Life on the Couch: My Convalescence Activities Journal

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I have to say that it has been a real mental treat to have so much time off from work, to focus solely on my health. To rest. To listen to my body. To do exactly what I feel like doing in the moment that I feel it. If I’m tired, I can nap. If I’m stiff from sitting, I can get up and move around without worrying about being late for a meeting.

So, in many ways — despite the physical restrictions, limited mobility, reliance on others, and discomfort and pain of recovery — this time off has been a gift for my mental health. My day is mine to spend in the way I wish. Playing a computer game for 8 hours? Sure. Watching 11 Spanish-language vlogger videos back to back? Why not. Rabbit-holing on any topic that catches my interest, for as long as I want, without guilt? Amazing. I am grateful for this experience. I haven’t had this amount of free time since my maternity leave — and if you can believe it, I will have MORE paid time off for these surgeries than for giving birth to and bonding with a tiny human. SMH.

For anyone who’s curious how I’ve been occupying my copious amounts of time, let me count the ways.

📸 PHOTO ORGANIZATION PROJECT: 

The goal? To organize and back up in the cloud ALL of our family’s photos. 

As the unofficial family documentarian, I have a lot of photos. Since high school, I’ve been religious about backing up those photos, organizing them by year-month-event so it’s always easy to find almost any moment from my life since 1999. Since Justin and I moved to the Pixel in 2018, it’s become even easier and more accessible since all of the photos we take are automatically backed up to our Google account. We use partner sharing, so all of Justin’s photos are also in my photo roll, and I download them every few months to organize and backup on a hard drive.

Now, I want ALL of our photos in our Google account so that they are easy to search and find. And I want them to show up in the correct chronological order. 

So, I’ve been going through all of our photos that are not currently in Google Photos to ensure the metadata was correct before backing them up to the cloud. Justin gave me hundreds of photos that his mom had scanned in and organized by year – now those are backed up! I’ve gone through all of MY personal photos, from 1996 – 2018, correcting the metadata and backing them up! And now, Im working through the bajillion Schwartau/Poston family photos that have been scanned. Phew! But one day, our entire family’s photographic history will be complete, unified, backed up in the cloud!!! (And yes, double backed up on a new hard drive.)

It’s such a satisfying feeling to see my family’s history in the same camera roll as Justin’s family history — truly a Schwannema timeline. <3

▶️ YOUTUBE

While I am no longer scrolling Instagram or Facebook, I do still rely on the algorithm on YouTube. This is where I do a lot of learning. I’ve curated my algo to focus on: Broadway and musicals, urban/civic design, behind-the-scenes of movies/TV/theatre/audiobooks, linguistics and language, new movie trailers, travel (specifically to all of the places on our bucket list), and Spanish language. 

Being able to dive deep into a rabbit hole and explore a topic until I’m done with it feels like such a luxury.🥰 Not feeling guilty for spending four hours watching videos has been a total treat. Some highlights: 

• Middle Aged Dad Jam Band has some amazing covers!
• Wired’s Tech Support series has been FASCINATING!
• Subway Takes has become one of my favorite series (here’s one of my faves). 
• For civic design stuff, CityNerd is my go-to. 
• This relocation series shares some cool perspectives that sent me down several Google rabbit holes. 
• This linguist’s take on the ever-changing New York accent was really interesting and led me to this one about the Southern accent. But the PBS “Otherwords” series is probably the most accessible of the linguistic content I’ve watched; so many interesting stories in here!

I’ll leave you with a video about how different cultures perceive and talk about time, and let me ask you this question: if we planned to meet at 1 pm for lunch on Friday, but later I say “Can we move our meeting forward an hour?”, will you show up at the restaurant at 12 noon or 2 pm? (Apparently it has everything to do with how YOU perceive time.) 

🇪🇸 ESPANOL 

I follow several Spanish learning accounts as well as Spanish-speaking vloggers so I have been listening to hours upon hours of comprehensible input, and y’all, I think my ear is getting pretty good! My goal is that when we next go to Mexico and when we visit Pau in Spain next year, that I won’t have to rely on Google Translate. 🤞

One of the ways I’ve been ear training is by listening to music, reading and translating the lyrics. Through this I’ve discovered a fun band and that Madrid has a THRIVING theatre scene. In fact, Madrid has the third largest musical hub after London’s West End and NYC’s Broadway. So this rabbit hole has been super fun, giving me tons of songs I know and love to listen to in Spanish! (Here’s a little treat for you: Antonio Banderas’ version of Being Alive.)

🕹️ COMPUTER GAME

Several months back, I bought Two Point Museum when it was on sale to save for post-surgery. I played it a lot in my first few weeks of recovery (but I dont want to admit how many hours I have spent immersed in that game). It’s GOOOOD. I’ve only ever played two computer games with any regularity – Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 (including the expansion packs), which I’ve played dozens of times since it came out in the early 00s, and its successor Planet Coaster. Management style games like these really pull me in, so I don’t allow myself to play them often. It’s been super fun learning the new game and building ridiculous museum exhibits.

If you’re into this style of game, hit me up, let’s nerd out!

📖 BETA READING

I fell in love with JL Collins’ financial philosophy a few years ago when I read his Simple Path to Wealth and its followup Pathfinders. (They have, in face, proven to be life changing.) I watch lots of his videos and subscribe to his email newsletter – gotta keep motivating ourselves as we walk the path! – and that’s how I signed up to be a beta reader for his daughter’s new workbook that will accompany his original book. Of course I can’t ever take off my editor’s hat, so that turned out to be a more in-depth exercise than I thought (and may have sent more feedback than they were expecting lol), but it was so rewarding! Not only did I get a refresher on all of JL’s lessons, I got to use my brain in one of my favorite ways: reviewing someone else’s writing! It felt good to be productive doing something that I know will help a lot of people — and that gave me practice editing exercise-based nonfiction!

(For those who may not know, I’ve edited a couple books including Spencer Cobb’s Hack Your Life and my dad’s The Art and Science of Metawar. Word on the street is I’ll be editing his next one too…lol)

📚🎶 📺 MEDIA

I haven’t consumed nearly as many books, TV shows, or movies as I planned to, but I’ve still enjoyed many great stories (see the whole list here), new and old. 

Of note, on screen: the new series North of North and the movie Saturday Night on Netflix were both delightful surprises. Of note, on page (or in my case, in ear): the history of Super Mario and Remarkably Bright Creatures, both of which I couldn’t stop listening to. Speaking of audiobooks, any Dungeon Crawler Carl fans out there? I just started book 4. Let’s talk! 

Also, revisiting Chicago the movie sent me down some nostalgic rabbit holes; this was the movie that made me fall in love with editing. It won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2003 (while reinvigorating the movie musical tradition) and made me start watching and caring about the movie awards.

Next Up…

My post-op appointment won’t be until mid-June — which means no weight bearing on that left leg until then! — so I still have several weeks of couch-living. So I’ll keep working my way through my Watch list and the DCC audiobooks while cataloguing photos and planning next year’s trip to Spain. A couple upcoming highlights: My bestie is visiting from Chicago and my MIL will be coming down for several days as well. We have a mini-staycation planned for a weekend in June, and I want to spend more time outside to bring some color into this pale skin of mine lol. I may have also started a little side project…. but I’m not ready to share that just yet. 😉

Now it’s your turn! Send me a YouTube video you found fascinting, share a fun fact you’ve learned, tell me what you’r reading and watching, or tell me about anything you’re doing that doesn’t involve sitting on the couch! 🙂