First Published: 2023 June 7
On thing that I’ve realized is less than ideal in my monthly reflections is that they are in many respects write-only memory.1 That’s sort of an issue, especially since I tend to have forward facing goals in each reflection. One way I think I might be able to address the issues is by looking at each of my goals in each day’s blog post.2
My goals this month were broken into finite and infinite tasks, which may have been better framed as timed3 and untimed.4 I don’t think that reflecting on the finite tasks will be particularly helpful, so I’m only going to focus on the growth ones in my daily reflections. I’m going to take the rest of this post to expound on the one line goals that I have.
I haven’t invited anyone over to my home yet, and it’s starting to become messy again. I should really spend some time this afternoon getting my home cleaner. In general, I would really love to have my default vision of my home as something that is clean, rather than one that is not.
I have been blogging fairly often, though I suppose I did miss a few days already. Of the goals that I wanted to write about, I think that I’ve gone through all of them except for piping interactions and book reviews. I’d like to blog about handwriting again, since that’s coming up in my life.
Exercising three times a week has been not happening. I’ve gone for one run since the month started. I think making time to go to the gym after lunch might be a good idea today!5 At the implicit6 recommendation of a friend, I’ve also been considering doing personal training, if only because it would be nice to know that I’m approaching things in somewhat of the right direction for my goals.
Sleeping enough and getting up at six have remained fairly at odds. The past few days, while I’ve generally woken up at six, I then immediately changed my alarm to seven thirty7 and returned to sleep.
Making time for prayer has been a mixed bag. On Sunday, I certainly did. Yesterday, I remembered to pray a rosary. In general, though, I do find that I waste my time on pointless distractions, and I would rather spend that time in prayer.8
I’m currently9 about a quarter of a chapter ahead on my book, which is slightly behind where I would like to be if I’m trying to evenly get to five chapters ahead. Getting one full chapter ahead by the end of the day would be fantastic.
Writing a song is going mixedly. I realized that every song I write turns into some variation of a love song, or at least an ode to someone. I tried to go through the list of songs that I like to see what common themes in them are. In what should have been unsurprising, most of them are love-adjacent songs. The rest of them generally have some sort of folk or union vibe, which I can’t personally relate to. Still, I’m working on a10 new song that I started last night, and I do have hopes of actually finishing it.
Writing letters to friends has not happened at all. I’m planning to write one today. It’s interesting though, I never realize how bad my writer’s block is until I try to write a letter.
That does bring me to an interesting piece of introspection, which is that I find that tasks that I don’t want to do often feel nebulous until I make concrete what the issue is. Here, I know that the issue is just writing the letter, so I’m going to take a break from writing this musing to write the letter.11 That took me all of about fifteen minutes, at least half of which was dealing with pencil lead. Still, it’s nice that I’ve written a letter to a friend!12
So, I think that I’ll just replace the items within the list below this each day with quick updates on each task:
Progress towards friends over13
Blog-ress14
Exercise progress
Sleep and rise at six
Pray and make time for it
Backlog building
Songsmithing
Letters to Friends
Hopefully this will help me to actually accomplish my monthly goals!
(716/197)
that is, I write the data and never read it.↩︎
this does also have the secondary benefit of increasing my wordcount, which is still far too low.↩︎
read: done on a certain day↩︎
though looking at them, this does not actually work↩︎
though maybe not.↩︎
original wording was tacit, but I’m not totally sure what the connotations for tacit are↩︎
seeing times written out really bothers me for some reason. I’m still going to do it, but it’s good to notice.↩︎
at least I think I would. The fact that I don’t sort of implies that I am not.↩︎
as of 957↩︎
nother↩︎
one interesting piece of diaries in general (wow look at that callback to the genesis of this blog) is that there’s no good way for the subjective time of the writer to be reflected to the reader.↩︎
and counting the words in the letter, I’m going to absolutely count the one hundred and fifty four words that I wrote towards my daily goal of three thousand, seven hundred, and forty (wow that’s way too many)↩︎
is the new goal because otherwise it’s a finite task↩︎
Current ideas: book reviews, handwriting, song progress, piping interactions↩︎
First Published: 2023 June 6
Oh wow, it’s been a few months since the last time I blogged about going to open mics. I think it’s been about that long since I went to an open mic, which is sadder. It’s hard for me to balance going to the open mic, which I enjoy, and going to sleep early, which I enjoy having done.1 Still, when a friend said that they missed my presence at open mics2, I decided it was time to dust3 off my old4 guitar.
It was hard for me to pick what I would play. For one, while I have been playing guitar, that has mostly meant doing some picking patterns, some scales, and a few songs that I don’t love singing along to in public.5 My staple open mic songs are all fairly stale, which also didn’t seem like an ideal situation. So, like all great folk musicians,6 I retuned my guitar to DADGAD.7 I’d been working on a Great Big Sea song8 that’s in Celtic tuning9, and I felt like I probably knew a Stan Roger’s song10 well enough to do them.
As it turns out, I knew the Great Big Sea song well enough, and I stumbled through the end of the Stan Rogers’11 piece. Also I learned a fun fact! My throat feeling clogged before open mics is most likely a consequence of having brassicas12 and not being nervous, as I had historically believed!
237/171
wow look at that callback. I’m truly a master of the genre.↩︎
not in those exact words, but that is the interpretation I’m choosing to live with↩︎
metaphorically. I had literally played it at Mass that night and was practicing at least a few times a week before that↩︎
it’s not really. I got it around a year ago, since I wanted an acoustic guitar that A: was in tune and B: had an amp hookup.↩︎
mostly because I still don’t know Fisherman’s Wharf (the song I play the most) well enough to want to share it with others↩︎
I’m not one, and it’s almost certainly overly reductive to say they all did this. I do know that Stan Rogers was encouraged to do this, though, so I assume others were as well↩︎
I.e. bottom, top, and second from the top strings all tuned down one step.↩︎
Boston and St. John↩︎
DADGAD↩︎
Harris and the Mare↩︎
I’m not sure how to add the genitive to Rogers↩︎
which I knew do that↩︎
First Published: 2023 June 3
Prereading note: sorry, this one got really rambly. I should probably fix it up at some point
Like many people, I wish that I did more.1 At the very least, I wish I had better knowledge of where my hours went.
As a result, I have tried a number of things to get my life in order.2 None of them have worked as well as I would like, but the struggle a few weeks ago did lead me to think more deeply about what my priorities really are.
I was making a list of activities that I wanted to complete. Some of them were things that I enjoy doing in and of themselves3, and some are things that I enjoy the knowledge that I have done them.4 It made me think of a nice two dimensional way to rank different activities.
The two axis5 titles that I settled on were do and done. What does that mean? Great question.
Do is tasks where doing them is itself the goal. For instance, I like reading because it’s a fun task and I enjoy doing it. It may benefit me, but even without the growth it causes, it’s something I’m glad to do. As I write, I realize I should have started with done, so onward.
Done is what I described as tasks that I do not necessarily enjoy the process of completing them, but I enjoy the knowledge that I have done them. As I mentioned in a footnote, running is really my best example of this. Every time that I run, I find it an unpleasant experience. Nevertheless, every time that I look back on a time that I have run, I am grateful to myself for having run.
Another way to think of it is future versus present enjoyment. Things that I enjoy doing bring me enjoyment in the present, as I do them. Things that I enjoy having done, by contrast, bring me enjoyment when I look back on the fact that I did them.
I have no clue if that made any sense, but it does mean that I can group most of the activities I do into four quadrants. Ideally, I would like to spend all of my time doing things that I enjoy doing and having done. Equally ideally, I would spend none of my time doing things that I neither enjoy doing nor having done.
As I made my list, though, it occurred to me that ranking the other two categories is an interesting values judgement. If I prioritize things that I enjoy having done, then I will likely enjoy each day less.6 On the other hand, if I prioritize things that I enjoy doing, I am likely to stagnate in most of my endeavors.
Returning once more to my realm of ideals, it would be fantastic if I was able to learn to enjoy in the moment all of the activities that I enjoy having done. If running became fun, for instance, I am sure that I would run more.
As I think about my day, though, I realize that I spend a lot of time doing things that I neither enjoy doing nor having done. That’s probably not great for me. Partially, it could be that I have the wrong framing for some tasks I accomplish. Failing to do something, for instance, could be reframed as setting me up for a future success and therefore a thing that I enjoyed having done.
That is not most of what I find lives in that quadrant, though. I am very easily sucked into time sinks.7 I know while I am in them that I will not be glad for having spent my time on them in the future. Even while I do them, I am not so much enjoying what I am doing as killing time.
I only have so much time, and it would be great if I stopped trying to kill it.
643/95
wow that’s such a bold start to a blog post.↩︎
non-exhaustive list includes: scheduling events by the minute, saying what activities I want to do before and after certain milestones in the day (like going to work), making a list of activities I want to do, to do lists (which are different somehow), ranked priority list of all the things I need to do↩︎
e.g. playing music↩︎
running is really my best example for this. I hate running but love when I have run↩︎
axes?↩︎
at least according to first-level effects.↩︎
specifically, useless time sinks↩︎
First Published: 2023 June 2
As I mentioned yesterday, I gave a talk this past Saturday. It was a part of my university’s1 “Universe in the Park” series. I went to a State Wildlife Area2 and gave the first of what is currently3 scheduled to be six4 talks this summer.
My talk changed a lot from what I gave last year. Last year, I had titled my talk “Prebiotic Chemistry in the Interstellar Medium,” which is not, in retrospect, as good of a title as I had thought. With the added wisdom of almost ten additional months, I revised the slide deck almost completely. It is now titled “Searching for the Origins of Life in the Coldest Regions of Space”, a much more evocative title.5
My first talk went really well I think, all things considered. The general format of a Universe in the Park presentation is giving a short-ish lecture6, answering audience questions until they run out,7 and then using a telescope until either the park is closed or everyone is bored. Despite now being trained to use the telescope’s GPS features, I used very little of them.
Mostly, people wanted to look at the moon, which is fair. Unfortunately the viewfinder8 had gotten misaligned from the viewing scope, and I didn’t want people to have to wait for the9 five minutes it would take to align them together. Instead, everyone got to see the moon through the viewfinder, and then I coupled the two.
It was then that I learned just how quickly the moon moves through the sky. I found that I needed to adjust the sight every four or five people.10 Every time that I did, at least three mosquitoes took their chance to bite my face, leading to more than a few jerks. Thankfully, the moon is11 bright enough that I was able to quickly adjust it back by following its aura.
After everyone viewed the moon and was impressed by its many craters12, I moved the view to Venus, both to use the GPS alignment and because it’s the only other object I think is cool to look at in the sky. Switching out the optic for a more powerful one, people were able to see that Venus, like the moon,13 has shaded regions.
At that point, the number of people there was dwindling. I pointed the telescope to a few stars14, and people all filed out by ten pm or so. It still wasn’t even fully dark, not that I’m complaining.
I even got feedback from the park person.15 It’s mostly irrelevant, except for a quote which I want to exemplify more daily, “It covered the science behind space much more in depth than I thought it would, which was fine. But he also, related it well to what people would know about, including kids. He also was not thrown off by any questions that were asked”. I choose to interpret this as meaning I went in depth but still kept people engaged. What more could I hope for as a scientist communicating to the public?
(508/362)
or the state, or the astronomy department, depending on where we draw the line (or the donor who funds the talks I suppose even)↩︎
which is like a state park except focused on research not tourism↩︎
very actively debating signing up for two more↩︎
UitP (as I abbreviate it), I’m giving at least two other formal talks outside of this program↩︎
the clever amongst you may notice that the two talk titles are reducible to each other. That is somewhat intentional. (for those not in the loop, searching for the origins of life is just a less (differently?) jargoned way of saying prebiotic chemistry, and the coldest (relevant) regions of space are in the interstellar medium)↩︎
which I claimed would be forty five minutes despite knowing in my heart that it would be more like 25↩︎
favorites from this past one include “so what do you think of astrology?” (asked by a 20 something), “why do stars look blue and yellow?” (asked by a youngish schoolchild [side note, I do love that schoolchild is a great way to say “I know that they’re older than four, but that’s all I can commit to”]), and “so does space really smell like raspberries?” (asked by a father, to which I responded something along the lines of “it’s the same ester that makes rum smell, so they could have had a much more fun title with ‘space smells like rum’”)↩︎
read: weak telescope coupled to powerful telescope to allow for rough aligning↩︎
optimistically↩︎
interestingly, I’ve realized that in my writing I still naturally default to objects first, but I then immediately change it (here I initially began the sentence “every four or five people”, but changed it before finishing the sentence. I’m sure musing about how my writing has changed almost 220,000 words published over two web serials later would be interesting, but that’s probably best left to another time)↩︎
was?↩︎
I promise that sentence is not sarcastic at all. Maybe hyperbolic, but I think to at least a first order approximation everyone was↩︎
Moon? I forget how capitalization rules work with celestial bodies↩︎
spoiler, stars look the same↩︎
i forget his actual title↩︎
First Published: 2023 June 1
Oh wow, it’s been over two weeks since my last post. I have no clue where the days go. I did write around 36000 words last month, so that’s somewhat exciting, even if almost none of them were for this blog.
My goals last month broke into a few categories. If I had checked up on them, I’m sure that it would have been useful to have them in that order. Instead, I just forgot that they existed until I began writing this post.
Rather than list the list again, I’ll just go through how I did on them.
Professional:
I did not manage to get running on my instrument this past month, which I at least now know why.1
Probably because of the above item’s issues, I did not finish building the other instrument.
I did finish TAing and I even got mostly positive reviews!
I prepared for a talk at a state wildlife area, which is apparently distinct from a state park. It went really well, and I had 53 people come! I should absolutely blog about that, so expect a post soon.
Personal:
I deep cleaned my home to at least my own standards.
I finished the book I didn’t enjoy and managed to at least stay on the writing schedule I needed for the one I am enjoying. I kept hoping to pull ahead but haven’t managed it yet.
I am now I think good enough at bagpipes to where I won’t embarrass myself next week. There are a shocking number of interactions I have had related to playing the pipes these past weeks, which also deserve a posting of their own.
I don’t think that I played particularly more music, but I don’t know if I dislike that too much.
I spent some time working on a song but not enough to break the wall of writer’s block. I should really just get back into writing poetry.2
Growth:
I have off and on been able to make more time for prayer.
I wrote none letters, though I did see friends in person!
Oof, I did not blog daily. I blogged half as much last month as in April.
I ran I think zero times.
I mostly stopped working out.
I actually did manage to go to bed generally early! My default wake time has shifted to be nearly six am now which is nice.
Looking forward at this month, I would like to:
Accomplishments/Finite Tasks3
Play bagpipes at a friend’s wedding
Write and give a talk at a conference
Get my instrument running
Growth
This might be a better way to frame my goals. In general, there are things that I want to have accomplished, and things I want to do.6 Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up with this more!
the short version is that the box I was given to output high voltage gives it negative not positive. The long version is that plus a bunch of other corrections.↩︎
well known as the gateway to songwriting↩︎
i.e. things that I will have done by the end of the month.↩︎
I’m not ashamed of it anymore which is nice↩︎
ideas from above/that I need to discuss in general are: my talk, piping interactions, book reviews of the books I’ve read recently, do versus have done↩︎
oh, shoot, that’s actually something I should blog about. I had a whole idea going about the difference between things I want to do, things I do, and things I want to have done. adding to list↩︎
First Published: 2023 May 15
Today I updated my twenty four for twenty four goal1, which feels like as good of a reason to restart this blog as any. On an impulse, I copied an old blog post, because I was intrigued by what the title meant. Interestingly, while discussing the definitions of in my life, I didn’t discuss the diving/gymnastics centered meaning of the word.
Anyways, one experiment that I was given to rebuild as a part of my PhD progress has the goal of creating a standing plasma. Last week I successfully produced a plasma for the first time in the instrument in over half a decade, which is incredible to me. Now I need to optimize the plasma and make it usable for what we need.2
First Published: 2023 May 4
It was just yesterday that I talked about how I’d like to keep up writing even though I no longer need to. As it turns out, I am incredibly motivated by deadlines. Without the explicit need to write 2000 words to put out a chapter today, I didn’t end up writing more than 1000 total words, and almost all of those came after 5pm. I need to think of how to make myself write even when there’s not a deadline. At worst, that seems like a skill I should be able to transfer.
First Published: 2023 May 3
Twice a year, the website I’ve been self publishing my web serials on has a competition: write 55,555 words in 5 weeks. The latest one began this year on the first of April, and I set a variety of goals related to it. As I mentioned in my last writing post, I wanted to write more words each day that I wrote. That goal didn’t end up panning out, though I did end up still writing 78010 words in April.1
Another goal I had was posting a chapter for the new book every day at 2:08 PM CST until I hit the word count for the challenge. I accomplished that, though I did become far looser on my personal idiolectal usage of hyphens.2
I also had the goal of maintaining my 3/week schedule of the book I had started before Writathon. I accomplished that.
I had the goal of completing Writathon, which I tangentially answered as having done above. To be clear, i did it.
Finally, I had a goal of learning to write combat scenes. I still don’t know if I’m fantastic at it, but I think that the scenes I wrote were at least serviceable.
I certainly feel like I grew a lot as a writer, if only in terms of learning to write content I am willing to put out into the world faster. Partially that was lowering my standards, but I also think that I grew a lot as a writer in terms of thinking in a way that transfers to the page more easily. These past few days in particular, I noticed that I was restarting sentences two or three times as I saw how they wouldn’t end correctly. Historically, I would have needed to reread the entire chapter to notice that mistake.
So, while I’m still unsure if I plan to do Writathon ever again, I’m certainly glad that I took part in it. If I can maintain my average of over 27003 words every day that I write4, I think that it would remain a very doable activity.
where I only counted text that I physically wrote as content for chapters, one book review, and the occasional blog posts. I didn’t include titles, the cases where I have macros defined for words (I use tables that have “Congratulations!” in them often enough that it seemed worthwhile to define a table that says congratulations), or any other writing I needed to do for life and whatnot↩︎
read: I stopped using hyphens because brain-dead is one word but brain dead is two↩︎
holy crud that’s a lot of words (also this post technically counts towards the average. It was 2740 before posting this, and would be 2755 after↩︎
basically 6 days per week↩︎
First Published: 2023 May 02
So the last time I can find that I mused about baking, I mused about a recipe I was working on. Today is sort of the opposite.
I’ve found that1 when I bake bread in the morning, I feel better about the day and I am more productive. To test that, I made bread dough last night and woke up slightly early to bake it this morning. It came out really well, which was great.
While I was making it, though, I considered what I was doing. Something that popped into my mind was a meme format I’ve seen going around a lot for the past few years. The general conceit is that someone is reflecting on how excited their ancestors would be of the quality of their living conditions.
I thought about the fact that I was actively choosing to make bread, not out of any need, but simply with the desire to feed my friends. I worked with finely ground white flour, which I was able to mix using drinkable water that is within my home. When I decided to bake it, I have an oven within my home.
It was a nice feeling, though I think the productivity was a little overstated. I didn’t end up doing as much as I wanted throughout the day, though I did get an early start, which was nice. Maybe my day wasn’t going to be productive regardless of my choices, in which case what I did was the best I could do.
In any case, I got to share fresh baked bread with friends, and that made me happy.2
First Published: 2022 May 1
So, you know, I kind of fell off writing this again. In my defense, I did write just under 80,000 words last month, so most of my mental energy was occupied elsewhere. In last year’s version of this post, I set the goals of blogging, poetry, and stretching daily. I also, humorously enough, set the goal of finishing the first draft of the book that I’m now putting out as a web novel.
My goals for the month come in a few shapes.
Professional:
Start running my first instrument. I have a conference in about a month and a half, and I really need to start collecting data.
Finish building the second instrument. More or less as above.
Finish TA’ing for the semester. There isn’t too much to this goal, since I just need to grade a few items.
Prepare for a talk at a state park. I can recycle most of my content from last year.
Personal:
Deep clean my home. It’s messier than I’d like.
Keep up with the book that I’m writing/finish the other one. One book brings me joy, the other doesn’t.
Relearn bagpipes. I’m playing at another wedding this summer, and I need to be able to do so.
Practice instruments more. I miss being musical.
Write a song. I have an idea that’s been floating around for a few days that I think I just need to make time for
Growth:1
Make more time for prayer and meditation. I felt better for the few weeks that I made the time to do this.
Write at least three letters to friends and mail them. I’ve talked to a number of friends who mentioned wanting a hand written letter. It’s fun to write them.
Blog more. I’d like to say daily, but, as I pointed out a year ago, that’s a strange level of both too high for realistic and too low for aspirations.
Run more. I like the way I feel when I can run, for all that I hate running. I suppose I could start swimming instead, but.2
An actual aspiration: It would be fantastic to hit 1000 pounds in my 1RM for the big three lifts.3 In theory I’m at about4 865 pounds, which is much closer than I thought. If I manage to actually keep up lifting 3x a week this month, it should be very doable.
Get to bed early enough that I can get up at 6 am every morning. I find that if I start my day early5 by writing or doing something else productive6 I become much happier and more productive for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, that means that I need to be smart and go to bed earlier.
Welp, that’s certainly a lot. Hopefully I manage to do at least most of these most of the time!
Generally, it looks like my professional goals are all deadline based, which makes some amount of sense. My personal goals are generally musical, which is interesting. My growth goals seem to focus on fitness and putting out writing. No real commentary there.
Anyways, hopefully see you7 tomorrow!
I see this as different than the two above in that this is aspirational and focused explicitly on future benefit↩︎
but nothing honestly, pools just have more restricted hours/require more planning.↩︎
Squat, Deadlift, Bench Press.↩︎
305+355+205 =↩︎
Yes I know that I used to be actively swimming laps at 6am, but I never really enjoyed it↩︎
i.e. baking bread↩︎
the hypothetical reader reading this before my next post↩︎