Reflection on the Start to the Year

First Published: 2025 February 28

Draft 2: 28 February

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

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

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

• Professional:

  • Thesis Work:⁹

    • Detailed outline (chapters and section titles at the very minimum) by 18 March

    • Meet with Committee to decide a timeline. Before that, come up with my own idea for one.

    • Work on the research within the thesis!

  • Be a better mentor: figure out how to take time to help underclassmen as they need help while still getting my own work done.

  • Leave work at work. I’ve been only really thinking about my research this past month, and I can feel it wearing me down rapidly.

  • Work towards future career:

    • Read the recommended readings about science communication

    • Do the reflections that were recommended to me (mostly focused around why I care about science communication)

    • Work on the materials for the science outreach event in April: the handout while they work and a page for the families to take home

    • Figure out the difference between my public-facing and field-facing presentation affects. As I focus on becoming a better presenter, I need to become aware of the difference and how to switch them

• Health:¹⁰

  • Spiritual:

    • Figure out what I want to do for my Lent. In general, I think I want to give something up, take something on, and find a way to do charity.

    • Do the Lenten goals.

    • Be intentional about prayer. That means both making time for prayer and actually doing it.

  • Mental:

    • Clean my Life:

      • Remove dirt and clutter from physical spaces (standard definition of clean)

      • Remove extraneous apps from phone

      • Spend time each day thinking about the goals for the day, and getting them out of my head and onto the page¹¹

      • Start reading and returning the library books I have.¹²

      • Start to separate the non-work time from work time. I think that, at the very least, I need to say that I will not do work in my apartment. Given that I generally avoid spending much time in there, these two goals should work together.

      • Don’t waste time, and in particular, be mindful about making sure to take breaks and rest.

      • Clean sight lines. Is my space set up in a way that orients me towards my goals for the space? If not, how can I make it so?

    • Interpersonal Relationships¹³

      • Figure out what belongs in a normal letter to a friend.¹⁴

      • Get back into writing letters.

      • Upon feeling a sense of dread at receiving a message from someone, remember that my lived experience says that most interactions are positive. More to the point, if my friends didn’t like me, they would tell me or at the very least would not continue to keep me in their life. If alone, speak something to that effect.

      • Compile a list of people who are important to me. It does not need to be comprehensive, but ideally would approach that.

      • Figure out the method and frequency of communication I would like to have with them, be that texting, calling, visiting in person, etc.

      • Work to begin doing so.

      • Potentially start giving small gifts, though many people also dislike clutter, so think carefully about that one.

  • Physical:

    • Go to group fitness classes more regularly and more often.

    • Feed myself simply and healthily.

• Other:

  • Music:

    • Figure out something to work towards on guitar

    • Work towards it

    • Spend time making efforts to improve as a singer, not simply passively singing.

    • Spend time making efforts to improve as a musician, not simply passively growing.

  • Writing:¹⁵

    • Find the mental block towards writing my web novel

    • Write poetry more often, ideally nightly.

    • Not only write blogs, but also post them. Ideas include:

      • 26 for 26

      • Lenten goals

      • Listening to an album and writing about my experience with it. Unsure if this is best done with one I have prior knowledge of or a new one, but regardless, sit and listen without other stimuli.

      • The arts I’ve been doing lately

      • Why I care about science and communicating it

      • the block between me and my web novel

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

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

• Discrete Goals:

  • Thesis outline by March 18 for committee meeting.

  • Committee Meeting

  • Recommended readings about science communication

  • Make Lenten goals

  • Remove extraneous apps from phone.

  • List of people

  • Learn how to write a letter

  • Find a guitar project

  • Find web novel block

  • Materials for science expo

• Continuous Goals:¹⁶

  • Thesis research

  • Writing my thesis

  • Being a better mentor

  • Separating work from not-work

  • Think about presentation affect

  • Pray better

  • Eat better

  • Write letters

  • Reach out to friends

  • quiet the voice in me that is nervous

  • grow as a musician (guitar, voice, general)

  • Write poetry

  • Write blogs

  • Daily goals/to dos¹⁷

  • Clean home (std meaning)

  • Improve aesthetics of spaces

  • Be mindful of my time

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

Draft 1: 28 February

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

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

• I have a timeline of sorts for my Ph.D, and I’m meeting with my committee soon to see whether they agree with it.

• I think that I’m continuing to grow in my relationships, so that’s really nice.

• I think that there was a typo in the old document, which is kind of fun. I do feel like my faith has continued to be a little touch and go, but hopefully as days get longer and brighter, so too will my outlook.

• I’ve been doing better about feeding myself, though I’m starting to let it slide again. Last weekend’s adventures of traveling to watch a close friend defend his thesis and then returning to help with a chaotic graduate recruiting weekend, while fun, were certainly not conducive to my schedule.

• Finding a way to live with my grief remains a weird thing. I certainly feel like I’m dealing with it better than I was in early January, and like with any pain I have, I find myself compulsively touching it. It’s so weird to realize that I can no longer and never again just text my mom a dumb question that I’ve forgotten the answer to and don’t feel like looking up. When something goes wrong in my life, I can no longer go to her for guidance or comfort. No longer will I hear her tell stories of her childhood and early adulthood.

  Despite all that, the pain continues to be duller when I think on these things. I am slowly coming to terms with the reality, much as it really hurts to do so.

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

• I don’t think that I’ve done a single piece of album work or touched my accordion since writing that post. Music has been really hard for me lately, both because it’s always an emotional experience and I’ve been trying to repress my emotions and because I can’t separate my memories of sharing music with my mother from any music that I do. Still, this past week or two, I have been playing “I walk the Line” most mornings, so that’s at least some progress back in the direcion of making music.

• I finished the embroidery project! That’s really exciting and great.

• Working on art is something that I very quickly gave up on. Much as I love art, I more and more realize that it is so far down my list of priorities.

• I stopped stretching in the morning and evening, because I’ve started going to yoga²⁰. This week in particular, though, I’ve been exhausted and trying to recover from that²¹. It’s been really nice to spend 45 minutes in the morning and/or evening working on my flexibility and breath, and while I still absolutely cannot do the movements as naturally as the instructors, I can even more definitely say that I’m getting more flexible.

• I think that I did a personal posting about my food needs? I don’t really remember when the series of posts was, but if it was after January 5, then I guess that I did that! Yay, a goal I finished.

• I wrote four or so letters in four weeks, and then fell off of it. I had set it as a thing I did on the way home from choir, and choir stopped happening for a little bit, so I guess the writing did too. I should really get back into it.

• Journal in the morning. I’ve stopped doing this, along with basically all journalling. I don’t know why, except that I’ve been feeling really driven in my work and nothing else lately. How much of that is repression, how much of that is a genuine drive, and how much is a fear of falling behind, I don’t know.

• I stopped writing poetry, and that’s a shame. I think that I’m going to try to get back into that. I’ve been spending some time most nights crocheting while catching up on my soaps²², and finishing the night off with a little writing would probably serve me well.

• I haven’t been able to touch my webnovel at all. I looked at the comments on the post where I said that I would be taking a hiatus, and the support there was really great. Even thinking about the novel this little bit has made my breath catch²³, and that’s something I need to figure out how to work through, because I do think that I still want to finish it? As I typed that, I realized that it wasn’t necessarily true, hence the question mark. That’s something I can and probably should spend some time considering tomorrow.

• Clearly I haven’t been blogging daily. I have written a few posts that I didn’t post though, because they went in directions I didn’t really want to share with the broader world. Still, it’s also good for me to remember how to sanitize my thoughts for broader distribution, especially as we start to head into public talk season.

Finally, with my yearly goals:

• I have made basically no progress on the thesis, though I have done some vague writing on the work I’m doing, which will hopefully make the thesis writing process easier. Still, that’s something I should spend some time on, and that might be a good thing to do while calculations run. At the very least, I want to spend some time making an outline of a thesis.

• Coming to terms with my grief is, in fact, something that I’m doing as best a job on as I think that I can! Woo, finally something else I can unreservedly say that I’ve done well on so far.

• Still working on the sustainability, but I think that there’s significant progress for sure. I’m right now struggling with the fact that I don’t know what I like eating, and my “fifteenth century girl dinner” of a roll, some hard cheese, apples, carrots, and some meat isn’t feeling great any more. I think that a large part of that is as simple as my body’s cues being different right now, and so I need to really figure out what my body needs, regardless of what I hear it saying.

• Not writing the web novel has been very sustainable, unfortunately. I want that to stop being the case, though, which probably means that I would need to take a step back from my research. Given that my groupmates thought that I needed to go home at 2pm yesterday because I seemed completely burnt out, that might be a good idea on its own merits.

• Wasting time has been ebbing and flowing. Generally, I find myself mindlessly browsing the internet far less, and I tend to be doing something with my hands while I watch all the videos that I enjoy consuming. I’ve even started unsubscribing from a number of the content creators that I followed while I needed constant audio stimulation, and will probably continue to winnow down the list. Outside of that, though, I do find that I spend a fair amount of time letting time pass, even if that’s just taking up logic puzzles. With Lent upcoming that could be a great thing to focus on. Instead of spending time playing mindless games, spend time praying.

• I wrote a few letters, but have kind of fallen off of it lately. I would like to get back into that, if only because I love my cage²⁴.

• I fell off of journalling, and I don’t know if it really is something that I feel good about lately.²⁵

• I thought that I wanted to learn to draw, but more and more I’m realizing I prefer other forms of artistic expression, mostly involving string and yarn. I’m not totally sure why that is, but I’m sure that there are reasons I can consider. Maybe it’s just as simple as the fact that crochet and embroidery²⁶ are both so repetitive that I can treat them as meditative in a way that drawing isn’t. The fact that I know far fewer people markedly better at yarn craft than me compared to drawing certainly doesn’t hurt either.

• Finishing the album is something that I’ve made literally no progress on lately. That’s probably ok, though, given how little time I’ve felt like I have had in general lately. I’ve been able to shift my sleep schedule earlier and earlier, which is actually really nice. I love waking up before 6 because my body is rested.²⁷

• I joined a new choir,²⁸ and I did immediately start writing a piece for it, only to immediately lose energy.

• I’ve been crocheting a lot lately, because I learned that making the flower part of a rose²⁹ takes between ten and twenty minutes depending on how well my hands are moving. That’s like the perfect amount of time, and it means that I don’t feel bad if I have to restart, in addition to making it far less likely that I do need to restart.

• I feel like I have dropped accordion from my list of instruments, but am getting more proficiency for sure in guitar. I find myself picking differently to get genre-specific effects, and I can do scales far faster now, for all that I rarely use them. Singing has also been fun. The new choir expects me to sing a G4, so I’ve been once again forced to rely on my head voice/falsetto, and especially the transition between the two. It’s a skill I had developed really well during my time as an undergraduate, where I sang tenor in the early music choir, so it’s been fun to start to get it back. Yesterday, the church choir I sang in moved me down to bass 2, which is only notable because one of our songs this coming Sunday requires a D2. Even though I really struggle with E2 and F2, D2 comes out really well. I think that I’m probably just actively using subharmonics there, but who can say for certain?³⁰.

  More than anything, though, all the singing in different styles I’m doing is forcing me to once again remember the way that I have to set my entire vocal structure in order to have different ranges feel singable. I tend to reset on a breath, which makes sense to me, even if I do also wonder if it might be better for me to start trying to be able to do the changes more on the fly.

• My life is absolutely cleaner! My home, while still a mess, is miles better than it has been, and I just find that I’m more and more able to keep my home relatively clean. That is, progress is well ongoing, even though I recognize I have a ways to go.

• Despite it being two of my goals³¹, I will still not be working on art right now.

• I should really start compiling my list of 26 for 26³². I feel like I’m making progress on it, but without tracking, it can be hard to know for certain.

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

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

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

• Got my talk accepted for a conference!

• Learned how to crochet roses, and got a ton of compliments on them.

• Visited a friend to watch their dance recital³⁴ and gift them a hat³⁵

• Had a wild interaction with a woman in a club, where she told me that she was dying of cancer and scared for her kids, and I was able to give advice as to what was helpful for me on the other end of the process.

• Started some new medications, which have been really helpful

• Found out what kind of group fitness classes I enjoy

• Helped out with the science bowl again!

• Taught the kids I teach how to binary search³⁶

• Read a book that’s been on my TBR since just about as long as I’ve had one³⁷

• Learned how to use the high throughput computing cluster at my school, and started using it.

• Baked a lot of bread!

• Made a pork shoulder that was absolutely delicious. Half of it fed me for weeks.

• Went to a close friend’s thesis defense, and was in the acknowledgements!!! That’s quite possibly the first time I’ve been actually cited as a scientific source

• Found out that the research I did in undergrad is not publishable³⁸

• Helped out at a recruiting weekend and ended up being looked to to put out a number of³⁹ fires.

• Met with my advisor and got a vague timeline for finishing my degree

• Started watching a show weekly with a group of friends

• Started leading my subgroup in weekly meetings and in general

• Met with quite possibly the world’s best chemistry outreach⁴⁰ person and got advice about structuring a talk and really just conversation in general.

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

Looking into March, what’s on the docket?

• Progress on thesis. At the very least, I want to have a detailed outline, where I have the chapters I’m going to write and the major sections within them as titles. Since I’m meeting with my committee in mid March, I should aim to do that sooner than later⁴¹

• Work on the food situation. With Lent coming up, I usually give up alcohol and meat. I don’t know if I’m going to give up either or both this year, but regardless, I want to focus on food which is more contemplative than mindless, and really make an effort to focus on eating food which is less ultraprocessed.⁴² That is, I want to make sure that I’m feeding myself simply and healthily⁴³.

• Figure out what the block is on my web novel. I don’t need to get back into it, but if I realize that it’s not going to come back, then I should accept that. If it is going to be something I pick back up, then I need to figure out what’s stopping me.

• Don’t waste time. I think that I’m going to give up playing games for lent⁴⁴, though I should really reflect on my plans for lent before it starts. I also think that not wasting time can be thought of as not scrolling by social media, and so much more. I know that rest is vital, and so not a waste, but there are ways to rest that are not as brain rotting⁴⁵ as social media. I want to focus on those.

• Writing. I want to, in addition to the thesis and novel, get back into blogging, poetry, and letter writing. The letters I’ve been sending have been really heavy, but letters don’t need to be so. Maybe read an old etiquette⁴⁶ guide on letters to see what used to be normative to include. The letter itself is probably the important part, not the depth of the contents.⁴⁷

• Be better about group fitness classes. Twice a day during the work week is likely too many, but twice per week is definitely too few. As much as I have been enjoying the productivity of morning work, it does leave me crashing by early afternoon, so going to the morning yoga is likely a good option.

• Be better about taking chances on interpersonal relationships. I have a deep seated and frankly irrational fear that many people in my life despise me. The best way to get that part of me to reduce is by forcing it to confront reality. Also, rejection rarely hurts as much as it feels like it will, especially if I don’t irrationally psych myself in any direction.

• Music. I want to make efforts to grow in guitar and voice, not simply passively have them. I also want to get back into listening to music, and think that spending time reflecting on albums could be a good way to do that.

• Continue to clean my life. I want the spaces to be cleaner, but I also want the content to be less cluttered. I do best when I know what’s coming and feel prepared⁴⁸.

• Work on 26 for 26. At the very least, figure out how behind I am.

• Healthy work life balance. I need to not spend every waking moment thinking about work, and I also need to be available as the senior member of my research group when younger students need my help.

• Taking the advice about science communication, revise last year’s outreach talks and prepare for the weekend talk I have coming up.

• Spend a little time each morning either virtually or physically thinking about goals for the day. I don’t know if looking at the goals again at night really helps that much, but if it’s something I have the space to do⁴⁹, then I might as well try that too.

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

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

• Professional:

  • Get a working outline of my thesis before committee meeting

  • Work on leaving work at work

  • Work on being a better mentor

  • Work on science communication:

    • Draft the materials for the science exploration I’m helping to lead

    • Read the recommended readings from the meeting and look to how I can incorporate that into the materials I already have

    • figure out how to separate my public facing presentation from intra-field communication. The talks need to be different, and I want to make sure I have the affects in my head.

• Heath:⁵¹

  • Physical:⁵²

    • Feed myself simply and healthily. I think that I should probably start tracking what I eat, at least vaguely, because right now I feel like I don’t feed myself enough, and the fact that my weight is stable means that the calories in and out are equaling each other, and I know that I’m not getting great calories in. I am in a healthy enough mind space right now that I don’t have to settle for simply making sure that I have any fuel, I can work on bettering the fuel.⁵³ I know that nutrition is aided by cooking, so figure out what foods I need to cook in order to efficiently extract the nutrition, or other options⁵⁴⁵⁵

    • Go to Group Fitness more regularly

  • Mental:

    • Spend time each day thinking about what I want to have happen in the course of the day.

    • Work to keep professional and personal things separate⁵⁶

    • Don’t waste time, and in particular, be mindful about making sure to take breaks and rest.

    • Clean my spaces:

      • Normal Physical things (kitchen, bathroom, messes on tables)

      • Sight lines: are the visuals I have at any given point the ones that I want? Are spaces set up to be conducive to what I want?

      • Start reading and returning books⁵⁷

      • Honestly, I think that the first two points, if not all three belong in here⁵⁸

    • Be more intentional about reaching out to others:

      • Both figure out what to put in a normal letter and get back into writing them

      • When I feel the sudden gut wrenching fear of an unexpected message, stop and verbally⁵⁹ remind myself that I have⁶⁰ good and honest friends who value our relationship like I do,⁶¹ and much as I like randomly reaching out, some of them do as well.

      • Once again compile a list of people who are important to me, and work to start figuring out times and ways to connect with them⁶²⁶³

      • I think those three are good! Maybe start giving small gifts, but that’s something I can do.

  • Spiritual:

    • Be more intentional about prayer

    • Figure out what I want to do with my lent, and start doing that.⁶⁴

• Artistic:

  • Work on guitar and voice, not just passively.

  • I guess the rest of writing belongs here

  • Writing:

    • Find the web novel mental block

    • Start writing poetry again

    • Start blogging (and also posting the blogs more)

    • 26 for 26? This should maybe go somewhere else? idk. Artistic might be the wrong goal. Maybe just “other”

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