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On Writing (Continued)

First Published: 2022 February 9

Draft 1

A part of me feels like this isn’t really a fair article to write, because I’m not totally sure how this essay will differ from yesterday’s. I guess one major difference is that yesterday was looking forward at what a writing habit might look like and internally at what’s preventing me from having a good writing habit as I am currently. Today’s, on the other hand, will be moreso focused on what writing looked like yesterday and how I think I can continue it looking forward. With this disclaimer out of the way, on to the meat of the document.

First,1 I was shocked at my writing rate yesterday. I started just free writing a book idea I have had floating around for a little while,2 and set a ten minute timer. At the end of ten minutes, I found that I had written around seven hundred words. That was really shocking to me. I didn’t even know that my typing speed was seventy words a minute, let alone my creative writing3 speed.

Second, it was a nice reminder that some skills are like the metaphorical riding of bicycles. I had a major struggle trying to fix the part of my voice that wants me to constantly go back and fix the grammar and spelling4 mistakes that I make while typing so quickly. When I started writing yesterday, though, it was really easy for me to shut off the voice that said I should go back and fix the typos. That made the writing time go by much more quickly, and it certainly helped me get more words on the page.

Third, it was a little harder than I thought to stop writing. I read somewhere that it’s really helpful to stop writing whenever your timer goes off, because if you were slogging to get through he minutes, it prevents some amount of burnout. Conversely, if the words are flowing really easily for you, it makes it easier to want to write the next day. It definitely worked, because I really want to write today, but I’m just not sure if I can find the time to write with the rest of my night being what it is.

In conclusion5, I really liked restarting writing yesterday, even if I’m unsure how sustainable the quick high will be. I’m wondering if I can do the additive, increasing my writing time by a minute a day until I get to a word count I’m happy with. At some point I will also need to add some editing time, because wow the rough draft is incredibly rough.

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  1. Wow a part of me still really thinks about putting firstly whenever I make these lists, but that habit has been beaten (metaphorically of course) out of me↩︎

  2. also while generating the document, I realized that there were a few other books I’d started in the past and just immediately given up on↩︎

  3. albeit at free flowing consciousness rather than well edited↩︎

  4. and ideas, though that’s less relevant↩︎

  5. wow look a five paragraph essay, habits do die hard↩︎

On Writing

First Published: 2022 February 8

Prereading note:1 this is really rambly, but helped me organize my thoughts. I apologize to my readers.

Draft 1

Yesterday, inspired by my impending2 deadline of sleep, my musing on the topic of reading was markedly shorter than a normal post from me. Today, since I’m writing in a bit of self-created downtime during my day3, I have a bit more time to consider this topic.

Lately I’ve rediscovered my desire to become a writer. The urge has ebbed and flowed over the years, but definitely flows4 more and more as time goes on. It’s also something very difficult for me to get into.

For one, I think that I mostly want to write fantasy. Unfortunately, fantasy comes with a wide array of issues. In part, the market is saturated with stories by people who look and live like me5, and my voice my not have anything special to say. In part, it seem so intimidating to get into, because where would I even begin. On that same vein, where would I stop? Editing and revising has always been a bane of my existence.

As I’ve noted before, I often will go through double digits of drafts for big papers and essays. If I’m writing a 500 page book6, going over it 10 times means that I have just read the equivalent of 5000 pages, many of which are going to be bad, at least in my own view. I guess I could try to edit less, which is likely what I would have to do.

I also feel like I set bad self goals. It’s really disheartening to not meet a self-imposed goal, but I also need my goals to be something that requires effort, or there’s no real gain to meeting them. I learned recently that Terry Pratchett7 allegedly wrote only 400 words a day, which is less than my postings here try to be. On the other hand, I also remember reading that he would often fully rewrite novels once the first draft was finished, which I can’t imagine counted towards that number. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are web-novel authors I read who put out 2000 words a day 5 days a week. From this, it seems like a goal of 2800 good words or 10000 decent words a week would be what I would need to be a full time author.8 If I want to keep this blog going9, then those words would need to be in addition to the writing I already do here, since I don’t want to turn this blog into a web serial.

I’ve been reading recently about how to live a more productive life, and how to read more10. Both point out the same issue: everyone is currently using all 24 hours of their day, so in order to add something, something needs to be removed. I definitely have habits I would be ok with removing, which mostly pertain to the mindless scrolling I do on the internet, but the issue is that I also have lots of awkward time gaps where I use that hobby. For example, if I have three hours at work where I have like a minute off every five, that translates to 18 minutes I could do something else, which is more time than I have currently spent writing these 600ish words.11 But, there’s also the startup and cooldown time I have in every activity. Mindlessly browsing is just a few seconds on either direction, but in general writing has much more of each for me. Maybe if I just deleted my mindless scrolling apps I would find more time in my day, especially if I tried to make writing more accessible.

Conversely, since writing fantasy might hit the same primal feeling as reading it does, maybe some of my reading time could become writing time. The issue there is that I read in non-planned or scheduled times, so it doesn’t help me to build a new habit. Especially since I’m already trying to rebuild the habits of writing poetry and having a healthy sleep schedule, trying to make a healthy writing habit appear out of nowhere seems a little optimistic. But, who knows, I’ve just deleted one of my time consuming apps, and we’ll see if I can write more in the future.

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  1. not included in word counts (neither is this)↩︎

  2. if self imposed and slightly ignored↩︎

  3. also far earlier than normal writing hours↩︎

  4. I guess since ebb means go out flow must mean increase↩︎

  5. within error bars of course↩︎

  6. since that’s a nice pretty number↩︎

  7. GNU Terry Pratchett↩︎

  8. I guess I don’t know for certain if the web authors are full time, but I’m going to assume that they are↩︎

  9. and I do↩︎

  10. two different topics↩︎

  11. hey nice I could stop my blog for the day here and be good↩︎

On Reading

First Published: 2022 February 7

Draft 1

Sometimes I forget why reading is both a great and terrible idea for me to do. On the great side, I get to expand my creativity and whatever other benefits reading has. On the terrible side, I lose track of time. I got home today at around six, and told myself I had plenty of time to do the many tasks that I should do in a day. Instead, I read until it was time for me to sleep. C’est la vie.

Reflections on Today’s Gospel

First Published: 2022 February 6

Isaiah 6:5: “Then I said, “Woe is me, I am doomed! For I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!””

Draft 1

As always, my relationship with the Gospel has changed a lot in the past three years. In the past, I focused on the fact that we should be fearful and trusting. Now I look at the readings and see that even the saints and prophets themselves were not perfect.

Isaiah is a massive figure in the theological development of the Jewish and Christian faiths. And yet, he says that he is “a man of unclean lips”. Paul too, whose readings I used to not like a lot, points out that he once persecuted the faithful. The future first Pope himself says that he is a sinner.1

Something about that really speaks to me right now. The Lord doesn’t only speak to or call the perfect. Rather, it is in being called and accepting our calls that we can turn away from our sinful natures.


  1. Luke 5:8 “When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at the knees of Jesus and said, ‘Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.’”↩︎

Science Bowl

First Published: 2022 February 5

Draft 1

Today I had the wonderful opportunity to volunteer with the Wisconsin Regional Middle School Science Bowl1. I really love volunteering for this event, and loved doing so last year. In part, it’s fascinating for me to realize how much science2 I’ve forgotten since I was younger and took biology adjacent classes. In part, it reminds me of when I was in high school, and the incredibly fun times I had participating in the science bowl and preparing for it with friends. In part, I really love the opportunity to watch young scientists develop their love for science. In part I just love competitions and trivia, so competitive trivia is incredible. And finally, in part I just like volunteering.

All this leads to the perfect storm of a morning and afternoon spent reading between 18 and 36 questions a round to each of the participating teams. My fellow roommates3 were both members of my research group, which is really exciting. I found, in mentioning that I blog, that if you are somewhat careful about your link clicking, you still can find my blog from my home site.

You just have to go to scores, click the “maintained by rebelskyj” link, and then it takes you to my personal GitHub account, which is where all of these posts are stored.4 Anyways, that’s a side note.

All this to say, I loved volunteering for the science bowl, and I’m very excited to do so again next year!


  1. Who knows if that’s actually what it is called, but that’s what I remember it as↩︎

  2. almost exclusively biology based↩︎

  3. volunteers in the same room as me, a term I have invented here↩︎

  4. It is a little interesting to me that I’ve shifted from calling them musings, like my inspiration, into posts, like the standard usage is.↩︎

Dungeons and Dragons Again

First Published: 2022 February 5

Draft 1

First, an apology to my1 readership. I got a message this morning2 asking me where the post for February fourth is. As with so many lovely things, I ended up losing track of time playing Dungeons and Dragons last night, and by the time I got home, was too tired to write a blog. We were told it would end around nine, but it instead ended around 11.

Anyways, excuses about being tired aside, playing Dungeons and Dragons again last night was incredibly fun! A friend and member of my group3 set up a one-shot4 for a few of the people in the group5 and a friend from the department.6

The game was incredibly fun, in some part because it was my first time playing in almost a year, but also because the group and dungeon master were both really fun. Most of the people in the adventuring group were new to Dungeons and Dragons, which was really fun. I forgot how much of a learning curve the game had, which led to a fun conversation in the car ride back where one of the other players asked about the ending, and what happened. I explained that the game is like writing a book together, where authors sometimes just stop writing the book, and so the ending may not be as good as people want. Conversely, people can continue campaigns almost indefinitely.

Anyways, on to the campaign. We six brave adventurers were hunting down a cultist as a nominal group. My half of the group made a drunken promise to one person to help hunt down the cultist for rejecting their entry into the cult. The other half said that they were hired by a professor to hunt him down because he stole from that professor.

I played a tabaxi rogue, which is very different than my normal character choices, which was really fun! The dungeon master had a fun mechanic in the game where our adventuring packs have sort of three use plot convenient items. I used one of mine for a tap to tap a barrel of whiskey, while I think everyone else in the group who used a use used theirs to make rope. I followed a side quest of trading lots of items, going from an onion to a rock to a belt to a necklace which is almost certainly7 cursed. Unfortunately, I don’t know if we’re going to continue the story, so I will imagine that it’s not cursed until that point. At the end of the session, we had caught the cultist, and one of the people assigned to retrieve the scrolls had done so. The three of us who were on a drunken adventure jumped into the portal that opened as the session ended. Who’s to say where we end up next!

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  1. apparently real↩︎

  2. I really don’t know whether to hope morning or night from the sender, because they should have been sleeping in any case↩︎

  3. this is the same person↩︎

  4. with maybe option to continue? It’s unclear↩︎

  5. due to interest, not exclusivity↩︎

  6. but not the group, if that was unclear↩︎

  7. out of character↩︎

On Making a High Voltage Box

First Published: 2022 February 3

Draft 1

A project I finished today was a box to make the high voltage setup in my lab more safe. It was really fun!

The electronics and machine shop at my university are incredible, and the people there are fantastic. It made the fact that I knew nothing about what I was doing not at all stressful.

I’m super glad that I get to work in a place that has such support for researchers.

Planning to Fail

First Published: 2022 February 2

Draft 1

I woke up this morning and thought to myself “Hey, Wednesday nights are always really late for you, and also in general you want to use nights to wind down, rather than write an essay. Maybe, just maybe, you should blog earlier in the day”1. So, I planned to at some point before tonight write my post.

But, when I got to work in the morning I had two two-sigma problems all morning.2 Lunch, as it always does, took longer than expected, and then my early evening activities all had one to two sigma issues themselves.3 And so I had to rush to my final appointment of the night, which unfortunately lasts from 1845 until4 2230 or so. Adding in the next 15 minutes to walk home, and I suddenly went from planning to write a post early to writing a post nearly an hour past when I’ve set as my “no more notifications because you should be asleep right now” time.

As I look back at my day, I definitely see times that I could have written my post. This morning I was tired when I woke up, so doing it before work wasn’t really an option. But, I could have taken some time after lunch instead of whittling time away to write this post. Or, I could have made a few minutes while monitoring the pumps, rather than just idling away my time. Regardless, hopefully my future failures to plan don’t become plans for failures themselves. I’m not at the word goal, but this is as far as my brain will let me write.

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  1. for those not in the know, I generally write my posts near the end of my waking hours↩︎

  2. two-sigma here meaning rare but not horribly so, something that screws up the routine but doesn’t upend it↩︎

  3. one sigma issues are completely foreseeable, just things I did not think about. Example: I lose track of time when working with electronics, so I should have known that I would be working there until later than planned↩︎

  4. tonight at least, which is not horribly strange↩︎

Introduction to Celtic Crochet

First Published: 2022 February 1

Draft 1

Wow, it’s hard to believe that it’s already February. As is so often the case, the day after I make some great resolution to be more creative, I hit a wall of writer’s block. Since I refuse to be beholden to inspiration, I tried to think of a way to work through this issue. Today, that took the form of scrolling through old post names while looking around at my desk. In doing so, I saw the shawl that I’ve been working on for a few weeks now, and it inspired me to write about the crocheting I’ve been doing.

As I mentioned, I prefer crochet to knitting because of the flexibility of patterns that you can make. The first thing I crocheted was a hat, as I think was the second. Very soon after making hats, however, I started working on what I’ve begun calling “Celtic Crochet”. I call it that for the very simple reason that the patterns end up looking like a Celtic knot.1 The style I’ve developed for this is a three row pattern, which has some advantages and disadvantages.

One major advantage is that it allows for really nice two-color patterns with a major and a minor color. By using the same color on the first and third rows, loops don’t end up looking odd, because the same color is always on the outside. Another big advantage is that it’s fairly easy to algorithm.2

One big disadvantage of three row is that the foundation row doesn’t count, which means that if you look very carefully, you may notice where the first row is versus the second and third rows. Since many people don’t even notice that the design is woven, that’s really not a huge issue.

Speaking of weaving, however, there are two massive disadvantages with the pattern-style I use. The first is that you have to make a foundation row with as many stitches as the pattern is large, which is approximately 16 per hole in a Celtic knot.3 The other issue is that, once you’ve crocheted the whole length, you’re mostly just left with a slightly kinky rope, which you then have to weave totally around itself in order to finish the design. So often I have struggled a lot with that final step, because weaving is hard.

That being said, I really like the way that the designs come out. I liked them so much in late 2019 that I decided that I would make a blanket that is totally one length of cord then woven together. Over two years later, I still have more than half of the blanket to go.4 When I finish the blanket, it will be far too long to weave, but that’s5 an issue for future me.

While designing the blanket, a friend asked me a fair question, though one which belies a misunderstanding about Celtic knotwork. They asked why I wouldn’t just make many small pieces and then sew them together.

One crucial element about well-made6 knots is that they are a single strand. I’ve tried a few times to crochet the whole celtic knot already woven, but I haven’t been able to get it running any time I’ve tried. If I could, I think that might really be fantastic, because there would be no loose ends to weave together.

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  1. when I both make the design and follow it correctly, which is not as common as I’d like↩︎

  2. Is algorithm a verb? I sure hope it is because algorithize feels wrong↩︎

  3. if I remember my math correctly↩︎

  4. To be fair I’ve taken many multiple month long breaks↩︎

  5. hopefully!↩︎

  6. drawn usually↩︎

Monthly Reflection

First Published: 2022 January 31

Draft 1

I really thought that I had a monthly tradition of reflecting on the past month. Looking through my history, however, I apparently only did this once, which makes it somewhat funny that it was also a January reflection.

Since I set yearly goals, now seems like a good time to check in on them.

.

Huh, I guess I didn’t really write my goals on the blog, did I. Welp, I guess let me look based on the goals I wrote down elsewhere.

I have a goal of blogging every day, I made it 281 days out of 31, which is pretty good. I’d like to do better next month, which might require more planning ahead.

I have a goal of writing a poem every day, I think I succeeded twice. I might want to switch to an easier format than villanelles, maybe sonnets again, just to get back into it.

I have a goal of working out more. I’ve been doing better on that regard, especially since I shifted from shooting for 30 minute workouts, which I cannot find the energy to do, into doing an additive thing. Basically, every day I do one more pushup and squat. I started on the 11th, so I do the number of days this year minus ten to see how many I should do each day. I still haven’t been great at keeping up with it, but hopefully next month will be better.

I’ve on average been good with Bible in a Year, though I’ve had to double up a few days. I’d like to do better at that.

Looking ahead to next month, I think my goals will be:

  1. Blog daily

  2. Compose a poem and music daily

  3. Do the pushup/squat thing daily

  4. Listen to BiaY Daily

  5. Track my daily doings better in my journal

I guess I’ll probably check in four weeks from now, to see how I did.

I do like that I’ve managed to add blogging back into my daily routine fairly easily, especially since I haven’t found that it correlates too much with extra screen time2. I still haven’t found my right place for poetry. Historically I would write them before bed I think, but I’m far too tired for that most nights. Who knows, though, maybe taking those extra few minutes would serve me really well. I guess that’s something I can work towards in February3

My last post that was written the day it posted was on February 15, and it was incredibly short. My last post is dated February 22 and was written March 3. The last post I’m willing to claim as a fullish post is my reflection on the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time, which was February 17 in 2019.4 It’s weird to me that in a few weeks, between less than two and five, depending on which standard I’m using, I will officially be past anything I’ve written before. The last post that was full and not backdated is the week before’s Reflection on the Gospel, which was the 10 of February. It’s a somewhat scary and exciting feeling.

Words: 522,35


  1. including today↩︎

  2. something I’m trying to limit↩︎

  3. wow hard for me to believe that soon I’ll have been writing in parts of the year I’ve never done before.↩︎

  4. it will be February 13 this year↩︎