On Making a To Do List

First Published: 2026 September 6

Draft 2: 6 September 2026

Making a master to-do list is something kinda fun I sometimes do. Draft 1 has the details in detail, but the general process is:

1. List all tasks at high level (do dissertation, not “write Intro, edit intro, write methods, ...”)

2. Give each task a value for importance and urgency

3. Make sure that the tasks are ranked in correct importance order

4. Write a new list sorted by importance

5. Taking urgency into account, order items by overall priority (and if below a certain priority cutoff, just cross out for now)

6. If the items are really multi-step (e.g. dissertation), make a new list of what tasks go into that, being as granular as needed

7. If still feeling like you want to productively procrastinate, give new tasks effort and time markers, so that when you have “I have fifteen minutes and my mind is empty, what’s something I can work on?” you can do stuff

8. Smile and look at the pretty picture

There’s something to be said for a method of making a to-do list that doesn’t require such effort or paper use. But, I find that the more time that I give myself for remembering tasks, the less likely I am to let any given task not make it on the list. It’s more important to me that I don’t forget things than that I feel like I’ve used the time completely “optimally”.

Also, it’s important to me to consciously acknowledge “this item isn’t important enough for me right now”.¹ When I have a number of low-import very urgent tasks, I can accept that they will not get done. Ideally, the focus travels:

1. High Importance High Urgency

2. High Importance, Medium Urgency

3. Medium Importance, High Urgency

4. Everything else

After getting through the highs, I find that it’s task dependent. Overall priority is sometimes to the less important but more urgent task or vice versa, based on how I’m feeling.

Now, there’s definitely something to be said for maintaining some form of master list. However, I find that bringing former iterations of the list to the table sometimes makes me keep items on it that no longer serve me. E.g. if I am not at all thinking about painting, and I see that painting is on the list, I still find myself expending more mental effort in choosing not to prioritize it than I would if I just hadn’t seen painting at all. It’s a tough balance between “what if I forget something” and “who cares?”. Sometimes I’ll do a quick read-through of previous lists after finishing the list of all tasks just to ensure that I’m not missing anything from a previous iteration.

Anyways, this is something that works for me!

I don’t know if it is the method that will work for everyone, but I think that it’s worth giving a try, especially in high-stress situations.²

That’s all from me today! Look forward to tomorrow’s musing “on Labor”.³

Draft 1: 6 September 2026

For the first time in what feels like forever⁴, I found myself wanting to blog but not knowing what to write. I realized that the daily reflection I’ve been doing under the blog doesn’t really serve me how I want. Instead, it would absolutely serve me better as something that I have as a flowchart or something similar in physical reality. I still think that the pushpin board will be the best place for it, but I still don’t know if that’s possible.

Anyway,⁵ I was, for the first time since making this iteration of the list, glad to have my “upcoming posts” list, even though it’s not on the public-facing portion of the blog.⁶ Most of the posts⁷ that I want to write are deeper than I have time to do in full today (And yes, I am aware that in the last post I made I said that wasn’t going to stop me from posting something incomplete, but there’s a difference between “I thought I’d get this done and didn’t” and “I know that I don’t want to expend the mental energy it will take to get this post to a place that would be finished, even in part”). One post that isn’t like that, though, is the post on “How I make my full to-do list when feeling like there’s too much to do.”⁸

So, what’s my strategy?

First, I just go through and write down literally everything that needs to be done, regardless of whether it’s so small that most people think that it shouldn’t have an entry (e.g. wave to a friend) or is so large that it’s not, in any world, one item (e.g. finish my dissertation). I don’t worry too much about completeness here, but I do try to be thorough. That is, if something comes up later, it won’t throw off the process at all, but if it doesn’t come up without serious thought, that’s also a sign that it might not be that important to me.⁹

Oh, to be clear, each entry is listed one below another. I’m usually a fan of filling space as much as I can, but for what we’re going to do next, it’s best to reserve space to the right¹⁰ of the page. If there are more entries than one can fit on a single page, I’ll then add a second column if needed. If I think that it’s going to hit something more than the single double column page, back of paper is allowed, as is multiple pages.¹¹

OH!

I meant to say this above, but ideally this is the largest possible grouping. So, I would put “finish dissertation”, rather than “write draft of Introduction, draft methods, etc.”. Why? That’ll come up later.

Partially it’s to remind myself of the bigger picture at all times (this will become clearer in a bit).

Having made the total list, this list is now List 1-A.¹²

At the top of the page, add two new columns to the right (see why we needed the space?): Importance and Urgency. Importance is how bad the consequences will be if the task is not accomplished. E.g. “Write an album” right now would be a 4 for me, because I would be sad if it never happens. Back when I was writing a dissertation, that was a 9 or 10, because it would more or less ruin my life plans if it didn’t happen.

Absolute scoring isn’t super important here. I also find that when teaching people this, it’s important to stress that this is not a well-thought out decision. It should be the first number that comes to mind when looking at the first task. From there, the same should happen for each successive task.

Urgency is the time one has before consequences arrive. E.g. for a dissertation, when it’s due. For something like “write an album”, the urgency is effectively 0, because it is something I want to do at some point, but I have no real timing in mind.

List 1-A has now become List 1: the unsorted list of large tasks with urgency and importance.

Oh shoot, there’s a few variations on this method depending on how much time i have.¹³ Right now I’m assuming that the person making the list wants more time to consider the tasks because they’re feeling overwhelmed and this task, being so rote and long, is soothing. Anyway, if not, List 1-A to List 1 and List 1 to List 2 can be combined into one.

To make List 2, we grab a new piece of paper. All tasks are then rewritten from List 1 from highest to lowest importance.

Wait no, that’s not quite right. Shoot we’re at List 1-B not List 1-Final.

So From list 1-B to the final version, we go through and confirm that the importances are correct. That is, go through and assign the ordinal¹⁴ for each task from highest to lowest (so in my two item list, dissertation gets “1” and album gets “2”). If it turns out that you’ve mis-assigned an importance to a value (read: you realize Task B is more important to you than Task A, even though you put different numbers down), you change the relevant importance value(s) and then change the number. Sometimes this does require adding decimal numbers. As an example, consider List 1-A: (right now a fake list, draft 2 may include a real list)

• Dissertation

• Write an album

• Have a friend over for dinner

• Finish reading True Color

• Finish the design of the big embroidery

• Learn embroidery stitches

• Clean home

• Find career

This can turn into List 1-B:

In this situation, we can assume that I am so focused on the dissertation that the idea of finding a career seems laughable. I would then go through and start adding in the ordinal numbers:

Then realize that “huh, finding a career does feel more important to me than writing an album”. Imagine that being in parentheses means struck through¹⁵

In doing that, I see that I have multiple items at importance 3, and so add decimals.

Looking at each item, in this case the list feels like it’s correct (each item is more important than the item following it).

I then go to create List 2:

Wow look at that! Sorted from most to least important.

From here, I then go and see that clean home is the only (relatively) low importance item with real urgency. It’s not the best method, but I’ll use that as the clue that anything below it shouldn’t be a focus right now, and I’ll mark an x next to the other items to remind myself that I don’t really need to worry about them at all. For the remaining items, I look at the urgency and their importance to give them a priority (I’m going to have changed some of the numbers around so that it’s a little clearer what the point of this is).

Look at that! A few items changed priority based on more than importance, because like I can consider a career forever, but my friends leave in X days (or something). From there, I do also like to note if there’s anything that’s dependent on another task. E.g. I need my home to be clean to have friends over, so “clean home” isn’t actually a real task, but rather a part of “have friends over”!

Since that’s the case, I realize that I don’t really need to think about the album right now either. My to-do list has shrunk (for now) to three items. Now comes the really really really fun part: we iterate this! List 2 has three items on it: Dissertation, Career, Friend for dinner. I then go through each of those and make a list of everything that needs to happen for the task to be accomplished. (adding a fourth item that’s just “return library book”, because it’s important to remember single items are still valid).

Return library book is good, because it’s the only item.

Invite friends over has:

• Clean house

• Find day and time with friends

• Shop for food

• Prepare food

• Decide if there’s anything else that I want to do with them that night

• Enjoy time with friends.

And I give each item here importance and dependencies (ex: I cannot prepare food until I shop for it)

c|c|c List Position & Task & Dependency
1 & Clean House & None
2 & Find date and time & None
3 & Shop for food & 2
4 & Prepare food & 3
5 & Decide if there’s anything else I want to do with them that night & 3 & None
6 & Enjoy the night! & 2, 4

Then I do the same thing for the dissertation:

And then again for the career search (omitted for time).

Then we get to the fun “choose your own adventure time”. Depending on what tasks I have, sometimes I’ll then go through and add ranking or boolean for time required, mental exertion required, effort required, etc.¹⁶ Or, I’ll just rearrange the list to have the non-dependent items at the first, and then either set deadlines or start working on the tasks there!

Is this the most efficient method?

Not at all.

Is it the best method?

Eh.

Is it a method that helps people feel less overwhelmed and more capable of doing what they need to do?

In my experience, absolutely.

Ok so time to make a much shorter version of this for draft two.

Monthly Reflection

First Published: 2026 September 4

Draft 2: 4 September 2026

Happy September!

Having failed¹ to have a monthly plan last month, all that I have here is proflection into this coming month.

Biggest goals are:

• Have friends at my home for an event, either dinner that I cook or board games.

  It’s been too long and I want to host. I also have a nice couch now, and have just set up a projector, so could also do a movie night, I suppose.

• Have my home in the right appearance for having friends over.

  This is not, as astute readers might be aware, a particularly novel goal.

• Reading physical media again.

  I have a book I am absolutely ADORING right now, and yet, I have not been reading it.

• Writing more.

  I like to write, I like both the words I produce and the feeling it gives me. I do not write as much as I would like.

• Hobbies again, in particular making music and art.

  This goes hopefully as an obvious choice.

• Not wasting time?

  Wasting is always the wrong word, but like

  I don’t want to be scrolling mindlessly. I don’t really want to be doing logic puzzles for the sake of having something to do while I listen to the many videos I want to consume.²

  On the topic of consuming videos, as the above footnote mentions, I have recently realized that I don’t like having a bunch of Youtube tabs open. To solve this, I made a private playlist of the videos there I have yet to consume that I think that I want to consume. As of making it yesterday, it sat at a pleasant 190 videos, many of which are over an hour.

  If I assume (at 3x speed of course) that each video averages to 45 minutes, which feels reasonable, that means I have 190/4 hours of content that I want to be watching.

  That is two full days, and many of the creators will continue to be posting during this lapse. Of course, a fair number of the videos are shorter, and I have been feeling less and less guilt about stopping or proactively deleting videos from the list.  It is now a much more reasonable 155 videos, even including the new ones I’ve added since getting the 190 number.

  Honestly, I’m kind of proud of that fact.

  But, that’s a long tangent to say that, in general, I feel like my free time has me listening to youtube while I play other games, neither of which leaves me feeling fulfilled.

  Ideally I’d use the Youtube as a way to do the other tasks I want to do³

  And, with that in mind, let’s finalize this post for now and start cleaning.

If I want to post more, that implies that I want to be more willing to put out unfinished works. That was an initial goal of this blog, and I’d like to start trying to lean more into it again. So, even though thoughts may not be resolved here or elsewhere, I will stop the post where I sotp it, post it, and hope that future me may have more ability to figure out what, exactly I mean to say.⁴

Draft 1: 4 September 2026

Woo! It’s been a whole month of August. I only posted four times, which is sadder when I realize that I have written far more than that would suggest. Some of the posts, though, didn’t feel finished, which is always sad.

Anyways, monthly reflection and proflection is a trend that I did back when blogging constantly felt, if not easy, then at least doable.

So, last month’s goals were primarily to feel healthier in mind and body and to get my life set up for the living better. I would not say that I was super successful in that goal.

My goals for September are, I think, similar. Let’s freestyle and see what goals we come up with;

• Have friends over at least once.

  Last month I had a housewarming party and that was so nice and I love having friends in my space and playing games with them.

• As a consequence of above goal, and also because i want my home to be nice for me, have my home nice.

  I know that there’s this whole “as someone with mental differences, having a nebulous goal like nice home is completely useless”, but I can always make the goal more concrete in the future.

• Read more.

  For some reason, I both want to read a physical book most every day and also find that I almost never... do read a physical book. That’s something that I don’t necessarily think that I need to interrogate so much as just fix.

• Music again.

  It’s great that one choir is started and another is starting up. Hopefully that will help me to do so as well.

• Write more.

  I don’t necessarily need to be posting what I write, though I obviously love having this blog and would love to have it be a more regular occurrence. Hand-writing is always really healthy for me, and so at the very least finding a way to bring back some sort of physical journaling process would likely be of great service to myself.

• Other crafts.

  Someone commented that it seems like I don’t do crafting as much as I used to. That’s almost certainly true, and that’s something that I’d like to consider how to fix.

• Socialize?

  I don’t know if the goal here is more or just better, but something in the socialization I’m doing feels lacking in ways that I cannot fully put into words here. I’d like to fix this.

That feels like a pretty decent list of tasks! I do still want to have an accordion style daily reflection, but that may not be the winner for me.

I was listening to a podcast from an ADHD person yesterday, and she mentioned that she finds having things in a digital format much more difficult. I wonder if the same might be true for me. Regardless, I think that August was a generally good month for me.

I’m very excited for September, not least because I’m being electrocuted five days a week.

Daily Reflection: 4 September 2026

1. What time are you starting this reflection? How’s this time feel?

   About 9:30. It’s generally a good time, for all that I know that I can’t do this time going forward. I slept in slightly today, so there’s the effective time of one hour post waking.

2. Home: What’s one large thing that home setup needs right now? Is there a way to break it into small and medium tasks you can do?

   It’s been hellishly hot here these past few days and I’ve noticed that the bedroom is much hotter than the living room when that happens. I’ve therefore been sleeping in the living room, so need to make that space again look ready for living, rather than sleeping. It can obviously and easily be broken smaller.

3. Home: What’s at least one medium thing you could do today to improve your home setup? Is there a way to break it or them into small tasks?

   See above.

4. Home: What’s at least one small thing you can do today to improve the shape of your home? If multiple, what is the one you’re going to pause right now to do, and what is the most important of the remaining?

   I’ll do these things after reflecting.

5. Career aspirations: Any changes?

   Nope!

6. Web serials? Thoughts on doing?

   As I mentioned in a post that I’m not sure if ever was actually...posted, I have had ideas for a new web serial about teaching chemistry. Since doing that, though, I have not really made any progress there.

7. Music: Have you sung today? If not, do a vocal warmup

   Nope.

8. Music: Have you played guitar today? If not, do at least one hand’s flexibility exercise.

   Haven’t taken the guitar out of its case since last Tuesday. ope.

9. Music: What is the smallest possible piece of composition you could do right now that would feel like it “counts” to you? Do that now if you haven’t already composed today.

   Moving on.

10. Stretching: When were your last three stretches? What routine (lengths) were they? How did the time feel for stretching? How were the routines? If it’s been more than 36 hours since three have been done, what’s in the way?

    Hmmm, I did spend some time stretching last night, because I’ve been noticing lower back pain. However, the pain didn’t appear to be anywhere that I could isolate when stretching, which is sometimes interesting.

11. Cleaning inbox: What’s the inbox count? Go move or delete 25 emails, based on whether they need to be kept or not. New inbox count?

    I did do a bunch of this yesterday, so will not be doing that now.

12. Touch type: Have you spent five minutes touch typing today? If not, do that now.

    I want to do my monthly reflection, so will do the touch typing after reflecting, and then continue the daily reflection here.

    Woot. Touch type went decently.

    I swapped back to the real words preferred mode, and that did so much for me.

    9 lessons, 7.02 cps top, 6.06 average, 99.15 top accuracy, 97.4 average.

13. Physical Journal Writing: When did you last do this? How did the time feel? If it was more than 24 hours ago, why hasn’t it happened again?

    Anyways.

14. Rereading old blog posts: What’s the most recent post you re-read? What’s the new most recent post?

    Anyways.

15. Regular embroidery practice: What’s the current embroidery you’re working on? When did you last work on it, how did the time feel? If more than 24 hours ago, why? What do you think it would look like with five minutes of dedicated work? How close were you to the estimate?

    Last Thursday⁵, I decided to do some free hand embroidery. It actually ended up pretty decent, which is nice.

16. Eaten recently enough? Eaten enough recently? If no to either, eat.

    Who can say? I got tofu recently, so yesterday I made a fun lil tofu fry with some bacon, mushroom, and spinach. The tofu ended up crumbling much more than I was planning, so it did become more of a tofu scramble than anything else, but that’s the nature of things sometimes.

17. Drunk recently enough? Drunk enough recently? If no to either, drink.

    I think so!

18. Blogging: when did you last blog? How did the time feel? How long did you spend?

    ........

    anyway.

19. Blogging: Any changes needed to the template? If so, why haven’t you made them?

    Nope.

20. Daily reflection: Any questions needed to this template? If so, what and why?

    eh.

21. What time are you ending this reflection? How’s the time feel? How’d reflecting go?

    Well.

On Revamping My Life

First Published: 2026 August 17

Draft 2: 17 August 2026

Woot! I got trapped in the “let’s go through the 4tW¹ files and sort them” because I realized most of the files I had tagged as “blog” were, in fact, posted blogs. So, I didn’t end up publishing it yesterday, and I didn’t end up making my daily reflection or anything else in the list from yesterday.  For my own sake, the to do list is:

• Figure out when to blog, both for now and when I get a new schedule again

• Revise the template so that it contains my ongoing posts instead of upcoming posts²

• Revise the daily reflection for better sets of questions.

  Still need to think about that

• Figure out my home.

  Did make progress here: cleared off my large table, did some vague food prep^3,4, and I also assembled the couch I was given.

  The couch is super nice! It’s a sectional that comes into three pieces⁵: the two seats (both recliners!) and a center console which is two cupholders and what I assume is meant as a trash or ice box. It’s a lil curved which is fun, and it holds the projector at a decent height, especially if I have a book to stabilize it underneath. I still do want to hang the projector somehow, but need to figure that out before I can.

• Career aspirations: what are they, how do I progress in them?

• Web serials: What’s stopping me, do I actually want them?

• Music: how do I make myself do them?

  I did do the helpful thing last night of restringing my guitar, but I also have the issue now that I lost my wire cutters, so the strings are long and unwieldy again.

• Finish RebelFit

• Stretching into a daily routine

And then we can add the new ones from today:

• Clean my digital footprint.

   As the upcoming posts section for the past many posts implied, my inbox is now just under 152,000 emails large, and that includes me deleting a bunch recently and having good spam and automatic filters. The oldest email I see is from 2012, which is strange because it’s definitely not on my oldest email account. Aha, the oldest email account has another few months of emails, just not in the inbox⁶. I’m sure there are older messages somewhere, because Gmail was released in 2004 and the oldest emails are still only from 2008, but that’s quite possibly the oldest emails that still exist.

  Anyways, I don’t like that I have infinite useless messages, because it makes the messages harder to search and also like it’s a waste of space and time. I kept them for some reason that I’d still like to blog about⁷

• Figure out what other forms of writing I want to be doing

  I’m not sure if the web serial is in this phase of my life or not, but if not, then I need to have some other form of writing.

• Get back into touch type practice.

  At this point, I’m fairly convinced that, while QWERTY may not be the absolute ideal keyboard layout, short of learning stenography, it’s likely to be my best bet, because the opportunity cost of learning a different layout is much too high and it doesn’t seem like there’s good data for people being significantly faster on average. There’s some strain stuff, but since I never want to get to a point that I’m typing to physical failure, that’s not likely to be an issue for me for years, at a bare minimum.

  Unrelated: “anyways” is apparently the older attested form, according to Merriam Webster. Its first appearance is thirteenth century, but anyway only dates to https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anyway#word-history. MW also agrees that it’s a real, though dialectical⁸ https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/lets-talk-about-anyways. That’s fun, anyways.⁹.

• Get a regular physical writing practice established.

  I don’t, at this point, really care if the practice is poetry, journaling, notes, or really anything, so long as I am writing again. I miss having a distinctive and pretty¹⁰ hand, so I’d also like to work on bringing one of those again. I think that I prefer print, if only because cursive is something that children learn much later, and it’s also something that I feel I waste a lot of time trying to reread.

• Read through the old writing I have produced.

  I printed and bound a full copy of my web serial at some point, and even though I don’t remember where it went¹¹, I would like to read through that.

• Get into a regular embroidery habit.

  Even if I’m not doing the huge project, which is still in the design stage, it would be nice to be able to make small embroidered objects to give to people I love and care about. Since the free-hand aspect of embroidery is what appeals to most people, that’s probably something that I’d also like to get into. Something to consider, especially because random fabric is miles away cheaper than nice even-weave, especially Aida and its off-brand clones.

  Huh, never mind.

  Aida as a fabric at least dates back to Verdi’s opera of the same name, so is from the late nineteenth century. I always assumed a brand name or trademark. Matty fabric may still be cheaper, though.

• Get into some sort of prayer habit.

  I have found myself in a spiritually empty place for a hot second now.

  That is not a feeling I like or want to keep.

  Best bet I can think of to get there is to pick up something Catholic and something Jewish. I have a history of Catholic prayer, so it might be good for me to pray the Jesus prayer a few times¹², or perhaps something less inherently self-denigrating, given the current mental battles. At the very least I might want to get back into praying before meals.

  The prayer for St. Michael might be a good one? Let’s see, the text goes something like:¹³

  St. Michael the Archangel¹⁴, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May G-d rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, oh prince of the heavenly host, by the power of G-d, cast¹⁵ into Hell Satan and all the evil spirits¹⁶ that prowl about the world, seeking the ruin of souls.

  Looking at EWTN, they use “defense” instead of “protection”, “heavenly hosts” plural not singular, “thrust” instead of “cast” (which I also have used in the past at times). Woot! I do have a memory still.

  Apparently there are three daily Jewish prayers, though that seems as though it may be more of a communal activity. Alas, I have not explored my Jewish side as much as I might.

• Jewish identity: explore.

  There’s a weekly Shabbat service from a synagogue¹⁷ that I have a friend who cantors for.¹⁸ I could try to start attending that, if nothing else, because while I do find that I love a rigid belief system, it’s not what I actually find solace in.

Anyways, that’s a large enough list of items for now! I guess this could work well for something that I have as a daily reflection:

1. What time are you starting this reflection? How’s this time feel?

2. What time are you ending this reflection? How’s the time feel? How’d reflecting go?

3. Blogging: when did you last blog? How did the time feel? How long did you spend?

4. Blogging: Any changes needed to the template? If so, why haven’t you made them?

5. Daily reflection: Any questions needed to this template? If so, what and why?

6. Home: What’s one small thing you can do today to improve your home setup?

7. Home: What’s one medium thing you can do today to improve the home setup?

8. Home: What’s one large thing that home setup needs right now? Is there a way to break it into small and medium tasks you can do?

9. Career aspirations: Any changes?

10. (assuming I want to do web serial(s)):

    •  New serial(s): what’s one large thing that the new serial(s) needs right now? Can you break it to small/medium tasks?

    • New serial(s): What’s at least one medium thing that the new serial(s) need)s(¹⁹? Can it or they be broken into smaller tasks?

    • New serial(s): What’s at least one small thing that the new serial(s) needs? Is that something you can do right now? If not, what’s something small you can do right now?

    • Old serial(s): What’s the status of plotting out the rest of the book?

    • Old serial(s): What’s the status of writing the rest of it?

11. Music: Have you sung a scale today? If not, do a vocal warmup (hmm change to just “have sung?” in the next one)

12. Music: Guitar? If not, do right and left hand flexibility exercise now, at least for a minute or so.

13. Music: Composition? What is the smallest possible piece of composition you could do right now that would feel like it “counts” to you? Do that now.

14. RebelFit: What’s in the way of it being finished? Can you break it into large, medium, small tasks?

15. RebelFit: What’s at least one large task? Can you break it into medium and small tasks?

16. RebelFit What’s at least one medium task? Can you break it or them into small tasks?

17. RebelFit: What’s at least one small task? Can it be done within two minutes? If not, it’s not small. If so, go do it.

18. Stretching: Go stand and touch your toes for three deep breaths.

19. Stretching: Do you have a stretching routine for 10 minutes? If not, what is missing from it? If so, when’s the last time you did it?

20. Stretching: same for 15 and/or 30 minutes(?)

21. Stretching: Same for 5 minutes.²⁰

22. Cleaning inbox: What’s the current mail count? Go move or delete 25 emails, based on whether they need to be kept or not.

23. Blog: What’s the biggest block to finishing one of your (when I make that post, it’s going to be its own post, I think? That makes sense to me, and then I can just reference the live page for it?) blogs?

24. Touch type: Have you spent five minutes touch typing today? (n.b. for the reader, I really love keybr for at least the 26 normal letters, haven’t tried it much with punctuation or numbers or non-English uses²¹)

25. What other forms of writing are you doing right now? Do them.

26. Physical Journal Writing (if that’s what I choose): When did you last do this? How did the time feel? If it was more than 24 hours ago, why hasn’t it happened again?

27. Physical Poem Writing (if that’s what I choose): When did you last write a poem? How did the time feel? If more than 24 hours ago, why hasn’t happened again? What poem type was it, how did that feel and go? What aids and tools did you need?

28. Physical Writing: How’s the new hand looking? Your current goals were that it is: printed, pretty (other goals), any progress on that front? Think using the n-gram mapper you made would help?

29. Blogging: Have you written and posted your “blogs-im-writing” blog post yet? Why not?

30. Blogging: Have you written and posted your “do a single time tasks” blog post yet? Why not? (this includes things like “make an n-graph for 1-5 (or more maybe) characters so that when writing you know relative frequencies to hit for optimal growth, assuming all things need equal work”, and “make the blog meta-data’d²²” I’m now adding the 30, 15, 10, 5 minute stretch patterns to it.)

31. Reading old blog posts: (I’m going to plan to start from the beginning and add notes to a new blog post) did you read your next blog post and (depending if I can add meta-data or not) add relevant tags? Did you add a summary of it to the notes post? If not, do that.

32. Reading old journals: What journal are you on? What are you reading through now? Is it worth transfer to another medium (e.g. a good poem, a song you wrote, something to remember)?

33. Reading other old writing: What writing are you reading? Anything worth maintaining? If not, why didn’t you throw it away?

34. Reading old web serial: What chapter are you up to? Did you add to the (not being posted here because I want at least the thinnest possible thread of separation between that identity and me, at least the me that posts here) notes document?

35. Regular embroidery practice: What are you doing? What’s five minutes of embroidery going to have looked like? (rewrite) Was the estimate right? (Maybe also add a question for counted and non-counted thread)

36. Prayer habit: When’s the last time you spent in prayer? How’d the timing feel? How’d the length feel? If more than 8 hours ago, why haven’t done since?

37. Jewish Identity: How’s that going?

Realizing that I want a different order during the Home set, I’ll copy to below and make the final list (for transparency, I then rewrote the list as it existed. All items after home on the above list were added after that. As a result, I started leaving notes to myself so that I’d remember what to do in the newer version).

1. What time are you starting this reflection? How’s this time feel?

2. Blogging: when did you last blog? How did the time feel? How long did you spend?

3. Blogging: Any changes needed to the template? If so, why haven’t you made them?

4. Daily reflection: Any questions needed to this template? If so, what and why?

5. Home: What’s one large thing that home setup needs right now? Is there a way to break it into small and medium tasks you can do?

6. Home: What’s at least one medium thing you could do today to improve your home setup? Is there a way to break it or them into small tasks?

7. Home: What’s at least one small thing you can do today to improve the shape of your home? If multiple, what is the one you’re going to pause right now to do, and what is the most important of the remaining?

8. Career aspirations: Any changes?

9. If doing serials, look above for questions

10. Music: Have you sung today? If not, do a vocal warmup

11. Music: Have you played guitar today? If not, do at least one hand’s flexibility exercise.

12. Music: What is the smallest possible piece of composition you could do right now that would feel like it “counts” to you? Do that now if you haven’t already composed today.

13. RebelFit: What’s in the way of it being finished? Can you break it into large, medium, small tasks?

14. RebelFit: What’s at least one large task? Can you break it into medium and small tasks?

15. RebelFit What’s at least one medium task? Can you break it or them into small tasks?

16. RebelFit: What’s at least one small task? Can it be done within two minutes? If not, it’s not small. If so, go do it.

17. Stretching: When were your last three stretches? What routine (lengths) were they? How did the time feel for stretching? How were the routines? If it’s been more than 36 hours since three have been done, what’s in the way?

18. Cleaning inbox: What’s the inbox count? Go move or delete 25 emails, based on whether they need to be kept or not. New inbox count?

19. Blogging: Have you written and posted your “blogs-im-writing” blog post yet? Why not?

20. Blogging: Have you written and posted your “do a single time tasks” blog post yet? Why not?

21. Blogging: Have you written and posted your “this is literally just daily reflections into infinity” blog post yet? If not, can you think of a better place for them? They look ugly under each blog post, in my current opinion (last confirmed 17 August 2026)

22. Blog: What’s the biggest block to finishing one more of your in-progress blogs?

23. Touch type: Have you spent five minutes touch typing today? If not, do that now.

24. Physical Journal Writing: When did you last do this? How did the time feel? If it was more than 24 hours ago, why hasn’t it happened again?

25. Physical Poem Writing: When did you last write a poem? How did the time feel? If more than 24 hours ago, why hasn’t it happened again? What poem type was it, how did that feel and go? What aids and tools did you need?

26. Physical Writing: How’s the new hand looking? Your current goals were that it is: printed, pretty (other goals), any progress on that front? Think using an n-graph map would help?

27. Rereading old blog posts: What’s the most recent post you re-read? What’s the new most recent post?

28. Rereading old journals: What journal are you on? What are you reading through now? Is it worth transfer to another medium? If so, where did you transfer it?

29. Reading other old writing: What writing are you reading? Anything worth maintaining? If not, why didn’t you throw it away?

30. Reading old web serial: What chapter are you up to? Did you add notes to the remembrance document?

31. Regular embroidery practice: What’s the current non-counted embroidery you’re working on? When did you last work on it, how did the time feel? If more than 24 hours ago, why?  What do you think it would look like with five minutes of dedicated work? How close were you to the estimate?

32. Regular embroidery practice: What’s the current counted embroidery you’re working on? When did you last work on it, how did the time feel? If more than 24 hours ago, why? What do you think it would look like with five minutes of dedicated work? How close were you to the estimate?

33. Prayer habit: When’s the last time you spent in prayer? How’d the timing feel? How’d the length feel? What did you pray? If more than 8 hours ago, why haven’t you prayed since?

34. Jewish identity: What’s one medium thing you can do to embrace this heritage? Is it really smaller things?

35. Jewish identity: What’s at least one small thing you can do to embrace heritage? Do it.

36. What time are you ending this reflection? How’s the time feel? How’d reflecting go?

I also sometimes feel like the daily reflection is... far too long for me. What’s the “I have no spoons but need to eat some cereal” version of the daily reflection?

Looking at the items (from the previous list:

• Absolutely keep 1

• Don’t really need 2 or 3 or 4

• Probably keep 5, 6

• Def keep 7

• Drop 8, 9

• 10 through 12 can just be combined to “music?”

• 13 14 15 16 can all be dropped because RebelFit is not a no-spoons activity

• 17 can be changed to just “stretch”

• 18 should stay. Good way to get some efficacy in

• 19 through 22 should really move up to the top few because keep blogging together

• 23 maybe keep, good easy thing to do

• 24 keep

• 25 keep

• 26 drop

• 27 keep maybe

• 28, 29, 30 drop

• 31 or 32, combine to just “embroider?”

• 33 reduce to just “pray”?

• drop 34, 35

• Keep 36

so full list becomes (after adding in some food, water):

1. What time are you starting this reflection? How’s this time feel?

2. Blogging: when did you last blog? How did the time feel? How long did you spend?

3. Blogging: Any changes needed to the template? If so, why haven’t you made them?

4. Blogging: Have you written and posted your “blogs-im-writing” blog post yet? Why not?

5. Blogging: Have you written and posted your “do a single time tasks” blog post yet? Why not?

6. Blogging: Have you written and posted your “this is literally just daily reflections into infinity” blog post yet? If not, can you think of a better place for them? They look ugly under each blog post, in my current opinion (last confirmed 17 August 2026)

7. Blogging: What’s the biggest block to finishing one more of your in-progress blogs?

8. Daily reflection: Any questions needed to this template? If so, what and why?

9. Home: What’s one large thing that home setup needs right now? Is there a way to break it into small and medium tasks you can do?

10. Home: What’s at least one medium thing you could do today to improve your home setup? Is there a way to break it or them into small tasks?

11. Home: What’s at least one small thing you can do today to improve the shape of your home? If multiple, what is the one you’re going to pause right now to do, and what is the most important of the remaining?

12. Career aspirations: Any changes?

13. If doing serials, look above for questions

14. Music: Have you sung today? If not, do a vocal warmup

15. Music: Have you played guitar today? If not, do at least one hand’s flexibility exercise.

16. Music: What is the smallest possible piece of composition you could do right now that would feel like it “counts” to you? Do that now if you haven’t already composed today.

17. RebelFit: What’s in the way of it being finished? Can you break it into large, medium, small tasks?

18. RebelFit: What’s at least one large task? Can you break it into medium and small tasks?

19. RebelFit What’s at least one medium task? Can you break it or them into small tasks?

20. RebelFit: What’s at least one small task? Can it be done within two minutes? If not, it’s not small. If so, go do it.

21. Stretching: When were your last three stretches? What routine (lengths) were they? How did the time feel for stretching? How were the routines? If it’s been more than 36 hours since three have been done, what’s in the way?

22. Cleaning inbox: What’s the inbox count? Go move or delete 25 emails, based on whether they need to be kept or not. New inbox count?

23. Touch type: Have you spent five minutes touch typing today? If not, do that now.

24. Physical Journal Writing: When did you last do this? How did the time feel? If it was more than 24 hours ago, why hasn’t it happened again?

25. Physical Poem Writing: When did you last write a poem? How did the time feel? If more than 24 hours ago, why hasn’t it happened again? What poem type was it, how did that feel and go? What aids and tools did you need?

26. Physical Writing: How’s the new hand looking? Your current goals were that it is: printed, pretty (other goals), any progress on that front? Think using an n-graph map would help?

27. Rereading old blog posts: What’s the most recent post you re-read? What’s the new most recent post?

28. Rereading old journals: What journal are you on? What are you reading through now? Is it worth transfer to another medium? If so, where did you transfer it?

29. Reading other old writing: What writing are you reading? Anything worth maintaining? If not, why didn’t you throw it away?

30. Reading old web serial: What chapter are you up to? Did you add notes to the remembrance document?

31. Regular embroidery practice: What’s the current non-counted embroidery you’re working on? When did you last work on it, how did the time feel? If more than 24 hours ago, why? What do you think it would look like with five minutes of dedicated work? How close were you to the estimate?

32. Regular embroidery practice: What’s the current counted embroidery you’re working on? When did you last work on it, how did the time feel? If more than 24 hours ago, why? What do you think it would look like with five minutes of dedicated work? How close were you to the estimate?

33. Prayer habit: When’s the last time you spent in prayer? How’d the timing feel? How’d the length feel? What did you pray? If more than 8 hours ago, why haven’t you prayed since?

34. Jewish identity: What’s one medium thing you can do to embrace this heritage? Is it really smaller things?

35. Jewish identity: What’s at least one small thing you can do to embrace heritage? Do it.

36. Eaten recently enough? Eaten enough recently? If no to either, eat.

37. Drunk recently enough? Drunk enough recently? If no to either, drink.

38. What time are you ending this reflection? How’s the time feel? How’d reflecting go?

and the short version:

1. What time are you starting this reflection? How’s this time feel?

2. OPTIONAL Home: What’s one large thing that home setup needs right now? Is there a way to break it into small and medium tasks you can do?

3. OPTIONAL Home: What’s at least one medium thing you could do today to improve your home setup? Is there a way to break it or them into small tasks?

4. Home: What’s at least one small thing you can do today to improve the shape of your home? If multiple, what is the one you’re going to pause right now to do, and OPTIONAL what is the most important of the remaining?

5. Have you done music today? If not, can you sing to a song right now, even if just for a  moment?

6. Have you stretched today? If not, go touch your toes for a few breaths and then do a sun salutation.

7. Delete 25 emails from inbox. Can go to random spot for easy ones (or just search for something you know you can delete)

8.  Touch type: Have you spent five minutes touch typing today? If not, do that now.

9. Physical journal: if you haven’t done today, go do

10. Physical Poem Writing: if you haven’t done today, go do

11.  OPTIONAL Rereading old blog posts: What’s the most recent post you re-read? What’s the new most recent post?

12. If you haven’t embroidered today, go do a few stitches

13. What’s a prayer you feel right now? If nothing, go pray the St. Michael prayer.

14. What time are you ending this reflection? How’s the time feel? How’d reflecting go?

Since I have spoons, I’ll now add the reflection for today to the bottom of the list, and then hit post on this blog

Draft 1: 16 August 2026

I’ve been realizing lately that I feel somewhat adrift.

That’s a great and normal feeling; most often, this is a sign that I’m recovering from a deep well of depression.²³

However, it’s also something that I still feel the need to address. Right now is my best time for improving the way that I am. So, what is the way that I want to change my life?

Or, more accurately, what are the ways that I want to do so?

²⁴

• Figure out this blog.

  What does that mean?

  • Revamp²⁵ the upcoming posts so that it’s instead a reminder to myself of the posts that I’ve started but not yet finished.

    I’ll do that after this post is finished.

  • Revamp the daily reflection. I don’t really think that the current set of questions serve me. That’s something I’ll plan to do after making this list

  • Figure out when in my day it makes the most sense to write, both for these next two weeks and going forward.

• Figure out a way to maintain a home that I can invite others into.

  Honestly, that doesn’t just require maintenance or even repair²⁶, but also finishing moving in in some regards. Let’s think of some things that are needing to have a routine:

  (N.B. I realized that right now I have my list of things that need a routine elsewhere, and right now what I moreso need is both to do the tasks and to get the apartment set up)

• Get the career aspirations settled.

  I’ve known that I don’t want to stay at my current place forever. My partner moving away did little except exacerbate that urge to leave.²⁷

  What does this require?

  • Job search with more intention.

  • Make my resume better, and probably make it easier to machine scan.²⁸

• Decide how I’m feeling about the web serials right now.

  In general, I want to be writing at least one of them, but I haven’t. Why not?

  I’m not totally sure.

  That’s something that I’ll need to consider in the future, but my best guess is that i don’t really want to do much, and it’s a low enough priority item that it’s fallen off of every day’s list. Anyways, that’s something else I’ll need to figure out in the next few days.

• Get RebelFit finished.

  That’s something I’ve been meaning to do for almost a full year now.²⁹ What’s the barrier?

  Primarily the barrier is that I want to revamp most of the code, now that I know a little bit more about objective programming.³⁰

• Find a way to get stretching into my daily routine.

  Pilates has been great for me and my body, but it’s not everything, especially when I push myself³¹ hard. Stretches feel good, and that feels good.

• Get music into my daily routine, both for the next few weeks and going forward.

  I want to make music more than just the approximately weekly times that I meet with a friend. That can mean many things, but almost certainly requires me playing my guitar. Right now the guitar doesn’t speak to me, which is almost always a sign of needing new strings, and so that’s probably the first step.

   

So, what else do I need to do to revamp my life?

That feels like as good of a starting place as any.

Honestly, this doesn’t necessarily feel like as good of a post as it could be. Then again, if the blog is a diary³², then the more introspective aspect of this blog post is probably actually exactly what I want and need. Eh, it’s something that I can post, if nothing else.

Daily Reflection: 17 August 2026

1. What time are you starting this reflection? How’s this time feel?

   13:42. A little late, given that I’ve been blogging for a few hours. I also feel hot and sweaty in current location, so let’s use that as the motivation I need to go stand up and move to a different space.

   Much better

2. Blogging: when did you last blog? How did the time feel? How long did you spend?

   Todayish, started approx 11:30, I think? Wild, two hours goes by so fast. Time felt nice, but I also got up later than usual today because no Pilates. Long term, a two hour block of writing time is not super compatible with the rest of life as I will again live.

3. Blogging: Any changes needed to the template? If so, why haven’t you made them?

   Not any longer for now?

4. Blogging: Have you written and posted your “blogs-im-writing” blog post yet? Why not?

   Nope! Today’s post is this one, and tomorrow’s is hopefully that.

5. Blogging: Have you written and posted your “do a single time tasks” blog post yet? Why not?

   Nope! Today’s is this, overmorrow’s is hopefully that.

6. Blogging: Have you written and posted your “this is literally just daily reflections into infinity” blog post yet? If not, can you think of a better place for them? They look ugly under each blog post, in my current opinion (last confirmed 17 August 2026)

   Nope! TBH, I don’t know how ugly it really is.

7. Blogging: What’s the biggest block to finishing one more of your in-progress blogs?

   Uhhhhh at this point I don’t really know what all of them are.  Otherwise, block is that I need to be off writing time for a little now.

8. Daily reflection: Any questions needed to this template? If so, what and why?

   Nope! Though, this q should go above the other blogging questions.³³

9. Home: What’s one large thing that home setup needs right now? Is there a way to break it into small and medium tasks you can do?

   Right now I think that the big thing would be clearing the music room floor. That can be broken into medium task:

   • Clear a path through music room floor

   • Throw out trash on floor

   • Move things into the other rooms as needed to make space for now.

10. Home: What’s at least one medium thing you could do today to improve your home setup? Is there a way to break it or them into small tasks?

    From above: Clear a path through music room floor. Only real small way that I can make that happen is to just list each item individually

11. Home: What’s at least one small thing you can do today to improve the shape of your home? If multiple, what is the one you’re going to pause right now to do, and what is the most important of the remaining?

    Clear a space to walk into music room. Not going to do that now, because I’m planning to do the medium task when I finish this post.

12. Career aspirations: Any changes?

    Not really.

13. If doing serials, look above for questions

    Whoop! For now, let’s change to “serials? Thoughts?” Hmmm, that’s probably something that implies I want the blogging answers at the bottom.

    Let’s do that in the template as well.

14. Music: Have you sung today? If not, do a vocal warmup

    Nope! Vocal warmup will be done in car maybe.

15. Music: Have you played guitar today? If not, do at least one hand’s flexibility exercise.

    Hands are sweaty right now and I don’t want to mess with the guitar since it has new strings.

16. Music: What is the smallest possible piece of composition you could do right now that would feel like it “counts” to you? Do that now if you haven’t already composed today.

    Honestly, writing down a melody in MuseScore would hit that urge for me. That’s not something I’m going to do right now, though.

17. RebelFit: What’s in the way of it being finished? Can you break it into large, medium, small tasks?

    Uhhhh pass.

18. RebelFit: What’s at least one large task? Can you break it into medium and small tasks?

    Rewrite the code. Smaller large tasks are rewrite the bounding algorithm and rewrite the point selection algorithm. Medium sized ones for point selection are each constant in the “pure” form, which is what will be sampled.

19. RebelFit What’s at least one medium task? Can you break it or them into small tasks?

    Any given “pure” constant, for now let’s say picking C given I.

    Also let’s see if I can figure out how to pick sigma, C, I as my three base variables again. Or, at least, use A, B, C, I, sigma, figure out how to constrain using all of them.

    One small task is finding the equation for C (normal) given A reduced constants and then using the bounds that I’ll have had in A reduced form, making that.

20. RebelFit: What’s at least one small task? Can it be done within two minutes? If not, it’s not small. If so, go do it.

    See above. Not doing now, though.

21. Stretching: When were your last three stretches? What routine (lengths) were they? How did the time feel for stretching? How were the routines? If it’s been more than 36 hours since three have been done, what’s in the way?

    ... no comment.

    I found my packet form back when I was a diver, some of those might be good to do agin.

22. Cleaning inbox: What’s the inbox count? Go move or delete 25 emails, based on whether they need to be kept or not. New inbox count?

    Inbox count: 152003. 25 gets me basically to 151975, so let’s go. Woot, that went fast enough. In the future, may need to remind myself that like, scrolling down through posts I’m not sure if I should delete still good.

23. Touch type: Have you spent five minutes touch typing today? If not, do that now.

    Nope! Will maybe do after, after I get some non-screen tiem.

24. Physical Journal Writing: When did you last do this? How did the time feel? If it was more than 24 hours ago, why hasn’t it happened again?

    .... Anyways

25. Physical Poem Writing: When did you last write a poem? How did the time feel? If more than 24 hours ago, why hasn’t it happened again? What poem type was it, how did that feel and go? What aids and tools did you need?

    ... Anyways.

26. Physical Writing: How’s the new hand looking? Your current goals were that it is: printed, pretty (other goals), any progress on that front? Think using an n-graph map would help?

    ... Anyways

27. Rereading old blog posts: What’s the most recent post you re-read? What’s the new most recent post?

    ...Anyways

28. Rereading old journals: What journal are you on? What are you reading through now? Is it worth transfer to another medium? If so, where did you transfer it?

    ...Anyways

29. Reading other old writing: What writing are you reading? Anything worth maintaining? If not, why didn’t you throw it away?

    ...Anyways

30. Reading old web serial: What chapter are you up to? Did you add notes to the remembrance document?

    ...Anyways

31. Regular embroidery practice: What’s the current non-counted embroidery you’re working on? When did you last work on it, how did the time feel? If more than 24 hours ago, why? What do you think it would look like with five minutes of dedicated work? How close were you to the estimate?

    ...Anyways

32. Regular embroidery practice: What’s the current counted embroidery you’re working on? When did you last work on it, how did the time feel? If more than 24 hours ago, why? What do you think it would look like with five minutes of dedicated work? How close were you to the estimate?

    ...Anyways

33. Prayer habit: When’s the last time you spent in prayer? How’d the timing feel? How’d the length feel? What did you pray? If more than 8 hours ago, why haven’t you prayed since?

    ...Anyways... Just did St. Michael in a prayerful attitude.

34. Jewish identity: What’s one medium thing you can do to embrace this heritage? Is it really smaller things?

    Uhhhhh. pass

35. Jewish identity: What’s at least one small thing you can do to embrace heritage? Do it.

    Pass

36. Eaten recently enough? Eaten enough recently? If no to either, eat.

    Generally yes, but probably good to have an apple

37. Drunk recently enough? Drunk enough recently? If no to either, drink.

    Generally yes, but given the sweat, take a drink.

38. What time are you ending this reflection? How’s the time feel? How’d reflecting go?

    13:58, so 16 minutes. Time feels generally good. Don’t love how much reflecting is just going “pass”, today, but that’s a downside of starting so many words into a document

On Making Short Videos

First Published: 12 August 2026

Draft 1: 12 August 2026

In the past, I’ve realized that something I find really important is science communication. I’ve written here about how I want to teach rotational spectroscopy. That’s something that almost certainly requires a textbook, problems, and lectures. However, I cannot force that onto people.

The textbook I can certainly write with the lectures, and the problems I can generate as feel relevant. However, the videos are really where I hit my biggest issue. I know that I am incredibly shy of recording, and will spend forever trying to make any recording perfect. Add to that the fact that I don’t entirely know how to make animations well, and you end up with a great recipe for procrastination and lack of doing.¹

However, I’m realizing that there’s another important issue to making rotational spectroscopy videos: getting people to look at them and learn. I know that it’s important to meet people where they’re at. I’m not going to begin with assumptions that people know upper-level undergraduate chemistry or mathematics². But, I have been assuming that people will be watching these long videos on YouTube or some other long-form site.

From what I understand, this is not the nature of modern media consumption.

Rather than fight the trend, then, I want to spend some time considering short form content that I could make to explain small concepts. If I have those, I can then link them into longer videos that explain a full idea. Goal of this page is, then, to have short ideas that I like and to ideate. It’s again going to be held in a secondary list location.³

Short Video ideas

Describing Center of Mass

Added 12 August 2026

Describing Center of Mass for Two-Particle System

Added 12 August 2026

This one is something that I’ve already made in the past. Imagine two weights, one at location X and one at location Y. Where’s the center of mass? Same as finding how to balance the scales. Only need one axis to figure it out, regardless of how many dimensions you have.

Exact formula is somewhere in my dissertation.

Upcoming Posts

• Wonder

• Curse of knowledge, esp re. Music Theory⁴.

  Most of a draft done, though rambly.

• Overview of a course on astrochem

  I think that I have writing somewhere about it.

• RebelFit

  A rambly draft done, and some more work which tells me that I was not doing anything wrong in the past, approximation just takes time.

• Why aspiring writers should practice typing⁵

• At some point I’d like to reflect on my hesitance to delete email, which I think comes from a place of digital hoarding. That’s going to be a fun one for sure.

• Moving (homes)

  I wrote two drafts of it, one focused on the feeling of losing my mom and one on the idea of letting go of the attachments I have that don’t serve me. Both are from July 2026.

• Algorithmic constraints in art I create⁶

• Singing in a low-voice choir, especially in context of my other music

• Listening to content at speeds (J speed versus single speed)⁷

• Book Review(s):

  • First 20 Hours

  • Dungeon Crawler Carl

  • Fred the Vampire Accountant

• Ideas of Salvation⁸, in particular, how mine have changed over time.

• Difference between lyrics and poetry in my writing.⁹

• How I make my full to-do list when feeling like there’s too much to do.¹⁰

• 28 for 28

• Taste of different food acids¹¹

• Difference between procrastination and not doing

Daily Reflection: 12 August 2026

• All in all, how goes it?

  Generally well!

• Creative Considerations:

  • Gut and / or vibes check, how is creative life going?

    Generally well!

  • Written Word:

    • How’s your relationship with the written word in general?

      I don’t actually know if I read anything since the last time I posted here.

    • How goes blogging? What’s feeling like the barrier?

      Blogged yesterday, doing today! Woo.

    • How goes reading?

      Ope, right now I’m not totally sure what I want to be reading

    • How goes writing poetry again?

      Wrote a poem yesterday. That’s good enough.

    • We’re counting audio book here, anything good?

      Nope.

    • How go(es) the web serial(s)? What’s the biggest barrier to you publishing the next chapter? If it’s writing, what’s the barrier to writing it?

      Ope.

    • How goes the hand-written stuff?

      Did a bit of journaling today

    • How’s the push pin board treating you?

      It isn’t

    • Upon reflection, how’s the written word? Anything missing in the seven questions?

      Eh!

  • Music

    • In general, how goes music?

      Good!

    • How goes recording?

      Nope

    • How goes writing?

      Finished setting lyric to a song with a friend last night, also finished the chords and layout for the song. Now all that’s left is actually practicing and performing.

    • How goes playing?

      Good! I realized that I can now feel a real difference between up and down strokes for guitar, which is really interesting to me!

    • How goes listening?

      Listening through the weekly discovery queue, which is nice.

    • How goes digital music creation?

      Nope

    • Upon reflection, how goes music? Anything missed in those five questions?

      It goes!

  • Embroidery

    • In general, what’s the vibe of the project right now?

      Nothing new

    • How goes progress on the design? What’s in the way?

      Today’s plan is to work on the design of the bottom layer

    • How goes progress on the stitching? What’s in the way?

       Nope

    • Upon reflection, how goes embroidery? Anything missed in those two questions?

      Doesn’t really go!

    • Project Progress and To Do

      • Base layer design:

        Still in ideation mode.

      • Weave layer design:

        Have demonstrated crossing with three stitches wide and four stitch gap at widest point. Looks nice, shows enough of the background that I’m happy with it, probably. Will need to consider in context of the top layer,

        Also will need to consider in the context of potentially having stitches cross each other as in a knot.

      • Top layer: Basically ready to go!

      • Full design

        • Figure out how many colors of thread I’m going to buy and how much of each. Current thoughts:

          • Need six colors for the knot

          • I think that I want to have one color for the weave, though that may end up being one mixed-color color.¹²

          • Figure out how many colors for the background.¹³

        • Figure out how all three layers all looks together.

          That is, take the full stitch design for the knot and add the stitches for the weave and background underneath.

        • Figure out action plan for stitching.
          See this post for most recent ideas.

      • Stitching: do.
        See this post for most recent ideas.

    • Future Embroidery Projects?

      • Using variety of stitches for shaping

      • Using colors for transparency or to give the idea of light better

      • Representational (or non-non-representational to be honest to myself for thoughts) work

      • Smaller projects

      • Using whitespace better. Right now I have all designs as much thicker than one stitch.

        Lots of the major styles (blackwork and Assisi, for example) base a lot on single stitch design. Why don’t we try some of that?

  • Other:

    • Vibe Check: how goes other creation?

      Doesn’t!

    • Crochet?

      Nope!

    • Anything else?

      Gonna do some bookbinding tonight maybe!

  • Upon reflection, how is creation going?

    Goes!

• Health Considerations:

  • Gut and / or vibes check, how is health going?

    Decent!

  • Working out?

    Only a single one today, but that’s ok

  • Stretches?

    Nothing really.

  • Food?

    Made and drank a smoothie. Apparently dairy (or calcium, at least) inhibits iron absorption, so that’s interesting.

  • Water?

    Not as much as I’d like. Planning to keep a water bottle with me today to ensure I have it.

  • Sleep?

    Eh.

  • Social? Wins / areas of struggle?

    About to spend the day celebrating a friend’s thesis defense!

  • Upon reflection, how is health going?

    Eh!

• Practical Considerations:

  • Gut and / or vibes check, how are the practical things going?

    Eh!

  • How could you be working on your LDR better?

    Better abt. calling

  • How goes setup of new home?

    Nope

  • Upon reflection, how go practical matters?

    eh

• Upon total reflection, how goes it?

  Eh!

On Songs I Like

First Published: 2026 August 9

Draft 2: 11 August 2026

This is coming post daily reflection, I think that I want a different list of items in the song:
“Song Title” Artist Album (Date added to this list)

• Where I got the song

• What about the song I liked (if remember) or else what I like now

• Most memorable part of the song

• Vibe of song

• What I can take for composing and/ or performing

That means:

\newcommand{\song}[9]{\item \say{#1} #2 \textbf{#3} (Added to this list: #4) \begin{itemize} \item #5 \item #6 \item #7 \item #8 \item #9 \end{itemize}}

Debating if I want to have them as a list or not. I’m leaning towards not.

Hmmm subsections? That could work!

OR

Subsection by artist? Nah let’s go by song, enumerated list, and then make the xml file myself in the future.

Gonna have it as an \include kinda dealio as well so that it’s easier for me to update in the future? Yeah sounds good.

Update: changed to a list, and then adding another entry for date added

Draft 1: 9 August 2026

Before I do my daily reflection, I’m going to write a little about what I intend this post to be.

I want to have a list of the songs that I like, and particularly, it would be nice to have the song list work in such a way that I’m able to have it easily available and searchable. Of course, the correct answer to this would then be some sort of .xml or .csv file probably, but I’m instead going to do an alphabetical list by title of piece. Plan is to have the next section just be a list of songs that I like, in the format:

“Song Title” Artist Album

• What I like about the song/ why I liked it, if I remember.

• What I hope to take from it into my own performance practice.

• What I hope to take from it into my own composition practice.

That’s not going to be too too hard if I remember how to define a new command. Let’s see if I can’t do that now:

\newcommand{\song}[6]{\say{#1} #2 \textbf{#3} \begin{itemize} \item #4 \item #5 \item #6 \end{itemize}}

That should work! Great, now to hope that’s true when I compile. Anyways, time to do my daily reflection.

Songs I Like and Why

Note: Current plan is to go through my favorites list from most to least recent.

1. “Burn the Deck” Slothrust Burn the Deck - Single (Added to this list: 11 August 2026 (entry 3))

   • Maybe the weekly discovery list? Or else shuffling with discover on

   • I like the lyricism, and I really like the driving guitar between lyrical sections, along with the guitar in it

   • Probably the stabs of the vocals with the guitar between them

   • Angry, emo, rock

   • The lack of fear of having no lyrics for long moments, along with the lack of fear to drop whole swaths of the soundscape

     Confidence in singing, the guitar stabbing very intentionally

2. “Leave Her Johnny” The Wellermen Northern Sky (Added to this list: 11 August 2026 (entry 2))

   • As with Santiana

   • I really like the harmonies, and I generally really like the song, regardless of harmonization.

   • Probably lyrics, since they’re slightly different than any other version I’ve heard, otherwise the extended chords at the ending choruses

   • Sad call and response modern sea shanty (so one person sings a line, group joins, then all in chorus, good harmony)

   • The way that they work with the different harmonizations of the same chorus

     Blend as always, otherwise, the way that the lead singer enunciates

3. “Santiana (feat. the Brass Gang” The Wellermen & Piper Ally Northern Sky (Added to this list: 11 August 2026 (entry 1))

   • It was in the album club I chose this week (starting 9 August 2026). I saw the group initially from “Torn Screen Door”, which I imagine came in the weekly discovery queue

   • I like the subtle bagpipes¹, and I really like the shift to the final verse’s harmony. I also generally like the harmonies through the song. The bit about 30 seconds from the end of the song also have some really cool synths

   • Probably the repetition of “Heave her up and away we’ll go, away Santiana” at the end of the song

   • Modern Sea Shanty (so slightly more harmonic, less haulable to)

   • The vocal harmonies and the way that they layer other instrumentation later on

     Not much, the blend is pretty basic advice, but always good to remember vocal blend

Upcoming Posts

• Wonder

• Curse of knowledge, esp re. Music Theory².

  Most of a draft done, though rambly.

• Overview of a course on astrochem

  I think that I have writing somewhere about it.

• RebelFit

  A rambly draft done, and some more work which tells me that I was not doing anything wrong in the past, approximation just takes time.

• Why aspiring writers should practice typing³

• At some point I’d like to reflect on my hesitance to delete email, which I think comes from a place of digital hoarding. That’s going to be a fun one for sure.

• Moving (homes)

  I wrote two drafts of it, one focused on the feeling of losing my mom and one on the idea of letting go of the attachments I have that don’t serve me. Both are from July 2026.

• Algorithmic constraints in art I create⁴

• Singing in a low-voice choir, especially in context of my other music

• Listening to content at speeds (J speed versus single speed)⁵

• Book Review(s):

  • First 20 Hours

  • Dungeon Crawler Carl

  • Fred the Vampire Accountant

• Ideas of Salvation⁶, in particular, how mine have changed over time.

• Difference between lyrics and poetry in my writing.⁷

• How I make my full to-do list when feeling like there’s too much to do.⁸

• Why I favorited the songs I did.

  Hey look, that’s this post! I get to remove it from the template. Also I remade my template to be more easily edited⁹

• 28 for 28

• Taste of different food acids¹⁰

Daily Reflection: 9 August 2026

• All in all, how goes it?

  Honestly pretty good! Remembered that there were more books that I read, took some time this morning to make my life easier when it comes to writing this blog, and that’s all pretty great. A little nervous about these upcoming days, but this is the nature of life. Have turned another year since last posting on this site which is weird.

• Creative Considerations:

  • Gut and / or vibes check, how is creative life going?

    Generally well! Realized I’ve been reading more than I had initially thought (as mentioned above), and I’ve been working on the design again and made a cute ball yesterday. Also got into cooking again, which was really nice!

  • Written Word:

    • How’s your relationship with the written word in general?

      I feel like it’s generally good! I’ve been doing more reading and writing which is always nice.

    • How goes blogging? What’s feeling like the barrier?

      Not as good. The past few days, preparations for the party I had yesterday were the main things. Yesterday, exhaustion hit me, sadly.

      Today, though, look! I’m bloggion

    • How goes reading?

      Real good! I remembered that I was in the middle of a series (Fred the Vampire), and so restarted rereading it again last night on the bus.

    • How goes writing poetry again?

      Ope! I keep forgetting you.

    • We’re counting audio book here, anything good?

      Nothing for a while.

    • How go(es) the web serial(s)? What’s the biggest barrier to you publishing the next chapter? If it’s writing, what’s the barrier to writing it?

      OPe. Need to remember you as well.

    • How goes the hand-written stuff?

      Generally good! I got some thoughts on the page which is nice, I took some time to write my thoughts which is healthy, and that’s great.

    • How’s the push pin board treating you?

      It fell down :(. After that, I used it yesterday for something that people could leave notes on. That was nice.

      I do want it to be hanging again, though. Also, I’d like to have the things that I want to be doing more (e.g. poetry, web serial(s)) up there as reminders. Hard to say which of the uses (friends or me) is a better use.

    • Upon reflection, how’s the written word? Anything missing in the seven questions?

      Generally decent! I don’t think that there’s too too much missing. I guess that in the context of the blog, I did spend about an hour or an hour and a half this morning on remaking the template so that it would be easier for me to continue working through.

  • Music

    • In general, how goes music?

      Generally good! That’s always nice, of course. I played a little yesterday while waiting for the crowd to come, and I started writing with a friend.

    • How goes recording?

      Nope.

    • How goes writing?

      Started writing a song with a friend this Wednesday, that was really nice! It’s so weird the difference between how I write music and how others conceive of it. It’s also strange the difference between how I write music when I’m alone and when I’m with others.

    • How goes playing?

      Eh, did some guitar yesterday. Otherwise, some guitar, some singing on Wednesday.

    • How goes listening?

      Good! Listened through this past week’s album club a few times. I pick this week’s album, so picked an album from a folk group I recently discovered. It’s really interesting; they have what is effectively an inverse karaoke version of their album, where they remove all the instruments and it’s just their vocals. I’m enjoying it so far.

    • How goes digital music creation?

      ...

    • Upon reflection, how goes music? Anything missed in those five questions?

      Generally ok! I think that hits most all of what I want to talk about right now.

  • Embroidery Project?

    • In general, what’s the vibe of the project right now?

      Generally pretty decent! I made progress these past few days.

    • How goes progress on the design? What’s in the way?

      Design going well! I just need to put in all the stitches (though I suppose that’s also something that I can do when I’ve finished other things.)

    • How goes progress on the stitching? What’s in the way?

      Need to set up the frame and start stitching.

    • Upon reflection, how goes embroidery? Anything missed in those two questions?

      Generally ok!

    • Project Progress and To Do

      • Base layer design:

        Still in ideation mode.

      • Weave layer design:

        Have demonstrated crossing with three stitches wide and four stitch gap at widest point. Looks nice, shows enough of the background that I’m happy with it, probably. Will need to consider in context of the top layer,

        Also will need to consider in the context of potentially not having all of the stitches going the same direction.

      • Top layer design:

        Have the knot made¹¹, have the spacing for the braid made¹². Have approximation of what the project will look like.¹³ Still need:

        • Figure out if i want to have multiple directions in the stitches.

          Done! I do want the two kinds of tent stitches. (so delete)

        • Figure out the number of stitches wide to generally aim for for the strands of the braid.

          Done(ish)! I want two stitches per color per strand. (so delete)

        • Figure out how to have the fact that the braids are two-colors thick work with the braid turning.

          More or less done! I think it looks ok, but I can always spend more time on the ribbon turns. (so delete)

        • Fill in the braid for the first third of the project

          Ehhhhh I’ll come back to this! (so delete)

      • Full design

        • Figure out how many colors of thread I’m going to buy and how much of each. Current thoughts:

          • Need six colors for the knot

          • I think that I want to have one color for the weave, though that may end up being one mixed-color color.¹⁴

          • Figure out how many colors for the background.¹⁵

        • Figure out how all three layers all looks together.

          That is, take the full stitch design for the knot and add the stitches for the weave and background underneath.

        • Figure out action plan for stitching.
          See this post for most recent ideas.

      • Stitching: do.
        See this post for most recent ideas.

  • Future Embroidery Projects?

    • Using variety of stitches for shaping

    • Using colors for transparency or to give the idea of light better

    • Representational (or non-non-representational to be honest to myself for thoughts) work

    • Smaller projects

    • Using whitespace better. Right now I have all designs as much thicker than one stitch.

      Lots of the major styles (blackwork and Assisi, for example) base a lot on single stitch design. Why don’t we try some of that?

  • Other:

    • Vibe Check: how goes other creation?

      Generally well! I have been crocheting more, and I did some cooking/drink making yesterday!

    • Crochet?

      Made a ball yesterday!

    • Anything else?

      Made a punch recipe and some freestyle drinks yesterday! Life hack, a drop or five of liquid smoke makes a non-alcoholic drink taste like a real mocktail. Also, different acids DO have different flavors. That was fun to realize, but now I need to write down what the acid flavors are.¹⁶

  • Upon reflection, how is creation going?

    Good!

• Health Considerations:

  • Gut and / or vibes check, how is health going?

    Generally well! I’ve been working out, food remains a struggle, as does sleep, but such is life sometimes. I guess that’s not really well, is it.

  • Working out?

    Been doing great! Averaging at least one Pilates class a day, which is really making a difference I can feel.

  • Food?

    Not great! Haven’t been eating much, because I haven’t been hungry, but that’s not really a good excuse sometimes and now is the time where it ceases.

  • Water?

    Not as well as it could be! Sad, but I’ll grab my bottle now and have some water.

  • Sleep?

    Decent! I think that for at least a little longer I can go back to biphasic sleep, which does a lot for me in general.

  • Social? Wins / areas of struggle?

    Social! Made new friends. An old college acquaintance and I reconnected, they bought me birthday dinner!

    I hosted a housewarming party, and friends came!

    I finally gave someone their wedding present.

    Area of struggle definitely the whole “I sometimes interrupt people way too much”, and I don’t like that, esp. bc I noticed that it’s happening more with some people.

  • Upon reflection, how is health going?

    Generally ok!

• Practical Considerations:

  • Gut and / or vibes check, how are the practical things going?

    Could be better, not doing great.

  • How could you be working on your LDR better?

    I could be better supporting, though I’m not 1000% sure how to do that right now.

  • How goes setup of new home?

    Eh! The home looked good for visitors yesterday, but that meant that the two bedrooms and two closets are borderline inhabitable. That’s the nature of things sometimes. Also, apparently I need more furniture, at least if the commentary I got is any indication.

  • Upon reflection, how go practical matters?

    Generally ok!

• Upon total reflection, how goes it?

  Generally better than I expected! Big thing I’m hitting right now is that I’m aware of the tightness in my lower-mid back and my hip flexors. Gonna spend some time on them today! That’ll be good.

  Time to go take a break to eat a bit of food, do that stretching, and then I’ll be back to write about a few songs I like!

  Hmmm I may also want to, at some point, figure out how to set up my projector again.

Daily Reflection: 11 August 2026

• All in all, how goes it?

  I think generally well. I’m doing my best to adapt to my new realities, but that’s the way that life always go. There’s no static me or static life, and that’s something I adapt to daily.

• Creative Considerations:

  • Gut and / or vibes check, how is creative life going?

    I think that creative life is generally going well. I have music in my ears, I read, and I have been doing other stuff(?).¹⁷

  • Written Word:

    • How’s your relationship with the written word in general?

      Generally ok! I have about two or so hours of bussing going on tonight, and that will definitely help!

    • How goes blogging? What’s feeling like the barrier?

      Ope! I never actually wrote the songs I like, and that’s something that prevented me from posting. Also, I don’t know if I wrote at all yesterday.

      That’s a shame. I think that it’s partially that I don’t have a schedule going on right now, and that’s getting in the way of things.

    • How goes reading?

      I finished the Fred series, which is almost certainly over at this point, given the way that the last book ended.

      That’s kind of sad because I enjoyed the world and the writing, but I also prefer a series to end than to not be finished.¹⁸ Anyways, I read that, and then after I post today’s, I’m going to go ahead and catch up on the serials I follow, and maybe I’ll also work on the writing I want to be doing for myself.

    • How goes writing poetry again?

      Speaking of the writing I want to do for myself!

      Let’s just do that right here right now. I’m going to freehand a sonnet as quickly as I can. Since all I’ve really done this morning is wake up, go to Pilates, and be miserable about the humidity, let’s try writing it about Pilates.¹⁹

      I lie down on my back and breathe in deep.
      Breathe out and feel my feet connect to bar
      My legs extend to push me out so far
      that I am standing, or at least in line
      

      Ope, no deep and line no rhyme, let’s try again

      I lie upon my back and breathe in time²⁰

      No that’s also no good.

      What rhymes with line or plane or try?

      line: tine, mine, mind (almost), brine, shine, opine, wine, whine, dine

      Plane: main, pain, plain, lain, brain, rain, wane, grain

      Plane is the winner for sure

      Upon reformer I am gently lain
      My breath connects me to my breath and bar
      And legs extend to push me out so far
      that I am standing, or at least in plane

      As class goes on, I tax my sleepy brain
      To keep the focus on the breath
      

      Ugh maybe not bar, because I can’t think of any good bar rhymes.

      Breath maybe?

      Nope, also no rhyme.

      My legs extend as gently I breathe in (or out).

      In, sin,²¹, been, bin, chin, din, pin, thin, akin

      Yeah that should be good.

      Upon reformer I am softly lain
      My legs extend as slowly I breathe in
      Then breathing out, I feel a sense akin
      To squatting down, if now in a new plane

      As class goes on, I tax my sleepy brain
      To focus on the placement of my chin
      The way that sweat and breeze play on my skin
      As slowly burning core

      The burn within my core begins to wane.

      Woot.

      I do find that rewriting the full sonnet does me good and keeps me honest because I find better phrasing²²

      On the reformer

      Upon my back I find that I am lain
      Begin with legs extending, I breathe in
      Breathe out and notice feeling that’s akin
      to squatting down, although in diff’rent plane

      As class goes on, the burn will wax and wane
      I focus on the lack of mental din
      Relaxed and in my home within my skin
      The benefit to me, at least, is plain

      Then class is over, I again return
      To life as it exists in daily life
      The way that thoughts and feelings tend to churn,
      The way that my desires want to burn
      The constant-seeming mind-displacing strain
      Until again to class I will adjourn

      I mean I’m not unhappy with that sonnet, so that’s really all I can hope for!

    • We’re counting audio book here, anything good?

      Might be part of what I do during the bus rides today!

    • How go(es) the web serial(s)? What’s the biggest barrier to you publishing the next chapter? If it’s writing, what’s the barrier to writing it?

      Ope! I just need to write, and that’s something that’s going to take me some time and thought.

    • How goes the hand-written stuff?

      Did some journaling yesterday, may want to do more today. I find that I think differently, and I find that I get through my inks much faster. That is particularly true when I use my stub nose, which seems to pour ink onto pages.

    • How’s the push pin board treating you?

      Not in extra use, may need more or newer command strips to get it to work how I want (read: on the wall).

      Otherwise, I’d like to generally have part of it reserved for reminders and whatnot, such as that I should write a poem and the web serial(s) again.

    • Upon reflection, how’s the written word? Anything missing in the seven questions?

      Generally decent! Nothing missing that I can think of?

      Oh, I guess I did typeset²³ my friend’s thesis chapter. That was fun!

      Also, I’ve been texting people. That’s healthy and good for me.

  • Music

    • In general, how goes music?

      I think music is generally going well. I need to replace my guitar strings, and there’re a few new dents on my guitar I don’t love, but that’s sometimes the nature of life, isn’t it?

      I haven’t played it in a few days, but I’m jamming with a friend tonight.

      It was my week to pick the album, and I’ve now listened to all the songs at least a few times. The songs I liked²⁴ I listened to far more times.

    • How goes recording?

      Nope!

    • How goes writing?

      Eh, gonna do some more tonight which’ll be fun.

    • How goes playing?

      Jamming tonight! That’s going to be nice.

    • How goes listening?

      Lots! Using this post to reflect.

    • How goes digital music creation?

      Nope!

    • Upon reflection, how goes music? Anything missed in those five questions?

      Goes! Still more consumption than creation, but the only question missed might be “instrument maintenance?”? Something to consider, at least.

  • Embroidery

    • In general, what’s the vibe of the project right now?

      Haven’t made progress in a day or two, but long bus ride may give me the chance I need.

    • How goes progress on the design? What’s in the way?

      Right now the biggest thing I need to figure out is the base layer gradient. I do really want some sort of gradient, and I think that black through cool tones to white through warm tones to black is what I want, but that’s not entirely decided for me just yet. I’ll ideate on that a little, maybe look at some sort of starburst pattern? That could be cute?

    • How goes progress on the stitching? What’s in the way?

      No new progress, nothing really to do there!

    • Upon reflection, how goes embroidery? Anything missed in those two questions?

      Project generally going ok! Nothing else in the works.

    • Project Progress and To Do

      • Base layer design:

        Still in ideation mode. Plan is to work on that today.

      • Weave layer design:

        Have demonstrated crossing with three stitches wide and four stitch gap at widest point. Looks nice, shows enough of the background that I’m happy with it, probably. Will need to consider in context of the top layer,

        Also will need to consider in the context of potentially not having all of the stitches going the same direction. Edit: Will not be having stitches all go in same direction, will now need to consider in context of maybe having it loop over itself like another knot.

      • Top layer: Basically ready to go!

      • Full design

        • Figure out how many colors of thread I’m going to buy and how much of each. Current thoughts:

          • Need six colors for the knot

          • I think that I want to have one color for the weave, though that may end up being one mixed-color color.²⁵

          • Figure out how many colors for the background.²⁶

        • Figure out how all three layers all looks together.

          That is, take the full stitch design for the knot and add the stitches for the weave and background underneath.

        • Figure out action plan for stitching.
          See this post for most recent ideas.

      • Stitching: do.
        See this post for most recent ideas.

  • Future Embroidery Projects?

    • Using variety of stitches for shaping

    • Using colors for transparency or to give the idea of light better

    • Representational (or non-non-representational to be honest to myself for thoughts) work

    • Smaller projects

    • Using whitespace better. Right now I have all designs as much thicker than one stitch.

      Lots of the major styles (blackwork and Assisi, for example) base a lot on single stitch design. Why don’t we try some of that?

  • Other:

    • Vibe Check: how goes other creation?

      Generally fine! Didn’t do anything yesterday, but that was mostly because I wasn’t feeling super in the mood to do things?

    • Crochet?

      Nope! May do some tonight, because I’ll be at the bar I like again, but I might also make a point to use the time for embroidery work. Hard to say for sure.

    • Anything else?

      Don’t think so! I guess that cleaning and cooking could count, but I’ve just been enjoying the leftovers of my punch from housewarming²⁷

  • Upon reflection, how is creation going?

    Upon reflection, creating is going well! I’m doing some making, some consuming, and I might want to rename that question to “how is creative work going”, but that’s something for the future.

• Health Considerations:

  • Gut and / or vibes check, how is health going?

    Generally well, I wish that I was eating better and stretching more and drinking more water.

  • Working out?

    Yeah! Another double header Pilates this morning, which again felt great. Honestly, I’m debating signing up for an evening class, because I do really enjoy the way that I feel when I’m moving more.

    Eh, we’ll see how the day goes.

  • Stretches?

    Been noticing that I’ve got tight and/or weak hip flexors, and my mid back remains very tight. I’ll try to stretch better and more.

    One thing I have a vague recollection of is that if my default with legs extended is to cross them, that means hip flexors need stretching out somehow, though I don’t recall how. Eh, that’s probably something pseudo-true anyway.

  • Food?

    Generally not as well as it could. I was reminded the other night that I enjoy cooking²⁸. I’m going shopping again today, so that’s going to be a good chance to stock up on the things I like to cook and whatnot. Maybe make a shopping list here? Sure!

    Ok so I know I like having frozen mirepoix equivalents, so need onion, carrot, celery to chop.

    I like having frozen peas, so a bag of those.²⁹

    I love to gnaw on a chicken, so may get a rotisserie chicken³⁰

    Some other source of protein would likely serve me well. I’m generally against buying sandwich meat because they’re so expensive compared to buying whole meat, but convenience is worth something, I suppose. Also probably cheese and lettuce if I’m doing that.
    And tomato, I guess.

    In my mind, I have a vague enough memory of that grocery shopping should be both getting staples and the things for specific meals until the next shopping trip. So, let’s think about both of those!

    Staples³¹

    Sources:

    1. Kitchn

    2. Serious Eats

    3. Ethan Chlebowski (video)

    4. Spruce Eats

    5. Martha Stewart

    In this age of internet slop, I do primarily seek out those sources I know to be good. Chleb and Serious Eats have shown good things over time. Martha Stewart is older than internet, as far as I know. Kitchn and spruce eats have generally not served me too badly for following.

    Anyways, I want to be better at citing sources going forward, for future me if nothing else. Oh, also let’s look at my old posts about feeding myself.

    Staples:

    • Martha:

      • Pasta

      • Grains and rice and beans (oats, beans, rice, polenta or cornmeal)

      • Oil and vinegar (wild to me that these are considered the same category)

      • Spices

      • Potatoes, onions, garlic (I’ve not had great luck with these in the past)

      • Dry mushroom (have!, have never used)

      • Baking staples (Vanilla, baking soda and powder, chocolate, gelatin, yeast, cornstarch)

      • Flour(s)

      • Sugar(s)

      • Nuts, nut butters, dry fruits (peanut butter, nuts, dry apricots, etc.

    • Spruce:

      • Oil and Vinegar

      • Spices (Pepper!!, salt, Paprika, etc)

      • Baking essentials (more or less as above)

      • Condiments (Fruit preserve, salsa, peanut butter)

      • Canned goods (bean, soup, tomato)

      • Dry good (coffee, crackers, dry fruit, milk, nut, pasta, rice)

    • Ethan: (not watching the vid, just gonna read the description)

      • Salt, fat, acid as bare essential

      • Spice

      • Vinegars

      • Flours and powders

      • Canned item

      • Prepared Sauce

      • Grain and rice

      • Root veggie

    • Turns out serious eats isn’t a guide. Sad

    • Kitchn

      • Oil, vinegar, other fat

      • Salt pepper season

      • Bake, sweeten

      • Grain, pasta, legume

      • Box, can, jar

      • Breakfast and snack (popcorn, peanut butter, bread, oat, fruit, coffee, tea)

      • Sauce, condiment

    Compiling for myself, then:

    • Canned beans (nice to make easy meal by dump in pot with stuff)

    • Dry beans (optional, depending if I think I’ll really use them)

    • Pasta (have spag and kraft mac, probs good here for now)

    • Rice

    • Oat (should relocate from previous location, because not using them there)

    • Flour(s?) (for now just one flour probably good, probably get a whole wheat flour, put in container, and freeze when not in use so doesn’t go bad)

    • Have sugar, so don’t need

    • Snacky things like nuts, nut butters, dried fruit,

    • Spices (particularly black pepper, paprika, and something green)

    • Baking stuff (soda and powder, yeast)

    • Jam?

    • Canned tomato or sauce? I don’t tend to eat a ton but it’s nice to have when I do. Also may eat more again since we are approaching winter and cooking time again.

    And then non-staples that I want to keep in home:

    • Carrot, celery, onion: chop and freeze for tossing in soup and the like

    • Frozen pea: great way to quickly cool down soup or pasta

    • Bacon ends: add nice flavor, cheapish and makes a meal with can of bean

    • Potato? I’m not as sure about this one, haven’t had great luck in the past, but in the past I’ve also ignored them for ages. Hard to say either way.

    • Garlic

    • Cooked protein: probably rotisserie chicken as a baseline, though if cheap cut of meat, can always do a gnaw of that as well or instead

    • Cheese? Probably good

    • Milk? Yogurt? Depends how smoothies go. I will make a smoothie once finished with this list

    • Apple, non-frozen carrot: nummy nummy snack

    • Other snacking foods

    Great, so don’t want or need to get all of these things at once, but I can use this list to help me compile a list in the future. Also need to remember to look at dietary musings in the future for those things.

  • Water?

    Not as much as I’d like, but that’s often true. It would probs serve me well to start using the one gallon bois again.

  • Sleep?

    I’ve been feeling like I’m needing more sleep, which could just as easily be:

    • a real thing that I’m catching up on sleep,

    • a real thing that I’m not sleeping well

    • Me not feeding myself and so body shutting down

    • Me not wanting to do life and so sleeping instead

    Gonna try feeding myself better to hope to eliminate 3, and I don’t think it’s 4.

  • Social? Wins / areas of struggle?

    Been messaging people! Otherwise haven’t seen a ton of people since last reflection. Was social at Pilates, as per my usual.

  • Upon reflection, how is health going?

    It’s going! Interesting that I didn’t put mental health here, but that’s probably for the best, because I don’t always want to air my dirty laundry to the world.

• Practical Considerations:

  • Gut and / or vibes check, how are the practical things going?

    Generally ok!

  • How could you be working on your LDR better?

    I could research more about residency so as to support the transitions that it has.

  • How goes setup of new home?

    Ugh. Haven’t been doing well, chaos and disorder is the natural order of creation, and I continue to fight against it. At least I did a load of laundry yesterday!! That’s progress of a sort.

  • Upon reflection, how go practical matters?

    Could be better! That’s something to work on for sure.

• Upon total reflection, how goes it?

  Could be better but generally ok! Time to finish this blog post (5600 words of daily reflections later)

Just a Daily Reflection

First Published: 2026 August 4¹

N.B. I realized that a 4000 word daily reflection is basically a whole post. Most of this is entirely contained within the stuff about the embroidery project, which, while still mostly on hold, has made some progress in the realm of design at least. Woot.

Upcoming Posts

• Wonder

• Curse of knowledge, esp re. Music Theory

  Most of a draft done, though rambly.

• Overview of a course on astrochem

  I think that I have writing somewhere about it.

• RebelFit

  A rambly draft done, and some more work which tells me that I was not doing anything wrong in the past, approximation just takes time.

• Why aspiring writers should practice typing²

• At some point I’d like to reflect on my hesitance to delete email, which I think comes from a place of digital hoarding. That’s going to be a fun one for sure.

• Moving (homes)

  Wrote two partial drafts, one considering the idea of that home being where I last lived that my mother saw. The second reflected on how I’m finally at the point where radical acceptance feels normal.

• Algorithmic constraints in art I create³

• Singing in a low-voice choir, especially in context of my other music

• Listening to content at speeds (J speed versus single speed)⁴

• Book Review(s):⁵

  • First 20 Hours

  • Dungeon Crawler Carl

• Ideas of Salvation⁶, in particular, how mine have changed over time.

• Difference between lyrics and poetry in my writing.⁷

• How I make my full to-do list when feeling like there’s too much to do.⁸

• Why I favorited the songs I did.⁹

Daily Reflection: 3 August 2026

• All in all, how goes it?

  Um, I don’t think terrible. I’m finally moved out fully, and more or less¹⁰ moved in. Now I just need to get set up in the new place. I have already really changed the setup from what I had intended, in large part because my family came to help me move and set one of the bedrooms up as a really nice storage space. I’m still thinking it’ll be a good studio workspace, but not exactly how I’d intended.

• Creative Considerations:

  • Gut and / or vibes check, how is creative life going?

    Eh, honestly not great, I haven’t been writing much at all, music hasn’t been going well, and I haven’t embroidered in the least.

  • Written Word:

    • How’s your relationship with the written word in general?

      Not fantastic. I have read about 6000 pages of a fan fiction since I started that in um the 22 of July. That’s about 2 weeks, about 3000 a week, about 400 pages a day in average. Ok, so maybe reading has been going well.

      Haven’t blogged, haven’t written much music, though I did write some lyrics yesterday.¹¹ Blogging feels like it’ll come when I¹² set up WiFi in my new apartment, and I have no real answers to the problem with poetry.

    • How goes blogging? What’s feeling like the barrier?

      It’s been nearly a full month. For a while the issue was feeling overwhelmed and ill. Now the issue is that I lack WiFi at my home.

      In theory I could go ahead and move to a coffeeshop or something to do the writing¹³. I might consider that, especially because there’s some work that I need to do these next few days before I get WiFi again. Otherwise, the issue is really just that I have been feeling overwhelmed. That’s something that blogging and journaling help with, though, so that’s something that I need¹⁴ to be better about requiring for myself. At the very least, jotting down some thoughts keeps them from spiraling.

    • How goes reading?

      As discussed in the header for this section, about 400 pages a day isn’t too shabby. I also have kept up with at least part of the soccer series my brother and I read¹⁵, and I’ve been keeping up with a few others that we both read. Oh! Shoot, I also read all of another web serial to catch up to where it’s now releasing.¹⁶ So, honestly, doing p well there.

    • How goes writing poetry again?

      Not great. As mentioned in the heading question, I wrote some lyric yesterday, and that’s great. Otherwise, I completely spaced that this was something I was doing.

    • We’re counting audio book here, anything good?

      About halfway through the next Dungeon Crawler Carl book, but that’s not been progressing in a hot second.

    • Upon reflection, how’s the written word? Anything missing in the four questions?

      Eh, about what I thought. Reflecting a little more, I did read a lot more than I thought I had been, and that’s kind of nice to realize. I just wish that I had those last 1000 pages read already so that I could move on and start reading other stuff again.

      Something missing from the questions: hand writing/journaling.

      I’ve been given an opportunity to spend some more time in a reflective space, and I’ve used that time for doodling and some note taking. In doing so, I’ve also been reminded that I love my pens and their inks. I found the two missing pens!¹⁷ I’ve enjoyed them again.

      But, this does mean that I have been doing more hand writing. I made my super to-do list again¹⁸, reflected on a few of the tasks, and just generally journaled for a minute. In general, I think that hand journaling is a good thing for me to do, so I’m going to add that question to the template.

  • Music

    • In general, how goes music?

      Hmm.

      Not creating much at all, but I did jam with a friend somewhat recently and make (admittedly very tentative) plans to do an open mic together. I’ve been listening to a lot of it, and I’ve been thinking about making it again. I’ve gotten really good at drawing treble clefs¹⁹

    • How goes recording?

      Nonexistent. I haven’t even made a pretense of setting up the studio for recording.

    • How goes writing?

      As mentioned in the written word section, haven’t done much of any, though a little bit of lyric. I have been wanting to do more, especially choral and especially low-voice writing. Also, since my alarm is a short four-part arrangement of three-fishers for digital strings, I’ve been wanting to get back into that a little more. Might be worth considering, especially since I know that what I’ve been loving in the more vocally interesting²⁰ that I’ve been hearing is the chord movement. I normally don’t plot out my music at all like that, but there’s a reason we spend so long doing so in music theory.

      I wish that I was better at transcription, I think. Then again, I don’t know if it’s actually something I enjoy or just something I like being able to see. I’m sure there’s elements where learning to transcribe makes me better at hearing where I’ve gone wrong, and so I might consider getting back into ear training. Sure, with all my copious extra energy.

    • How goes playing?

      Haven’t really been. Noodled a bit on the dulcimer and kalimba and music maker²¹ for a bit recently, but not really much at all. I miss making music, maybe do that tonight?

    • How goes listening?

      Honestly really good. I’ve been keeping up on album club. I have listened through the weekly tracks that Apple Music gives me.²² I also started listening back through the recently favorited songs I have. Part of me does really want to make a note here or somewhere about what in each song I find compelling. Hmmm.

      Let’s make that today’s post!

      Eh, let’s do that in the future.²³

    • Upon reflection, how goes music? Anything missed in those four questions?

      Honestly music going well from consuming, not as well for producing. Could ask about part writing and ear training. Could ask about the e-recording, though I guess that kind of goes both in writing and recording. Then again, since I think it goes in both, maybe it does need its own post.

  • Embroidery Project?

    • In general, what’s the vibe of the project right now?

      Honestly, on hold is the general vibe. I worked it a bit when visiting my partner a few weeks ago, and I have not touched it since.

    • How goes progress on the design? What’s in the way?

      Design is honestly going pretty well. I realized a few things:

      • I want gaps in the braid

      • I don’t think I’ll be able to do a repeating motif, given that there’s so many curves

      • I want even spacing along the knot, rather than along a perfect line.

      • There’s a way to make a dot appear evenly spaced along a curve in Procreate²⁴

      • Woo!

      So, at this point I know what the braid looks like, I just need to figure out how many stitches wide to make them, etc. I also have a question to look up, because my partner’s aunt, who introduced me to embroidery tapestry²⁵ apparently doesn’t have all stitches the same direction at all times. Is that just her or a general thing?

      I mean I’m not doing anything majorly time-sensitive right now. Let’s look now.²⁶

      Well, a quick internet search doesn’t seem to provide answers... I have mixed feelings about doing so, but I don’t entirely know what the right answer is. Maybe message a friend? Who do I know who might own a tapestry embroidery kit?

      Sadly seems like searching is victim of internet generative²⁷ slop. So, I might have to go to a meeting of the local embroidery guild sometime soon.

      Ok having answered the weave layer question²⁸, let’s go to Wikipedia for counted thread embroidery. Unfortunately, tapestry embroidery doesn’t appear as its own page :(.

      • Assisi: outlines of shapes rather than filling them in. Uses what appears to be a repeating shape for non-borders. Borders are done in so that the stitches are lying along the border²⁹

        My impression: Stitches can vary in neither direction nor size, except the borders, where one wants similarly sized stitches. However, doesn’t fill in the space.

      • Bargello: Upright and flat. Also called Florentine work, Hungarian point, Flame stitch, and Irish stitch. Apparently, strictly speaking, the flame motif is also essential to the upright stitch, and the basic size is four stitches, though since the beginning of the craft they have varied in size, even within the same design.

        My impression: All vertical stitches, but variable number of holes skipped. Space filling.

      • Blackwork: absolutely anything goes. All in black, also called Spanish blackwork.

        Note to self: Holbein Stitch could be good when doing long works.

        My impression: Anything goes, size or direction can change. Monochrome and doesn’t fill in the full space.

      • Kasuti: same as blackwork, but in color. Indian style of embroidery, linked from Blackwork page instead of counted thread.

        My impression: Anything goes. Multicolor enabled, the thread is the design, and so not space-filling.

      • Canvas work/ needlepoint: uhhhhh generally a catch-all I think. Or, at least, the oldest form and therefore most consuming. Often just uses a tent stitch³⁰ along full fabric, like I’d thought. However, many other options including just a bunch of space-filling methods. The question then becomes how much I want to have the embroidery stand as a thing that varies solely by my color choice and how much I want the thread to do the speaking. Ughhh this is like the issue with transparency, isn’t it? Adding a note for this.

      Well, ok so it seems like it’s up to me. I’m going to go with my initial instinct for this project, which has me not varying the lines? Hmm, gotta make a few test swatches. Questions for the test swatch(es):

      • How do I cross lines?

        That is, how do I fill space when one set of stitches goes front slash and another goes backslash?

      • Does it work to have more than just the two directions of front and back at 45 degrees?

        That is, can I have the knot design and braid have stitches which move more or less completely along their direction of movement, rather than the thread in place?

      • If I have more than two directions, how does that work to fill space?

      • Do I want the weave to be in more than one direction?

        That is, in general do I want the two diagonals to cross each other and have front/back slashes or do I want to deal with all front slashes like I had planned to this point?

        Also, if I want more than just front slashes, do I want to add breaks like I’d considered, and therefore also add in potentially more directions with that?

      • Do I want the base layer to be in more than one direction?

        In general, tent stitch or some variation would seem the most sensible. However, there’s also something to be said about the idea of the directionality of the weave or the knot impacting the canvas below. I think that I’m going to lean towards base layer is just in the one direction, at least as much as is viable given the whole “how do I cross lines?” question.

      These’ll be fun questions to draw and then stitch out!

      Ope, may need to re-answer the stitch questions again. I don’t think that I’ll need a test swatch for each question, but I do think that I will need multiple test swatches.

    • How goes progress on the stitching? What’s in the way?

      At this point, just lacking the design to do the stitching. When I have that, I’ll do some test swatches again.

      Update after finishing the design reflection: I think that I need to make some more test swatches. Need to draw up how they’ll look, and need to find the embroidery canvas that I was using.³¹

    • Upon reflection, how goes embroidery? Anything missed in those two questions?

      On hold generally. That’s fine, though. I’ll get back to it when it’s the time to do so.

    • Project Progress

      • Base layer design:

        Still in ideation mode.

        No update.

      • Weave layer design:

        Have demonstrated crossing with three stitches wide and four stitch gap at widest point. Looks nice, shows enough of the background that I’m happy with it, probably. Will need to consider in context of the top layer,

        Also will need to consider in the context of potentially not having all of the stitches going the same direction. I get why, when doing a less geometric design in particular, one might not be as set on simply using the same stitch over and over. I just don’t know how that works with counted thread embroidery...

        Let’s return to the question above about the design.

        Ok so lotta open questions there. Mainly just about when if ever to add breaks, and whether to use front and back slashes or just front slashes.

      • Top layer design:

        Have the knot made³², have the spacing for the braid made³³. Even have a vague approximation of what the braid will look like over one third of the project. Still need:

        • Figure out if i want to have multiple directions in the stitches.

        • Figure out the number of stitches wide to generally aim for for the strands of the braid.

        • Figure out how to have the fact that the braids are two-colors thick work with the braid turning.³⁴

        • Fill in the braid for the first third of the project.

      • Full design: Figure out how many colors of thread I’m going to buy and how much of each

        • Need six colors for the knot

        • I think that I want to have one color for the weave, though that may end up being one mixed-color color.³⁵

        • Figure out how many colors for the background.³⁶

      • Full design: Figure out how it all looks together.

        That is, take the full stitch design for the knot and add the stitches for the weave and background underneath.

      • Full design: Figure out the action plan for doing the stitches.

        Since every stitch is going to be marked out³⁷, I’m thinking just go one color at a time? Like for the knot layer, do all the red, then all the orange, and so on. That’ll look cool, to be certain!

        Or, do I start with the background and work my way to solid color? Eh, it’ll end up depending how the swatches come out for multi-lines. If it ends up that all I want is the single forward slash tent stitch, that’ll make it much easier to do the background first. Eh, that’s questions for future.

      • Stitching: do.

        I’ll be curious what the rate that I can stitch ends up being. I’ll have an idea of how many stitches large the project is, so then we can do time per stitch times n stitches is total time. I’m guessing that it’ll end up being about a stitch every ten seconds, especially once we account for threading the needle.

        Then again, I’m told that a needle threader exists, and that might save massive amounts of threading time.

        I’ve mentioned it in the past, but I fight the two forces of:

        1. Threading the needle takes a lot of time and so I want the longest possible thread to not have to do it as often. Plus, there’s wasted thread from the ends I need to keep. Therefore, maximize working thread

        2. Longer working thread takes longer to pull through, tangles and occasionally knots, and so I want a shorter working thread.

        Thread is honestly cheap enough that losing bits for the stabler stitches or the ends of shorter working lengths shouldn’t really be a bother to me. That being said, we’ll see how good a threader is before I make any other decisions. I’ll have to ask my friends how to use one as well, since the directions seem spooky.

    • Things to try with embroidery:³⁸

      • Using variety of stitches for shaping

      • Using colors for transparency or to give the idea of light better

      • Representational (or non-non-representational to be honest to myself for thoughts) work

      • Smaller projects

      • Using whitespace better. Right now I have all designs as much thicker than one stitch. Lots of the major styles (blackwork and Assisi, for example) base a lot on single stitch design. Why don’t we try some of that?

  • Outreach:

    • How’s outreach going?

      Nonexistent. I did get an email recently though.

    • How goes prep for the rest of your life?

      Need to do more of that.

    • How goes prep / submission of workshops?

      ... whoop

    • Any talks coming?

      Nope!

    • Upon reflection, how goes outreach? Anything missed in those three questions?

      I need to do more again.

  • Upon reflection, how is creation going?

    Generally decently. Also crocheted a few balls recently, and in doing so I managed to convince some people to buy memory foam scrap. Also made a flower for a bartender.

• Health Considerations:

  • Gut and / or vibes check, how is health going?

    Physical health good, mental health bad.

  • Working out?

    Doing great here! Averaging one or two Pilates classes a day. Double headers are a killer but I leave them feeling great.

  • Food?

    Eating more than I had been a few weeks ago, still not where I want to be.

  • Water?

    Not really where I want to be in general. Still, drinking more than before and it’s always a game of progress.

  • Sleep?

    I was having some insomnia, so tried a lil bit of sleep modulation. I think that the insomnia was an acute thing from an infection, and the need for more sleep is actually the chronic bit. Once I finish this reflection, gonna go take a nap.

  • Upon reflection, how is it going?

    Eh! Could be doing better, could be doing worse.

• Practical Considerations:

  • Gut and / or vibes check, how are the practical things going?

    I forget what these are. So I’m going with good.

  • How goes packing old home?

    Done! Get to remove this question from future answers.

  • How could you be working on your LDR better?

    She’s really busy right now, so I could definitely be doing more to support her in taking care of herself.

  • How goes setup of new home?

    Pretty decently! The public-facing space is mostly viewable, and I’m excited for my open house.

  • Upon reflection, how go practical matters?

    Decent!

• Upon total reflection, how goes it?

  Honestly, better than I had expected. I think that when I’m catching up on an old web serial, it can be demoralizing to read for days on end only to still have more to read. This book at least is constantly moving forward, which I do find pretty impressive, especially for a web serial. No wonder it’s so highly regarded.

  Anyways, time for a nap while I consider what to actually blog about today.³⁹ Then again, four thousand words of a daily reflection is also something to be impressed with, even if I didn’t have other content.

On Reflection

First Published: 2026 July 5

Draft 2: 5 July 2026

Three years ago, at the end of this month, I wrote a post about reflection. In that, I focused mostly on the chronology of my life as it pertained to writing and what the point of it was. A lot has changed since then; a lot has changed in the past months and days. So, let’s take some time and reflect.

Yesterday I read a book that helped me understand something that I have struggled to articulate to many people. The book is called “The First 20 Hours”¹, and it explicitly calls out in the intro the idea that it takes ten thousand hours to master something. Rarely is my, or the author’s, goal to master something, however. Instead, my goal is competency or at least mediocrity. The author and I agree that this is a much faster process, though he goes so far as to call it attainable in twenty hours.

He does an interesting job contrasting practice, learning, and skill acquisition, which I’m sure I’ll touch on in the review. It helped me mostly in that it reminded me that I do not have to try to be the best in the world at everything I do; I can and want to and probably should seek instead to be able to do many things at least acceptably well.

I’ve also been thinking about what I want out of my life lately, especially because it’s hard to be long distance from my partner. That’s a situation we both want to resolve, but that involves uprooting my entire life.² Before I tear the roots I’ve grown out of the ground, I want to know where they go. I’m also moving apartments, for the first time since moving for graduate school. I’ve lived here for six years, and that’s not nothing, in the span of life.

I just realized I haven’t really stopped to consider that this apartment where I’m currently writing is the place I’ve lived the second longest ever. For the next decade, at least, it will remain that. If I do not outlive my mother³, this is where I will have lived for 10 percent of my life. That’s something to say goodbye to, and a home to mourn for sure. Anyways, back to the reflection.

Why am I here?
What is my calling?
How do I get there?
These questions are ones that I consider often, and they are questions I do not have an answer to.

But, nearly six thousand words of writing later, I do also find that I’m out of the mood to reflect. Maybe writing by hand would help, but I doubt it. So, I’ll choose to treat this time of reflection as what it was. I’m grateful I had the morning to reflect⁴, and I’m grateful that I’ve had these past few weeks to reflect.

I am grateful for those in my life, past and present.
I am grateful that I never, for a moment, doubted that I could come to my mother with anything to receive the help I need.
I am grateful that I still know that there’s always a place I can return if I need.

I am grateful.

I am still filled with grief about my mother’s passing; I likely always will be.
I am sad that I am losing the place I spent the past six years and that I’m also losing the time it takes me to move. This is the last place my mother will ever help me move into.
I am unhappy that I do not live near my partner. I want to build a life with her, and our distance makes that harder.
I am sad that my friends from graduate school have and are moving elsewhere, even as I am so excited and glad that they are building and continuing their lives. I am especially grateful for those who have kept me in their lives.
I am not satisfied with my current work. It is not where I am meant to be for life. That’s something that I knew going into the job, but it’s still a shame.
I’m nervous to go back to work tomorrow; I worry that people will be mad or disappointed in me for being injured, and I worry that I’ll be unable to get the work done that needs to be finished.

I have many negative emotions, but they do not define me.

I am defined by the boundaries which create me. Those boundaries come primarily in the interactions I have with others and the bonds we made; I am where these bonds intersect. I am not the person I was at the start of this musing, and I am the person that I was when I laughed at my very first breath.

I find that this sort of reflective mood is not the most conducive to me doing anything, but I also find that I tend to drown it out. I’m going to take some time to see what it feels like to just sit with the feeling; I’ll lie down and just breathe for a bit. After that, I’ll work on removing the traces of my life in this home.⁵

Draft 1: 5 July 2026

I don’t entirely know how I’m feeling right now. A few hours ago, maybe even an hour ago, I would have said solely positive. But, I realize that I had not given myself space to pause at all up to that point in the day. I woke up, rushed out (with an audiobook on) to Pilates, then left Pilates, left voicemails, turned back on the audiobook, and only turned it off to shower and shave, then write. At no point today was there a moment of just sitting and being.

I said that I would let myself take a nap after having some caffeine, because I do know that caffeine also helps when feeling sleepy. I drank the caffeine, and then I lied down⁶ for about ten minutes. In that time, I did some thinking, though about what I no longer fully remember. I did some resting, I imagine. And, more than anything, I had my headphones off⁷.

That didn’t dim the mood. But, I do think that it made the mood at least a little more introspective. Reflective, one might say.

It’s a good thing that this was already the plan for today’s blog post! The last time I had a post with the URL “reflection” was about three years ago. That post is not quite negative, though it does end on a negative note. It’s focused much more on a chronology of my life and considerations for what I’m doing writing. It’s strange to realize that it’s been ages since I wrote in my little notebook at all, and so my penmanship hasn’t gone through the same forced change it otherwise would have.

I’ve reintroduced lower-case letters to my writing, though. I think that came because I was going into pure⁸ cursive for a while, and then I wrote a letter to a child.⁹ Children, as far as I’m to know, learn cursive well after print, and I wanted to be considerate of that.

I still write my letters strangely. My capital A is still closer to a triangle, and my lower case a is now effectively a 2. I’d been trying to avoid having hard reversals in the letters I write. When I started working on my left hand’s hand¹⁰, I noticed that cursive is full of these backtracking notes. It’s strange, then, that it’s considered the running script; I find that my running form doesn’t have many hard stops and starts. Still, penmanship is something I’d like to get back into; I no longer get compliments about the way my writing looks, so something is clearly degrading.

I thought about the point of what I write during the last reflection. That’s no longer a huge consideration for me. I said that this blog might be a nice resource for my future children; I neglected to consider that it’s also a great place for a future partner to learn about me and how I’ve changed through the years/what’s been on my mind.¹¹

The penultimate paragraph of the post goes:

When I look back at myself this time next year, what will I wish that I spent more time on? I have to imagine that it will be similar things that I wish past me had spent time on now. I wish that I would have practiced art, though I can never really explain why. I wish that I would be better at organizing. And, despite the fact that one of my most common compliments is that I am good at keeping in touch, I wish I did better at that.

I didn’t end up blogging a year later. The reflection post came at the end of July. I wrote a post July first and July second, and then not again until November. Even just looking at that first post when I came back is still hard, which is something that’s going to be kept with me forever.

As a child, I think that at times it confused me why my dad still so clearly carried the weight of his own father’s passing. After all, his father had last known him as a high schooler. At this point in my life¹², I do not think of myself as particularly connected to even the college part of me, let alone the high school part of me. And yet, that if anything makes the loss of my own mother hit all the harder; she never got the chance to see me like this.¹³ The weight of that is something that I’m going to feel on many days; growing up I knew that my side of the aisle at the wedding would not be filled with first cousins¹⁴, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. At this point, I at least have an aunt and an uncle, even if I don’t have a mother I can walk down the aisle with. She will not be there to see her grandchildren born or her son’s partner follow in her footsteps.

My goal with this post was not to wax melancholic about the passing of my mother. Then again, my goal with almost nothing these days is to consider her passing; that might be part of the issue.

When my grandmothers both died, I was in middle school. I kept myself from sinking into sorrow the best way that I knew how; I listened to music as soon as I woke up and until I went to sleep. It went so far that I tried to use a song looping as an inverse alarm clock, thinking that when the song stopped playing I might wake to its absence. (For the record, that did work, though it was not a restful night). This lasted until my mother and I went to the Boundary Waters for a canoeing trip.

There are no electronics on that trip, or at least there weren’t when I went on it. The books that were brought were explicitly intended as firestarters; when we were done with half the book, those pages would be used to start the flames for our nightly fire.¹⁵ We talked to the other people on the expedition, we played games, and of course, we worked out. It’s not nothing to portage a canoe and two weeks of supplies every day for two weeks.

But, there was also a lot of time for silence. I cried a lot that fortnight, and it was very healthy for me. When I returned home, I still listened to music, but it was no longer to drown out my thoughts.

These days, I can ignore the lyrics in music. I can, in fact, almost ignore all of music, if I try. It still acts as something which prevents my thoughts from fully going, though. Likewise, the headphones I wear, although noise-cancelling, produce an inverse sound that works in a similar way, allowing me to block out part of what I don’t want to consider. If I’m going to be reflective right now, then, I should take off the headphones.¹⁶

Three years ago, I talked about how I was being ramblier than usual in the post. Looking at my posts lately, they’re all at least as rambly as that one was.¹⁷ That’s something that’s interesting to note, and I’m sure I’d notice many other things if I was to continue reading through old posts. I do especially appreciate my note about three sentence paragraphs, which I do often find myself using.

Looking at the Draft 0, I see a few things I wanted to talk about. First is something that will be irrelevant by the time any of my readers can see this post; the abridged version is that the back-end for my blog was written in 2018. The code it runs on is now deprecated, and so I need to update something to make the posts get pushed to the site.

The second comes from a conversation with my partner.

This morning, my Pilates instructor was a former graduate student in the same department as me. She Mastered¹⁸ out, and she now works as a Pilates instructor and professional dancer. Lately I’ve been thinking that I want to use my Ph.D. in my long-term work, in a way that my current job doesn’t seem equipped to allow. But, thinking about how much joy it brought me to see a chemist doing something else, I know also that I don’t want to do only chemistry. No, that’s not totally it.

I’ve known since the start of my Ph.D. and before that I am not someone who has a single interest. Or, at least, the interest I have and had are not those which map onto a career that becomes my life, much as I admire people like Erdős. I especially admire those thinkers who, by drifting through different fields, are able to impact multiple fields.

I think about this in the context of a podcast I listened to recently about Natural Law. The podcast was about how the modern Catholic apologetics around the theory tend to ignore a lot of what is foundational to both the conception in Aristotle and Aquinas’s Catholicization of the idea. I’m not going to rehash the ideas in the podcast here,¹⁹ but something that the author mentioned is really meaningful to me; the great thinkers in Natural Law did so while also practicing other pieces of human flourishing: poetics and poetry. Few, if any, of the leading apologists who weaponize²⁰ Natural Law are also practicing poets or work in poetics.²¹

I mentioned on the call with my partner that I think that I want to work in chemistry the way that an 18th century person might have. Not, as joked by her, in a shed with no rules, but rather as something integrated into the quest for knowledge. Three years ago, I thought about how the writing I do serves me, and I asked if it’s bringing me closer to G-d. In a way, it’s a similar question here; how does me using my Ph.D. bring the world to G-d?²²

Or, at least, it feels like a similar question. Chemistry does not provide the tools to answer every question. Where chemistry provides the tools, it’s incredibly powerful. I do love rotational spectroscopy, and I do love astrochemistry. I don’t know if I see a world where my fulfillment comes in absence of both of those.²³

How, exactly, chemistry impacts my life will depend so much on the life I end up living. If all proceeds according to current plans, I’ll be married with children, likely serving in more of a domestic role. I know from one of my mathematician friends that some of what I consider baseline ingrained action is seen by the outside world as chemistry; they messaged me all excited about the kitchen chemistry they did to make cheap Pedialyte replacement. I know that I want to instill in my children and other children the idea that the world is understandable. I know that I feel a deep need to make knowledge more accessible.

I have been wanting to get into philosophy for more than a year now. When the idea of finishing my dissertation was still more an amorphous idea than something with a deadline, I really wanted to spend time looking at the ways that philosophy can interact with science. No, that’s not right. I wanted to look at the ways that the Academy I exist within fundamentally has its sets of philosophies and how we can improve them for the sake of improving knowledge, or at least how we can expose them for the uninitiated.

I still want to do that, and I still think about the fact that it’s only in the oldest quantum mechanics textbook I found that there’s an intuitive explanation for bonding.²⁴

In making the astrochem doc and adding the text, I realized that I have a folder of old blog posts.²⁵ I have a post I was going to reflect on here, “On Grief”. However, I have not posted this anywhere. That’s interesting, and I did start to go through to see what else I have.

That’s not the project for now, though. Nor is reading my post about grief or the idea of turning 60, though I am interested in those as well.²⁶

Where was I?

eh, I’ve rambled off track here enough that I’m going to move on to a new draft.  Maybe Draft 2 will be coherent?

Draft 0.5: 5 July 2026

I’m planning to write this draft before I do my daily reflections, because I generally want to spend some time thinking about where I am.

It’s always fun to see the ways that my posts can interact in conversation with each other; three years ago at the end of the month, I also wrote a blog post about generally being reflective. I’m sure that the main reason I’m feeling reflective this morning is that I recognize that today is the last day before I return to my normal behavior.²⁷ It also helps that I woke up early, went to a lovely Pilates class, and am generally feeling good today.²⁸

So, let’s quickly think about what I wanted to reflect about?

No, I’ve gotten distracted from that.²⁹

Let’s do the daily reflection and then go back to this to write the major reflection.³⁰

Hmm upon finishing the daily reflection, that is a two thousand word daily reflection. That’s like (45 minutes?) of writing, which is maybe more time than I should be spending. I guess that a few hundred of the words are template, and that’s ok. Still, I don’t know how conducive this will be to my every day experience. I guess album club won’t have a full draft each day. Also like, I think that all the questions are good questions. It still only took me an hour to do, including the breaks and whatnot, which is an hour that I’m happy to spend thinking about life.

One question will have to be whether we can do this writing in the morning? Might be good to start the day with that kind of intentionality.

Regardless, I’m going to take a break before the next draft and order my agenda for the day, then go and close the many HumbleBundle tabs I have open right now.

Draft 0: Some random rambling I did on 5 July 2026

Ugh the blog from yesterday failed to post... well, I guess that we’ll have to do some git training today

reflection plan today: what do i mean by chemistry like 1800s? Like integrated with other things

Bring up the whole "natural law, aquinas was also a poet" , so was aristotle

book from yesterday, easy to get competent. I already have/had most of the skills. One of the skills he learned was coding for his website... i should maintain my own site

this text was removed because it’s not something I want publicly shared right now

Upcoming Posts

• Wonder

• Curse of knowledge, esp re. Music Theory³¹.

  Most of a draft done, though rambly.

• Overview of a course on astrochem

  I think that I have writing somewhere about it.

• RebelFit

  A rambly draft done, and some more work which tells me that I was not doing anything wrong in the past, approximation just takes time.

• Why aspiring writers should practice typing³²

• At some point I’d like to reflect on my hesitance to delete email, which I think comes from a place of digital hoarding. That’s going to be a fun one for sure.

• Moving (homes)

• Algorithmic constraints in art I create³³

• Singing in a low-voice choir, especially in context of my other music

• Listening to content at speeds (J speed versus single speed)³⁴

• Book Review(s):³⁵

  • First 20 Hours

  • Dungeon Crawler Carl

• Ideas of Salvation³⁶, in particular, how mine have changed over time.

Daily Reflection: 5 July 2026

• All in all, how goes it?

  Honestly, really good. I’m feeling great right now, though kind of hungry and thirsty, which I’m about to address with food and drink before starting the actual line by line items.³⁷

• Creative Considerations:

  • Gut and / or vibes check, how is creative life going?

    About as well as yesterday, which means that this set of reflections may not be useful as an everyday thing.

  • Written Word:

    • How’s your relationship with the written word in general?

      Really good!

    • How goes blogging? What’s feeling like the barrier?

      Honestly right now the barrier is nonexistent. Big issue I’m having right now is that my blog is written in a now deprecated version of something so it can’t deploy.

    • How goes reading?

      Really good! I read two books last night, a romance novel that a friend lent me³⁸ and a book about how to learn competency in skills quickly. The competency book I skimmed more towards the end, because I already know how to do ukulele and don’t want to develop an interest in windsurfing.³⁹

    • How goes writing poetry again?

      Generally decently. As we saw in yesterday’s post, I am able to write an (admittedly bad) poem in the form I want relatively quickly. That’s the end of what I did, though, so that’s not the ideal for me, especially long term. I think maybe getting back into a sonnet a night could be nice?

    • We’re counting audio book here, anything good?

      Still finishing Bedlam Bride, 42 minutes and 47 seconds left. OH, I should reflect about listening to audiobooks at single speed. Added to the list.

    • Upon reflection, how’s the written word? Anything missing in the four⁴⁰ questions?

      Generally decent! I think that I’d like to get back into reading about writing again. I should add a line about the web serial again. That’s something that I want to return to, so having a daily reminder. No updates there, so adding that to the list for tomorrow’s reflection.⁴¹

  • Music

    • In general, how goes music?

      Generally ok! I still don’t think that I’m having the strongest relationship with music, but that’s also sometimes the ebb and flow of life.

    • How goes recording?

      None

    • How goes writing?

      None, but that’s something I want to do today (and so I’m adding it to today’s fungenda)⁴²

    • How goes playing?

      Didn’t do any, which is sad. The book about learning things⁴³ did end with a chapter on learning ukulele, so I did feel some connection to music then, if nothing else. My favorite bar also has live music on Fridays⁴⁴, and that’s something that could be fun to consider for some Friday night if I get back into playing a whole lot more.⁴⁵ I do miss playing in front of others.

    • How goes listening?

      Well, I have listened to the full album for album club this week. Let’s take this space to write the reflection:

      Album of the week was the 2022 remaster of The Who⁴⁶’s Who’s Next

      I always forget how “Baba O’Riley”’s intro does nothing to really connect to the vibe of the rest of the song, even if the arpeggiated organ sound repeats through the whole song. Didn’t listen closely enough to see if it’s actually a completely static through line, but it felt like it was! I like the song.

      As I already mentioned to the group⁴⁷, “Getting in Tune” feels more modern than the rest of the album. There’s a podcast/YouTube channel I’ve recently started watching (Actually Sounds Like with Jim Lill),⁴⁸ and his first episode was on the Beatles. In that, he mentioned how remastering can do a lot to change the sound of a song, and I heard what he meant when playing two versions of one of the Beatles’ songs. Not sure if that’s why?

      “The Song is Over” feels like a death ballad, in some ways.⁴⁹

      “Behind Blue Eyes” was probably my favorite, in part because it seemed like a song I could recreate myself. It’s primarily guitar and vocals in harmony, which is a sound I really like.

      In total, though, the album felt really like one sound through the whole time, and I didn’t give it the time to listen to each song on repeat until I really felt the feel of what made each unique. As with most older albums, what really strikes me is how much time they let things develop and play. “Baba O’Riley” doesn’t introduce anything but the arpeggio until more than thirty seconds in, when the crashing piano overlays it. They give the piano three and a bit repetitions (another fifteen seconds) before introducing the drums. This five minute long song doesn’t start vocals until one minute and six seconds in. I can never imagine a modern song doing that, because people would click out well before then.

      But, it’s something that I really admire.

    • Upon reflection, how goes music? Anything missed in those four questions?

      I think that reflecting on music did a lot to help me feel more connected. I guess there’s something to be said for “did I listen to the Jim Lill stuff?” but that’s probably not something that I really care too deeply about.

  • Embroidery Project?

    • In general, what’s the vibe of the project right now?

      Good! I wrapped my hoop yesterday which was nice.

    • How goes progress on the design? What’s in the way?

      No progress since last post. I spent some time last night while in bed thinking about the base layer, the color gradient. I’m not sure what I want it to look like, and the issue with doing two corners of warm and cold colors is the diagonals. Issue with doing a single point in the middle is the same. Issue with having a wall is that I then have a full line of a single color which I don’t really want.

      I’ll probably just need to play around with it for a while.

    • How goes progress on the stitching? What’s in the way?

      At this point, I feel pretty confident about most of it. I’m going to be doing four total strands (two doubled).

      Hmm, I did really really like the 14 strand with 6 that I did before... Ugh Ok I guess that I’ll see whether the pain I was having was just because of the material having a bunch of junk under it.

      I wrapped my hoop yesterday though! That was really good of me, and I’m proud of myself.

    • Upon reflection, how goes embroidery? Anything missed in those two questions?

      In general, slowing down a touch, but that’s not something I’m unhappy with. I think it’s good for me to take things as they come. I do have some questions about how I’ll carry the design around with me and whatnot, but that’s something I can consider later. I have a nice big embroidery frame that would likely hold the entirety of the project, but I’ll need to figure out how to attach the project to the frame, and it’s a little too big to just casually carry around, which is an issue of its own.

      Eh, need to finish the design first anyways.

    • Project Progress⁵⁰

      • Base layer design:

        Still in ideation mode

      • Weave layer design:

        Have demonstrated crossing with three stitches wide and four stitch gap at widest point. Looks nice, shows enough of the background that I’m happy with it, probably. Will need to consider in context of the top layer

      • Top layer design:

        Have the knot made⁵¹, and have a braid pattern that works for the six colors going straight up. Still need:

        • Figure out how to do turns

        • Figure out if the pattern I have for the braid works with angles that aren’t straight up

        • Figure out how to do the braid going sideways

        • Fill in the knot with the braid and make sure it looks ok

        • Decide if I’m going to mark every single stitch (probably), and if so, start marking in the braid stitches

      • Full design: Figure out how many colors of thread I’m going to buy and how much of each

      • Full design: Figure out how it all looks together

      • Full design: plan out the action list for making it happen

      • Stitching: do

  • Outreach:

    • How’s outreach going?

      Nonexistent.

    • How goes prep for the rest of your life?

      Nonexistent. Planning to write up a thing I can send to libraries and whatnot about what I can do, though.

    • How goes prep / submission of workshops?

      Added to the fungenda.

    • Any talks coming?

      Sadly no :(.

    • Upon reflection, how goes outreach? Anything missed in those three questions?

      Nonexistent right now, but I’m getting back into thinking about it, at least.

  • Upon reflection, how is creation going?

    About what I thought! That’s kinda nice, not going to lie.

• Health Considerations:

  • Gut and / or vibes check, how is health going?

    I will always laugh at me putting “gut check” for my health, because something something the gut is part of health. In general, not sleeping the best, but feeling generally healthier?

  • Working out?

    I did a cardio Pilates class this morning, which was really fun! It absolutely set me up for the day, though I am hitting the midday sleepies.⁵²

  • Food?

    Still not as great as it could be. Yesterday I ate a cream puff over six or so hours⁵³, an order of fries, and about half a large pizza.⁵⁴

    This morning before Pilates I had a cinnamon sugar stick. Since Pilates, I’ve had a mozzarella and hard salami on rye bagel sandwich.

  • Water?

    At the bar yesterday, I had what I think is averaging out to at least a glass of water an hour. That’s not a great sign, given how little water I’ve been drinking lately. Probably good for me though! Right now I’m sipping on my bottle as I write.

  • Sleep?

    I went to bed much earlier than I have been last night!⁵⁵

    I woke up much earlier than I have been this morning!⁵⁶

    I still toss and turn at night, but the weighted blanket is absolutely helping. When I’m up in the middle of the night, I still don’t necessarily know what I need to do to fall back asleep. I’m hoping that the combination of Sonnet Time and me working out this morning will have helped.

  • Upon reflection, how is it going?

    Decent! I think that the place that’s going best right now relative to before is the mental load. I feel excited to do today, and that’s not something I’ve been able to say a lot of days. It probably helped that I met a chemist today at Pilates.

• Practical Considerations:

  • Gut and / or vibes check, how are the practical things going?

    I don’t think as well as they could be, but not bad!

  • How goes packing old home?

    Ehhhhhh. I’ve taken over a load of dirty clothes.⁵⁷ I would like to spend time today figuring out how to rent a moving van so I can take my table (and probably bed, though I’m hopeful that will be easier to move).

  • How could you be working on your LDR better?

    I feel like I’ve been monopolizing our conversations more than is the ideal, because I would love to hear more about my partner’s life and we have such little time to catch up.⁵⁸

  • How goes setup of new home?

    I haven’t really done anything for that. I’ve continued to think about how I want it to be arranged, and I should really look into getting some sort of furniture for friends to come over and sit on?

  • The work you’re being paid for?

    Starts tomorrow! I have nerves for sure.

  • Upon reflection, how go practical matters?

    Could be better. Big action item today I think will be being more intentional about how much I’m speaking during the call time.

• Upon total reflection, how goes it?

  Good! About what I thought, but that’s also not something that I think is really that bad.

Monthly Reflection June 2026

First Published: 2026 July 4

Draft 1: 4 July 2026

It’s more than a little strange to me that I’m today living through what we choose to celebrate as the 250th birthday of my country of origin. I’m constantly reminded by the song that Harry Chapin wrote half a century ago to celebrate its two hundredth birthday, “There Was Only Choice”. The song is one of my favorites, and has been for ages. In part, I love that it’s practically a medley; there are completely disparate sections, many of which seem to track their own narrative lines about both loss of childhood innocence and coming to terms with life in an imperfect world.

Anyways, let’s look at the past month.

Since I am only now restarting this blog, I don’t have the goals that I would otherwise have made at the start of the month.¹ Instead, I’m just going to give myself a bit of a mental “what happened?”, then look at my calendar and whatnot to see how accurate the reflection is.

• The end of my 5² year college reunion. That was really great. I loved getting to see people who had helped raise and shape me. I loved getting to introduce my partner to these people as well.

• Meeting my partner’s family. That went well, I think, and i feel really grateful that I was given a glimpse into the upbringing of someone I love so deeply.

• a Shockinginly disabling surgery. Luckily, the arm has returned to full use now, and the scar looks cool.

• Time back in my home town³⁴

• Got my arm back

• Read a book

• Started moving in

• Some future planning with my beloved.

Looking at the calendar, that’s more or less accurate to what happened! I also started the new embroidery project, but that’s so totally fine as a thing.

So, all in all I do think that this month was good for me if only because it forced me to start thinking at more than the day by day level. Whether that’s happened enough, I’m not totally sure.

So, what’s the new daily reflection going to be?

• Blogging?

• Progress on the embroidery?

• Other creative work?

• Work going well?

• Workout?

• Food and water?

• Sleep?

• Moving homes?

• Other?

That’s a decent start at least! Let’s do my normal “nest everything” approach, and add the open ended questions like in the prior version.

• Practical Considerations:

  • Gut and / or vibes check, how are the practical things going?

  • How goes packing old home?

  • How could you be working on your LDR better?

  • How goes setup of new home?

  • The work you’re being paid for?

  • Upon reflection, how is it going?

• Creative Considerations:

  • Gut and / or vibes check, how is creative life going?

  • How goes blogging? What’s feeling like the barrier?

  • How goes writing poetry again?

  • How goes the embroidery? What’s the next hurdle?

  • Music

    • In general, how goes music?

    • How goes recording?

    • How goes writing?

    • How goes playing?

    • How goes listening?

    • Upon reflection, how goes? Anything missed in those four?

  • Outreach:

    • How’s it going?

    • How goes prep for the rest of your life?

    • How goes prep / submission of workshops?

    • Any talks coming?

    • Upon reflection, how goes? Anything missed in those three

  • Upon reflection, how is it going?

• Health Considerations:

  • Gut and / or vibes check, how is health going?

  • Working out?

  • Food?

  • Water?

  • Sleep?

  • Upon reflection, how is it going?

Now I’ll add this to the bottom of the document and reorder as it feels most appropriate.⁵

And finally, what are the things I look forward to in the coming month?

I’m excited to visit my partner, I’m excited for the camp I have coming, and I’m excited to move!

That’s a pretty packed month, if I do say so myeslf.

Upcoming Posts

• Wonder

• Curse of knowledge, esp re. Music Theory⁶.

  Most of a draft done, though rambly.

• Overview of a course on astrochem

  I think that I have writing somewhere about it.

• RebelFit

  A rambly draft done, and some more work which tells me that I was not doing anything wrong in the past, approximation just takes time.

• Why aspiring writers should practice typing⁷

• At some point I’d like to reflect on my hesitance to delete email, which I think comes from a place of digital hoarding. That’s going to be a fun one for sure.

• Moving

• Algorithmic constraints in art I create⁸

• Singing in a low-voice choir, especially in context of my other music

Daily Reflection: 4 July 2026

• How’s things?

  Decent! I’m looking forward to returning to work on Monday, but I’m nervous that I’ll have forgotten everything.

• What’s a recent win?

  I finished the braid design for my new embroidery project!⁹

• You have the big tapestry embroidery project! How’s that going?

  I have figured out the braid, the shape of the knot, and I have a decent idea of how many threads I want to use at a time.¹⁰

• Do you feel like you’re taking good care of yourself?

  Not as good as I could be. Doing ok though!

• What could you be doing better?

  Drink more water, eat more regularly, go to bed sooner.

• Are you appropriately keeping in touch with those you love?

  Decently! I have had a bit of a taper off these past few days because of the whole starting my move. Otherwise, I think so!

• Big upcoming events? Preparation for them?

  • I have a two week camp equivalent coming up in mid July. On Monday when I have access to the intranet again, I’ll make sure I’ve followed all the procedures for that.

  • I’m visiting my partner in mid July. Have ticket, am ready to go

  • I’m moving!¹¹ I have the keys, and I have cleaned out the old expired food from my home. Otherwise still basically need to move everything from location A to location B. Unfortunately, the world is in a heat wave this week.

  • Visiting partner in August.¹² Need to do all planning

  • Visiting partner in September¹³ Need to do all planning

• Once again, then, how’s it going?

  Decent! I’m definitely going to remake this again, though. I did also write my partner a poem last night, and that felt really nice. I also read one full¹⁴ book last night, which is pretty dang cool for me.

New Reflection Template

• All in all, how goes it?

  Generally ok! I feel like I’ve been feeling better lately, but I also think that this may be short lived. It feels more like the manic energy that comes and goes rather than the sustained positive feelings that I have when I do well.

• Creative Considerations:

  • Gut and / or vibes check, how is creative life going?

    Decently? I think that I’m getting much more into it these past few days, and I do miss making music.

  • Written Word:

    • How’s your relationship with the written word in general?

      (forgot to answer until I’d done the reflection)

    • How goes blogging? What’s feeling like the barrier?

      Haven’t done in a hot sec. I think that I felt like I was too busy, and then I didn’t really want to, because I wanted to work on the embroidery instead. But, as I always know, reflection and writing is good for me, and I like thinking about myself as a writer. To be a writer, I must write.

    • How goes reading?

      Decently! I’m keeping up on a smaller number of web serials¹⁵, and I don’t really feel like reading much of anything on my phone. Reading on my phone does often take the place of scrolling, so it’s definitely not the worst thing to get back into, though.

      I read a full book last night, which was great, and I’m planning to do the same this evening/tonight.

    • How goes writing poetry again?

      I wrote a poem last night which had a really cool conceit. The first word of each line started with the next letter of my partner’s name, and the second word started with the letter before it. Repeat partner’s name between each line, and end the final line with an acrostic line. E.g. if the name were “Odysseus”¹⁶, a quick and dirty¹⁷ one could go:

      Odysseus
      Do ocean tides still fill your heart with fear?
      Odysseus
      You dealt in trickery, and in deceit you were repaid
      Odysseus
      Some youth will follow in your path, defy the ocean god.
      Odysseus
      Siren song you followed, and nearly crashed the ship
      Odysseus
      Each song that’s song about your name distorts it slightly more.
      Odysseus
      Under each verse there lives a lie, a truth of who you were.
      Odysseus
      So utter not false words of praise.
      Odysseus
      Of Damned Yet Stoic Seeker Escaping Unknown Straits

      So... all in all poetry is good. I want to get back into villanelle. I do think that I’ve been too rigid in the past, trying to not alter the line at all. It seems like the best approach is to intentionally make small changes to the line. In general, though, we all know I’m one who loves repetition and forced action in my creative endeavor.¹⁸

    • We’re counting audio book here, anything good?

      Been relistening to Dungeon Crawler Carl to get into the new book. I don’t know that I listened to it at all in June, but I did listen to a full six hours while working on the embroidery design yesterday. I’ve almost finished Bedlam Bride.

    • Upon reflection, how’s the written word? Anything missing in the five questions?

      I think good! All in all pretty happy with how I relate to it. Don’t think that there’s anything missing!

  • Music

    • In general, how goes music?

      Eh! I listened through about half of the album for album club this morning, and I forgot how much I enjoy The Who.¹⁹ My fingers have lost guitar dexterity, and I miss music all in all.

    • How goes recording?

      Haven’t done, but have spent some time considering where and how there’s space in my new home for a studio. Quiet hours exist in the new place, so that’s going to be a consideration for sure.

    • How goes writing?

      Haven’t written anything, but last night had an idea for a song for the (formerly) men’s chorus I sing in.²⁰

    • How goes playing?

      Not great as well! I’ve got a jam coming up on Monday, so that’s going to be nice. Otherwise, planning to move the guitar and accordion²¹ soon so that I can play them.

    • How goes listening?

      Listened to half of album club for the week! These past few weeks have been in a bit of a music slump. Not much has seemed nice lately. Still need to listen to the mix tape and the playlist my partner made me.²²

    • Upon reflection, how goes music? Anything missed in those four questions?

      Could be much better, but now that I’m aware of it I can do better.

  • Embroidery Project?

    • In general, what’s the vibe of the project right now?

      Vibe is good! I realized it’ll be about 250 stitches wide, which is much smaller than I expected.

    • How goes progress on the design? What’s in the way?

      I think that at this point I need to really get a handle on the background ombre and exactly how many thread colors I want. What’s in the way is that I don’t have the knot fully fleshed out, and that’s technically more important. Also haven’t figured out the weave.

    • How goes progress on the stitching? What’s in the way?

      Just decided I’m going for four threads, two doubled ideally.

    • Upon reflection, how goes embroidery? Anything missed in those two questions?

      Generally decent! Excited to finish the knot and decide on the total number of threads

    N.B. I took a break here to go play games with my brother and friends

  • Outreach:

    • How’s outreach going?

      Nonexistent

    • How goes prep for the rest of your life?

      Nonexistent

    • How goes prep / submission of workshops?

      I learned I can!

    • Any talks coming?

      Nonexistent

    • Upon reflection, how goes outreach? Anything missed in those three questions?

      Nonexistant

  • Upon reflection, how is creation going?

    Generally well!

• Health Considerations:

  • Gut and / or vibes check, how is health going?

    Decent!

  • Working out?

    Not since Tuesday :/

  • Food?

    Not as much as I should

  • Water?

    See above

  • Sleep?

    See above

  • Upon reflection, how is it going?

    See above

• Practical Considerations:

  • Gut and / or vibes check, how are the practical things going?

    Generally decently! I could be doing better about packing the home!

  • How goes packing old home?

    Could be better, not going to lie.

  • How could you be working on your LDR better?

  • How goes setup of new home?

  • The work you’re being paid for?

  • Upon reflection, how go practical matters

    Decent!

• Upon total reflection, how goes it?

  Decent

On Recovery

First Published: 2026 June 28

Draft 2: 28 June 2026

Recovery is such a strange concept to me. On the one hand, it brings forth for me an image of restoration, returning back to some prior state. On the other¹, there’s no returning to any previous point. When something is broken, repair is making something new, especially when it comes to a living being.

Every cell inside of me is being constantly replaced. Most every molecule is constantly being reacted and re-made, if not actively filtered out and replaced itself. I would have few doubts in my mind that most of the individual atoms themselves² are even being cycled through relatively quickly.

So, then, what does recovery mean to a body in constant change?

In this case, my acute recovery is focused on the large patch of skin that was removed from my arm. Something that feels somewhat strange now that I’ve taken a moment to think about it is how our body can regrow each part of our skin at the same place. The freckles and moles I have do not change location. In some ways this makes sense; the relative location of my skin does not change, so if there’s a piece that says to grow weirdly, I suppose I would expect it to keep regrowing weirdly. Right now, though, I’m less sure of that fact.

When the skin was removed from my arm, the surgeon³ sewed the edges together. The goal is to minimize the amount of scar tissue that forms. That raises an interesting question for me, though: what happens to the relative skin location of each chunk.

There are a few ideas that would make the most sense to me:

• The body, upon replacing all the skin cells, reproduces whatever arrangement existed before things are removed. Given that the goal of removing skin is often to remove a single set of mutated cells, this may not be what happens. Given that I was told to expect my mutation might grow back, though, it’s also possible.

• The body has the mental map of skin cells. There’s a distortion, where two previously disparate⁴ areas are now touching. The body is an algorithm, and so it has no relation between radial location of different skin locations.

• The body has a radial map, and it slowly regenerates the mole from its sewn location back to where it belongs. Removed area is replaced with new skin that maps to the specific radial location.

Unfortunately, I did not look for the location of any mole right on the edge of where the incision happened, so I do not know what my body will be treating as the answer to recovery. I’m sure that, in general, the body does some combination of the three. Honestly, given the strangeness of the human body, I’m sure that it actually does some other thing.

But, that’s neither here nor there. What is here is the fact that my body is rebuilding itself. It’s strange to me, therefore, that I am intentionally weakening and restricting my body from maintaining its strength.

It makes sense when I stop to think about how all that will stretch and tear, and I don’t want to stretch and tear the stitches or the fragile web of new skin that connects their pieces. It’s fun to me, though, that to improve one injury, I must allow other parts to become weaker.

This reminds me of what I’ve heard is a difference between European and Chinese teaching styles. Both compare children to fields. However, while a field of wheat needs time to rest and years to sit fallow, rice paddies improve when they are constantly maintained.⁵ As a result, European models include long breaks and discrete rest, while Asian models do not. I’m sure that this is moreso racial storytelling than anything real, but it’s something that can help here; rather than think about this time as becoming weaker, it’s time for my body to rest fallow. This is the time that I rest to allow for better growth in the future.

Fallow is something that I think we need to get back to as a culture. Not necessarily in the initial context of farming, I’m all for man’s domination of the natural world, but in the realm of our lived experience. Unlike the people who extol boredom and the experience of not having anything to do, I think that it may be better for me and others to consider the idea of letting the mind and body sit fallow.

When a field is left fallow, whatever happens to grow on it grows. This allows the minerals and chemicals that desired produce require to refill naturally. As we have improved farming techniques, lettings fields fallow has become less important. First, we know what plants can be used to replace missing nutrients, and we can intentionally seed them instead. Second, we know what chemicals are the nutrients, and we can manually add them to the soil and plants as they need them at each different stage of growth. This is certainly better; we have fewer years of famine as a result of fields not producing.

But, there’s a value in letting nature take its course. I’m sure of that fact, even if the analogy may not work for farming. OH wait!

When fields are left to fallow, the plants which return are often plants which local pollinators yearn for. Local pollinators, for all that we tend to consider them unneeded, are responsible for large portions of agriculture. Giving them opportunities to eat the diets they most desire helps with that.

Second, when fields are scheduled to be fallow, we are reminded that time exists not just within the cycle of the year, but within the cycle of multiple years. We have removed the Jubilee year from our society, and we are the weaker for it. So much of modern business relies on this idea that there will be eternal debts.

Nothing, however, is eternal.

If every debt came issued with the knowledge that at the next forty-nine or fifty year mark⁶, what changes would happen? Well, it certainly would be harder to get a loan in the years directly before the Jubilee. We would not have this issue of generations of wage debt. The company store never would have been able to trap people for their entire working life.

I note that, for all that we are consistently being told by the fascists and proto-fascists in power that we need to return to biblical principles, not one has seriously proposed that we have universal debt forgiveness.

When we do not let the ground rest, why would we expect that we would let our fellow man rest? The way we treat any part of Creation mirrors the way that we treat all of it. In the past, when we needed to let the world rest, we understood that we needed to let one another rest. Today, we know what chemicals we need to make someone productive. We know exactly when and how to give them for optimal performance.⁷

There’s evidence that fruit trees grow more fruit when they are not monocultured. That’s more work to harvest, though, so we will not do that.

As I take this time for recovery, I am reminded that the idea that I, a single man, would be expected to keep my home, feed myself, work, and all else is a completely modern idea. The boarding house was, so far as I understand it, the most stable iteration of the removal of young men from their families to follow their career. And yet, that idea feels so absurd now.

What does it mean to recover?

Recover comes, through steps, from the idea of seizing again. It is to recapture something which has been⁸ lost.

To recover, then, we must lose something. To recover, we must grasp something.

To recover, I must accept that I have lost many of the aspects of me that were my most joyful.

To recover, I must grasp for them.

Draft 1: 28 June 2026

I’ve been back home for the past two or so weeks recovering from a surgery that was far more disabling than I expected. That was not in my plans for the summer, but I’m also not entirely unhappy with the fact that it happened. I love my time with my family, and it’s been really nice being able to focus on the recovery and my family life.

It’s also been nice to be able to use this time to work on recovering some mental health. I think that I’ve posted here in the past with the fact that my rate of blogging loosely correlates with my mental health, at least over a few week to month term.⁹ Because I have had so few obligations on my time and attention, I have been able to put my focus towards figuring out what serves me best.

Some major takeaways from the physical aspect of recovery:

I hate having a shaved arm. It’s very itchy, especially since it’s wrapped in such a way that I can’t really use my arm.

I miss working out, and especially working out in Pilates classes. They feel really nice in the moment and they help me feel more centered in general. My hips are tight now, which is causing some lower back pain. Probably that’s because Pilates helped me strengthen some muscles that were previously weaker, and so now that muscular strength and endurance is degrading¹⁰, there’s a mismatch in what my body can do. It will be nice to be able to work out again.

When my arm is splinted, there’s still a fair amount of rotation possible in the shoulder. This is bad, as it means that I have to make sure my shoulder is rotated correctly to prevent my arm from hurting.

While I can use my right hand for a task for a few moments, within a minute or so there is a large amount of pain. This reminds me that I do not respect my boundaries or listen to my own body.

I am not great at remembering to take medicine on a routine that’s more often than “upon waking up”.

Showering is hard when I can’t use my right arm. Many things are hard, but the fact that I also have to ensure I keep it dry absolutely doesn’t help.

Great!

Some mental notes:

The things I have been given to help with focus help. In particular, when I am on my standard working dose of stimulants¹¹, I am able to churn through large amounts of work in relatively short periods of time. When I remove caffeine from the equation, I find that I am less able to go for as long, and I also find that I am less able to stay awake through the day.¹² When I remove all stimulants, I cannot do anything, it feels like.

I often feel like there’s this vague cloud of unease around me. When I sit down to journal, the cloud disperses, letting me know that, in retrospect, it was a worry that there might be something on my mind, rather than anything in particular on my mind.

Being in a relationship with my partner is fantastic. It both gives me another reason to feel better and helps me when I’m thinking about the future. I’ve not made a secret in life or on this blog that one big reason I have yearned for a partner in the past is for a reason to build my life along a certain path. In front of me at all times are infinite branching directions I can take my life. So many of these branches are now useless to me, as they do not involve my partner or are actively antithetical to remaining with her. That’s been honestly really nice as I consider my future.

Much as I would like to believe that I am a being that exists separately in separate spheres, I am in fact a composite being. Stressors in one part of my life bleed over into others, and when any part of me is struggling, all parts of me struggle more. This does also work in reverse, however. As any part of me improves, the entirety of me is bettered.

So, that was far more rambly than expected. Let’s take a bit, call a friend¹³, and then come back and see what we think. Great.

Called the friend.¹⁴

Upcoming Posts

• Wonder

• Curse of knowledge, esp re. Music Theory¹⁵.

  Most of a draft done, though rambly.

• Overview of a course on astrochem

  I think that I have writing somewhere about it.

• RebelFit

  A rambly draft done, and some more work which tells me that I was not doing anything wrong in the past, approximation just takes time.

• Why aspiring writers should practice typing¹⁶

Daily Reflection: 28 June 2026

• How’s things?

  Decent! Haven’t been keeping up on most things, but that’s life sometimes.

• What’s a recent win?

  Annotated my entire CV! That’s great and exciting.

• You have the big tapestry embroidery project! How’s that going?

  Not great. On Friday (two days ago), I did manage to get a few four by four blocks with gaps done, so now I’ll go through and fill them in to see what the color looks like.¹⁷

• Do you feel like you’re taking good care of yourself?

  Eh. I’m being gentler with myself, which is probably good. I was reminded yesterday that caffeine does make a big difference in my productivity, and also that breaks are bad. When I take a break, I do manage to get back into the work, but all I want to do next is take another break, and then that second break lasts forever.¹⁸

• What could you be doing better?

  I had things that I wanted to be doing daily this break, and I haven’t been doing all of them as much as I’d like. Could be doing those more.

• Are you appropriately keeping in touch with those you love?

  Mostly! Forgot that I was to call someone yesterday, so will call them after this daily reflection or maybe whole blog post.

• Big upcoming events? Preparation for them?

  • I have a two week camp equivalent coming up in mid July. I have submitted the necessary paperwork, now I just need to wait to go back to work to remind the work that it’s happening in case it didn’t get across.

  • I’m visiting my partner in mid July. I have booked tickets and shared the itinerary.

• Once again, then, how’s it going?

  Honestly really well. It is really nice to be at home with my family, and I do really appreciate the time that this is giving me to recover and reflect. I do wish that I was being better about journaling on paper, because I do really and legitimately believe that it the thing I do with my life that best serves my mental health in the short and medium term. Despite that fact, though, I am not about to go do so.¹⁹

Revisiting RebelFit in 2026

First Published: 2026 June 22

Prereading note: this is very rotational spec heavy and very rambly... readers be advised.

Draft 1: 22 June 2026

So, I really want to get back into the spectral fitting program which made up the bulk of my Ph.D. dissertation. My biggest let downs with the project as it stood then were:

• The program required calling another program (SPCAT) hundreds of thousands of times, often in what seems like might have been redundant calls. When I looked at the runtime, I think that, to a rounding error, all of the run time came from calling this program.

• I couldn’t get the Latin Capped Hypersphere to work

The other major features that I would want to add to the program to call is something to be proud of:

• Extension into S reduction

• Now that I’m further from the actual project, using the 6 “true” distortion constants as the source of truth, and then using A and S reductions as the shadow ones.

• Making it easier to have the program take in other Hamiltonians.

So, how would I resolve this?¹

Let’s start with the first issue: calling the catalog generating program a number of times. This is not a new issue in the field of rotational spectroscopy. Since before even this program was created², there have been methods to approximate the value of the energy levels in a way that can be pre-computed. If I remember correctly, three-ish gigabytes is the storage needed to solve the primary rotational constants to basically floating point error. It also only took like twenty minutes to generate, and that gives all possible values of the rotational constants. Since RebelFit works within a range of values, that takes far less time. Still, thinking about the optimization part of it should come later. For now, let’s talk through what I would need to solve in order to get this to work.

1. Showing that SPCAT A, B, C and a hard-coded (read: manually solved (read: I put in the math and make my computer solve it)) A, B, C produce the same transition locations

2. Showing that SPCAT A, B, C and hand-solved X, Y, Z lead to the same transition locations

3. Showing that SPCAT A, B, C and A reduction lead to the same transitions as hand-solved A, B, C (or X, Y, Z) and A reduction

4. Showing that SPCAT A, B, C and A reduction lead to the same transitions as hand-solved X, Y, Z and Watson T reduction³

5. Showing that hand-solved X, Y, Z match up to the approximation version for X, Y, Z

6. Showing that hand-solved X, Y, Z and T match up to the approximation version for X, Y, Z and rho⁴

7. Showing that SPACT A reduction matches the approximation version

8. Reading and using the paper that defines transition intensity to match the approximation to the SPCAT intensities⁵.

9. Ensuring that this new version is actually faster than the old version

10. Hopefully don’t need to repeat to get the S-reduction available

11. Something something make it work for other forms of distortion⁶

Since I’m often told something that my writing⁷ lacks is connection between fact and conclusion, let’s motivate each step.

1. SPCAT A B C matching computed A B C.

   This is in theory not a step that I actually need to do. These are mathematically identical. However, I’ve tried to read the SPCAT source code before and I have legitimately no idea what it’s doing. Three rotational constants is easy enough that I should be able to do the coding for it in a few seconds, and then the issue is just having SPCAT run a few times. In general, I probably want it to run one very oblate, one very prolate, and one that’s just basically intermediate.

2. SPCAT A B C matching computed X Y Z

   So, in general, rotational spectra are solved using A, B, C rotational constants. However, computational chemists are more likely to use X, Y, Z. There are⁸ six ways to pair X, Y, Z to A, B, C. So long as I match them appropriately, this should take moments at best to verify.

   Given that I think it’s trivial to verify, why do it? A few reasons:

   • I think that the Watson paper which defines A reduction uses X, Y, Z coordinates somewhere

   • In theory, X, Y, Z are better coordinates to use because they can be taken straight out of a Gaussian or other computational software output

   • Something something, this makes the distortion work out.

   Once we ensure that we can reliably match the rigid rotor to the SPCAT rigid rotor, it becomes important to match them with reductions. There’s a slight hiccup here, which is that A, B, C in rigid rotor world are not, as it turns out, the same as A, B, C in A reduction world. As I write this, I am a little curious if that’s the issue that I’m running into or was running into, at least, when I last worked on this.

3. Showing that SPCAT A, B, C and A reduction lead to the same transitions as hand-solved A, B, C (or X, Y, Z) and A reduction

   So, this is better named as three different steps:

   • Showing that SPCAT A B C and A reduction match the computed A B C (A reduced value) and distortion

     This step is the first one. Using the same numbers, do we get the same outputs?

   • Showing that SPCAT A B C and A reduction match the computed A B C (Non-A reduced Values converted into A reduction) and A distortion.

     Once we’ve shown we can use A(A) B(A) and C(A), use Watson’s conversion from A to A(A) and etc.

   • Showing that SPCAT A B C and A reduction match the computed X Y Z (real values, converted to A reduction) and A distortion.

     Once we’ve shown we can convert A to A(A), make sure we can do all six versions of X to A(A)

   Since realistically, I don’t really want to manually compute these values, I’m likely going to have to trust that the values are as linearly interconvertible as I remember that they should be. In practice, this calculation is way more computationally expensive, because the Hamiltonian gets much more complex. Then again, since it remains a numeric matrix, computers do, in fact, go brrr.

   Assuming that I get this, I have more or less proved to myself that SPCAT and real Hamiltonians result in the same transitions.⁹

4. Showing that SPCAT A B C and A quartic match the computed X Y Z and Watson T¹⁰ transitions.

   The ultimate goal here is to use the approximate form of the rotational Hamiltonian that Watson outlines. Watson gives his T values in terms of A quartics and in terms of the approximate quartics. While I’m sure that there’s a better way to solve for them, I don’t entirely know what they would be.

   Two questions to try here are giving SPCAT values and back solving for T values, and giving T values and feeding SPCAT the T values.¹¹

   If this works out, then I have confirmed for myself that I can, in fact, solve five equations for five variables. Also, it makes it easier to test the next parts.

   At this point, I luckily no longer need to use SPCAT, which means that I get to save the half a gigabyte of storage that computing transitions takes up on my computer. That’s probably offset by the amount of memory that my computer is using, but that’s not something I have to manually clear, which is great.

5. Showing that hand-solved X Y Z match approximate A B C

   Again, this should be relatively straightforward. At this point I don’t really care too much about the transition energies¹², and so can just compare matrix outputs.

   I’ll probably want to generate a representative sample of values, just to be certain¹³.

   Above I had this listed as approximate X Y Z, but I’m like 99 percent certain that the approximate value calculation relies on A B C. In theory, though, it’s incredibly straightforward to match X Y Z to A B C, so again, that’s not a huge concern

6. Showing that hand-solved X Y Z and quartic distortion (either A or T, since we’ve demonstrated interchangibility) match approximate distortion form (most likely using the Watson approximate distortion)

   This one is likely to be the painful portion, if only because I’ll need to be really clear whether I’m working with A(A) or A. Then again, assuming that I calculate out the values for the hand-solved exact version, I can also play around with different options and versions within the approximate form. At the very least, it’s something that I can try!

   If this works out, then I’ve (through the transitive property) shown that the approximate version of the rotational constants matches the SPCAT output for quartic centrifugal distortion. Sextic distortion at that point should go really quickly.¹⁴

7. Showing that SPCAT A and approximate match up

   Having tested the intermediary, I’ll throw the program against what most people would use: SPCAT itself. Issue here will be again, ensuring that I’m using the right versions of each constant.

8. Showing that I can also calculate rotational transition intensity

   There’s, as far as I can tell, basically a single paper that people use for determining the transition intensity of a rotational transition. I’ll read the literature a little more to make sure that’s true¹⁵, and then have the calculations run given the arbitrary constants and some arbitrary values for the dipoles.

   Realistically, as long as they more or less approximate the values that SPCAT uses, I’m totally happy. SPCAT is known to produce approximate transition intensities, and so that’s so totally fine with me if mine is approximate as well. One issue I’m foreseeing is that calculating transition intensities requires population analysis, which is temperature dependent. My assumption is this is where most of SPCAT’s runtime actually occurs, and so that’s not great.¹⁶ Then again, it’s also likely something that I can extrapolate to a general form when solving the Hamiltonian a million times.

   E.g. if I solve the relative population as a function of energy one time at the start of the run (or for all energies before a run), then all I really have to do is use a lookup table! (Assuming that this is the right way of viewing the problem. I forget whether the exponent has other funky things)

9. Ensuring that this new version is actually faster than the old version

   Since we need to solve for energy levels, it’s possible that a single run may be much slower. When doing one hundred runs, however, I cannot believe that it would be anything but far faster. When doing more than ten thousand runs, there’s no chance that it’s not faster.¹⁷

10. Hopefully don’t need to repeat to get the S-reduction available

    The A and S reductions are the most popular ways to solve a centrifugally distorted rotor. Having done all the work to make A work, I’m assuming that the work to make S work will be trivial, especially because A and S reductions are interconvertible.

11. Something something make it work for other forms of distortion¹⁸

    There’re other forms of distortion that people care about. A lot of the research Hamiltonians focuses on these complex issues, especially because most easy molecules have been solved. Then again, there are still a number of molecules with no rotors or unpaired electrons, so there’s every chance people would jump on the promise of more or less instant solving.

How do I make the Latin Capped Hyperspherework? Few steps¹⁹:

1. Figure out how to pick the n+1 sample space based on the output of the n sample space.

2. Ensure that the powers of two are all lined up, because in the past I’m fairly sure I wasn’t letting it search as far

3. Ensure that it works to converge on the right answer

Let’s motivate the Latin Capped Hypersphere:

There’s a relatively recent paper that argues a better way to sample astronomical observations is via Hypersphere, rather than Hypercube. The main argument comes down to the fact that a hypersphere inscribed in a hypercube takes up vanishing amounts of the hypervolume at higher dimensions. If I remember correctly, it’s something like 1 percent the hypervolume by ten dimensions.

So, if one is relatively confident in their center point, then there’s effectively a hundred-fold increase in sampling density within the reasonable area by using a hypersphere rather than a hypercube.

My own personal motivation for capped hypersphere is that it feels somewhat rational. That is, I’m fairly sure that, at early levels of solving the rotational Hamiltonian, there is no real assumption that the center point is correct, so a Hypercube is the appropriate choice. When approaching the correct answer, however, the displacement that a transition needs is well-correlated to multiple values, and so searching around the near space makes the most sense.

As I write this, though, I’m realizing that I’m already intending to include multiple forms of distortion constants so that I can have for the distortion what I have for A, B, C: something which imposes constraints on the pure sample space. That’s pretty exciting to me, and likely will be exciting enough to others.

There’s a question in my mind about whether to use the limiting values based on A, A(A) and A(S) or not. I think that it could make sense to truncate the distortion constant ranges based on them, but not so much A, B, C. Mostly that’s because it feels rational to me that the “pure” rotational constants would be better able to be found than the distorted ones, but maybe that’s not true!

Ugh, then we get into the hard issue of “given that A(A) depends on A, Delta J, and Delta JK²⁰, what is the actual variable values of A given the bounds of A(A), the bounds of Delta J, and the bounds of Delta JK?” I don’t know that this would actually be too much of an issue, but it kind of feels like it would be.

Let’s assume not.

So, the ending sample space would have nine dimensions: X, Y, Z, XX, XY, XZ, YY, YZ, ZZ. That is, the rotational constant in X, Y, Z and the six quartic distortion constants. From there, we would sample I (real), which is defined as the sum of 1/X or Y or Z (real). I think that’s the best one to choose as our defining value, because it’s the one that’s most physically meaningful. Regardless of the representation we use or whether we ensured all inertia is along axes, it feels reasonable to assume we can know the total moment of inertia.

After I (real), we’d sample C (real). C (real) would be limited by the maximum of:

• lower sample bound of C(real)

• lower sample bound of C(A) given the current sample space of the distortion constants

• lower sample bound of C(T) given sample space of the distortion

• lower sample bound of C(S) given the sample space

• lower sample bound of C(rho) given sample space

• I can’t imagine that it’s actually going to be the limiter, but also the lower sample of C(X)²¹ given A(X), B(X) bounds. Wait, no that’s not going to be an issue at all, so that’s null, because we’re only calculating “real” moment of inertia, not I(X).²²

• It is theoretically possible, but lower bound of C given I and the bounds for A, B, C. I think that the code generally assumes this won’t happen, but always good to edge and corner check. I guess this means I should have the bounds checked²³

and the minimum of basically the above.

We now have two of nine dimensions sampled. Since sampling either of A or B gives the other for free²⁴, let’s see what we’d do there. Lower bound of A²⁵ is the largest of:

• Lower bound of A

• Lower bound of A(A) given distortion bounds

• Lower bound of A(T) given distortion bounds

• Lower bound of A(S) given distortion bounds

• Lower bound of A(rho) given distortion bounds

• Lower bound of A given B bounds, C and I

Oh wait, can I ignore A(X) for sampling C? That’s something I think that I need to think through more... I think so, but I don’t feel confident.

Let’s see, if we assume C max, then the possible ranges for A are dependent on that, and therefore so are the possible values for A(X). Is it possible that C max defines a value of ranges for A which, given the ranges for distortion, are not possible for A(X)? Mathematically it sure seems like it! Maybe. Given that we know that C max has to have an available value for A, I have to assume that it would never end up breaking. Still, probably good to ensure that it’s true for realsies. Maybe I throw that calculation in the C(X) calculations, though.

That’s a question for future distortion me.

So three variables later, we have (effectively) X, Y, Z and A, B, C.

From there, we know that each of the five distortion constants can be calculated based on some linear combination of the six real distortion constants.²⁶

Set each constant based on its limit given itself, the bounds of the other constants in each X, and the bounds for A(X), B(X), and C(X).

This goes point-wise, and creates a really weird sample space after the first hypercube. At some point want to set it to re-open, though that’s again a question as to when. Also, what are the starting ranges?

Part of me wants to go fully computing and say “we have no idea what literally any value can be”, part of me thinks that maybe asking the person for reasonable bounds would work, and part of me thinks that like starting at 1 percent of A, B, and C for distortion constants feels reasonable as an absolute limit? Or as a starting limit if not entered.

Realistically, all that would need to be input is a range for I and a range for C. I’m sure that one can reasonably well approximate the moment of inertia of a molecule based on just its molecular mass. And then let’s see, we know that C is greater than B is greater than A.  If all of the mass is in the C direction, then it’s value will be 1/I, and B will equal A will equal infinity. That’s not super helpful.

We could try asking for an approximate level of non-prolateness²⁷, or we could just set arbitrary bounds and let people manually set bounds if they’d rather. As a scientist, it’s always frustrating to me when a modeling software²⁸ doesn’t let me set arbitrary bounds. Exactly what the default set of inputs I’ll require and outputs I’ll give will be, that’s a question for the implementation team.

I do kind of feel inspired by the idea of using something with expected values. E.g. instead of a Latin hypercube, do an orthogonal search²⁹ based on the empirical CDF from the previous search. Maybe somehow have like increase the orthogonalization as the dimension searched increases?

Or something like “the more that the optimal value for a constant moved, the more/less to use orthogonal search?”

I just generally don’t like the current method of take the top 5³⁰ points and use them to define the new sample space. It feels ugly, and even if it worked in the sample molecule, it still failed a fair number of times overall. So, let’s come back to the question of rebounding later, once we’ve got the question of sampling down.

Oh wait, those two are kind of linked questions.

Eh, maybe a distribution with a floor function?  That is, less than some percentage of our maximum strength just doesn’t count?

I know that in the past, using previous values resulted in bad outcomes because one lucky guess would just forever fix the current values. I do still believe in the fundamental stability of the correct answer and the cheapness of computation. Throwing out a previous run’s values upon generating the next run does still feel pretty ok to me, especially if I store them for later use.

Part of me does still think about the question of the total hyper-radius, as much as that makes sense as a concept. Eh, that’s a problem for V2.

Upcoming Posts

• Wonder

• Curse of knowledge, esp re. Music Theory³¹

• Overview of a course on astrochem

• RebelFit

Daily Reflection: 22 June 2026

• How’s things?

  Pretty good. I’ve def been very high energy today, and that comes with all sorts of things. I set up two meetings (or at least one meeting and was told a second meeting is being set up later in the week). I got my hand writing done, and I called and caught up with a beloved friend!

• What’s a recent win?

  Recent win that’s safe to post on the blog: I connected one of my close friends with someone who works in a field they find interesting. Other than that, I’m feeling good today which is really nice.

• You have the big tapestry embroidery project! How’s that going?

  No real progress yesterday. Today’s big thing will be working on the design for the top layer. What does that look like?

  Who can say.

• Do you feel like you’re taking good care of yourself?

  Eh, overall I think that I’m doing ok. The wrappings on my arm continue to disappear and bother me, but that’s kinda not me taking care of myself so much as taking care of things which take care of me. Eating is going decently, consuming some liquids which is good, and I’ve done the hand writing.

  I was going to work on RF³² but (see above post).

• What could you be doing better?

  I could have been more prepared and realized I had deleted some of the relevant files for RF. That’s so so long ago, and so at this point the main thing is just that I could have been better about writing the things that I said I wanted to write. Because I noticed that my computer is running out of storage again, though, I did delete a bunch of games from it, which is good both for my productivity and for the general having storage on my computer.

  In general I could do better about showing my appreciation to those around me and revising my materials.

• Are you appropriately keeping in touch with those you love?

  Yeah! I called a friend and am currently coordinating to meet up with a different friend later this week. Also made³³ plans to see another set of friends.

• Big upcoming events? Preparation for them?

  • I have a two week camp equivalent coming up in mid July. Found out where I need to send paperwork, so now I just need to send it.

  • I’m visiting my partner in mid July. Still need to get tix.

• Once again, then, how’s it going?

  I think generally decent. If I stop to think about the question, though, it feels like it’s going less decently.