my favourite when it got dim.  I’ll try playing around with it in art but I’m not sure I’ll use it for journalling again.  I only have a sample anyhow.  I’d forgotten how finicky my Pilot Metropolitan CM nib can be about angles, but I got used to it again pretty quickly.
  • Endless Alchemy Golden Sunburst (orange with gold shimmer) – I liked this a lot more than expected for an ink I really bought to be a fidget.  Super pretty while it’s drying.  Like most (but not all) of my shimmers it takes a fair bit of pen turning if you want to keep the shimmer consistent, but it’s a nice enough colour even with less shimmer so it doesn’t bother me as much as it might.
  • Diamine Marie Rose (peachy brown) – A new one from Inkvent 2025.  I was kind of meh on the idea of writing with a colour inspired by chip sauce, but I actually really liked this one to my own surprise.  Behaved perfectly.
  • Diamine Apple Glory (intense spring green) – This I’ve had for a while.  It’s nice but honestly was a bit too intense a green in this mostly warmish palette which was a pity.  Was nice to pull out the eco with the stub nib for this, though.

I might have a post up soon about some pens I inherited from my grandfather that I’m trying out, but I think that it’ll be its own thing!

 

 

 

Chilly March 2026, Life & Ink & Knitting

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It’s March!  Traditionally, February is the month where I used to feel the worst when I lived in Canada, likely because it’s when you’re sick of winter and the dark, but honestly it didn’t seem so bad this year, possibly because I wasn’t in winter in December so I haven’t really gotten sick of it.  It’s amusing that the number of people with masks on the bus seems to go up when it gets cold — a nice n95 really keeps the face warm, I guess.  Even I keep mine on on the walk from the bus stop some days just for the warmth!

A very fluffy (Eastern) Blue Jay with a peanut as large as his brain stuffed in his mouth. He's sitting on a wooden railing overlooking my snowy backyard. He was actually even more fluffy a moment before I took the photo. The weird pattern is from the screen door on my patio.

A very fluffy (Eastern) Blue Jay with a peanut as large as his brain stuffed in his mouth. He’s sitting on a wooden railing overlooking my snowy backyard. He was actually even more fluffy a moment before I took the photo. The weird pattern is from the screen door on my patio.

Possibly I’m not sick of it because of the sheer relief of being here and not there, though. As exhausting as it is to live in a house where you can’t find anything because it’s “in a box” and hasn’t yet been unearthed or it’s been broken by the movers’s terrible packing, it’s hard not to watch people’s driver’s licenses get yoinked overnight in Kansas and think “I’m so glad I got out before they yoinked my work permit like that.”  One of my new co-workers was aghast that I’d abandon a green card, but I’d definitely reached the point where no amount of getting paid more was worth the risks of being declared illegal at any moment.  And then I wasn’t even getting paid more.  Though I *did* just get my promised partial annual bonus from the old job so that was nice.

 

New job is working out, even if it doesn’t pay as well.   I like my new co-workers and we have interesting discussions about technology and security.  I’m less excited about the constant AI push in corporate land (it feels every single Microsoft product is yelling at me all the time), but I only have to use the parts that have a clear benefit to my work flow, so that’s something.  I’m spending a lot of time on the bus to commute and although I miss having more time with my kid at home, I do like having dedicated time where I don’t get interrupted.  I’ve been enjoying podcasts, audiobooks, mentally writing stories and just having time to think about whatever.  I’m not thrilled to have been hired as hybrid and told I’ll be going back to work 5 days a week in the fall (I definitely wouldn’t have applied for this job if it had been listed as 100% in office) but I’m trying to wait and see how it works out in practice.

 

Three sticker sheets featuring corgis & food, bunnies in teapots, and dogs. Four fountain pen inks and pens (described in post) and a roll of green washi tape and a small blue tooth stamp.

This month’s palette was pretty much built around matching those cute corgi stamp stickers.

Stickers

  • Corgi food stamp stickers – bought in Japantown San Jose but I don’t know the artist/company.
  • Tea Time Bunnies – ByMossyPine
  • Tiny Dogs – I think these were from Mind Wave.

Pens & Ink palette

  • Pelikan Pura <B> – Endless Alchemy Golden Sunburst.  I mostly bought this ink as a fidget because of the lovely bottle which is designed to be swirled, but I decided to see how I like it in a pen too.
  • TWSBI Eco <1.1 stub> – Diamine Apple Glory.  I bought this ink specifically for this pen!
  • Pilot Metropolitan <CM> – Ikebana Cowslip.  Accidentally got some green ink on the nib while wiping it off after filling, so this may not be the right colour in my notebook.  Oh well!
  • Pilot E95S <M> – Diamine Marie Rose.  From the latest inkvent.

Quick check in on creative goals

2026 Goals List

Creative space: My office is set up enough to be usable for work and for writing, haven’t quite figured out the desk situation enough work on painting yet.  There are still a lot of boxes but I’ve switched most of them to be clear ones so I can at least find things, and I suspect there’s at least a couple of boxes missing still. I’ve got an initial stationary shelf started (see photo below) but I’m thinking I’ll use drawers for most of my inks and samples and I haven’t decided where in the shelf those should go.

A black, square shelf with a number of small binders (of stickers), a big pencil sharpenter with googly eyes, a bottle of shimmering orange ink, and more notebooks and inks.

 

Crafting for the climate: Finished a scarf for my kid and a sweater for me.  Still working on a very complicated scarf for my husband, but it’s definitely not getting finished before it warms up this year!

Fluffy scarf made out of grey-brown fun fur yarn.A open front sweater laid on the hardwood floor so you can see the back cable. It is made in a gradient of yarns that go from bright pink at the shoulders to deeper purple at the bottom.

 

Painting with fountain pen ink: not set up for this yet but I did get some more watercolour painting books from the library so I’ve got some exercises to do once I figure out where the heck my watercolour paper got packed (or give up and buy more; I’ll use it eventually.)

 

Writing: wrote a bunch of fanfic for a valentines event and I’m really happy with how things turned out.  Got a few things in progress and with all the ao3 downtime the past couple of days I fit some extra writing time in.

Happy New Year! January 2026 Life and Ink

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We made it! Plan “get the dog and us across the country with an RV and our friend who loves driving” was a total success. We were lucky to get a very nice agent at the border and didn’t even have to have the whole RV searched. It’s tempting to point at the past week of news to explain why I’m so happy to have made it out safely, but if I’m honest with myself I could have pointed at nearly any past week of news in the year or so since we started making more concrete plans to leave and it would have seemed just as urgent then as now. But yeah, I made it and I’m excited for J to have his turn to be the immigrant; hopefully it won’t be as demoralizing for him as it often was for me.

A largish RV sitting in our new driveway in the snow, with lots of winter shrubs and trees around it.

We’re kind of rattling around in a large empty house at the moment, and there’s some stress going on with the moving company and the internet setup, but at this point most of the scariest parts of this adventure are over. Unless you’re our anxiety-ridden pandemic dog, who now has to meet a lot of strangers who come into the house. Thankfully he’s got lots of other nice things to enjoy that make up for the stress. He particularly likes the kid’s new game that he calls “melt the dog” which involves turning on the fireplace next to the dog bed and watching Hatch slowly sprawl out. I’m not sure why the kid thinks this is hilarious but Hatch obviously doesn’t mind. We’re giving kid a few more days of vacation to sleep and adapt before getting him registered in school but that’ll be soon.

Hatch, a black lab mix dog, is sprawled in a white fluffy dog bed with his front feet sticking out one side. There is a lit gas fireplace behind him, warming him up.

It took me a bit before I sat down and made some stationary choices for this month, mostly because cleaning up the remaining drywall dust and flooring sawdust and whatnot took precedence. Also sleeping. A lot of sleeping. And figuring out how things work and where to put stuff. And people stopping by (good for everyone but poor dog).

A set of stationary supplies: two sticker sheets of birds from Mind Wave and winter dragons from Stickii, three inks and four fountain pens and two washi tapes. Everything is described in more detail in the psot.

Stickers

  • Japanese birds in costumes for all seasons (Mind Wave)
  • Winter Dragons (Sara Capello Illustration for Stickii)

I’ll probably need another sticker sheet but I may just use up some leftover bits. We’ll see how much I write once I’m tired from work.

Fountain Pens & Ink

  • Platinum Preppy Wa – Koi pattern <F>. This has the original black cartridge in it.
  • Kaweco Liliput <BB> – KWZ Jurassic Treasure
  • Pelikan Pina Colada <M> – Diamine Celestial Skies from Inkvent.
  • Pilot E95S <M> – Pilot Iroshizuku fuyu-gaki

Two of these are new pens, both from Fountain Pen Day sales but I hadn’t gotten them inked with the chaos of December.

The Liliput has been on my wish list for a while as a shiny upgrade to my kaweco sport pens, which get regularly rotated in and out because I like writing with them but the aesthetics of them have never grabbed me. I’ve only written with it a bit but the nib is lovely and I suspect I’ll get used to having to screw the cap onto the back of the pen though that’s not my favourite. Still, I love the feel of it, so light and satisfying to hold. And the shiny blue looks just as good as I hoped it would. I wasn’t sure if the double-broad nib would be too much, but I rather like it, especially with this super smooth and shiny ink.

The Pelikan Pina Colada was more of an impulse buy because it was cheap and used the same converter I have for the Pelikan Twist. It feels light and maybe looks a bit unappealing because of the plastic, but it has a really nice clip and the grip is more comfortable for me than the one on the Twist. I’ll withhold final thoughts until I see if it handles a month of writing with sparkly Diamine ink. So far it’s not really bringing the sparkle as much as the Twist did, but I don’t think this ink itself is quite as sparkle heavy as the last thing I used in the Twist so who knows. We’ll see if it clogs.

KWZ Jurassic Treasure and Pilot Iroshizuku fuyu-gaki are both inks I’ve had a while but I’m not sure I’ve inked pens with them. I bought the rest the KWZ “all that glitters” line when it came in stock because it is my favourite sparkle ink that works in every pen and it only has 4 colours — I’ve used the blue/silver and orange/gold ones, this is gold/gold and there’s also a green/gold. I hope they make more. I’d love a purple/silver. Fuyu-gaki came in a little set of Pilot inks and I wish it was more red and less orange (the swatch is a bit darker than my writing with a non-dip pen) but it’s a fun colour even if I was really hoping for a good red.

Celestial Skies was possibly my favourite of this year’s Inkvent Teal calendar, so I figured I should ink it first. It’s nice that the gold sparkle goes well with Jurassic Treasure for a lightly matched ink palette.

Notebooks and Bags

This setup hasn’t really changed since I last posted, I think, but here’s a picture since it’s been a little while:

My current notebook setup: Lihit labs pen case with fountain pens, washi, stamps and scissors above, Lochby Field Folio case with a Campus free monthly calendar on one side and a Lechtturm notebook on the other.

My current notebook setup: Lihit labs pen case with fountain pens, washi, stamps and scissors above, Lochby Field Folio case with a Campus free monthly calendar on one side and a Leuchtturm notebook on the other. There’s a wooden pencil in the pen slot and a sticker sheet barely visible on one side.

All of this is working well for me: I used one of the calendars in the back of the campus diary for swatching inkvent and was impressed at how well it handled even some of the wetter swatches. The Leuchtterm is about half full from my start in October and it also handled some paintbrush swatches of ink. I won’t say I’ve completely gotten used to how much more ghosting it has than some of the other notebooks I’ve tried, but it’s usable and I could see myself using it again if I wanted a higher page count. Mostly I want less page count so I don’t have to carry as much with me, though. The pen case and A5 Field Folio are both great. I’m tempted to try some of Lochby’s other offerings, but they’re a bit thick for what I want out of a purse notebook so this bigger journal setup may be the only place they fit in my life. Oh, also I’m using a little midori calendar stencil instead of calendar stickers this year for the little monthly calendar I put at the start of each month for a quick “what day is it again?” check.

Commuter Stationary Planning

I’m going to be commuting to my new job on the bus several days per week, and I decided that rather than just transferring my existing little purse-backpack notebook back and forth, my commuter backpack should get its own notebook. Not sure yet if I’ll use that for work or it’ll just be for doodles on the bus.

A lochby TN size notebook tucked into a TN zipper case insert, with a clear TWSBI eco sitting on top of it. Beside it is a small maurman flip notebook with a todo list in it from december, sitting on a Tom Bihn ghost whale pouch. there are two more fountain pens beside it: an Ooly duo and a pilot varsity.
A Lochby TN size notebook tucked into a TN zipper case insert, with a clear TWSBI eco sitting on top of it. Beside it is a small maurman flip notebook with a todo list in it from december, sitting on a Tom Bihn ghost whale pouch. there are two more fountain pens beside it: an Ooly duo and a pilot varsity.

Right now I’ve put together a TN-sized notebook from Lochby and my TN zipper case and stuck them together so the zipper case serves as a notebook cover (I used to use this zipper case stuck to the back of my calendar to hold stickers). I’ll probably fill up my TWSBI Eco with something non-sparkly so I don’t have to worry about clogging. Maybe pull out the bottle of Nitrogen for a bit of sheen, not sure yet.

In practice, the only stationary I really used in my last job was my running todo list notebook. I’ve yet to find a digital to do list that works as well for me as a little paper notebook does. Not sure if that will still be the case but I threw it in the picture with the commuter notebook because there was space. I’ll see if I wind up using it for work or if it will be only for personal lists. Mostly I stick two or three pens and the notebook into the pouch and then into my pocket and use it around the house on days when I will absolutely forget to do things if I don’t write them down, or when I need a little boost of checkboxes to keep me on track.

Stationary Shopping in Canada

Shipping even small stuff from the US seems to cost about $25 minimum so I’m unlikely to do many orders from the US in the future, stationary or not. That’s definitely not a surprise, since before I left it was pretty common for people to put together big group buys of stuff to defray shipping costs. And with the political situation in the US, Canadians are kind of aggressively refusing to shop American and support the whole war machine, which rather makes sense. Thankfully it’s not much of a concern if I can’t shop where I used to: I’ve got a comfortable amount of supplies after my enthusiastic shopping since I started using fountain pens again in 2024, and I could probably write happily without buying anything new for a year or two. Still, I’m intending to find some Canadian stationary/pen stores to shop at, online and maybe offline (I know there’s one near my old apartment that has a small selection). If you know if great stores in Canada that carry fountain pens and ink, let me know!

I don’t have a big wishlist at the moment: maybe some standard inks to balance out my collection which is very dominated by inkvent holiday inks? No pens on my radar right now, since the Liliput was the last one. A friend may be storing his pen lathe in our garage so maybe I’ll get a kit and try turning a pen or two if we get that set up. I’ve got paper and stickers enough to last for probably over a year at my current journalling rate, though I’m always open to stickers when I find new artists I want to support.

New Job

New job starts next week and I’m excited! This was the best team I interviewed with and I’m looking forwards to getting to know them. I’m also very much looking forwards to having income again as we deal with the last moving bills and no doubt new expenses as we figure out what we need in the new house. I’m less looking forwards to a long commute to the office three days a week, but I also have no furniture for my office and for some reason the flooring guys forgot that room so I also have to wait for a new floor… which is all to say that I’m going to be glad to have a desk and proper chair!

Mom, I’m bored

I feel like I should wrap this up somehow but my kid is telling me he is BORED so I guess that’s that. Happy new year!

December 2025 Ink and life

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I knew that this month was very likely to go off the rails with our upcoming move, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have hopes even as I tried to build slack into my plans. One of the things I’d hoped was that I’d be able to take a little time out of my day and do Inkvent swatches and journalling as a bit of a meditative practice in the face of chaos. Turns out chaos was stronger than that and I’ve been mostly offline for the first few days of the month, but I’m catching up and getting into it now.

Ink

No ink palette for this month — I’m writing half of my journal entries with the day’s Inkvent ink using my dip pen with the reservoir and finishing them out with whatever pens I still have inked. I might swap inks eventually but there’s basically no colour scheme going on here.

The front of the Diamine Inkvent Calendar, Teal edition. It's a box with numbered doors on it and each one has a new mini vial of ink behind it. The design features a wintery scene.
The front of the Diamine Inkvent Calendar, Teal edition. It’s a box with numbered doors on it and each one has a new mini vial of ink behind it. The design features a wintery scene.

I am making swatches of each ink as I go, so I’ll probably start posting those in groups or something if things have really settled down enough to allow for that.

Stickers:

  • Christmas bears by Kawaiihentaii
  • Holiday squirrels by Nettle & Twig
  • Shiny snowflakes don’t list an artist, just stickii.
Three sticker sheets from stickii wth seasonal themes and three washi tapes, one very thin one in a larger holder.

Other Stuff

It’s been a rough month and we’re only a few days in, but I’m still working on holiday knitting and haven’t started the advent-style knitting I had planned because emergencies took precedence over winding yarn. The house is starting to look like we’re prepping for a move with boxes starting to pile up, and kid’s got a big countdown chain to help him visualize how many days before the end of school I’ve got a cough at the moment that has kept me out of choir, which honestly is a bit of a blessing because it’s one less thing to worry about. But we’re surviving and we were lucky enough to have a friend visiting when the worst went down, so I’m feeling tired but supported and hopeful that we’re making our way through it all.

Moving on

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For anyone who hasn’t already heard: I got hit in the latest round of layoffs at work. I’m super excited about this since it gives me the ability to take the rest of the summer off to spend with my kid, something I’ve wanted to do for a while.

We have a plan to hopefully move my work open source project to be under a foundation (to be decided by the other maintainers and me), since work will no longer have the resources to maintain it in-house. We always could have forked and moved since it’s GPL but this way it should be a nice friendly transition. I’d set the groundwork for a lot of this earlier this year and I’m glad it’s working out.

My severance is generous enough that I don’t have to look for a job anytime soon. I’ll probably start job hunting sometime after my kid starts school in the fall, but I’m effectively paid quite a bit past that and I’m hoping to take advantage and do some fun stuff of my own choosing.

I know a lot of my colleagues are heartbroken to be leaving, but I’ve been managing burnout for a while so I’m profoundly relieved and happy to get out. I’m sure I’ll be sadder to be leaving as I’m saying goodbye to colleagues when we get closer to our last day (July 15), but for now I’m leaning into the joy and finishing stuff up and getting ready to move on.

How I reduced my phone screen time

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I had this idea to do some socks tracking how much time I was spending staring at my phone. A lot of knitters track things like temperatures, but that’s never really interested me, so I set about thinking about data that I’d like to track and could do with relatively minimal effort. (Some people may be good at tracking; I am not naturally inclined to it.) My phone provides me a screen time breakdown, so I thought that would be a good candidate and started taking a look at it to see what colours I’d want to use and what increments of time should represent one row and so on.

But what I discovered, when I started looking, was that I regularly had my phone screen on for more than 5 hours a day. That seemed like… a lot. I felt a lot the way I’d felt about TV in my 20s: it wasn’t the worst thing ever, but I could use the time for things I’d enjoy more. (Also for getting a PhD, but that’s probably not completely related to my dislike of TV.)

So instead of setting up my knitting project (which I still haven’t done but probably will eventually), I set about figuring out how to reduce how much time I spent looking at my phone.

Looking at my data

Once I started looking at my data, I realized there *were* some extenuating circumstances: I’d often spend an hour with my phone open to a knitting pattern but it’s not like I was actually looking at it the whole time. Sometimes I’d accidentally leave my tea timer on screen for an hour while my tea oversteeped (a tragedy for me as it gets too tannin-y). Sometimes the screen time was due to having GPS navigation on, which, again, didn’t feel like it should count. But some days I really was just looking at my phone that often.

One of the things that helped the most was having a big widget on the screen of my phone telling me how much time I’d already spent using the device (I put it beside my weather widget where I’d tend to look). I paired this with stickers in my journal every time I went below my target amount of time, so then I found myself correcting if I felt like I’d used too much time for the day already.

Another thing that helped was just setting the screen auto-shutoff to be more aggressive (30s vs a minute, making it so apps couldn’t keep the screen on) so I wasn’t having it on by accident. That helped me figure out where I was really spending my time, and did reduce my numbers just by itself (and improved my battery usage considerably!)

Removing low-value time sinks

My phone actually up and died partway through this project, in a way that I couldn’t carry over all my settings and apps. And that turned out to be convenient for this because I had to make conscious decisions about what to install. But also inconvenient because I lost all my screen time data from before this project so it’s very hard to compare!

Things that went:

  • Most mobile games. A lot of these have kind of dark-pattern things to keep you logging in each day but once I broke the streaks because I had no phone for a week I decided I could just… not do that. I kept a few but I’m finding I play them less because they just don’t feel as rewarding as my Switch games now.
  • Removed most social media, tuned what was left to have less stuff (mostly turning off boosts for most people in Mastodon, being more aggressive about my filters, unfollowing a few people who weren’t bringing me joy but *were* bringing a lot of posts.)
  • Threw out most of my RSS feeds. I used to follow a lot more news and craft stuff, but the news was making me miserable and the craft stuff was encouraging me to buy supplies I didn’t need. I kept enough so I could be an informed voter for my riding and read my friends blogs, then culled down the rest.
  • Most notifications got turned off. Wow, there were a lot of notifications.
  • Swapped my phone to “flip for silent” and put a pretty case on it so I was more likely to flip it. This doesn’t seem like it should have made a big difference because I already had it in do not disturb frequently, but just taking it out of my pocket and putting it down made just that little bit more friction when I went to “just quick check something” so it wound up helping.

Finding other things to do

The big things I wanted to more of were: play actually good games (instead of crappy mobile dark pattern nonsense) and read books/fanfic. So I started actually carrying around my ereader in my pocket and learned how to stuff it with fanfic so I didn’t have to read a whole darned novel when I just wanted to do something for a few minutes while I was waiting for my tea or whatever, and I fell in love with playing Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom on my Nintendo Switch so I started carrying that around in my knitting back (too big for my pockets, alas. Though I did also pull out my 3DS which is more pocketable.)

An old e-reader with a white cover that has flowers on it, and an Animal Crossing special edition Nintendo switch with green and blue joycons attached.
An old e-reader with a white cover that has flowers on it, and an Animal Crossing special edition Nintendo switch with green and blue joycons attached.

It’s kind of goofy to be proud of replacing some of my phone time with looking at different screens, but I am getting a *lot* more enjoyment out of my gaming time, and since I’m not *scrolling* for a tiny screen while holding a device, I can enjoy reading longer stuff while knitting. It’s also been great for connecting with my kid, as we’re currently both playing Zelda games and sharing tips and showing off stuff we’ve done.

The amusing thing about switching to my ereader was that it forced me to spend more time on my actual computer to transfer files, which encouraged me to spend more time doing personal writing. You haven’t seen this on the blog yet because I’ve been writing fiction rather than blog posts, something I hadn’t done in a long time. I’m not finishing a novel anytime soon, but I feel like I’m stretching some mental muscles and having fun. So far I’m mostly writing fanfic which is nice because people actually read it. I’ve also found great delight in writing more comments on fanfic that I enjoyed. It’s probably obvious in hindsight, but when you write to tell an author how much you appreciate them a lot of them write back with really thoughtful responses (I know, I know, who knew writers could write) and after all the AI crap I had to deal with for Google Summer of Code this year it’s felt amazing to talk to humans without some chatbot in between. Honestly, it feels pleasantly minorly transgressive to be writing un-monetizable fanfic by hand given the state of capitalism and art right now.

I haven’t really been into fanfic since the last time I was seriously burned out after finishing my PhD thesis and moving to the US and developing both migraines and a problem requiring surgery. (It was a rough two years as much as it was a great two years.) So I’m reading fanfic again and, no surprise, I’m hideously burned out now because of *gestures at everything*. I’m in a completely different fandom than I was last time and doing different stuff (last time I was an artist!) but it’s still helping me cope with the burnout as well as changing what my screen time looks like.

Beyond the “let’s just use different screens” strategy, I’ve been reading more books and starting to do some drawing and I continue to knit although I don’t think I’ve done particularly *more* of that since I already knit a lot. I did a decent stint where I was spinnning until March but I’m taking a break on that right now. Now that the weather is nicer, maybe I’ll get some biking time in too.

So how did it work?

Well, it’s May 2025 and I started putting stickers on my calendar in January 2025. I’ve gone from “regularly looking at my phone for 5+ hours per day” to “only exceeding 3 hours a couple of times per month, often with extenuating circumstances like being sick.”

I probably could have gone lower than my new normal of around 2.5 hours on average, but I found when tracked it that all the days I went over 2hrs it included stuff that brought actual connection: chatting with friends or editing and sharing pictures or writing about books. So I’m not inclined to go any lower than that, although I *did* move some writing stuff to my computer so it doesn’t show up on the phone time tracking when i realized how long it took me to write some things on my phone.

The greatest result has been more connection time with my kid: not because we’re gaming together (we already did that) but because I now am playing the single player games he likes as well. This started before I started really focusing on phone time, back when I bought Echoes of Wisdom for us in the fall, but I’ve been happy to find that the single player gaming doesn’t have to be a “selfish” use of my time since we share some similar tastes in games. It hasn’t really increased our offline time much because the phone screen time was happening when we were both exhausted, but now when I sit and he wants to watch videos after school while he eats his snack and rests for a bit, I’m getting gaming or reading time in instead of scrolling while I wait for him to finish. It’s not perfect — I’m more grumpy about being interrupted during some games than I would have been in boredom mode on my phone — but I think it’s better overall.

What’s next?

I feel like I’ve made the habit change I wanted and I’m going to stop putting stickers in my planner almost every day (though they’re weirdly motivating, so I’ll likely keep them for some new habit tracking). I’ll keep the screen time reminders and other phone setting changes I made. I’m not intending to be quite so aggressive about cutting myself off after 2h, but I *have* bought a new game and new books now that I have time for them, and I’ve got a bunch of writing in progress so I feel like I’m at the point where the change will stick.

I might finally get around to knitting the screen time socks that I had planned, now that I feel better about what the data will show about me!

Overall, I learned some about my habits and made a good change. Go me!