Monthly Reflection

I kept a living document of daily reflection goals, which I’ve now sort of stopped. While it was helpful for me then, it was also twenty minutes out of each day that I spent filling it out. Time passes regardless of how I spend it, but I have to wonder whether it’s a good use of my time.⁹ I’m going to restart it, but I don’t really necessarily know where my goals might be. That’s not true, but I do suddenly have a much shorter timeline than I thought for my degree, which makes me kind of feel anxious about what all I will need to do. Still, I cannot write if I do not exist, and so let’s structure the goals from that basis.

When I reflected ¹⁰ on my goals for this phase of my life¹¹, I did come up with a tiered list of priorities. Structuring the reflection like that might not be the worst idea.¹²

Before making my list of daily reflections, let’s think about five things I’m excited for, five SMART¹³ goals, and five general themes I want to shoot for.¹⁴ Also, five great things from last month that I didn’t have as listed things last month.

Five amorphous ideals for the month, like last month’s “areas I want to focus”²⁸:

In making my list of general priorities, family was at the top, but it’s not an ideal here. Why? I generally feel like the way I am with my family is relatively good, and so it does not need to be an area of specific focus like these other five, where I feel that I am very lacking.

So: let’s revise our daily reflection template with my ordered tiers of goals in mind. Within each numbered entry, bulleted points are nominally of about the same importance, or at least feel flexible enough that I cannot always put one above another.

Daily Reflection

and a shocking number of parents. Shocking only in that I didn’t expect them to be as into the process as they were↩
read: generally structured and with an explicit formula↩
shocking↩
something something motivation levels↩
read: I exist in a community and that means that there exist obligations to others that I must fulfill↩
one might say obsessive, if they wished↩
give or take the off by a few days tracking error of when I started or finished a book↩
good to know I’m not crazy for thinking so↩
oh, actually, typing that here makes me realize that it absolutely is. On the days where I didn’t do it, I got overwhelmed with stress. That’s good to know. Let’s move to it after this↩
I should really make a new post called what we don’t post and then have different notes for each folly I’ve written and then not made public↩
read: until the end of summer, which is (not coincidentally) the end of my doctoral time↩
took a break here in order to run through the rest of the ink within and then clean pens (see: I do hobbies) to set up for the next ink that I’m trying↩
specific, measureable, achievable, relevant, time-bound↩
that is, five things that are absolutely not SMART (gotta love acronymizers who make really aggressive things when taking the antonym↩
in part because I was up and then started making really risky bets so that I could go home early. Ended up like 2% ahead (read: 20 cents), so tossed that in as an extra ante↩
!↩
I feel like I’ve almost certainly mused before about feeling unmoored from history↩
and second↩
exciting in the literal sense of excited like an atom, full of energy, not necessarily positive↩
as far as I know, it’s not TAing when I’m not a graduate student↩
note to self, remember to figure out difference between thesis, defense, dissertation, and everything else that people call this finishing of my academic striving↩
it’s a wildlife preserve, I think↩
this is similar to a rephrasing of the first thing↩
and oop, I really need to pack for that↩
I refuse to use quantifiable. Wait is there a difference between quantized and quantified? Looks like quantized is a science only word right now but. Wow I’m going to be (more) insufferable↩
meaning well cited, contains all the information I think that it needs, and has the figures which are most pressing↩
current front runners include: what does abortion mean, how should Catholics treat the government given its fundamentally unjust nature, punishment, the many ways that we need to ignore saints because they spoke on material reality rather than faith and morals and are therefore explicitly wrong (ok so this is also about punishment), and what it means for me to be Jewish and Catholic↩
why am I using a different term? great question↩
love that this is one word, curious what its origins are, guess it gets a note↩
is post it a trademarked term still? probably↩
and, of course, work on the friendships↩
back to the 10 oz of espresso a day life↩
I don’t know why the term lunch bothers me, but I think part of it is that I often have started eating something over the course of an hour or five, and it feels wrong to call a six hour meal lunch↩
it is burning hot down here. Apparently there was a heater stuck to on until the other day down here↩
there we go, a distinction between absence of sound and the actual goal of silence↩
though tragically, not the mug I so desperately crave↩
read: things that will help me with the above goals but not goals in and of themselves↩
yes this one gets its own tab because I think that it’s more important that the below but less than the above↩
mmmm off by N numbering↩
love that sonic song↩
consistent color as writing, regardless of pressure/amount put on page↩
doesn’t have different hues as light hits differently↩

Musings

I'm just copying my father

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Monthly Reflection

Draft 1

Daily Reflection