First Published: 2025 May 23 (because forgot to hit post)
Of the many things that I do not post, things that I worry may negatively impact my future career aspirations are high on the list. As a child, I was always advised1 to never willingly incriminate myself, and even though there is nothing objectively objectionable in what I deleted, I don’t know if it is necessarily a good look. There is a question to be had about whether it’s incriminating to describe that I have not posted something incriminating, but I think that I just don’t like being embarrassed by what I put out in the world.
I have, not infrequently, written an entire blog post only to realize that it had no place on this site. That can happen for various reasons, and I’ve more recently started thinking about how I can still reference that I did do writing even if I’m not posting the results. So, with that in mind, let’s talk about what we don’t post.
Most often, what I don’t post is either overly political or overly personal. That which is overly personal often includes vulnerability that does not feel appropriate2, and more often than not these days focuses around my mother. From here on out, I’d like to make a new draft of this with each post that I don’t make.
Yesterday I got most of the way through a reflection about morality and the role of women in the Church, before realizing that I didn’t really care about it any more. More than that, though, I think that I forgot what I wanted to say in the post at all. I hadn’t, and haven’t, reflected about the meta-reasoning behind each folly, and don’t really know if this is the space I want to use for to do so.3
Anyways, all this to say, there is much that I do not post, even though this is something that I will
Top Priorities:
Sleep:
Keeping sleep time sacred?
Yeah! Went to bed at like 8 again last night. Felt great, somehow actually slept through my alarm though!
Good sleep hygiene?
Eh, I have to imagine so.
Sleeping enough?
Slept through alarm which implies no, but idk, maybe it’s also just the whole “I’m getting up earlier than I am used to”.
How well rested do I feel?
Eh, decently. I get exhausted easily, but that’s the nature of life
Feed myself:
Did I eat breakfast?
I’m about to! Yesterday I ate a breakfast equivalent.
Did I eat a second meal?
I did yesterday! I went for a long-ish walk and got the cheap overly large chinese-american lunch that is popular amongst a demographic of students here.
Did I eat dinner?
I think so! i honestly don’t remember what happened when I got home last night, I was just so tired.
Water?
Nowhere near enough yesterday, today is another day, though. Goal is to finish the whole water bottle and all of the tea.
Family:
Am I neglecting any familial obligations?
I guess I’m not listening to the new album quite as much as I maybe should be.
Movement:
Am I stretching at least 5 minutes per hour of computer time?
I did not, though I did get far closer yesterday. If anything, the fact that I had such limited motivation really helped with that, because I could always use stretching as a way to be productive while procrastinating
Am I generally making efforts to be limber?
I think so! I spent a solid 20 minutes stretching last night and a few minutes this morning vaguely stretching. I know that I’m slowly tightening up again, which I don’t like, though.
Spirituality:
Time for prayer?
No
Prayer?
No
Time for sacred silence?
No
Deep breaths?
I’m generally doing it, at least as I read these daily reflections. Outside of that, though, I don’t know.
Secondary Priorities:
Thesis/ Ph.D. work:
Keeping up on the writing deadlines?
I realized yesterday that I don’t really have an internal image of where my thesis currently stands and what it needs. With that in mind, I printed out a copy of the thesis as it stood yesterday to see what I have.
Reading the necessary things?
I brought more textbooks to the camp today, which might help.
Making graphs?
No.
Visual depiction of Latin Hypercube
Visual depiction of Grid Search
Visual depiction of random search
Visual depiction of Loomis-Wood Diagrams
Visual depiction of Spectral Stacking
Visual depiction of how the fitness of the spectral stacks is really reliant on the graphs being the right height
I guess that the stuff for intro to quantum video counts here.
Plots from the actual results of the runs, to make sure that it worked out.4.
Organizing citations?
I spent a little bit of time yesterday, and I also realized that I had not ever actually made the .bib file for the thesis, so set that up as well.
Love:
Taking risks?
Marginally!
Making efforts?
Minimally!
Showing affection?
Yeah!
Being honest?
Trying to
Being open?
Eh.
Being appropriately vulnerable?
Yeah
Adjacent to Primary and Secondary:
Typing Practice?
Yeah! I like doing it first thing in the morning. However, I do also know that the morning is my most productive time, so a large part of me feels some bits of guilt about not using the time to be productive. Hard to know what the correct thing to do is, though.
Applying to jobs?
Not so much. I have a meeting with the career office this afternoon about an application which is due tomorrow, so that’s existentially terrifying.
What if they don’t want me? Even worse, what if they do!
Reading the things I think could be good?
Eh, not as much as might be good. I want to understand how rotational transitions work, and I want to describe that in my thesis. I’m just not sure how much of an explicit derivation I should/want to/can have. It’s certainly a lower priority than other things I could be doing.
Making manim videos?
Nope! That’s something I could work on when I run out of energy today though!
Cleaning?
Office
Remains fine because I’m not there.
Home
Minor efforts, and I found out that Monday is Memorial day, so that should help! Nominally not allowed to be at work, which means that I can really focus on cleaning the home.5
Car
Shoot! I’m giving an outreach talk on Friday and Saturday, which means that I need to have it cleaned.
Computer
Not a ton, but a little bit last night.
Other as needed
I don’t think that there’s much else. I guess my thoughts and life and thesis, which I have done a little bit of.
External Obligations:
Guitar for wedding?
I realized yesterday that I want stepwise and fourth-wise motions. If I limit myself to major chords, that means that I only have twelve chords at most, and since most of them are symmetric6, there’s really not that much to do. Since I don’t realllly want to be moving all around the neck, that limits the chords even further. That being said, I do still need to be spending time on it.
Travel plans?
Nope!
Talks for parks?
Signed up for a few more, so I think that I’ve officially set up at least as many talks this summer as I have before this summer.
Other requested talks?
Not at all!
Talks for conferences?
Yesterday while in my mood of existential dread I made the “dream talk, minimal viable talk, realistic talk, stretch talk” outline.7 I have about a month until the conference, which is both too long to feel urgent and also not long enough to be able to feel comfortable with procrastinating it in full.
Tertiary Goals:8
Blogging?
I’m going to get this post out today, and I will commit to that.
Reading?
I have been churning through the Cradle series again, which is fun.
Web Noveling?
As with blogging, I’m going to get a chapter done today. I will also do everything in my power to get another chapter done tomorrow, and a third done Friday. I don’t know when, exactly, would be best for me to do that, but we’ll see if it’s possible. I think that I really need to just accept that even though they tell us to stop working after boot camp ends, it’s only 4pm which means that I do, in fact, have a lot of the day left to do things. Might also want to go on a long walk tonight! Oh wait, today is burger night, hmm.
Guitar?
Played three fishers this morning, which was fun. I love the way that things sound when I’m still primarily asleep.
Other hobbies?
Quaternary Goals:
Letter writing
Nope!
Handwriting/penmanship
This week is dissertation camp, and I realize that I’ve been doing a lot of handwriting. I’m not totally sure why it is that writing things by hands makes my life go better, but wow do I need things to be hand written.
Picking a new signature
Honestly, I don’t think that this should be an entry any longer, because wow I do not make progress on it.
yes, I knew a bunch of lawyers as a child, how did you know?↩
see the daily reflections!↩
if only because I’m at writing camp and am currently at a weird mental and physical space where I both feel productive but also as though there’s nothing I want to do. It’s a really nice stage, because my thoughts feel like they’re under my command, which is not something that I am at all used to.
Turns out it was a prelude to feeling tired, which I guess makes sense.↩
SSC, AAT, if any vib states were good, what happened to the computations, etc↩
or other things, as needed, I guess↩
going from A to B is the same as B to A in reverse, give or take↩
read: this is what I need to do in order to have the content for the talk which satisfies each of the sets of goals↩
mmmm off by N numbering↩