Reflection

First Published: 2024 December 9

Draft One Written 7 December 2024

It’s been more than a day since my last post, which is not exactly what my goal was. Alas, the world is what it is, and I became far too optimistic about how much mental and emotional energy I had and would need to write the posts that I had been planning.¹ Still, I do know myself well enough to know that daily musing does, in fact, make me feel generally better about life, and since I want to get back to writing my web serial², this feels like the good and gently way to slowly edge back into it. With that in mind, I think that I’m going to treat this like I treat the beginning of most periods of my life, and go for some goal creation. Unlike most of my reflection posts, however, I’m not going to be looking back at old goals.³

Also unlike most of my reflections, I don’t think that I’m going to focus on deliverables as much.⁴ I know that there’s a lot of research talking about how goals are best when they’re actionable and etc., but the most important of the things that I want to accomplish in the next few months aren’t really the sort of thing that one can break down piece by piece. Anyways, with that disclaimer out of the way, time to stream of consciousness some goals, which I’ll then organize into time frames, etc.

• Learn how to use Vim keybindings. I’m doing not no scripting these days, and it does really seem like a great way to become a more efficient typist, if nothing else. Also, it always looks like magic watching someone who is good at Vim use it, and I love being the magic.

• Accept my grief. Right now I find myself either completely ignoring the fact that I am grieving, or else lean into it too hard and find myself becoming emotionally exhausted. Of course, this is a process, not necessarily something I can just do.

• Finish my Ph.D..⁵ I feel like this one is self explanatory.

• Write some science communication articles. I still want to write a popular science book, but it’s probably best to start with a few articles. Lots of novel advice for getting published after knowing how to write a novel⁶ involves writing short stories, for a variety of reasons, and that feels fairly parallel. Also, it’s a great way to get my name out in the world. More than that, though, people seem more willing to read an article than a book.

• Finish the album. It’s hard, because a lot of why I was working on it was reflecting on how precious the time with my mom was. In her absence, some of the songs ring hollow now.

• Write a choral song. I would really like to have one of my creations sung by the choir that I am in, and that requires writing something the director might want. I should probably pick some farish off date⁷

• Get into daily musings again. It’s so good for me to take time to sit and reflect on the world I inhabit.

• Stretch bidaily. I’m getting to the point in my life where my body will hurt if I do not take care of it. Also, the only way to reach my dream of touching my toes⁸ is to put forth the effort.

• Put myself out there. I’ve had great excuses for not attempting to expand my social circle, but I will always be able to find such excuses. The life I want to live involves others, and I need to make that happen.

• Publish my paper. I know that at this point a lot of what is holding me back is my executive dysfunction preventing me from pulling a trigger, but that doesn’t necessarily make it easier to fix.

• Finish the web serial. I hate when books get dropped as a reader, and also I want to say that I’ve finished it. That being said, the primary motivation I had for writing it was my mother, and it will take time for me to accept my new reality, to say nothing of the fact that it will also take time for me to find a new motivating factor to write.⁹

• Find a way to make exercise a routine thing for me. It’s hard to do a series of activities, but routines are easy. As mentioned with the goal of stretching, it’s important for me to take care of myself.

• Get back into letter writing. Given how many people in my life have moved away, or just generally like receiving letters, it would probably behoove me to begin writing them again. It’s a little too late to do Christmas cards for the year, but that could be a fun idea for a template. Hmm that does bring up the question of whether I’d want to do a template or a series of¹⁰ discrete letters to different people.

• Feel comfortable with myself. It’s not that I feel uncomfortable in my own body and being who I am, but I don’t feel as though I’ve truly actualized myself yet.

• Get a routine for food that serves me.¹¹ Routines, as mentioned above, are crucial to maintaining things. I don’t want to have to write a menu out each week, and I don’t know that meal prepping has ever worked for me in the past, but that’s not to say that neither will be what ends up working best for me. If I can proactively make sure that the food I eat hits my macro and micro goals, though, that will take at least one piece of mental burden off of me. Might be worth spending at least a musing or two on the macros and micros I think that I need to hit.

• Finish the embroidery I’m doing. At first, I was thinking that I could use the embroidery as a coping tool to deal with the grief. More and more, though, it’s just becoming the thing I do with my hands when I don’t really want to think but want to be doing something.

• Get through the books that I have checked out. I have far too many books, and that’s something that I need to resolve.

• Get back into Sunday musings about the readings. I want to get back into my faith, and that feels like a good starting place.

Ok well that feels like a good enough list, if one that’s probably both too vague and too specific at the same time. I know that setting really optimistic goals for myself rarely works out, so I’m going to try to avoid that if at all possible. With this in mind, what’s a good way to break up the goals? There’s something to be said for timelines, there’s also something to be said for actionable versus overarching goals. Maybe I’ll just go through them all and think about how I can work on them before the year ends? That seems reasonable enough. Other than that, I’ll compile the list so that I have starting material for the future. So, without commentary, my goals for the foreseeable future right now are:¹²

• Learn how to use Vim bindings.

• Accept my grief

• Finish my Ph.D..

• Write Science Communication articles.

• Write a pop sci book¹³

• Finish my album

• Write a choral song, and ideally have it be performed

• Daily Musings

• Twice Daily Stretching

• Grow interpersonally

• Publish the paper

• Finish my web serial

• Make exercise a routine

• Letter Writing as routine

• Comfort with myself

• Food routine

• Finish embroidery

• Read Library Books

• Sunday Musings about Gospel

• Clean life.¹⁴

So, since working on all these things at once would be, frankly, insane, let’s set come up with at least one way that I could work on each of them as a goal before the New Year, and then compile a list of what I’ll actually do.

• Learn how to use Vim bindings.

  • Spend X minutes a day working on them

  • Go through the Vim user guide

  • Pay for access to the vim adventure

• Accept my grief

  • Write letters to mom

  • Spend time each day focusing naming on my feelings

  • Affirmations?

• Finish my Ph.D..

  • Spend X minutes a day working on writing it.

  • Write an outline at the highest level.

  • Talk to boss about potential timeline

• Write Science Communication articles.

  • Figure out a topic

  • Decide on a place to post them

  • Write a draft

  • Figure out an audience

  • Spend X minutes a day reading pop sci articles

• Write a pop sci book¹⁵

  • Spend X minutes a day reading pop sci

  • Spend x minutes a day writing the book

  • Find a topic I’m passionate about

• Finish my album

  • Spend X minutes a day writing music

  • Spend X minutes a (period) recording

  • Spend time mastering

• Write a choral song, and ideally have it be performed

  • Figure out what a good commission would be¹⁶

  • Spend X minutes a day writing

  • Spend X minutes a day doing score study.¹⁷

  • Do X counterpoint exercises a day

  • Spend X time reading and following either Renaissance Counterpoint or one of the other composition textbooks I’ve¹⁸

  • Write Hymn harmonizations

• Daily Musings

  • Write a musing every day¹⁹

  • Compile a list of musings to do/schedule it.²⁰

• Twice Daily Stretching

  • Stretch twice a day²¹

  • Come up with a stretching routine/find one

  • Figure out a way to make it fun?

• Grow interpersonally

  • Find an event and attend it

  • Spend time with people.²²

  • Find a place to volunteer and start doing so regularly

• Publish the paper

  • Spend X minutes a day working on writing the paper

  • Come up with a detailed hit list of what the paper needs and go through each item one by one

  • Set up a meeting to discuss

• Finish my web serial

  • Spend time plotting it out

  • Start writing it again

  • Start publishing it again

• Make exercise a routine

  • Find a way to make myself accountable

  • Find an exercise I enjoy and make it easier to do

  • Find a way to reduce willpower needed to exercise

  • Exercise daily

• Letter Writing as routine

  • Compile a list of people I want to write letters to and their addresses

  • Come up with a schedule for writing letters

  • Figure out a good template for writing letters that isn’t emotionally draining but is also something someone would enjoy?

• Comfort with myself

  • Daily affirmations

  • Compile list of ways that I’m dissatisfied with myself

  • Work through that list, either coming to terms with or changing about myself

  • Spend time each day focusing on growth

• Food routine

  • Musing about macro/micro

  • Compile list of X meals I can make and their accompanying information

  • Figure out what foods I can buy to have to eat

  • Make a meal plan

• Finish embroidery

  • Spend X time working on it per X

  • Invite friends to craft time

• Read Library Books

  • Spend X time a day reading books

  • Come up with an ordered list for what I’ll read

  • Figure out my motivation for each book and have it as the bookmark

  • Read X books a Y period.

• Sunday Musings about Gospel

  • Muse on Sundays about the Gospel

  • Read readings on Saturday

  • make a template that I can fill in

  • Tell myself it doesn’t have to be good

  • Block out time in my schedule

• Clean life.

  • X time cleaning each day

  • List of things that need to be cleaned and the frequency

  • Schedule

  • Throw things away/remove from my life somehow

  • Make a list of everything I own

• Learn to draw²³

  • Figure out what I want to learn to draw right now (e.g. figures, nature, something abstract)

  • Spend X time working on fundamentals

  • Spend X hours total working on a single piece

  • Spend X time reading/watching content on how to learn the skills

Huh wow, that was far easier than I expected.

Given how many of these seem to be schedule based, scheduling my life is clearly a must. Since none of these are things that absolutely have to be done before the end of the year, I think that it might be best to focus on the bigger picture ones, like compiling lists. With that in mind, my goals for year end are:

• Define how I’m feeling each day at start and end

• Talk to boss about Ph.D. timeline

• Pick a topic for a science communication article

• Read a pop sci article a week, making notes about how they work

• Spend 30 minutes 2x a week working on writing the song

• Practice guitar daily (at least one scale and a chord progression)

• Find an occasion I could write a song for

• On Sundays, write a hymn harmonization for one of the hymns we sang

• Muse daily

• Make a list of musings to do

• Stretch Twice a day

• Make a list of the stretches I’ll do each day

• Find a place to volunteer

• Paper hit list

• Read the comments on the serial

• Walk to the gym every day

• Compile a list of people I want to write letters to

• Do daily affirmations

• Muse about macros and micros

• Compile a list of 20 meals that I can make, with their ingredients (inc. shelf stable or lifetime), time, effort level, and nutrition info

• Come up with an ordered list for what I’ll read

• Figure out my motivation for each book and have it as the bookmark item Muse on Sundays about the Gospel

• Read readings on Saturday

• Block out time on Sundays for gospel reflection

• List of things that need to be cleaned and the frequency

• List of things in my life

• Decide on what I want to draw right now

• Ten minutes 4x a week on drawing

Well, that’s honestly not the worst list I’ve ever made. I do love how many of them are list based, if I’m being totally honest. For now, however, I’m going to step away, if only because I don’t want to burn out too early.