A Conclusion to Science as Mysticism

First Published: 2024 January 6

Draft 7: 6 January 2024

d]

The line between passion and obsession is the point where pleasure turns to pain. Amateur means unpracticed and unskilled, not because love means that you cannot improve, but because love is fundamentally healthy. To become virtuosic requires moving well beyond the point of love, growing obsessed with the very smallest minutiae in a subject. A mystic is more like a great musician or a groundbreaking scientist than any of their followers are like them.

Obsession and passion are also the difference between knowledge and truth.¹ Knowledge is simple. Knowledge is facts and figures. When we read and respond to the writings of the great thinkers, or when we play the notation that some great musician laid down, we are confronted with knowledge. When we grasp in the darkness, gathering and creating, we work with knowledge.

Knowledge is comfortable. It is practicing scales for hours on end, until the instrument feels like an extension of your own hands. It is cutting pounds upon pounds of carrots identically, until it is easier to julienne one than do anything else. Why do we spend our lives working with on these small minutiae? We work with them because we must.

The Prophet Jeremiah puts it in a striking way. “I say I will not mention him, I will no longer speak in his name. But then it is as if fire is burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary holding back, I cannot!”² That is to say, truth is not something you get to choose. Truth grasps you and forces you to share what you have learned. It is the difference between shining a light in a dark room and a bolt of lightning illuminating the entire space. One is active, and the other is passive.

It is here that the real difference between knowledge and truth comes. Knowledge is something we seek, something we can create or discover.³ Calculus today is knowledge. Nearly every college student for generations has been expected to understand it. Literacy today is knowledge.

Calculus in the time of Zeno, however, would have been truth. Without calculus, Zeno was able to formulate any number of real and unsolvable paradoxes. When Newton and Leibniz discovered calculus, they did something that no one before had been able to do.⁵

When a mystic sees a vision of the world, they feel compelled to share it. The reasons for their compulsions are as varied as the mysteries they reveal. However, if they do not share it, the truth dies with them. A scientific invention, unless shared, does no good to the world.

Truth becomes knowledge when it moves from the individual reception to the broader person. The mystic, the poet, the scientist, and the musician all are given a revelation. That revelation spreads, and the magic is gone.

¹ wow I’m actually really loving this so far

² Jeremiah 20:9

³ depending on your belief structure and what specific piece of knowledge we’re constructing. I think that as I’ve grown older I more and more believe that there are very few absolutes. Someone can create the most optimal implementation of an algorithm in a language on a machine, but there is an optimal way to sort in general that we have to find⁴

⁴ Or maybe we’ve already found it, I guess. I’m not particularly up to date on anything computer related. I doubt that we’ve found a proof for something generally optimized, but I refuse to look it up because I want to stay on track

⁵ I think that I remember reading that some non European also discovered calculus at some point, but that does kind of add to the point that I’m trying to build to, which is that truth only becomes knowledge once spread. I only realize now that my goal was to do that

Draft 6: 6 January 2024

The difference between science and Science is the difference between music and Music or religion and Religion. At its core, it is the difference between truth and Truth. It is the difference between passion and obsession. It is, in short, the difference between knowledge and revelation.

Knowledge is simple. It is facts and figures. We can express it in theorems and proofs. Calculus today is knowledge. Almost anyone can learn calculus today. Calculus was once revelation.

On the other side of experiential knowledge, the realm of virtuosity is constantly pushing forward. In one generation, we have Jimmy Hendrix, who is frequently called the best rock musician ever. Now that the music has been transcribed, however, anyone can learn and play it.

I feel like this is getting away from me again.

Draft 5: 6 January 2024

One of the hardest questions you can ask a musician is what makes something music. Like basically any definition, you cannot draw a boundary without cutting out something that is music or including something that is not. Everyone has their own definitions of music as well, and one person’s music is another’s noise.

Draft 4: 6 January 2024

c]

In the modern world, knowledge can be broken into any number of binaries. Most commonly, though, I see truths¹ as broken into subjective and the objective. We have the objective truths we find in science, where the speed of light or the boiling point of water is constant. On the other side of this coin, we have knowledge which is only true for the individual. Think of the way that a song may remind one person of heartbreak and another of their first love. The objective and subjective may be a helpful distinction in many regards, but there are so many places that it is lacking.

No this is bad

¹ truth and knowledge will be interchangeable in the rest of this musing

Draft 3: 6 January 2024

The core question behind any inquiry is what it means to gather new knowledge. Are we shining lights into a dark room, illuminating what is already there? Or, are we forcing a wave function to collapse, creating truth from the realm of possibilities? Whether knowledge is created or discovered, however, both of these approaches presume that new knowledge comes from an active source.

To be sure, there are any number of places where we do, in fact, gather knowledge in an active form. As a scientist, much of the work that I and every other scientist do is bean counting. As a musician, almost all of what I do is practicing scales and other rote learning. Artists need to practice drawing lines over and over in order to be able to transfer their thoughts onto the page.

However, when we speak of art or music or science, we are not speaking of these repetitive practices. While we need these small details in order to fully illuminate our space, but that is not what we care about. What we care about it the new rooms, rather than the note taking.

No no no this is bad.

I need to plot out what I want to say. What do I want to say here?

Conclusion needs to be “knowledge is passively received”. How do I get there, though?

Ok I can talk about the fact that we think of the two sides of learning as like science and art. The two sides are instead knowledge received and knowledge taken. Knowledge received is fundamentally deeper. Knowledge received can be shared and given away. That’s great. Maybe see something there? Like ideas once learned are able to be shared and seem almost obvious.

See if that works for the next draft?

Draft 2: 4 January 2024

b] Mysticism and science are interrelated through a weird network. Wait wait, I have an idea.

When mystics share their findings, we get religions and new philosophies. As the information spreads, it becomes less explosive and therefore more up to questioning. You cannot question a mystic about what they saw. What you can do, however, is ask someone three hundred years later about the consequences of what the interpretations of their experience has caused. That can be formalized into philosophy.

Mathematics, as we all know, is a form of philosophy.

On the other end, a scientist has a sudden inspiration for an experiment. Because science requires rigor, that idea is then formalized out into a proof or an experiment that’s actually run. When we continue to try to understand what’s happening, we get to mathematics?¹

Let us try again.

I already have the framing, which is important. What I’ve struggled with, however, is the who cares, the takeaway. What does it mean or matter if there is an overlap between the two?

Looking at yesterday’s drafting, I think that I was going to try the framing of knowledge being discovered rather than created. Then there’s the question I have to ask myself, which is how to connect the two. Even though I do think that the Catholic Church is True, I don’t know if I want to explicitly make the musing Catholic. I don’t know why, but I have this gut instinct that it’s something like how I feel like it’s intellectually lazy to just go “ipso facto, Catholics are right”.

WAIT!

As I was writing there at the end yesterday I had the connection to eldritch knowledge. Knowledge spreads like a fire. Lies spread like a fire.

Flames illuminate, sending light further into the darkness, heating and illuminating more space for fire to spread.²

A common thread in science fiction is the idea of forbidden knowledge. More than that, though, nearly every society has had some variation on restriction of knowledge. No, I don’t think that leaning into the forbidden aspect is where I want to go.

Many cultures have a version of a Promethean myth. Humanity was gifted fire.

No, I continue to circle this damned³ conclusion, unable to reach it. I feel as though the conclusion is staring at me from behind a stained glass window, just distorted enough that I cannot see more than its vaguest outlines. There’s a fun joke there here where I can do the whole “I would have a conclusion to share, but I haven’t gotten the revelation yet.”

What are things that we can take away? Truth versus a truth?

There’s the comment that the friend made to me, which went something like “we’re always told there’s only one right answer in math and science, but that’s not true.” It is true, though, but there are a lot of questions that are subtly different with vastly different answers. I tried to get to that for why and how.

In rubber ducking a friend,⁴ they had the idea of being able to refuse knowledge, but not revelation.⁵ We also came to the idea that the coins are not science and humanities, but revelation and busywork. I think that something about refusing knowledge is an idea for a takeaway. Another idea of a takeaway is that, if knowledge is something we experience, then great⁶ poets are not separated from great scientists by anything except for what revelation they were given.

Oh wait. Wait.

Wait.

Ok so if knowledge is something that we discover, rather than create, then how do we discover? Discover is the wrong word, I think. There we go. We don’t discover truth, truth is revealed to us.⁷ This feels really good, but I suppose we’ll see what rubber duck⁸ says. Update: approved! Great, so now we just have to write the musing.

¹ Ugh that’s so dumb I don’t quite know what I’m trying to get at, but this certainly isn’t it

² hmm, the metaphor is starting to lose its coherence, and I am getting far too into the poetic, rather than illuminating my goal.

³ interesting how I only feel as though I could put profanity in this blog when I fall into a poetic form

⁴ where you basically just talk to something inanimate to find an answer. In this case, I do it to a person, who often has great insights of their own

⁵ who then also required me to cite, because plagiarism is bad

⁶ or really any, but I feel like starting with great is a safer line of inquiry

⁷ Passive voice intentional here, because the point is that this type of knowledge is not obtained but received

⁸ there is an idea that we could have recurring people in my life show up as the same nickname over and over, but idk if we’ll do that

Draft 1: 3 January 2024

a] I recently mused about the fact that there is a shocking overlap between mysticism and science. Or, at least, I mused about the way that I consider the two fundamentally related. In a beautiful example of metacommentary¹ , the next day’s posting was about the fact that I cannot find a way to write conclusions. I haven’t been satisfied with the way that the science and mysticism post turned out, and it’s been playing in the back of my mind on some level since.

Today, I met a friend for coffee, and we ended up talking a little bit about the theory of mathematics. One of the big questions in my view of theory of mathematics is whether mathematics is discovered or created. I then connected it quickly to an alleged early Irish musical claim, which is that all the Irish airs were given to humans by the Tuatha.

I don’t know if I can quite put the dots together right now, but there’s no place to try like here. So, I’ve always been one of the sort who believes that mathematics are discovered, rather than created. There’s the idea of shining a light into a dark room. We steadily see more of reality, even if mathematics is an orthogonal reality to the real real world.²

Ok so let’s see if we can’t do something with that. Mathematics is³ , in many regards, the intersection of science and religion, being as it is one of the purest forms of philosophy. No, that isn’t quite what I wanted to say.

The friend mentioned something about how artists are famous for working under altered states, often with drugs. Mathematicians, similarly, often describe their great discoveries as though they have been themselves under a trance like state. However, just as musicians can share their songs with us even after they’ve come down from a high, the truths revealed to us by science are equally shareable. There’s something about the whole “forbidden eldritch knowledge” that I’ve always thought about, especially ¹ I really do need to reduce my usage of meta, for all that it remains an accurate representation of what I mean. It’s commentary without being explicit? Ok so there’s probably a better way of phrasing, but I don’t want to put the work in on it right now

² I’m sure that there’s another way to describe this, and should revise it in a future revision, but for now I’m just trying to get ideas down onto the page

³ are? I never know how plural the word mathematics is

Flash Fiction Friday

First Published: 2024 January 5

Draft 1

a]

Another Friday, which means that it’s time for another musing on Flash Fiction Friday. This week’s prompt is a little late, in my opinion, but is “how it ends”. There is a lot that I can do with that prompt.

Given the album work I’m doing, something on the topic of star death or heat death of the universe is tempting. Of course, the idea of writing a villanelle inspired by do not go gentle into that good night remains something that I want to do. Villanelle remains a poetic form that I am in love with, if only because there’s something really inherently intense in the form. Something from the hollow men also seems tempting, though that is just because the text is so, so very into the public consciousness.

That being said¹ , I do think that there’s something good about looking far smaller. Rather than taking the death of everything and animating it, it could be fun to turn the end of something small into a larger picture. Things that end include relationships, classes, friendships, lives.

I guess one immediate question is whether I want this to be poetry or prose. I haven’t been writing a lot of poetry lately,² and I do want to get into song writing. Maybe trying to do something that’s more elevated prose?³

I could try doing a villanelle inspired piece of prose? No, I don’t think that would work. What makes a villanelle so compelling is the fact that it is only nineteen lines and full of repetition.

Having now come back about an hour later, I find that I’m inspired also by a song that my band⁴ played “Til Forever Falls Apart”⁵ That’s a song about some nebulous end, but I think that it’s about death? Or maybe the potential of death. The group also did “I Will Follow You Into the Dark” at the same time, and I get those two songs stuck in my head together.⁶ That song is more explicitly about a murder suicide pact, which is its own form of romance.

So, based on my musing so far, it does really seem as though my muse wants me to be writing poetry, probably about death and related to romance. Since I don’t think that the album will be about romance,⁷ I don’t have to worry about putting out this set of lyric. Since it’s going to be anything I want, I want a villanelle.

That’s AbA’, abA, abA’, abA, abA’, abAA’.

That is, even though the entire poem is nineteen lines long, I only have to generate 13 lines of rhyming meter, five in the b rhyme and seven in the a. I will have to break myself of the habit of wanting perfectly strict meter here, because villanelles sound way too sing songy when written in meter.⁸ Nothing left to do but try to write it, I suppose. Given that the flash fiction minimum is 100 words, I do need to have lines that average out to at least 5 words a piece, which is hardly a struggle usually.

Having now written a draft and sent it to a fantastic and eloquent friend, the friend mentioned no small number of issues with the poem. Chief among them, I chose an incredibly trite refrain, and I did not think of any meter at all. Now almost two hours later, however, I have a completely different poem that is miles away better than where I started. All of the improvement is due to the fact that my friend patiently led me to water, then, when I was about to collapse from thirst, reminded me it was there.⁸

There’s really not much more for me to talk about, so that’s nice. Goodnight all!

• Blog? This is a little more disjoint than I would like

• BiaY and CCCiaY? See yesterday’s answer

• Jeb? See yesterday’s answer.

• Album? Oh gosh I learned that I am not prepared to write the lyrics to my song

• Exercise? I did not the bare minimum, but I did some light cardio for like an hour!⁹

• Stretch? Just a tiny bit.

• Book on Craft? A little! I also bought a book light which means I can read it tonight.

• Library Books? I saw it again.

• Guitar? I saw it, moved it, and did not touch it.

• Prayed? Eh!

• Water? I just remembered that I’m sitting next to a water bottle

What I Read and Wrote

First Published: 2024 January 5 (because I forgot to post, not bc forgot to write.

Draft 1

It’s been another week, which means that I get this week’s version of what I’ve been reading and writing. I’ve read basically nothing over the past week, which is a little sad. It is also Christmastide still, so I guess that it doesn’t surprise me that much, and it isn’t really that bad of a thing.

However, I did just start reading the extended Percy Jackson Universe book about Nico and Will, so we’ll see how fun that ends up being. Once I’ve finished that, it will probably be more or less time for me to go back to the actual reading goals that I have.

In terms of writing, I mused about the album that I’d like to write, and I’ve started thinking about the album’s content. I’ve also managed to continue with daily musings, filled a few pages in my lab notebook with notes, and I’ve written two chapters of my web novel.¹ I think that’s everything!

Oh wait! I’ve also been working on some of my Saturday musings. That really is everything, which is a little bit disheartening, but I suppose doing this every week should hopefully keep me at least somewhat accountable for how much I’m reading and writing. Time to do another draft of one of the musings, I suppose.

• Blog? There’s this, and also the next draft on the Saturday musings that I’m going to try.

• BiaY and CCCiaY? Nope, sadly. Maybe tomorrow, though.

• Jeb? SHOOT. Tomorrow, I hope.

• Album? I want to do some work on the song writing after this post, but I’m not sure whether that’s going to happen after I get the musing draft.

• Exercise? I did the bare minimum, which is what I’ve set as my daily goals

• Stretch? I have stretched a little bit, which is great. I’d like to do more, but even the minute or so that I did today is enough to help at the point that I’m at.

• Book on Craft? Ugh, I really don’t want to have not read it for so long. Maybe if I’m smart and lucky I’ll find time ot write it soon.

• Library Books? I looked at them, which is more than I’ve done in a few days.

• Guitar? Nope, sadly enough. I looked at it and moved it out of the way, though, which feels worse than nothing.

• Prayed? A little better. I fond that I do a better job praying when I am failing to sleep.

• Water? A little bit, which is nice. I should try to drink more, which I don’t feel great about, because there’s far more water that I should drink.

Album Update

First Published: 2024 January 5 (because I forgot to post, not bc forgot to write.

Draft 1

Today is the first Wednesday of the year. As a result, it is the first in my series¹ of reflections on the album that I am going to have written, recorded, and released by my 26th birthday.³ I spent half an hour or so this morning unplugged and thinking about what I might want to have an album be about.

Some of my readers might know that I have really only written a few songs in recent years.⁴ The song that’s received the most praise is a song that I never really gave a title to. Its working title is⁵ “Starfall,” which prompted an idea for how I could arrange the album.

As my readers may also know, I have been⁶ giving talks on space. And so, like every scientist interested in art, I decided to mix the two. My album will be 11 songs based around the birth, formation, life, and death of a star. I’ve planned it to be the following songs:

1. Emptiness I

2. Diffuse Cloud

3. Dense Cloud

4. Pressure

5. Ignition

6. Emptiness II

7. Planet Formation

8. Homeostasis

9. Pressure Redux

10. Nova

11. Emptiness III

Of course, all of these names are significantly less than finalized. My idea is to write it as a triptych, with the first four, second four, and final three songs as smaller acts within the piece. I’m hoping to have the Emptiness songs be in communication with each other.

There is, obviously, more to an album than what the album specifically is about. The way that messages are conveyed and the metameaning⁷ are just as important as the text and music of the songs themselves. I haven’t fully decided what I want the album to be about in that sense, though I do think that I want it to be about a journey.

I’ve visualized the first act as the period(s) of a life where you become aware of the influences that have brought you to where you are today. As Pressure breaks to Ignition, we reach the second act, where a person sees their own place in the world, distinct from those influences, though obviously still aware of their impact. Finally, as Homeostasis gives way down to Pressure again, we see the impacts that we have on the world around us.

A star is born from the ashes of a dead star. Its own ashes eventually become the cradle for another star to be born. Between those, it exists as a bright point of a light, plasma, and potentially life.

Of course, I haven’t really figured out to what extent I want the pieces themselves to be about stars and star formation. I think that, on some level, at least, I want to reference the stages of the star’s life in each song. However, much like Starfall uses the idea of gravity to discuss a failed relationship, I think that the astronomical concepts may end up better used as framing metaphors for the individual songs. A part of me wants there to be a binary star, which could work for the relationship aspect.

A healthy partnership, after all, is nothing like a planet orbiting a star. There are probably relationships that I can think of to make the idea of planets around a star a metaphor for something, but I’m not sure what just yet.

So, now that I have the framework, I need to start working on the music. I think that I’ll work on the set points of the album: Emptiness, and see if that helps me with the goals? That could be something good.

Anyways, I realize that I have also not been doing my daily reflections for the month. Might as well do that here.⁸ Goals for January:

• Keep up on BiaY and CCCiaY.

• Keep blogging daily

• Get ahead on Jeb

• Write and record at least a song

• Exercise and stretch more

• Finish the book on craft

• Read and/or return ideally three of the library books that I have checked out.

• Play guitar more

• Pray better

• Drink more water

That means that my daily reflection should be:

• Blog?

• BiaY and CCCiaY?

• Jeb?

• Album?

• Exercise?

• Stretch?

• Book on Craft?

• Library Books?

• Guitar?

• Prayed?

• Water?

I feel like most of the goals are best worked on after I return from my familial home. That being said, my minimal exercise has been going well, I’ve been blogging, and today is the first day in a while that I have not written an entire chapter of the Jeb. As demonstrated, I have made some progress on the Album⁹ , and tomorrow I plan to do more of the actual research work. Reading needs to be more of a priority for me, but I don’t quite know how to make it one.

¹ to be²

² hopefully, at least, but I suppose that we’ll see

³ which wow now that I’ve written it out like that, it really sounds like a lot

⁴ I keep wanting to say that I’ve only written a few songs, and then I remember that I’ve written at least a dozen or so songs for solo voice. It’s just that many of them reflect the fact that I am constantly learning and growing in my ability to create. In order to be where I am now, then, I needed to have written worse music.

⁵ was? will forever be because I’m not including it on the album

⁶ have and will likely continue, which I guess means that present perfect is the right tense? I think

⁷ wow I should make sure that I stop relying on the prefix meta so much

⁸ I.e. I will be doing it here

⁹ henceforth written with a capital A on this blog

Footnote Frenzy Continued

First Published: 2024 January 2

Draft 1

a] At the beginning of the ’blog, I mentioned that one of my great inspirations for writing this was my father.¹

One of the² most striking pieces of his blog is the use of footnotes. That is, in addition to using footnotes,⁵ he also uses end notes which are called from other end notes.⁶ Now, like many people exploring a medium, he has done any number of interesting things with these end notes.⁸

As someone trying to emulate a lot of his blog,¹⁰ I also wanted nested footnotes. It turns out that, while I am not unique in this request, I am close to it. There appears to be a single reason that style guides believe that footnotes or end notes¹¹ can be reasonably nested. As we know¹² , there are only a few circumstances that most style guides will accept footnotes.

Obviously, citations can go there in some style guides, but there is absolutely no reason that you would need a footnote from a citation.¹³ Otherwise, asides are sometimes welcome in the footnote, though, of course, it is bad for bonus thoughts to have their own bonus thoughts in most formal writing. Finally, translator’s notes or editorial comments on editorial or translated editions, counterrespectively,¹⁴ are allowed end or footnotes. I’m sure that some of you have pieced together where the nested footnote is allowed. A translator’s note on a translated editorial piece may need to reference an aside as an aside.

These tend to be ranked, however. They are nested, so there is a clear sense of ownership between first level and second level footnotes. I don’t like that. To me, there are three levels of importance in the words within a text: main text, footnote, and not included.¹⁵ I want footnotes referenced in other footnotes to be on the same level.

Unfortunately, as I’ve mentioned a few times on here, this ’blog¹⁷ is written in LaTeX which is then compiled into HTML. LaTeX generally does not have issues with nesting of footnotes, but pandoc does not support it natively. For a while, I thought that I might need to switch to Markdown. Thankfully, I am related to people who are not just infinitely better at their domains than I am, but are also incredibly skilled in those domains on an objective level. My father was willing and able over break to figure out how to let nested end notes be a thing in my writings without forcing me to change from LaTeX. It does require a little bit of change, but that isn’t too much.¹⁸ One benefit will definitely be that the text will stay cleaner, because the bonus thoughts will keep being nested somewhere else.¹⁹

For other examples of endnotes used in creative ways, I have been told the book²⁰ “House of Leaves” does a wonderful job exploring the limits of the written page.

Yearly Reflection

First Published: 2024 January 1

Draft 2

Happy New Year! It has been basically a year to the day since my last yearly reflection. Last year I did five things that I was excited for and five things that I was excited to have done in the previous year. So, five things that I am excited for in the upcoming year:

• Publishing my first first author paper

• Giving an invited lecture at a university

• I’m excited to grow in my relationships¹

• I’m once again also excited to watch my little brother graduate

• I’m excited to record an album

Five things not on last year’s list that I’m glad I did,

• I got to explore my new home state and visit a lot of the state parks in it as outreach!

• I got to give a lecture to a classroom which is only slightly different than the last item but felt significantly different.

• I did open mics!

• I kind of became a computational chemist

• I got much better at writing! Both in terms of content and in terms of quality.²

Last year I also had five items that I was excited for!

• Passing my third year exam. I did it!

• Self publishing a book. I have more than a thousand followers, which is really exciting!

• Taking an improv class. I sadly didn’t get around to it.

• Watching my littlest brother graduate. It was fantastic.

• Growing in my relationships. I did! It was very rewarding, and I am very glad that I did it.

I had a number of goals for last year, and I generally did not do a great job with them.³

This upcoming year, as with every year, I have any number of goals, however (un)reasonable they may be.

• Blog Daily⁴

• Finish the research for my dissertation⁵

• Make significant progress on writing my thesis

• Figure out what I want to do after graduate school

• Apply to whatever I want to do next

• I would like to finish the book on craft that I’ve started and then read the ones that I was gifted this past Christmas

• I want to read through the books that I’ve checked out

• I would like to be better at putting myself out there

• Write and record an album

• Do BiaY and CCCiaY. It should be easier because I can talk to a family member about them

• Be better at exercise

• Learn to weave

• Learn to spin yarn

• Learn a polka on the accordion

• Swim a mile

• Be better about exercise

• Improve at prayer.

That’s far more than I think might be reasonable, and so I will hope that I can make it through everything, increasing in productivity constantly.

Let’s move on to the other portion of the reflection, which is the monthly reflection. I think that monthly goals remain useful for constructing my month in the way that I would like to live it.

Goals for the upcoming month:

• Finish at least three of the books that have been sitting maligned on my “Currently Reading” shelf. I did it! I think that I even cleared through more than three of them.

• On a related note, read two of the books that I’ve checked out from the library. I don’t think that I did a good job with that, but I did read like a third of one book. I then found like another five or ten that I want to read, which isn’t great.

• Following that line of thought, I want to spend my time more intentionally. I did a better job with it, even though it wasn’t super intentional.

• I want to write a sonnet every day. I wrote a lot of sonnets, and I even revised a fair few of them

• I want to read a book on the craft of writing start to finish. I had accepted that I might not finish this book at the end of the month, which is good, because I didn’t do it. Hopefully next month.

• Get better at prayer. I really did not.

• Clean my home. I think that I did improve the home at least a little bit.

• Stretch and do some other form of exercise every day. Oof, I fell off this wagon.

• Get better at touch typing. I did! My words per minute has grown much higher, and I hope that I wil continue to improve.

• Write letters to friends. I wrote a few of them, which is nice!

• Get ahead on Jeb. OOf, I did not get ahead of the book, which is ok.

• Get better at embroidery. I did get better! I think that I could have done better, but it’s ok.

• Play guitar every day. I did play guitar more often! Even though I didn’t get there all the way, I tried my hardest, and that counts for something.

• I want to keep up the daily blogging. I kept up with it! Yay!

• I want to finish a full draft of the paper I’m working on. I did not, which is sad enough.

• I want to drink more water. I don’t think that I drank very much water, sadly enough.

Anyways, goals for the upcoming month, which should hopefully reflect my goals for the upcoming year.

• Keep up on BiaY and CCCiaY. If I want to egt there at the end of the year, I need to start there.

• Keep blogging daily

• Get ahead on Jeb

• Write and record at least a song

• Exercise and stretch more

• Finish the book on craft

• Read and/or return at least three of the library books that I have checked out. Three might be far too many, but hopefully at least one of them, maybe two?

• Play guitar more

• Pray better

• Drink more water

Draft 1

So, it’s been a year.⁶ I’m planning to work on this in a few drafts, so let’s take a page from last year’s yearly reflection and do five things I was grateful for last year and five things I’m excited for this year.

Last year I thought that I would be excited for:

• Passing my third year exam. I did it! I’m very proud of myself, and it’s wild that I’m now a dissertator

• Self publishing a book. As of the time that I’m drafting this right now, I’m sitting at just under three hundred and fifty thousand words, I have 1351 followers, and my chapters have been read an average of over four thousand times each.⁷ It’s been a great experience, and I have definitely been forced⁸ to reflect on myself based on how the writing I put out is received.

• Taking an improv class. Sadly, this never happened. I do think that I went to an improv show last year, which was fun. Hopefully I’ll find a time with my friend to go to improv class this year.

• Watching my littlest brother graduate. He did! It was fantastic to get to watch him, and it was really great getting to spend time with family and see him in his element.

• Growing in my relationships. Oh boy did I! I started being deliberate about writing letters to friends, and I made an effort to stay in touch with a lot of people. I think that they have by and large been successful goals, though I’ve also finally come to the realization that I don’t have to be friends with everyone. Some people will dislike me for who I am, and that’s ok.⁹

All of those tasks that I did accomplish were things that I am glad I did. Other highlights from the year,¹⁰

• I got to explore my new home state and visit a lot of the state parks in it as outreach!

• I got to give a lecture to a classroom¹¹

• I did open mics!

• I kind of became a computational chemist

• I got much better at writing! Both in terms of content and in terms of quality.¹²

That is all very exciting! What am I looking forward to in 2024?

• Publishing a first author paper!¹³

• Growing in my relationships.¹⁴

• Giving an invited talk at a university¹⁵

• I’m excited to watch my littlest brother graduate again!¹⁶

• I’m excited to write and put out an album.¹⁷

Ok cool, that also includes some of my goals for 2024. Turns out I did set goals for 2023, I just put them in a separate document. My goals last year were to:

• Blog Daily. I did better at that towards the end of the year, but I think that I averaged somewhere like one day in three overall.¹⁸

• Do BiaY and CCCiaY. I completely dropped the ball on both of these. I do think that they’re important, and a family member is doing them, so that should help be a motivator.

• I wanted to be better about exercise. I think that I ebbed and flowed in that goal over the course of the year. I’m generally pretty ok with that fact, though. I have higher priorities, and I’m comfortable with that fact.

• I wanted to write more and varied forms of poetry and prose. I think that I generally did a pretty good job of writing more, for all that I kind of dropped the ball on the poetry. I think that I did do a pretty good job with varied forms of prose.¹⁹

• I wanted to practice music more. Again, this is a goal that ebbed and flowed, but I would like it to flow more than ebb this coming year.

• I wanted to try monthly, quarterly, and yearly goals. I generally did alright²⁰ with the monthly goals, but I gave up on quarterly goals almost instantly and never really referenced the yearly goals.

Last year I wanted to make an effort to learn species counterpoint better. I don’t think that this is a goal that I am going to take with me to 2024. I’ve briefly talked about it before, but to recap: I do want to compose, but mostly for my own solo performance, rather than traditional choral composition. I don’t think that there are enough hours in the day, days in the week, or weeks in the year for me to explore everything that I want, so I need to prioritize.

What else are things that I want to work on or do this year?

I said in my 25 for 25 post that I want to learn how to weave, swim a mile, take an improv class, learn a polka on the accordion, and spin yarn. Those all remain things that I think that I want to do. Let’s see what I think that I would need to accomplish each of the tasks:

• Learn to weave: sign up for a class with my friend who also wants to learn how to weave

• Swim a mile: Start swimming regularly, focusing on just swimming

• Take an improv class: force my schedule to overlap with the friend I want to take the course with and the course itself

• Learn a polka on the accordion: get my accordion back and look up an easy polka for it

• Spin Yarn: either use the kit that I have or sign up to take a class with a friend

What else do I want to accomplish?

• I would like to figure out what I want to do after graduate school

• I would like to finish at least most of my thesis research

• I would like to make significant progress on writing my thesis

• I don’t think that I want to do NaNoWriMo again. It was fun the past few years, but I know myself now well enough to know that the way I should grow as a writer is by writing better, not necessarily writing more.

• On that note, I would like to finish the book on craft and read at least the other books that my friends have given me for Christmas.²¹

• I would like to read through a lot of the books that I’ve checked out, and I would like to be able to return them with the knowledge in my mind

• I would like to be better at putting myself out there, at least in terms of presenting a genuine version of myself more readily.

• I would like to apply for a job in whatever field I end up deciding feels right for my next steps

Wow that’s a lot of things that I want to do. I guess that I should either reduce the goals or increase my productivity. Those both sound like a lot of work, so we’ll see what ends up happening. For now, time to look away from this and do work for the day, rather than looking months into the future.

Reflections on Today’s Gospel

First Published: 2023 December 31

Draft 2

Today is the Feast of the Holy Family. There are a number of optional readings today, which means that there is no way that I would be able to discuss every variation on the readings. Instead, I am going to reflect on the readings that were read at the Mass I went to today.

Year B’s version of the first and second readings focus on Abram turned Abraham. We see his conversation with the Lord, where he bemoans the fact that all of his blessings will fall to his servant, rather than one of his descendants. This conversation is striking to me for a variety of reasons.

First, the G-d of the Old Testament, for all that we talk about the anger, is also a kind and loving Father. I could never imagine a Greek myth where someone complains to Zeus about the way that they have not been blessed the way that they wanted to be. Of course, the Greek gods are gods in a very different sense than the Almighty. I don’t need to go into that, but it is something that I thought about as I started redrafting this musing.

Second, the Lord assures Abraham that his children will be as countless as the stars. As a child, that felt interesting to me, because it seemed like we should be able to count the stars. Or, at least, there is a way to count all the stars that the naked eye can see in the night sky.¹ Similarly, there is, in theory, a way to measure all of the biological descendants of Abraham. We could genetically sequence the world and find all of his living children, at least.

However, the stars in the sky are far more than the stars that we can count. One of the biggest discoveries of Hubble was that there is no such thing as empty space. For those who don’t know, one of Hubble’s projects was staring into a dark void, previously thought to be empty space. What it found was more and more dimmer and darker stars. Similarly, as the priest reminded us during his homily today, all Christians are adopted children of Abraham.

The second reading reminds us of the many ways that the Old Testament prefigures the new. Abraham is willing to trust his son, his only child with Sarah his wife,² to the Lord. When the Lord says that the is to kill his son, Abraham trusts that he could bring his son back from the dead. Thankfully, however, the Lord does not require Abraham to go through with the sacrifice. In the New Testament, however, the Lord does give up his only son.

I’ve seen discussions of the Binding of Issac which point out that Abraham was ancient when he was asked to kill his child. There was no way, the commenters claim, for Abraham to overpower his child. That is, his child went to the sacrifice willingly. That doesn’t directly relate to the Gospel today, but it feels at least somewhat relevant.

Anyways, time to move to the Gospel. This passage, like one of the readings from Luke a few weeks ago, contains one of the Canticles that we use frequently. We have the Canticle of Simeon. The Canticle of Simeon, like the Canticle of Mary, is a song of praise to the Lord. Today’s reading notes that Simeon is full of the Holy Spirit as he says the words.

It is also important to note that Christ is introduced to the Jewish people according to custom. For all that modern Catholicism tends to overlook a lot of the way that Christ existed as a Jew in the Second Temple Era, it was a vital part of the early Christian theology. Christ was brought into the Temple, the same way that every other Jewish boy child would have been.

However, this entry to the Temple is not entirely filled with joy. A prophetess of the Lord sees Mary and tells her that a sword shall pierce her heart.

Sometimes I think about the song “Mary did you Know?” It’s often unpopular among the theologically inclined, because the answers to most of the questions are yes. For all that these complaints are valid, I do think that there’s something really powerful in knowing that Mary spent 33 years with her son, knowing the entire time that he would be murdered before she would die. It is often said that the worst fear a parent has is outliving their child. I cannot even imagine what it would be like to not only outlive your child, but to watch him grow and develop knowing, the same way that you know the Lord is G-d, that he will die before you. Anyways, I think that’s as far as I can get in understanding the readings right now. I’ve still got some hours until the New Year³, so there’s always a chance that I’ll be inspired to write more in the upcoming time. If not, I’m pretty ok with where I’ve gotten.

Draft 1, Realized there’s some critical framing errors

I found out today that there are optional first and second readings for Years B and C for today’s readings.⁴ In the Year B readings, we focus on Abram⁵ and the promise the Lord gave him, that he would have descendants as countless as the stars. As a person tangential to astronomy, that’s an interesting thought to me. Every time we look in what should be a dark region, we see more stars, fainter and further away.

The Second Reading comes from St. Paul, who reminds us of the first reading. Abraham is gifted children countless beyond any number because of his trust in the Lord.

On Faith and Reason

First Published: 2023 December 30

Draft 2: 30 December

N.B. In the interest of showing chronology of my thoughts, any rough drafts will end where I end them on a given day and start as a new section or draft afterwards.

The phrase Fides et Ratio means many things to many different people. To those who are not Catholic and speak¹ no Latin, the phrase likely means nothing. To those who know Latin, it translates perfectly to Faith and Reason.² For those who are familiar with their Papal Encyclicals³, it is the opening phrase⁴ to Pope Sain John Paul II’s writing on the way that faith and reason⁵ overlap. It is also the name of any number of catholic and catholic adjacent groups who focus on that same overlap.

If I’m being honest with myself, I think that Fides et Ratio, and the worldview it professes, are what makes Catholicism so fundamentally different from most other forms of Christian thought.⁶ It is not that Faith and Science occupy different spheres and never overlap. That story, while often told to young children, especially those with questions, is only true in the way that most stories we tell children are.⁷

Faith and reason both give us glimpses into the truth. As such, JP2 writes, they cannot contradict each other. If there is an apparent contradiction, one of the two must be wrong.

For me, a great place to point to for this is the concept of the death penalty. It was long taught as licit for nations to have capital punishment, with one of the primary justifications being that it reduces crime rates. As more and more modern research has shown that not to be the case, however, the Church changed her stance on the issue.⁸

On the other end of the spectrum, we have what is allegedly taught as one of the great sticking points of modern Catholicism for atheists: transubstantiation. That is, the bread and wine that the priest holds at the altar does, in fact, truly become the body and blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. However, absent other miracles⁹, it is still indistinguishable to mortal eyes. A chemical analysis would not show that they have changed.

There are two ways of¹⁰ disputing this. First is the way that I feel least comfortable with, which leans close to the God of the Gaps heresy. That is, just because the Host remains unchanged by any technique we currently have available does not mean that it is unchanged. New equipment or forms of measurement could be¹¹ developed which would account for the difference.

The other is a much easier argument from a theoretical basis. The second argument is, however, far more difficult to convince someone of. It is to claim that there are truths that cannot be measured via scientific inquiry.

Of course, we know that this is true. Science cannot prove its own validity. Even outside of that, though, philosophers¹² since Godel¹³ have proven that there is no way to construct a set of truths that can prove every truth.¹⁴

Before I drift too far into my “multiple methods of inquiry are good, and what do we mean when we say science anyways” rant, let’s pull back to faith and reason. The two should be thought of as supporting each other, rather than existing independently or in opposition. For instance, because I know that the Lord created the universe to follow rules,¹⁵ I can perform scientific inquiry. More than that, though, because the universe we were created can be studied from within itself, we are capable of showing when things are, in fact miracles.

This is a fine line to walk, of course. Just because something cannot be explained by modern science does not mean that no science is capable of explaining it.

On the other hand, the Lord helps those who need it. I am fully willing to believe that in days before antibiotics and immunizations, far more miraculous healings were performed. This is not the God of the Gaps, whose power diminishes as we learn more. This is a G-d who loves us so dearly that he gives us what we could never hope to have on our own accord.

So that is one way that I can use faith to increase my ability to do science.¹⁶ How can we do the reverse?

Truthfully, that is where the spark for this musing came. Yesterday I was talking with a friend who knows that I was raised Catholic.¹⁷ The friend asked me if there was any way that I connected the work I do to the faith that I was raised in.

It’s a difficult question to answer.¹⁸

If faith and reason can both complement¹⁹ each other, then the system needs to work both ways. As someone who does science and reads reason, how can that enrich my faith life? There are the obvious places like reading great works of speculative theology or works like the Summa.²⁰ However, that feels like a cop out.

Today is a Saturday musing, and those are supposed to be deeper delving than my usual musings. So, let’s take some time and stew for how my science makes my faith grow. There’s the fact that it forces me to remember that there is beauty on every level? That’s true but an easy answer.

There’s the stock answer that I give people, which is that you cannot hope to understand a sculptor without understanding his sculpture, which feels on the right track, if still a little too pithy. Can I take that a little deeper?

Let’s see, I study the bible²¹ because it helps me to understand G-d, since it’s His divine revelation. The universe, however, is just as much a creation of the Almighty, and it is sustained constantly through his active choice to keep it. In studying the universe, we get glimpses into something deeper? Is that true?

Sometimes I find that questions are best answered by approaching from another angle. When learning about the vastness of space, it is common to fall into a state of existentialism. The universe is just so vast that it defies words and explanations.²²

When I learn about the vastness of the universe, though, I do not feel smaller. Instead, I understand that the Lord created such a large space for us. Why, exactly, he did it is a mystery, but I guess that I can take some stabs myself.

The earth is so big that it feels almost infinite. The Odyssey, for instance, takes place completely within the Mediterranean Sea. Moses and his people traveled for forty years inside of a small middle eastern desert. I can absolutely see how there could be a motivation to treat the concept of infinity with less grandeur if the universe was as small as the earth.

There’s also the concept of harmony of the spheres. I know that science has more or less entirely moved past²³ the concept, but science has also seemingly given up on animism. Animism means a lot of things to a lot of people.²⁴ In general, though, when I think about animism I think about the idea that the inanimate, isn’t.²⁵ One of the biggest flexes that modern scientists try to have over prescientific thought is that we now know that lightning doesn’t come because the gods are angry.

On the other hand, every explanation of more or less any scientific concept does rely on the idea of animism. We say that atoms form bonds. In part, this is because we are taught to write in the active voice, which requires an agent and therefore agency. However, when we speak in that way, we end up defining our thoughts.

I knot that there’s more for me to say, but I can no longer find the words. As much as I would like to keep going or post this next week, I think that I need to throw in the towel.

Daily Reflection:

• Hobbies:

  • Did I embroider today? It has been another day without embroidery, but maybe tomorrow would be a better day. I hope it will, at least.

  • Did I play guitar today? Shoot! I spent the day with my family, but that’s about all that I can say for most everything.

  • Did I practice touch typing today? I dd a few lessons, and that is what matters. I don’t think that I made any progress.

• Reading

  • Have I made progress on my Currently Reading Shelf? A bit! I talked about it with the person I’m reading it with, which is fun and exciting. That’s always great, and I’ll probably make more progress reading after I post this.

  • Did I read the book on craft? Drat. If I want to finish the book by the end of the month, I really need to do a bunch of reading tomorrow.

• Writing

  • Did I blog? I even blogged yesterday, even though I didn’t post it. I didn’t like the post, and I wasn’t proud of it, so I didn’t post it. I think that, for all that I keep planning to write the posts every day, I will give myself grace to not post them when they are bad.

  • Did I write ahead on Jeb? I really need to start writing. Even though I am not posting Monday, I still hope to find time to write it before Monday. Unfortunately, that’s abut all that I can say.

  • Letter to friends? I wrote to a few friends, and that was fun! That’s about all that I can say in terms of that, though.

  • Paper? I did a little, and I started thinking about appendices that I might need to add to my thesis. I think that there’s something to be said about needing to justify a lot of what I did, and even more to be said about explaining what happens.

• Wellness

  • How well did I pray? Not at all, really. I need to do better, but it’s hard.

  • Did I spend my time well? I spent it more or less napping and spending time with my family. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I wish that I didn’t need more sleep.

  • Did I stretch? I was so sedentary, which I’m not happy about.

  • Did I exercise? See just above.

  • Water? Rip

Draft 1: 29 December

Fides et Ratio are the opening words to an encyclical by Pope St. JPII. It is also the name of various faith and science groups that I have friends who take part in. After a conversation with a friend today, I find that I am thinking a lot about it as a concept.

I’ve mused before about the way I find mysticism and science to be intrinsically linked, but this is something different. Mysticism, after all, is a tradition that nearly every faith has. As a scientist, I do believe that there is objective truth. As a Catholic, I believe the same.

As far as I have ever been taught, the two domains should never intersect. Or, as JP2 put it, truth cannot contradict truth. That’s probably the better way to frame the differences. It isn’t that science and faith cannot answer the same questions, it’s that they should come to the same answer.

For instance, we have the Big Bang. It’s the most famous example that I can think of where science and faith absolutely agree. We believe that the universe was created ex nihilo²⁶, and that seems to be what the Big Bang suggests. Because the universe was created out of nothing, it makes sense to me that there would be no way to predict what came before the Big Bang, much as scientists might try to speculate.²⁷

But, there’s far more to it than just that. I am getting a Ph. D. On some level, I do believe that this involves dedicating my life, at least in part²⁸, to science and teaching. Even if the rest of the world and field no longer thinks that Doctor means teacher, I still do.

But, of course, I also find that I am continuing to grow in my faith. On some level, everything that I do should and needs to be oriented towards the salvation of the world. As someone whose favorite research questions do not heal the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, or house the homeless, that means I have to find another way that the research points to salvation.

As I reconnect with old friends and meet new people, a common question I am asked is what my favorite part of my research is. Of course, they rarely actually mean the research, and tend to mean my favorite part of being a graduate student.²⁹

What I Read and Wrote

First Published: 2023 December 28

Draft 1

As I mentioned yesterday, Thursdays are going to be reserved for what I’m reading and writing lately. It is currently a form of vacation for me right now, which means that I am doing far less of both than normal.¹

In terms of reading, this past month² I finished:

• Genesis of Gender by Abigail Favale. The book came recommended to me, and it’s a deconstruction of modern gender theory from a former gender theory professor who converted to Catholicism. I found it better the more I read the book, probably because the focus shifted towards the latter parts. I may or may not discuss it in greater depth in the future, depending on how starved for content I become.

• There’s a serialized version of C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters³ that ended this year’s run in December. It was a much different experience to read the book in short weekly snippets.

• I listened through C. Mantis’s Path of Ascension⁴. I think that it’s my third or fourth read through, since I’ve been following the serial since early on in its career on the internet.

• I also listened through Casualfarmer’s Beware of Chicken, which is another former web serial turned book available from an indie publisher.

• I read through Peter Kreeft’s Fundamentals of the Faith. It was a really beautiful book, but I unfortunately⁵ gave it away to a friend.

• I finished Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score, which I’ve been working on in theory since last year. I found that it was much easier to get through in audio format, but that may have just been where I was at for that week.

• I listened to one of the recommended reads for my entire campus, Clint Smith’s How the Word is Passed. It was an interesting reflection on the way that America has or hasn’t dealt with slavery and the consequences of chattel slavery. I know that it changed my views of the Confederacy at least a little, if only because I tend to be sympathetic to foot soldiers.⁶

• I listened to Travis Baldree’s Legends and Lattes. I know the author primarily as an audio book reader, so I was very interested in his book when it came out. It’s apparently become a fairly well known book, at least in the sense that I’ve seen it more places than any of the books I’ve heard of his.

• After watching CGP Grey’s video about how to be miserable⁷, I read the book that he based it on, How to Be Miserable: 40 Strategies you already use by Randy Paterson. It was really eye opening to me how half of the items or so I read and went “who would ever do that?” and the other half were habits I hardly realized I had, they were so ingrained.

• I generally kept up on the web serials that I’m reading. Path of Ascension and Beware of Chicken both post fairly consistent updates, which is fun. It’s wild how far ahead the freely available content is from the nominally published.⁸

That more or less sums up the reading⁹ that I’ve been doing. In terms of writing, I’ve written a fair amount of code, though that’s been a lot of writing long functions just to delete them when I realize that I don’t want the functionality they provide.¹⁰ I’ve recently been taking a break from Jeb, which has been really restful, though I am excited to get back to writing it. I wrote a fair number of sonnets this month, and I finally got to the point that writing a sonnet is hardly an effort, even if it isn’t good.

Oh! I suppose that I’ve also been reading the book on writing, Writing Well by Sven Birkerts and Donald Hall. It’s a fantastic book, and I’m really enjoying the way that it’s making me think about the way that I write and consume language. I just finished the section of words, and one piece of advice they kept repeating in that section is that “a change in style, however slight, is a change in meaning, however slight”. I feel like often, at least in my experience, people don’t treat rephrased sentences as different meaning. As someone who does legitimately believe that no distinguishable wordings are fungible,¹¹ it was nice to have that take explicitly stated. Even the difference between “I read a book” and “a book was read by me” has a shade of difference, even outside of the taste. Of course, the taste of words is not something that they underestimate. One piece of advice they stress almost as much as not mixing metaphors or using dead cliches is having sentences flow. I’ve just started the sentence section, so I haven’t heard exactly what they mean by it, but I am excited to find out.

I also just started the first of my Saturday Musings, which is focused about copyright. I don’t know if it will end up being the first Saturday Musing I post, because it’s a lot to write about, but I hope to do the subject justice. I’d also like to start plotting out the next few chapters of my web serial, and now is as good of a time as any, I suppose. Plotted out the next three and a half chapters, and I’m excited to write them again. If I was smart, I would find a writing guide that actually teaches how plotting works, since right now I just kind of free associate what I want to see and then write in details.

Daily Reflection:

• Hobbies:

  • Did I embroider today? Shoot! I should do that tomorrow. It’s too late o clock right now.

  • Did I play guitar today? No, sadly today was more focused on real work.

  • Did I practice touch typing today? Once again, a few lessons. I think that it might not be the best choice ever to go straight from 50 wpm goal to 75 wpm. Might be a smarter choice to do smaller, more iterative versions, where I go up by like 5 wpm at a time. Then again, it isn’t like I need to worry about optimizing this. Any typing practice is probably ninety percent as effective as any other.

• Reading

  • Have I made progress on my Currently Reading Shelf? I am!

  • Did I read the book on craft? I read it a little last night and then a fair amount this morning!

• Writing

  • Did I blog? Kind of! More brain dump than anything else, but that’s life sometimes.

  • Did I write ahead on Jeb? I plotted out a few chapters, which is nice.

  • Letter to friends? I met with one and set up a meeting with another!

  • Paper? I once again proved to myself and the smart people¹² in my life that, not only can I not use derivative based methods for most of the work, I cannot even use most derivative free methods for optimization.

• Wellness

  • How well did I pray? Remaining less than great. This is something I’d like to work on in the future.

  • Did I spend my time well? Kind of! I spent a lot of time with family again, caught up with a close friend, and did some research work. Between that, pretty well.

  • Did I stretch? sadness.

  • Did I exercise? sorrow.

  • Water? Remembered I was thirsty at one occasion and then drank water! That counts for something!

On Schedules

First Published: 2023 December 27

Draft 3

I’ve mused a few times about schedules on this blog. I have also mused more than a few times about writer’s block or general struggles to find a prompt for the day.¹ Finally, I’ve started realizing that I want to try writing better essays, and that the most effective way to do that is by spending more chronological time with the essay as a work in progress. There’s an old expression about birds and stones that feels relevant here.

To write better musings, I need to be able to spend more time on a musing. The amount of mental energy that it takes to come up with a prompt and start exploring it is such that I cannot really dedicate myself to writing two completely disparate and unique musings at once.² Additionally, I do better with deadlines. There’s an expression I once heard in a class³, which goes something like “a work of art isn’t finished until it’s wrested from the author’s grasp”. Or, in slightly more real terms, as Jim Butcher once said, “I don’t have a muse, I have a mortgage”.

All that to say, I think that it is important for me to schedule not just a day where I post more in depth musings, but also a more scheduled way of musing overall so that I have the mental space to write it.⁴ Having spoken to my family, they still think that it is too ambitious to write a blog post every day, keep up with my research and work, record an album, and keep up with my web novel.⁵ However, I think that I have the space to be able to do so, at least for now, as long as I make some changes.

Moving forwards, I will reduce the mental load on myself by scheduling each day’s activity. Sundays, as you might expect, will continue to be dedicated to Reflections on the Readings.⁶ Fridays, as well, will remain focused on Flash Fiction Friday musings.⁷ Saturdays, I have decided, will be for long form writing.

Now, this is three of seven days. Even that is more planning than I have been typically doing⁸, but that’s not enough. Also, as mentioned, my family is worried about my ability to remain focused on research. To help with that, I will be dedicating the Monday Musing of each week to Thesis Work.⁹ My thought there is that starting each week with writing explicitly focused on my thesis will help me to remain focused on my life goal.¹⁰

On Wednesdays I will muse about the progress on my album. Wednesdays tend to be one of my freest nights, which gives me the space to do some last minute writing or recording if I feel behind. Additionally, since it will often be a short reflection, that will give me more time for writing.

Thursdays will be dedicated to quick recaps of what I have been reading or writing. Partially, this is because Thursdays tend to be busy nights for me, and often what I read and write does not change week to week. However, I do also want to be more intentional about what I’m reading and writing, and I think that needing to reflect on them weekly will help me with that.

The astute among¹¹ readers may note that this only describes six days of the week. The week, however,¹² is seven days long. I know that many musings that I might be interested in pursuing do not deserve or warrant¹³ a full week of consideration¹⁴, and I want the freedom to be able to write about whatever I want at least once a week. I think that I know myself well enough to know that I do best when I have some freedom, however constrained. Giving myself one day a week to let musings die will probably be a good valve for my stress to escape.

Daily Reflection:

• Hobbies:

  • Did I embroider today? I went through another needle’s worth of embroidery! I think that I only need two or three more total strands, given that I’ve filled in about a quarter of the grid.

  • Did I play guitar today? I also took today off, which is probably less great given that I want to start writing for an album.

  • Did I practice touch typing today? A few lessons! I’m kind of unsure how it prioritizes which letters go when, but I think that it might be lowest wpm letter¹⁵ going through?

• Reading

  • Have I made progress on my Currently Reading Shelf? I’m enjoying the book once more, which is really nice.

  • Did I read the book on craft? I brought it with me, but it is currently dark, so I don’t think that I’ll be reading it for at least a little longer (if at all)

• Writing

  • Did I blog? Three drafts may have been the right number for this musing.

  • Did I write ahead on Jeb? I should probably start Jeb again tomorrow.

  • Letter to friends? Met with two and set up a meeting with a third!

  • Paper? I will try to work on it tomorrow as well.¹⁶

• Wellness

  • How well did I pray? oof.

  • Did I spend my time well? Eh! I wrote this which I’m pretty proud of, and I spent a lot of time with family.

  • Did I stretch? Should probably delete this goal. Won’t but will continue to feel bad.

  • Did I exercise? Nope

  • Water? Eh. not a lot

Draft 2

I’ve mused a few times about schedules on this blog. Additionally, I have mused more than a few times about writer’s block or general struggles to find a prompt for the day.¹⁷ There’s an old expression about birds and stones that feels relevant here.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve realized that schedules generally make my life better. I not only prefer to know where I’m going and what I’m doing when, but also find that it makes me more productive. As I’ve grown older, though, I’ve also gotten more and more freedom to set my own schedules.

Because I know that I need schedules, I have begun to find ways to govern myself. At least once every few months, I try some strategy to keep me productive through every minute of the day.¹⁸ Without fail, these plans fail. However, I’ve gotten better at following the advice of some random blogger somewhere, who said that it’s far far healthier to reframe that. That is, rather than saying that I failed to keep up my tracking activities to the minute, I could instead say that for the week I did track my time, I was more productive. Things can serve you for short periods of time without becoming permanent fixtures.¹⁹

However, there are kinds of schedules that I do find I can keep myself on, at least in general.²⁰ In general, things which occur monthly or weekly are much easier for me to keep up on. Daily activities that don’t need to be done in a schedule can also be easier to keep up on, which isn’t really relevant here. The fact that I can do things with a weekly schedule is the way that I can kill the birds with a stone.

There is even a third bird that my suggestion will help ricochet to.

Sorry, I have written about 500 words in footnotes for this draft, and I find that I’ve completely lost the thread of this musing. Time to try again (if you didn’t read the footnotes, they’re a time).

Draft 1

I’ve mused a few times before²¹ about schedules. As I come to another day where none of the prompts that I have feel particularly good, I’m going to jump the gun on 2024’s New Year’s Resolutions and start talking about my schedule. I’d like to start writing one really good essay a week.²²

I think that one way I can get through that is by scheduling other blog posts to be more mundane, and therefore require less energy, with the goal and expectation that I then use the extra time and mental space to write parts of a longer and better thought out musing. So, what are things that I want to keep up on every week?

Maybe I should take a step back and ask what things I want to prioritize in the next year.

Nope, that’s a bad idea because most of what I want to prioritize are habits.

There are seven days each week. If Sundays are reserved for Reflections on the Gospel or Readings generally²³, and I want to spend Saturdays on a more in depth writing, what do I do with the other five days?

I want to do more composition, so one day a week could be reserved for my progress getting through species counterpoint. Actually, let’s take a moment and decide whether I actually want to keep learning species counterpoint. The choir I’m in has implied that it would be willing²⁴ to let me compose some music, but I don’t really know if that’s something that fits into my life. Right now writing is really becoming a huge part of it, and I think that I would like that to continue.

One day a week could be reserved for me to reflect on the writing I’ve done over the past week. I think that monthly and daily checkins might be the wrong level for me to be motivated to outwrite on my web novel.

Since I want to make progress on the album, one day a week could be reserved for talking about it. Right now, I need to write and record and all the other parts of songs, so there’s bound to be stuff to talk about re: difficulties, fun parts, etc. That brings us to four.

If I continue doing open mics semi regularly, talking about them could be fun. When I consider that open mics tend to run opposite a DND campaign that I’m in, we get Mondays taken care of. Then again, I don’t want to have to force myself to do those activities or muse about them.

Still, four days a week of musings is better than one. One day a week could be a brief review of everything that I’ve read.²⁵ That actually sounds really fun, especially because I can also jot down my notes somewhere more cogent. On weeks that I feel like reviewing a book, it can go there, and on other weeks I can just discuss the reading that I’ve been doing.

One day a week devoted to working on my thesis would probably not go amiss. Since I want it to be fairly long, I do need to get a lot of writing done. I do worry about the fact that I would like those to also be edited, and the musing format tends to be more informal than I’d like. Still, I am sure that I could find at least one thing to quickly talk about each week, especially since I want to work on making a lot of my research more approachable to the general person.

(took a break to play some backgammon, time to start musing again)

Right now we have:

• Sunday: Reflections on Readings

• Saturday: Better Musing

• A Day: What I’ve been Reading

• A Day: Thesis Work (very nominal, can be as vague as needed)

• A Day: Progress on the Album

• A Day: Progress on writing generally

Oh shoot! I also have flash fiction fridays! That takes up my whole weekend, so then we should probably get rid of one of the seven so that I have time to have one day free? There are absolutely topics I want to discuss that I don’t think deserve a full length essay.²⁶

so:

• Sunday: Reflections on Readings

  Rationale: I’m obligated to attend Mass on Sunday, it’s the day that I’ve been told I should set aside for the Lord, and it’s a good habit to make me more prayerful.

• Monday: Thesis Work.

  Rationale: Starting the week with active productivity will make me better at work generally and should help me prime the week to come.

• Tuesday: Free day.

  Rationale: I filled the other six days and I want one day where I’m free to write whatever is on my mind/ generally have a day to discuss what’s going on.

• Wednesday: Progress on the Album.

  Rationale: Wednesdays are my freest evenings, for all that I teach a discussion section until 5pm those days. As a result, when I’m not as far along as I want to be, I can use the rest of the night to write or record

• Thursday What I’m reading/ writing.

  Rationale: I think that it makes most sense to alternate these or maybe do both each week. Of the things that I want to do, these are the freest, and so I feel like deserve to get crammed together.

• Friday: Flash Fiction Friday.

  Rationale: the event is on Fridays, and I think that it will continue to do me good to think about it.

• Saturday: Long form Musing.

  Rationale: Saturdays should be days of rest, and that way I have the whole week to look forward to the writing.

For all that this feels very ordered on the page, a retrospective note should say that I wrote it in order: Sunday, Monday, Friday, Saturday, Wednesday, Thursday, Tuesday.

1000 words later, let’s try to make this coherent?