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Exploring Hesitation to Restart Web Novel

First Published: 2025 March 26

Draft 2: 26 March 2025

I do really love a good metanarrative, and this blog post might be a good example of one. I was1 wondering why I have not been writing my web novel. I thought that I would2 have the time, energy, and motivation to write another draft yesterday. Instead, 13 hours after leaving home for work, I returned. Everything that I planned to do at home last night took longer than I had assumed it would, and as a result I did not end up writing my chapter.

I forget who initially told me this, but someone once told me that there’s no such thing as free time. That is, anything that I do has to come at the expense of something else that I am otherwise doing.

Somewhere else, I’ve seen that I need to have some amount of my time as rest. For a while, I think that the novel was a form of rest for me, but it absolutely stopped being one by the time that I stopped writing it.

With both of these in mind, it’s obvious to me that I have been less able to do things lately than I was before.3 If I want to be better about extending grace to myself, I need to make this a question stemming from curiosity, not judgement.4

So, let’s go through the reasons that I might write a web novel, and see how motivating they are to me right now.5

In general, I would love if more of the things that I did were autotelic.6 Actually, I don’t know if that’s true. Some use autotelic to mean that a task is undertaken without external goals, and is therefore motivated by the thing itself. It gets to intrinsic and instrumental motivations.

Do I have intrinsic motivation to write?

Broader, do I have intrinsic motivations?

Even broader, is it better for me to have intrinsic motivations?

I guess things which are good in themselves are considered intrinsic motivations. I more and more realize that I think that I subscribe to a version of Divine Command Theory, which means that good is itself an extrinsically defined thing. However, since I also think that goodness is a moral constant, I suppose that practically speaking I can treat things that I do because I believe that they are Divinely ordained as good, and therefore intrinsically valuable. I’ll even go the step further and say that I’m going to use intrinsically motivating as good in itself, where good means I think that it, on the whole, helps to bring the world towards G-d.

Ok, diversion aside, let’s say that an autotelic action is an action I undertake without the explicit or implied belief that I will have an extrinsic benefit from doing it. For me, working out is not an autotelic action, because I exercise to stay in shape. Practicing my guitar is not autotelic, because I do so to be better at guitar. Jamming with a friend is an autotelic action, because the jamming is the goal.7

This helps me think about the book. What would it mean for me to be writing the book as its own end? I think that it would mean that I’m writing it to figure out where the story leads me.8 That is certainly a motivation I have. The initial premise for the book had the main character becoming a terrorist in the final book.9 I’m less and less sure how that will happen given the way that the story is playing out right now. In short, I think that there is at least a small part of me that wrote the book and would continue writing the book for its own sake.

Is writing the book a way for me to hone my writing skills? If so, then the motivation to write the book becomes10 my motivation for improving my writing skills and my belief that writing the book improves my writing skills. Writing skills are not a monolith, however, and so I should really clarify what it means to improve at writing, at least insomuch as it relates to the book.

I believe that the primary ways the book helps me improve as a writer are that it teaches me to work on a deadline,11 it teaches me to write faster,12, it helps me with considering a long narrative and pacing therein13, and it helps me to understand the general human experience.14

How motivated I am to improve in each of those regards is, as far as I can think of it, a function of how motivated I am to be good at the skill, how good at the skill I currently am, and the rate of progress that I think I will have in improving in the skill.15 This means that my overall motivation for writing the book to improve myself is the sum of the motivations to improve each skill multiplied16 with the likelihood that I will improve that skill by writing It can be better broken down into the sum of how quickly I think that writing the book will help me with a given skill multiplied by how motivated I am to be good at the skill, divided17 by the skill I think that I have, or:

M(Write) = ∏ M(Be good at skill) P(Writing will improve the Skill) E(Speed of improvement by writing)

Where M is the motivation overall, P is the probability, and E is the expectation value, which is itself a function of how easily I train the skill, how good the skill already is, how hard it is to train, and what it means to improve. In general, right now I do think that I am, at least consciously18 very motivated to improve at writing. I think that writing the book will absolutely help me with keeping to deadlines, writing quickly, and understanding the human experience. I think that it will be neutral to slightly negative towards my ability to write in the scientific tone, but it might be positive at helping me to develop a specific register for writing, in such a way that I can then change it.

Ok, so the overall motivation appears positive in both regards, and I assume that if I have two positive motivations that they will add. Let’s hope that this will continue to be true, and all reasons I once wrote the book are positive motivators.

The next reason I had to consider was that I was motivated by the idea of making money. That’s really a few motivations hiding in a trench coat and pretending to be the same: the amount that money itself is a motivator, the amount that money is a decent stand-in for how much the external world values something, and the fact that one of the initial reasons I began to publish the book was my belief that I could write something better than the authors who make a lot on the platform. Money itself is not really a motivator for me, I more and more realize. Money as a stand-in for value is something that motivates me decently well, though not much better than anything that money can be exchanged for (pizza, ice cream, a medal).19 Given that the majority of my readers are faceless entities leaving comments on a faceless book, money is really the only way for them to show value. I don’t think that I’m really motivated by the idea that other20 authors are making more, because I’ve seen a number of what I consider really well written books also not have a significant monetary value associated on the website, and I’ve seen how much work the authors who turn major profits put into the business side of the writing.

A part of me also worries that being paid to write will make me want to write it less and/or value the book less. Given that I’ve made absolutely no steps towards monetizing the book, I don’t think that’s a motivation I should take into account. Comments are about as meaningful to me as I think that money would be, though there is the secondary point that something people spend money on is something that they’re more likely to recommend to a friend, which would increase my number of comments. All in all, though, I guess that I have to say possibility of monetization is probably just about zero as far as motivations go.

The next motivation I wanted to explore was the fact that I do things in order to prove21 that I can. I think that I have effectively proven that I can write a web novel while doing a Ph.D., and I’ve proven that I can write something that others want to read. However, I haven’t proven that I can finish a story or tell a narrative that ends in a way that people like.22 There is also the above portion of my motivation to prove that I can write something that others would pay for, but, as discussed, that’s relatively minor, especially since I’ve had comments saying that people are actively looking for a way to pay me. All in all, I’ll say the part of me that refuses to accept limits is a minor motivation at best.

My motivation to write something that my sibling enjoys is not something I’ve considered for a bit. Given the group chat I had with other friends who enjoyed commenting on the book as each new chapter released, I should probably extend it a little further. They all have other things to read which they enjoy, so I don’t really feel like I’m depriving them of much. Then again, I do also love when people like things that I made.23

And finally, a friend asked me how motivated I was to write the thing because I enjoyed it. That feels like a tough question, and was part of my question for an autotelic action. Does doing something because I think that I’ll enjoy it make it not autotelic? Great question, and one I’ve just reached out to a philosopher friend of mine about.

Ok, so all in all, I do have a fair amount of motivation to start writing the book. I do really believe that on some level the thing that was keeping me from writing was the fact that I didn’t have an explicit reason to point to for why I would. I have that now!

Now comes the hard question: how do I start writing it? I have been and plan to continue to be very busy at work. However, breaks are important, or so I’m told. I do often find that I stick myself into a rut while working, and forcing myself to take breaks is at least one way of confronting that part of me.

How often do I want to publish, how much do I want to be able to revise, how much will I revise, how long will each chapter be, how much of a backlog do I want to start with are all other questions. Let’s answer them now. I want to publish at least once a week, and ideally three times a week again, because I love a MWF release schedule. I would ideally like to be at least 10 chapters ahead so that I can hopefully avoid writing myself into a corner re: making a choice that has bad consequences in three more chapters. I don’t really think that I’ll revise much, in part because I don’t care that much about eking out every possible shred of skill into the book, and in part because a goal is to get better at quickly writing decent text. I want each chapter to be in the 2000 to 2500 word range, but will accept if they are again in the 1800 to 2200 range. I want to start with a ten chapter backlog, because that gives me the revision ability that I had hoped for.

How do I get the next twenty five thousand24 words written? I set up time and space to do so. In general, I think that I can and probably should start setting time aside on Sundays again for personal growth related activities. They, like swimming or most things in my life, make every day slightly harder but in return make every day markedly easier.25

I’m a few weeks behind on keeping up with the living goals, but here it is!

N.B. I’ve decided to have the whole list of goals that I have for the month at the bottom of each posting, and I’ll delete entries as is relevant. That way I can track everything each day!

Draft 1: 25 March 2025

I keep musing within my musings about why it is that I’m not doing my web serial right now. I have a few reasons that have seemed plausible, and so I’m going to explore them as well as anything else that comes up as I muse today. I’ve been very into structuring documents lately28, but I want this to be less structured, if only to force myself out of the happy little boxes that I’m putting myself into.29

The first and most obvious reason an external observer might have for me no longer keeping up with the book30 is the same reason that most people have expressed shock that I was writing a web serial at all: a graduate degree is intense and31 all consuming. Especially now that I’m in the thesis writing stage, I really should32 be spending a lot of my mental and physical writing space33, if not all of iton the thesis. However, I stopped writing the serial well before I started writing the thesis in earnest, and I was, in fact, able to write it while in a doctoral program, so that can’t be all of it. Whether it’s an actual reason or a convenient excuse I’m using is definitely up for debate, and I’m sure we’ll come back to this in time.

The second reason34 that an external observer might use is the death of my mother this past October. Technically speaking, I stopped writing before October35, so that’s not explicitly timeline accurate. Of course, my mother was actively dying in late August, and had been in the hospital for a while before that, when it wasn’t clear if she was going to recover.

The death of my mother does tie neatly into the comment from the first reason: time. Not only was I grieving the loss of one of the pillars of my life, I am36 playing catch up, or at least feel like I’m playing catch up for the time that I was less than productive while actively dealing with her dying. Even outside of time, grief is absolutely something that has taken up a lot of my mental space and time. Something that countless authors have spoken37 about is the way that grief is almost all consuming at first.

The death of my mother also directly affects the novel for a really key reason that I’m not sure the average external reader would know: she was one of the main reasons that I wrote it. There was a solid month or so that I had to force myself to write each chapter, beginning with typing “the only way out is through, and the only way through is forward. This is something you can do to notably improve your mother’s experience as she deals with her cancer”, deleting it, and then writing the words to the book. When it became clear that she was not, in fact, reading it or likely to be able to read it again, that baseline reason disappeared from the logic. Given that it was, at least allegedly, the sole thing that got me writing for at least a month, the loss of the reason is definitely a big part of the loss of motivation. I think that I had forgotten or blocked out the fact that I used her cancer as an explicit reason to write the book.

Obviously, this ties to another barrier to writing: I associate the book with her and it’s painful to do things that I associate with her, knowing both that I am no longer able to connect with her about them and, maybe more importantly38, that the more I do them without her, the less I’ll associate the actions with her. That’s not just me fearmongering, it’s, as best as I understand it, the state of the field in psychology and neurology. Part of me was, and probably still is,39 grasping tightly onto anything that I have that still reminds me of her. Looking at the blank text file where the book once was, or seeing the drafts that are still unwritten, though painful, also makes me immediately think about her. Grasping tightly is never healthy, though, and I think that I’m finally starting to loosen up my grip.40

I also have the general wall of starting anything.41 I’ve taken enough time off of writing that restarting the book is just that, starting again.

Part of me is worried that fans will suddenly hate the way that the book is written.

Part of me knows that so much of the book was written with the general love for life and optimism that I have had for most of my life. I’m beyond terrified at the idea that this optimism, which I have internally as such a key part of my identity, might no longer exist. I also worry that the writing will become darker, and therefore ruin the style that I’ve worked towards.

Part of me knows that the book is, to put it mildly, unique in the writing style. I’ve continued to read about writing style and how to structure prose, and I think that there’s the internal argument within me42 between adapting my writing style, and therefore the book, into something more mainstream, the part of me that wants to lean into the uniqueness, and the part of me that wants to not think about the style as I write. Writing that sentence, I know that it’s the exact same issue I have always had with poetry and music.

More than that, though, it’s the same argument that so many pop-adjacent43 musicians use for not learning theory. They have a unique sound and don’t want to force themselves into the box that learning theory will do. I always decry this argument as nonsense, because learning new tools is never a bad thing.

However, there is absolutely something to be said about the rubik’s cube dilemma.44 That is, once you know how to solve a rubik’s cube, there’s no way to go back and try to derive how to solve it yourself. Or, rather, knowledge changes the way that we see the world.

I know this is true, and have commented on it a lot. There is even a name for this, the curse of knowledge.45 In music, I feel like I’ve never thought of it as a curse.

Because music is such a universal human behavior, there are countless thinkers46 who have put forth their reasons for why the curse of knowledge doesn’t apply to songwriting. In short, the idea tends to be that we all listen to so much music, and our brains are so hard wired to find patterns, that we have internalized most musical rules. Education simply lets us make the choices conscious, rather than unconscious.47 There’s also the secondary point that I don’t see a lot of people talk about, which is that most people, especially today, learned their instruments from some sort of system that derives on some level from the academy.48 I guess that I’m growing a little less sure of the position that knowledge is not a curse when it comes to finding a voice.

There’s the related but completely independent argument that much creative expression is not solely about using our own voice, but also about sharing it with someone else. If the consumer does not take in what you are trying to convey, were you successful in expression? Even deeper, if the consumer doesn’t consume the product because it’s so off putting to them, were you successful at expressing yourself? In some regards, this ties to the question of why I am writing the web novel.

Is it something autotelic49? Is it, as I’ve mentioned before, a way for me to practice and hone my writing skills? Is it, as I’ve thought about before, something I do with hopes of one day turning a profit? Is it about demonstrating that I can do whatever I set myself to, believing that I am unlimited?50 Is it, as the initial drafts were, about writing something for my older sibling to read? From a friend, is it something that I do because it’s pleasurable?

This feels like a good place to stop the reflection for now, return to work51, and come back to this later.

  1. and am, I suppose↩

  2. wow three I statements in a row↩

  3. see: grief is a huge obligation↩

  4. which, eh we’ll see if I’m ever able to do↩

  5. I was about to make a list but then I realized that I said I wouldn’t last version↩

  6. hmm, is that true? I suppose that I want everything that I do to be for the greater glory of G-d, and I want that to be my main motivation. If I assume that I have that motivation and that the actions I take are doing so, then an action is as though autotelic↩

  7. or, making music is an end in itself to me.↩

  8. I also more and more realize that I believe in some weird potentially inherently heretical metaphysics where knowledge, song, and story all exist external to humanity and we receive revelation which lets us see them, if only for a moment. I should really expound on that sometime↩

  9. or at least a revolutionary↩

  10. I’m working with probabilities right now, so that’s where my mind is at with separating things out↩

  11. relevant for the thesis drafts↩

  12. always something that I want↩

  13. wow, really relevant to the thesis↩

  14. which is not, in fact, a writing skill, but is a motivation that I should explore on its own↩

  15. Wow I really think entirely in the mode that I last used my brain. Yesterday I tried to learn probabilities, and now all I can do is think about probabilities↩

  16. for some really arbitrary definition of multiply. Convolved? Functioned? Idk↩

  17. again, for some arbitrary meaning thereof↩

  18. there’s such a ripe series of musings for me to do about what it means to fight your subconscious. I.e. if there’s something you aren’t doing, there’s clearly some part of you that doesn’t want to do it. There’s a saying I see that people can lie with everything but their habits, which might be relevant here↩

  19. I have commented a number of times that, much as I love receiving awards and medals, I hate having them (hate might be a strong word, dislike? do not like? hmm) after the fact. My motivation to win is entirely on getting a thing, not having a thing↩

  20. potentially worse↩

  21. side note: to who??↩

  22. the one thing I published on the site has a fair number of angry comments on the last chapter because I spent the entirety of the book on a few days and then sped through the next two decades.↩

  23. There’s a meme that goes around where someone says something like “when looking at your art, think of it as a cake at a party. People don’t go ‘wow this cake isn’t as good as this other cake’, they go ‘wow! two cakes!’” which feels somewhat relevant here↩

  24. wow what a big number↩

  25. which is such a horrible thing to realize, because it really shows me how quickly my discount function takes effect when I’m in the day to day. Framing it as a time discount might help me going forward, though (another idea!)↩

  26. as a living list!↩

  27. what’s the term for not just within?↩

  28. unsurprisingly, given that I’m setting up and writing my dissertation right now↩

  29. read: no lists or subsections today↩

  30. I don’t know why I am so opposed to listing the title or even the shortened version I tend to use↩

  31. in theory at least↩

  32. should is a word that is apparently problematic for a lot of people↩

  33. the best part about being in physics is that now I can use space and time interchangeably and justify it with spacetime being a thing↩

  34. I know I said destructuring, but I also need the reader to understand that writing paragraphs that are text numbered feels completely free form to me at this point. The more I’m doing with planning, the more I feel like a bunch of nested bulleted lists tends to be the ideal way to write (side note: maybe explore that as a fiction idea?)↩

  35. the 28th of August is when I posted that I was going on hiatus. Oof↩

  36. I don’t know why I’m using past tense, and much as I hate intra-sentence tense disagreement, I think that it stylistically works here. Readers are of course free to disagree↩

  37. written?↩

  38. for all that I’m just now coming to the realization↩

  39. deciding what belongs in text and what belongs in footnotes is really hard when the entire thing is me reflecting and musing on emotions and what’s in my mind explicitly↩

  40. I listened to the audiobooks for the first series we ever read together (rather than like as a mother reading to a child). It was really hard, and I think that I actively like the books less now for having done so. Then again, I did do that in November, so the grief was without a doubt far rawer then↩

  41. how’s that for a smooth transition↩

  42. that’s redundant, but I do also feel like I have internal arguments outside of me and external arguments within me, maybe↩

  43. I don’t know what else to call it. I’m using popular here in the musicological sense, which is non-academy and (these days generally) non sacred. That isn’t to say pop the genre as labels define it, just music that people do independent of the academy↩

  44. I know it has an actual name, but my little sibling is or was trying to solve a rubik’s cube without any help↩

  45. see this comic for a humorous example↩

  46. from the academy, of course↩

  47. then we get to that whole “four levels of mastery” thing that I find so intuitive and that no one else seems to use↩

  48. of course, music being so intertwined with culture means that like the blues, which was famously initially something completely independent from the academy, is now a staple of the knowledge the academy can give you (why the blues progression is what it is and how to quickly vary it)↩

  49. new word I learned meaning something done for its own sake↩

  50. something that an expert tells me is that I have an internal worldview that believes that I am unlimited, and so therefore am hard on myself when, as it turns out, I am not↩

  51. ah the first point returns↩

Planning For Lent

First Published: 2025 March 1


ectionDraft 1: 1 March 2025 As far as I can tell, I don’t have any musings on Lent.1 Lent comes from the Old English word for spring, which I really appreciate, since so few liturgical words seem to come from English’s roots. Every year I do something different for Lent, based on what I’ve done previous years and where I feel the most spiritual need for growth.

The Church’s default three things to focus on in Lent are: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. I’ve often seen this expressed as giving something up, taking something on, and doing charity. These two triads are not identical, but they share some similarities.

A quick google search has any number of ideas for how to make Lent more meaningful. One of the sites has the very crucial piece of advice: the thing we give up for Lent shouldn’t be inherently sinful, because we shouldn’t be doing that in the first place. It’s totally fine and good to give something up for Lent with the expressed purpose of returning to it after Lent. That’s something I should keep in mind. Normally I tend to treat Lent as a test run for things which might be healthier for me long term. I’m going to give myself the freedom to also consider giving up or taking on things that I am pretty sure aren’t going to serve me as a new practice.

In the past, I have tended to give up meat and alcohol, both because those are traditional Lenten things2 and because they’re parts of my diet that are nice but not necessarily essential. This year, however, I’m really trying to find a way to keep my body nourished, and so I think that anything that puts a block between me and food is probably not a healthy idea3.

In the past I’ve also added on large prayer plans, but that doesn’t feel as good right now, probably because of how little prayer I have right now. Still, I should add more prayer, both because it’s a thing explicitly recommended in Lent, and also because it’s a goal I’ve had external to that. I think that a decade of a rosary is absolutely a low bar, and something that is at least somewhat meditative, if I do it right. Chaplet of4 St. Michael is another good one, and I do find the intercessory prayers more powerful in that one, so I might say that as the thing.

Ok so then we have almsgiving. There are just so many places in the world right now that need help, and there are so many ways that I can give time, talent, and treasure5. What causes are the nearest and dearest to me?

Honestly, I think that because so much of the focus of catholics around me is entirely on abortion, I find myself more and more looking at the ways that life is hard for mothers. There’s the cheap answer of trying to campaign for maternity leave or better protections for mothers, but that’s basically the same as doing nothing. There’s a charity in town that gives away diapers and other supplies families might need, and that’s probably a safe and good plan. It’s controversial for having formerly6 been a crisis pregnancy center, and I understand some of the objections that many have to them. However, they are the major provider of aid for new mothers in the area, as far as I can tell.

I have a friend who volunteers at a house for young7 single mothers. It is also an organization that could always use more resources. For reasons which seem fair, they’re less keen on having men volunteer, but I don’t have to put all my eggs in a single basket. It is important to both give low level aid to many and high level aid to a few. Which is better is ultimately a meaningless question, because we are constantly reminded that anyone we see struggling is Christ.

There’s also the more classic version of almsgiving, and the area certainly doesn’t lack homeless people. One thing that I’ve seen suggested in the past is giving away as much money to others as I spend on myself. Since part of Lent is about giving up pleasures, the fact that it might lead me to spend less on myself is a benefit, as is the reminder of just how many blessings my life is filled with.8

It’s hard for me to feel like giving someone money is not an effective form of charity, even if I understand economies of scale are sometimes helpful, especially for food banks and the like. However, charity is a virtue like all others, and it needs to grow from somewhere. I think that it makes most sense for me to send money to one of the two organizations for mothers and infants, in part because that was something dear to my own mother’s heart. I’ll also think more about volunteering, though I do truthfully feel like I don’t have the time for it right now9 between everything else that I do.

So we’ve taken on prayer: the chaplet of St. Michael and alms giving: donating at least as much as I spend on myself per week to one of the above organizations as well as giving to the homeless on the street. What am I giving up?

First: games. I spend a lot of time passively wasting on playing logic puzzles, and I don’t think that’s particularly healthy for me. I’ll still play with friends or any non-digital game as it comes up, but solo games are out for the season. Should I give something else up?

I want to stop scrolling social media, so will try once again to stop scrolling. My friends value memes, it’s true, but they value me more than the memes I give them.10

I think that limited social media and no more games are probably two good things to give up. As I said, giving up meat doesn’t seem like my best bet right now. All said, this seems reasonable to me!

N.B. I’ve decided to have the whole list of goals that I have for the month at the bottom of each posting, and I’ll delete entries as is relevant. That way I can track everything each day!

  1. At least, not by name↩

  2. the meat for sure, alcohol is less clear, given the fact that, you know, alcohol used to be an essential part of diets↩

  3. fasting and avoiding meat on required days being the obvious exception↩

  4. to?↩

  5. which is a common thing I see, I don’t know if that’s a Catholic only thing though?↩

  6. still?↩

  7. I think↩

  8. which is a sentence that still feels weird to say when I think about my mom↩

  9. which I know, is sort of the point. The woman who gave her single coin was worth far more than those who gave from their excess. However, I know that I need to give myself grace as well↩

  10. hopefully↩

  11. as a living list!↩

Reflection on the Start to the Year

First Published: 2025 February 28

Draft 2: 28 February

As the second month of the year comes to a close, I was reminded by a dear friend that it has been a while since last I updated my blog. The first draft of this post contains more ramblings and ideas, but my ideal blog post1 is much tighter and cleaner.2 Where my writing, like my mind, is meant to ramble, I prefer to have asides in the footnotes. With that in mind3, let’s reflect and, like all interactions, plot towards the future.4

Since the year began, I’ve managed to make progress on a fair number of my goals for the year, and possibly more importantly, I’ve also revised my goals for the year, incorporating both more time to think and the lived experiences that I have from attempting them. The only major difference is that I no longer have a goal relating to drawing or art of that kind. More than that, I now know that when I feel as though I should learn to draw, I simply have a short lull in my life, and some activity is soon to require my attention.

As we look towards the next month and period of the year5, it seems worthwhile to explicitly state some goals, so that I can reflect on them. Given my inability to write those reflections without finding any number of sidebars6, and given that they didn’t appear until at least a few thousand words in, let’s rewrite them. My goals can broadly be grouped into: Professional, Health, Other.7 Other is wrong, but I can’t find the word right now to describe the connecting thread for them that doesn’t also mean professional or health related goals.8

Well, when spelled out, that’s both a lot and not many goals at all!

I think that it’s also probably smart for me to break the goals into one-offs and continuing goals:

Despite how long this list appears, it’s really a very discrete number of things. More importantly, most all of the continuous goals are me attempting to orient myself. That is, rather than trying to get to writing daily poetry, I just want daily poetry to be on my mind going forward. Well, more than 6000 words later, I think that I should call this reflection here.

Draft 1: 28 February

It’s officially the end of the second month of the year. It has been a little over a month since the last time I posted here, and that’s not great, especially given the goals that I’ve had. Let’s use this space18 and look through what our goals were for the year19 and see how resonant they still are, along with how much I have made progress on them.

Let’s start with the things that I’m excited for this year.

Moving on to my January goals, which I’m also going to treat as February goals:

Finally, with my yearly goals:

So, two thousand words in33, what is the summary of my reflection?

I’m generally doing better than I thought I was on my goals, even if I’m doing far worse than the me of early January had hoped.

Before I answer “What do I want to work on in the month of March?”, let’s get some highlights of the past two months out of the way, because focusing on the good is better when framing my future.

Wow, that’s way more than I thought, and I had to go back multiple times to add more and more to the list. Honestly, I feel way better about a lot now that I have that all down there. It is wild to me how much just sitting and reflecting does to make me feel centered, and I do absolutely need to make more of a point of doing so.

Looking into March, what’s on the docket?

This set of goals is markedly different than the one at year beginning, and I feel comfortable with the changes. Mostly, they come from me realizing that my priorities are starting to focus on excelling in the areas I care about, rather than trying to become competent at even more areas that I have no true need for.50

In a slightly more coherent manner, the goals I have for March:

Woo! We did it! Only 4500 words to vaguely get my point across. Let’s revise this so that i can make it a little easier to follow

  1. truthfully, I’d like all my writing to be so, but as someone (I think Twain) said, something something if I had more time I’d have written less↩

  2. hmm the choice of adjectives I made comes with a lot of connotations. Why is a more concise (the word I forgot) writing cleaner?↩

  3. wow a lot of w sentences↩

  4. that metaphor failed, but that’s fine. In general I was thinking how like ripples from a pond you can trace time in both directions. Idk↩

  5. since Lent is about to begin↩

  6. which I think is a boating reference? should look that up↩

  7. wild how all categorizations work when you add an other↩

  8. personal, for instance, doesn’t work, because health is an incredibly personal goal↩

  9. I do love nested lists, and nested things generally, as a group member pointed out (about my code)↩

  10. I break into physical, mental, and spiritual, not because I think that I am these three discrete things, but because I think most of my goals primarily target one of the three aspects of me, and the effects that they have on the rest of me are harder to quantify (not that all goals need to be quantifiable)↩

  11. be it physical or digital↩

  12. elements of this hit professional, because it is potentially part of the thesis work↩

  13. are essential to my mental health, and I know this↩

  14. even ignoring that not everyone and I had a deep connection over my mom dying, that’s only good for a single letter I think. Also, I want them to be potentially light, rather than always heavy. “Hi Friend, I love you and hope you’re doing well” is not a heavy statement, but feels lacking to me for a letter. Whether that’s a personal issue or actually advisable, who knows? not me yet!↩

  15. other than letters and daily notes, as in health or the professional ones in professional↩

  16. meaning, not planning to finish in March, even if they can be explicitly finished↩

  17. Hmm I don’t have a good mental distinction between the two. Should I?↩

  18. digital, and also the time that I have right now (spacetime is a thing! That means space is interchangeable with time)↩

  19. and also January↩

  20. conveniently hitting the second point↩

  21. not eating well probably doesn’t help that fact, but↩

  22. read: the youtubers I enjoy or whatever audiobook I’m listening to↩

  23. not in a good way↩

  24. the space I have reserved in the library is very cage-like↩

  25. as I’ve been writing this, I’ve also been catching up on text with friends, and remembering the correct usage of full stops is always a fun journey when swapping between the two back and forth↩

  26. at least the way I do them↩

  27. wow this reflection is getting rambly faster than I would have expected (rambley? spell checker dislikes both and googling (I had a moment of “I don’t use google or to support it”., then remembered brand dilution is a thing) doesn’t seem to immediately treat either as a word↩

  28. TTBB! My first ever I realize↩

  29. not the stem or calyx (which is a term crochet embroidery pattern makers feel wayyy too loose in using, imo)↩

  30. me, if I bothered to pay attention↩

  31. whoops↩

  32. which is a blog post I should do↩

  33. hey cool, my writing pace is still around 2k an hour, which is right around 30 a minute. Given that I have to think about what I’m going to write, along with the fact that I’ve been multitasking and correcting all my errors, I’m really happy with that↩

  34. they were, unsurprisingly, fantastic↩

  35. which I did, in fact finish after the recital but before I left↩

  36. no, that was not connected to the theology in any way, shape, or form↩

  37. and, wildly, it was really great. One review put it nicely “it shouldn’t have been as enjoyable as it was”, since it did really have a pretty predictable and generic plot, caricatures of characters (ooh that’s a great line, I need to do something with that in the future), and the outdated sexual morals of the 1970s (consent is much different now)↩

  38. not so much we got scooped as the field came to the knowledge as a whole↩

  39. thankfully metaphorical↩

  40. he’d say public engagement, and I agree with his points↩

  41. i.e. probably today in between reviewing documents with the group↩

  42. Deep down, this feels like something related to spirituality, but for the life of me, I cannot find the words to describe how↩

  43. ah yeah simple is probably what I meant↩

  44. in the sense of video games to pass the time, not in the sense of any shared experience with people↩

  45. I think that’s a new phrase but↩

  46. wow I had no idea where the t’s in that word went↩

  47. that feels wrong to say, but I am in general struggling to find the words to express myself. That’s part of why I want to get back into journaling and poetry↩

  48. once again the wrong word, but like I feel better when I have a journal with me, regardless of my intention to write↩

  49. mentally and emotionally↩

  50. Drawing is really the big one here. I don’t care about it when I don’t have time, and when I do have time, I do. That’s interesting enough, and is probably something I can keep in mind as I move forward in life. The more space I have, the more I care about learning to draw↩

  51. retroactively placed above artistic after first point there because I was (am as of right now) unsure whether I should put writing there. Why I don’t think of writing as artistic is a question for another time↩

  52. yes, I realize that I am not a mind, body, and soul as three distinct parts, but it does help me to think of the driving reason behind each. Secondary effects are not primary↩

  53. there’s a post that I’ve seen that means a lot to me talking about how there’s no bad calories, and also that potatoes are not great in spite of caloric density, but in part because of it↩

  54. acids??↩

  55. oof this is getting rambly↩

  56. in that like I want to be able to mindfully take breaks↩

  57. this is kinda new buttttt↩

  58. if we redraft, move them down here↩

  59. if alone↩

  60. probably, though that’s something I shouldn’t say there. Hmm what is something that I can say that feels true and is helpful (this was initially going to be followed by wronged, but the new one is better)↩

  61. like not necessarily meaning to the same degree, because that’s not important↩

  62. obviously make sure they agree with the goals, but for now make it aspirational↩

  63. ooof helping one of the fellow students in my group with a coding issue really took me out of this. The next like 600 words I spent describing the difference between how I feel also did↩

  64. taking a break here for work with the group. Returning: let’s keep going↩

Musing on Getting Back in Shape

First Published: 22 January 2025

Draft One

I know that somewhere I’ve mused before about my fitness goals. Though they’ve changed over the years, I think that they’ve remained relatively static since college, or at least in the past few years. These days, my goals are primarily to gain flexibility and endurance.

In college, I would often joke about the fact that I had steadily gone from sprinting sport to more sprinting of a sport. Football, despite being nominally only a few seconds per play, ends up generally being a few minutes of sprinting back and forth until possession changes. As a person whose only real event in swimming was the fifty freestyle, those few minutes became twenty to thirty seconds1. Then, in college, I transitioned to diving, where each three second burst of effort in a meet was surrounded by at least five to ten minutes of rest.

Through all of this, I was relatively strong. Even today, I’m fairly sure that I can, at least once, lift more than most of the people I know. There’s something to be said for focusing on strengths, but I don’t think that applies here.

For one, I have always preferred being a jack of all trades to a master of one. For the other, given that I’m already stronger than average, the number of situations where I’ll need to lift something beyond my current limits but within my theoretical limits is relatively small. By contrast, the number of times that I’ll want to rush somewhere without losing my breath, or be able to contort my body to get somewhere2 is far higher. With that in mind, while working through the group fitness offerings, I prioritized cardio fitness and flexibility over strength.3 Today, I tried my first barre class.

In retrospect, I’m not entirely sure what I expected. If I force myself to come to a conclusion about what I thought we’d be doing, it was something like plies and other such movements on the barre4. Instead, it was, as the instructor said, a mix of plyometrics, calisthenics, and ballet. We did do a little bit on the barre, but mostly we used it for balance.5

I struggled with the workout a lot. I hadn’t realized quite how out of shape I am, but that was a great reminder. Somewhat surprisingly, to me at least, the fact that it was so painful and hard for me motivated me to go more regularly. I rely on my body for so much, so seeing that I’m letting it down in general is not something that I take lightly.

I still didn’t make it to yoga today, but I have hopes for tomorrow. Otherwise, I think that I was in general decent at following the flowchart. I’m not sure how much of it is a thing that I need to do in order and how much is just a “yes, this is a list of activities I need to ensure that I do at some point.” Still, I think that I’m doing better for having the organization, even if it is far from optimal. After all, the only way to improve is to start. Wherever I am right now is where I am. The only way to get closer to my goal is day by day.

  1. less than thirty most of my high school career, sadly never less than 20↩

  2. because, much as there are any number of benefits to my size, there are some downsides↩

  3. As it turns out, even the strength portions are relatively cardio heavy, and a few friends of mine who’ve gone said that they don’t think that I’d get much out of it. I don’t think that’s true, given my lack of cardio fitness, but there is something to be said for aiming to improve a trait by focusing on it↩

  4. is it just bar in this context? Given how pretentiously French everything in ballet is, I’ll assume not↩

  5. which, again, in retrospect, is what it’s always used for↩

An Initial Attempt to Make Macro Bread

First Published: 21 January 2025

Draft 1

As I’ve mentioned in the last few posts, I’m trying to organize my life under a few different principles. Notably, I wanted to make sure that, even though the USDA seems less than clear about their need, I get enough phytonutrients of each kind. When I looked through my diet and what I could easily add to my diet1, I was missing aliums and purple fruit. With that in mind, I decided to try to make a bread that incorporated them.

At the store, dried figs and daikon2 were the mixins that spoke to me most. Below is the recipe I vaguely followed, along with a quick back of the envelope calculation for macronutrients.

How did they turn out? Honestly pretty well. I’m happy with the taste, if only because the fig comes through, but the daikon doesn’t at all. I didn’t love how sulfurous the daikon smelled while shredding or baking, though, and so might have to take steps to prevent that in the future. Chief among these, I think that I’ll try shredding into cold water that’s been doped10 with either salt or baking soda, since those seem to work for others. Other than that, I might add more of either the daikon or fig, since they’re shockingly under noticed, for being a full 45 percent of the mass of the dough.11

What else went wrong? I don’t love the texture. I’m not sure if that’s due to the relatively low flour to other ratio, the overproofing, or something to do with using whole wheat flour. Regardless, I will probably try the next batch without rye, since I didn’t notice much by way of flavor from it, and it definitely does a lot to add that kind of texture. I’ll also try not to let the dough overproof, but that’s far more optimistic.

Nutrition Information as Eyeballed:

In total:

which, assuming I split my rolls perfectly, comes out to about:

In total, about 24 calories per gram of protein, well below the 40 threshold I need to average over the day. It is interesting how calorically empty daikon is, and how relatively dense fig is.

Daily reflection:

Didn’t do great about maintaining the schedule I set, but did do more than expected, all things considered.

  1. such as carrots, which I love to gnaw on↩

  2. which I normally see labeled as daikon radish but↩

  3. 529↩

  4. 648↩

  5. about three hours, in my case↩

  6. 267↩

  7. 254↩

  8. 103↩

  9. total of 840 grams or so↩

  10. oop my materials chemist came out↩

  11. ok not entirely, because I did squeeze about half the mass of the daikon out as water. Still, that’s like 400 grams, so still one part in three.↩

  12. that’s what my notes said, so I’m willing to believe I missed ten grams of flour somewhere. Oh I think it might have just been spillover↩

  13. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it’s almost all one of the macros by mass↩

  14. it is at this point that I opened a spreadsheet to do the math↩

  15. 5136.696↩

  16. 209.429↩

  17. 84.8475↩

  18. 900.66↩

  19. 144.44↩

On a Scheduled Life

First Published: 20 January 2025

Draft 1

As I mused about at the start of the year, I want to stop wasting time. The easiest way to do that, as I can see, is to see what I actually do with my time, and also to make sure that the things I want to do are on the list. I opened all the posts1 that even vaguely referenced schedules as I prepared to write this post.

However, before that I made my actual schedule.

“How?” you might be asking, either as someone looking for insight into my mind or as someone who wants to organize their own life. It was certainly not the most time efficient method, though I think that it may have ended up as the optimal method for me.

First, I sat and intentionally did not have audio going. I know that may be obvious to many, but your brain cannot think as well or deeply or freely if you’re listening to an audiobook. From there, I started writing down my goals for the day, and that led quickly into the things that I generally want to do, and their regularity.

I traveled to a new location2 and took that messy document3 and compiled it into two pages: goals for the day and my general musings. The goal for the day was nominally in linear order, but the musings were not in the slightest. My general musings had me breaking my life into:

Of course, I was not immediately able to annotate the importance of items without having the full list. More than that, though, I don’t love absolute measurement scales, and so I started with my first item, decided that it wasn’t very important, and assigned it a low score. The next item on the list seemed relatively more important, so I gave it a six. The next item was even more important, so I gave it a seven. Item 4 was in between items two and three for importance, so I gave it a 6.3, since I felt like it was closer in importance to item two than item one. I continued this through the entire list.

Now that I’m done with it, I do find it interesting that so many of my goals were in the 6 to 7 range and the 8 to 9 range, with nothing between 7 and 8, and only a single item below 6.7 Even if the exact values might change, it does show me that I have one goal I don’t care about8, one goal I care about a lot9, groups of goals that are very important to me10, and groups of goals that are moderately important to me.11 I do keep some absolute scaling, I guess, because nothing was a 1012, and nothing was a sub-413.

I then took my annotated pieces of14 paper home and didn’t look at it until today. Before bed, however, I made a list of tasks that I wanted to accomplish today in my bedside journal.15 Upon waking up and going through parts of my morning ritual16, I sat down with the two pieces of paper and the goals from yesterday’s journaling17 and grabbed some more blank paper.

First, I wrote in large letters and a sectioned off block the nominally immovables in my schedule. That is, the things that happen at a set time. I say nominally because in that list was also when I work18 and a few things that have rough end times. Below that I made a list of all the things that I had sorted yesterday, now ranked from most to least important. The new list looked something like:

That is:

One of my big goals was making use of the fitness class access pass I bought for the semester. They break all activities into one of four categories:

I always want more cardio fitness, generally enjoy feeling stronger, and would love to be flexible and in touch with my body. As a result, I then went to the page where they listed each activity per category, e.g. for the made up category of “Fun”

I did my normal way of deciding between options, ranking each item in relation to the rest, and started ranking them on the page:

Which means that22 I think that I would probably enjoy yoga and sleeping the same amount, though if I had to choose I’d lean towards yoga. Sleeping is significantly preferable to singing songs. Singing songs beats out testing gravity, which beats out touching grass.

After going through each of the four categories, I made my overall ranking, which unsurprisingly was almost entirely less than or equal to signs.23

From there, I went down and listed every single option on the calendar that the school provides, because I prefer being able to look through hand written pages, because I don’t like their layout24, and because there were only a few activities that I cared about. I did make this new list still broken down into category, e.g.

Etc. etc.

On a new page, I looked back at the group fitness goals I had29. Of the four activities I compiled, I wanted to make sure to do three of them at least once a week. I then went through and tried to find a way to do that. Because of prior commitments, there was only a single time each week I could do a barre class30, a single time a week I could do Zumba, and a nice yoga spot every morning before I wanted to get to work, so below the listed set of workouts with prior constraints removed, I made a list of what I wanted to do each day and when.

From there, we moved on to the actual scheduling part of my time.31 I started by listing the events that I wanted to do, starting with waking up. Using my time estimates, I was able to back track how early I would need to wake up in order to get each item I wanted to do before work done before going to yoga. Thankfully everything except for the 4 fit. It took some restructuring, because as I walked through the morning in my mind, I realized that I have a connection where some activities feels better to move into others. Like those logic puzzles where everything is given relative referents, I found a solution that worked, along with the quick time reminder of how long each would take.

Saturday and Sunday were the odd ones out, because neither has work, and so timing is weird. Since there’s another yoga slot later in the morning on Saturdays, I just moved the entire schedule so wakeup is at the same relative time to yoga. Sunday I set the wakeup time with the other five days of the week, but decided to go to it last.

Because my schedule diverges daily after yoga, I then went through my Monday through Friday schedule, noting the activities that I wanted to do before going home, with time stamps where relevant. On the next page, I started to plot out what I wanted to do each night, and what I also wanted to do differently each night. I also started plotting out ideas for Sunday. At this point, Monday through Friday is nominally scheduled from waking to sleeping32, and Saturday and Sunday are relatively empty. Looking at the ordered list of floating items, I was happy to se that most all of them were done, with only the weekly tasks yet to be assigned. I made a list of those items under the day I felt like they belonged, since floating items only need to be scheduled relative to the fixed items and each other if relevant.

I then made my weekly flowchart, which diverges and converges fairly often. Because routines are important, I tried my best to keep the divergent streams as similar to each other as possible. I also put literally everything I could think of as a necessary part of the schedule33 as an example, because cognitive load is bad.

I opened another small journal and made nine lists:

Finally, two hours after beginning, I was finished with my goal of plotting my ideal life. Most of it will be as simple as following a checklist, with the only34 cognitive load coming at the beginning and end of each day, where I go over my short term goals, and at the beginning and end of each week, where I do the same with slightly longer term goals.35 I’m hopeful that this will work and that it will make my life better.

Now to look at all the previous times I’ve tried and failed to see if there might be any common patterns:36

It’s very possible that I missed some posts there, but I don’t really care that much. I think that the important pieces for me in particular to remember about my aversion to schedules are:

All this being said, I do hope that I am able to maintain my life when the summer, with its constant interruptions to schedules, arrives.

Daily:

  1. I should really add some meta data to them so I can sort more easily. Not entirely sure how to do that, though, so would have to ask for help↩

  2. for unrelated reasons↩

  3. 5 hand written pages on top of already printed paper↩

  4. brew something again, start writing my thesis in earnest↩

  5. I feel like I’m using more itemized lists in my blog these days. Wonder what that’s about↩

  6. also these are made up examples, because I want to illustrate the system better, and while I understand it, I think that it’s generally helpful to show manufactured examples to make sure details are clear↩

  7. which, in retrospect, might be why it’s so clumped.↩

  8. the 4↩

  9. the 9↩

  10. 8-9 range↩

  11. 6-7 range↩

  12. life or death↩

  13. things I don’t care about↩

  14. white, printer↩

  15. musing to come↩

  16. i.e. putzing (I always forget that not everyone throws the occasional yiddishism into conversation) around↩

  17. transferred from the journal to another↩

  18. which is flexible↩

  19. 5m↩

  20. D↩

  21. hence question mark↩

  22. from bottom to top↩

  23. because I only picked my favorites from each category and there’s something in each category I value↩

  24. I understand that overlapping class times makes things hard, but listing two events on top of each other because one lasts ten minutes longer hurts me↩

  25. because in going through the rest I realized that what I wanted from Sleeping was equally available from other sources↩

  26. R means Thursday↩

  27. Sunday↩

  28. Saturday↩

  29. between 2 and 6 times a week↩

  30. cardio and flexibility! Perfect for someone like me with neither↩

  31. Why did I spend the last thousand or so words on fitness? Because that’s what I spent my time on, and it only seemed fair to say so↩

  32. though I will be very clear that there are two activities called “sit in silence”, and I always try to be pessimistic about how long things take because bonus time is fun↩

  33. turn on kettle for tea↩

  34. scheduled↩

  35. Long term goals go here↩

  36. in alphabetical order by URL↩

  37. except for using less social media to communicate↩

  38. oof 2022 is not one year plus away anymore↩

  39. i do feel like I’m more and more treating footnotes as asides and annotations, rather than parentheticals. I should think about whether that’s the goal or not. Certainly using hyperlinks is a good way to avoid needing to link, but. Eh a topic for another musing↩

  40. which is something that I’m hoping nested lists like I have might help↩

  41. wow I just got hit with a wave of sadness, remembering how healthy and energetic mom was then↩

  42. Reading each night is definitely one of them. The afternoon workout can be skipped at least a few times a week↩

  43. short of starting the day over, I’m realizing I don’t know of too many that work reliably for me↩

  44. I’ve generally been skimming the posts, if you’re wondering how I missed a good one↩

  45. so no pomodoro↩

  46. and probably physical↩

  47. which is my shockingly accurate gauge of my general well being↩

  48. Which is the point of nightly goals, use the remaining brain power before reset to decide. Transfer in morning in case light makes me change my mind↩

The End of a Series

First Published: 18 January 2025

Draft 2

After writing yesterday’s musing, a friend asked what the daily needs of each phytonutrient are. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem like an easy to answer question, since the textbook I’ve been relying on lists vitamins, not phytonutrients. It has, however, been updated in part, though tragically only for total energy expenditure. Time to see what Big Food1 thinks that I need.

I do also have a new favorite quote from the day: “data were insufficient to set a UL42 for arsenic. Although a UL was not determined for arsenic, there is no justification fro adding it to food or supplements” Interestingly: organic arsenic is usually fine. Inorganic arsenic (arsenite III or arsenate V), by contrast, “is an established human poison”.

So, what have we learned?

Dietary science is a lot of “people who eat like this tend to do better”, and I remember seeing a thing about how the way food is presented affects absorption of nutrients. It makes me feel better that I cannot fall into the trap of living my life by evidence based practice to the detriment of my day to day living, because there truly is not a lot of evidence.43 Well, this has been a fun journey. Tune in next time to see my recipe for bread44

Draft 1

A friend, upon reading yesterday’s musing, asked a very poignant question: how much of each phytonutrient do I actually need? Using our favorite textbook, we find that the actual chemicals are not listed, instead the vitamins are.

Instead of trusting the website that told me I need pretty colors, I’m actually just going to take this time and see what nutrients the government thinks that I need daily.48

Welp, time to go back and see what the USDA cares enough about to write a chapter on.

  1. one of the rare times I use this phrase where it’s accurate↩

  2. about 340 cals↩

  3. and women require 7 fewer↩

  4. I’ll look at all four values, knowing that the very active will likely never be relevant again, even if the top three might be↩

  5. which feels weird to put in dietary reference but↩

  6. which does explain why they updated it↩

  7. so curious what sub 1 is↩

  8. what about above that!↩

  9. I think that’s the assume you don’t move at all↩

  10. which I love as a concept, thinking about the fact that your basal needs are the entire basis for the increased costs↩

  11. this is a dangerous concept for me to be aware of, if only because I can start actually counting my movement in a variety of ways↩

  12. which makes sense, because I don’t tend to think of milk as fibrous↩

  13. which I assume is good↩

  14. wow that’s a range↩

  15. I have absolutely taken more than that↩

  16. originally had an s (a s?) instead of z↩

  17. tragically, mostly brassicas↩

  18. the latter half of the sentence is commentary↩

  19. so many b vitamins↩

  20. as is becoming a trend,↩

  21. commentary↩

  22. 1000 to 2500 mg↩

  23. 35 ug, estimated bc IR↩

  24. 900 to 10000 ug↩

  25. IR, 4-10 mg↩

  26. 150 to 1100 ug↩

  27. I knew this one! Comes from the soil which is why the Great Lakes are not healthy↩

  28. 410 mg, UL of 350, which is apparently only from pharmacological agents. Kind of funny still↩

  29. 8 to 45 mg, one of the rare cases where women have a higher one, and a significant one at that (18 mg)↩

  30. I will always be mad that this and Magnesium are both elements↩

  31. IR 2.3 to 11 mg↩

  32. 45 to 2000 ug↩

  33. upper limits cause reproductive issues in mice, not people, it comes from the soil↩

  34. mmmm matches↩

  35. 700 to 4000 mg↩

  36. IR, 4.7 g↩

  37. I never would have thought that I needed this, 55 to 400 ug↩

  38. IR, 1.5 to 2.3 g Na, 2.3 to 3.6 g Cl↩

  39. I do have to wonder why Phosphate wasn’t listed but↩

  40. 11 to 40 mg↩

  41. all UL and mg/day, B: 20, Ni: 1, V: 1.8↩

  42. upper limit↩

  43. in the sense that like if I do the generally normally accepted advice of “eat less processed food, lots of plant, and move around more”, I’ll probably be fine↩

  44. and a review!↩

  45. since I say mig I type mig, instead of mg↩

  46. read: Vitamin A↩

  47. assuming a seven to eight inch carrot↩

  48. these numbers are for males aged 19-30, but don’t really change a lot if you change that↩

  49. no weight↩

  50. the first one I’ve noticed increases as I grow older after 30. I wonder why↩

  51. typing insufficient research is hard, so I’m just abbreviating here on out↩

  52. how that differs from a gram, unsure↩

  53. Wild, I had no idea I was actually supposed to have any↩

  54. I hate typing microgram, and mu is not a latin letter, so I use its closest analog↩

  55. wow such a big number↩

  56. I wonder if there’s really any dietary source for chlorine outside of salt↩

  57. OH NO! I’ve learned that this is just normal data. I’ll have to look at each chapter for the weight based things↩

Dietary Needs Mostly Concluded

First Published: 17 January 2025

Draft 2: 17 January 2025. Realized that I want to make sure I’m getting the proper micronutrients from fruits and vegetables, and wanted to start listing that

I just finished meeting with a nutritionist. In general, the advice was good, practical, and not particularly enlightening.1 That being said, I was advised to generally eat more often, which is absolutely a good idea. I’d like to plan to start eating lunch and dinner daily, along with two snacks of peanuts and maybe a fruit. The macro breakdown in draft one shows me that’s probably doable, and so now it’s time to make sure I get my recommended plants.

Of course, frozen fruit is an equally viable option. The site claims I should shoot for about 4.5 cups a day of fruits and veggies9 The book I was using for macros does not provide specific guidance, so that seems like a reasonable enough goal. Writing my shopping list for next week, then:10

My lunch each day will shoot for 30 grams of protein, and I’m hoping for it to include:

The snack container, having just been measured, is about 3.5 oz, so my snack(s) will be:

Here we go!

Daily Notes:

I only drew once, on Sunday, but I did manage to write and send out a letter22.

Draft 1: 17 January 2025

23

I just finished meeting with a nutritionist!24 In general, there was nothing particularly life altering about the advice she gave. I feel mixed about that, as I tend to when no easy solutions present themselves.

On the one hand, it’s nice to know that I wasn’t just failing to do the proper research or draw the correct conclusions. On the other, it’s kind of frustrating to go into a situation with a  problem and leave the situation with the same problem.

That being said, though, there were three pieces of advice that she gave which I think may become helpful for me in the coming weeks.25

Other pieces of advice that I found useful, though less so:

Let’s see what peanuts29 are like in terms of their protein efficiency. Looks like it’s around 17030 calories per ounce, and about 7 grams of protein in that same space. Converting to grams, that means I’d need about 364 grams of peanuts a day, or about 13 oz.31 That’s really not bad!

So, assuming that I eat two meals32, if I’m awake for 16 hours a day, I should be eating at least two snacks. I’m going to start shooting for 3-5 ounces33 of peanuts at each of these snacks. That means I’ll be getting between 21 and 35 grams per snack, for a total of 42 to 70 grams per day. Oh, yeah ok if I can eat 10 ounces of peanuts a day, I should have no trouble finding the other 20 grams from somewhere. Looking at the price per gram of protein, it’s about 2 cents an ounce.34

Since I will generally be in my office from 8:30 to 535, I can do two snacks and a lunch36, which is great. Assuming that I can manage 25 grams of protein in the lunch37, I only need that much again for dinner! That’s so much easier, and if I make my lunch:

  1. not in a bad way, just in a “oh good I’m not horribly off base with my estimations”↩

  2. that I enjoy enough to consider having as part of a daily lunch or snack↩

  3. though other sources disagree with that↩

  4. which is not beta carotene, containing a hydroxyl group on one end.↩

  5. cancer stoppers I guess.↩

  6. make me life forever↩

  7. I wonder why those in particular↩

  8. onions, mmmm, keeps me from tumors↩

  9. nine servings, I imagine, though Harvard seems to disagree Green, vitamin C, and beta carotene seem to be the important things for that. Ah, one cup of each is considered a serving, other than fruit juice and dried fruit, which are both halved.↩

  10. this is more a journal entry than blog post, but↩

  11. maybe↩

  12. because I’m going for a snack board kind of vibe↩

  13. I forget the specific term↩

  14. I do also own green tea, which I should remember to consume during lunch↩

  15. about 20 grams of protein↩

  16. 10 grams protein↩

  17. probably prune↩

  18. stuffed? I never know what it means when people say a loaf is studded↩

  19. dietary info to come, might mean I need less of the chicken or cheese?↩

  20. about 24.5g, 600 calories (wow that’s a lot of calories↩

  21. and staying out too late↩

  22. also on Sunday↩

  23. did absolutely write 2024 at first, did have to correct myself↩

  24. there are a number of unseen benefits to continuing education. This was absolutely one of them↩

  25. no, “don’t worry too much” was not one of them↩

  26. When awake, though I didn’t ask about what happens when I wake up in the middle of the night↩

  27. I should also be eating breakfast, but that’s its own issue↩

  28. nuts and seeds were examples of high protein snacks↩

  29. the cheapest nut, by far↩

  30. plus minus ten↩

  31. I did not convert back, but I did redo the math without the conversion because I still consume my food in ounces, in general. Or, at least, I feel like I can estimate an ounce better than 30 grams, even though they’re the same amount↩

  32. because shooting for two a day is a good starting goal↩

  33. which is .75 to 1.25 cups, which might be FAR too much, but who knows↩

  34. which I only now realize I calculated in the second posting↩

  35. I feel like these hours are generally decent, and somewhat reflective of reality↩

  36. starting next week, since I’ll be able to do my pseudo meal prep↩

  37. I’m thinking part of rotissiere chicken, fruit, and probably bread (it took me far too long to remember that bread exists), which is a fun thing that is full of tactile sensation and also requires effectively no prep. Since I do also want to hit the other two kinds of vegetable (I don’t care about starchy, and peanuts are legumes)↩

Dietary Needs

First Published: 17 January 2025 (because I forgot to hit post)

Draft 1: 10 January 2025

Yesterday I went through some of the different ways that I could get sufficient protein.1 Since I’m2 not going to just consume all of my protein from a single source, I do technically have an NP problem, which is a variant of the knapsack problem. However, I’m looking for solutions that do not fit neatly into the normal computational framework, if only because more or less everything I could consume is functionally continuous, and the knapsack problem is meant for discrete entries.

Chicken, fish, and cheese are all similar in that I need to be eating about a pound a day of them in order to get my nutritional needs met. That’s a fair amount of volume, if nothing else. I can’t really imagine sitting down and eating a pound of any of them in a single sitting3

However, one piece of advice a friend gave me was to speak to a dietician at my school, which is apparently free. Rather than continue to worry about all of this, I’m going to try to do that instead.

Daily:

  1. as also kind of pointed out, though mostly implicitly, fat and carbohydrates are so minimal as to be trivially consumed.↩

  2. after much counseling from friends↩

  3. which is probably something that I would be told is bad.↩

Dietary Needs

First Published: 9 January 2025

Draft 2: 9 January 2024

My last draft really went off the rails, because I got too far into the biohacking mindset. At the base minimum, I should be consuming:

Below, we see that,1 at the absolute minimum, I can meet this in a smoothie that does this relatively easily. Since the fat and carbohydrates are incredibly simple to achieve, it’s worth considering what 90 grams of protein otherwise looks like. Common ways I get protein are:

To get 90 grams of protein from each of these sources, I would need to consume2:

In the future, I’ll hopefully figure out a way to take these numbers and construct a meal plan out of them.

Daily:

Draft 1: 9 January 2024

First, it appears that I was wrong in yesterday’s musing. The oil requirements are just straight up grams per day, which makes my life significantly easier. In order to hit my nutrition goals, I should be consuming at a minimum:

That is very little, and in total seems to add up12 to around 2300 calories. If I choose better oils for alpha linoleic acid13, that number drops to 1222 calories per day. If I price out my costs,14 to hit the minimum I need for nutrition:

Total cost for the base need smoothie comes out to around 7 dollars and 10 cents.

If we swap the gelatin out for egg whites, we get a little bit of carbs, but, assuming the cost is only in protein15, we can start pricing out the price per gram of protein for different foods:

Gelatin and egg whites are both about 1.6 grams per gram of protein, whey protein is about 1.1, and pinto beans are about 5, so it does require significantly more bean consumption. It also takes me well over the minimum carb load for the day, which also saves me 30 cents in sugar. It would, however, require consuming a full pound of beans18 each day. Egg whites probably strike a good balance of volume and cost.

Now that we have gone through this, we also need to remember the whole “there is a limit of calories I can, or at least should, consume in a day.” At the 3500 calorie mark, that means everything needs to be under 40 calories per gram of protein in order to be a valid source of all protein I consume.

Also, if I do the insane thing of bulk buying gelatin, I can get it for as cheap as 40 percent the cost, bringing it down to 3 cents per gram, which is honestly kind of tempting. It does, however, require purchasing 50 pounds of gelatin, which would serve me for around half a year. It would take us down to under three dollars a day.

According to the USDA, as long as I’m spending under 10 dollars and nine cents a day, I’m doing well.

This has absolutely degraded from the initial goal of figuring out how to feed myself well, for all that it would, without a doubt, be a very easy and effective way to get myself all of the nutrients I need in a day. I do wonder if I would be able to eat enough fruit and vegetable in a day to feel satiated.

  1. ooh an unconsidered benefit of drafts↩

  2. going off of USDA’s food search↩

  3. I assume the usual 2:1 water:rice ratio many use, and that the entirety of the water is into the rice, so I divide the USDA’s protein by 3↩

  4. assuming white long grain, which is my usual↩

  5. assuming the same water absorption↩

  6. assuming cooking doesn’t change the size much↩

  7. which, I do note, means that it’s almost all protein, since each gram of protein is 4↩

  8. same assumption as fish, which will go forward as needed, and assume that the grains expand the same tripling↩

  9. which weirdly gain a gram of protein when fried↩

  10. which according to Wikipedia at time of looking, is about half of corn oil, so 34 grams of that↩

  11. which wikipedia claims means about 160 grams of corn oil, or 4 grams of flaxseed or linseed oil↩

  12. assuming corn oil is my only oil choice↩

  13. better here meaning optimal↩

  14. assuming gelatin, sugar, corn oil and linseed oil all priced from my local grocery store that lists prices online↩

  15. true to a first order↩

  16. I’m remembering something about bioavailability, but that’s probably not too relevant, skimming an abstract, I see that all animal sources basically fine. Soy also approx 100, as is potato, interestingly. Oh wait, this is percent of amino acid intake, which have requirements in the mg/kg/day, which is so much less as to seem irrelevant to me; I’ll just trust protein labels.↩

  17. this article claims it misses lysine, threonine, and methionine.↩

  18. raw, then cooked↩

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