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The Week That Was
Jan. 8th, 2024 09:00 amLast week was...not the best. I made strides in a couple of areas, but I still fell down on other things more often than I would have liked. I'll do a quick rundown of my six habits here.
Meditation: 5/7 days. I'm in a place with meditation where I see the obvious benefits play out through the day. I'm more focused, more emotionally stable, and I catch myself indulging in bad habits a bit more quickly. It really does help to anchor me to the world, helping me be more present with things.
I skipped Friday and Saturday this week; Friday just because I fell into BlueSky scrolling instead of meditating and didn't do it once the window for it had passed that morning. On Saturday, I just didn't feel like it. On Sunday I really wanted to set up the next week in my Bullet Journal and get some organization under my belt, and it really helped with that.
Writing: 3/7 days. An improvement over the final few weeks of the year, but not by much. My total word count: 1108 words on "Swiftie's Intergalactic". Wednesday was a tough day and I think it heightened the time pressure I feel with writing to the point I couldn't push through the anxiety. Also, a couple sleepless nights really doomed me. More on that later.
Reading: 1/7 days. Just terrible with this, mostly because I'm so squishy on what "counts" as reading. I'm just going to go ahead and codify a reading list so there's no confusion. I'll allow a maximum of 3 books for my stack: one for fiction, one for non-fiction, and one for furry lit. All The Pretty Horses is my current fiction read; Being Black, a primer on Buddhism from a Black American perspective, is my non-fiction read; and "Carmine & Jet", a short story from Dissident Love, will be my first furry fiction for the year. Any one of those three counts towards the goal.
Grooming: 2/7 days. This sounds worse than it is. Each day I set a grooming goal for myself -- mostly, flossing every day and doing my face wash. I...have not been great about cementing that habit, though I'm also seeing the benefits of it when I actually follow through. I'm hoping to use this first week as a baseline that I can then use to mark my progress.
Exercise: 5/7 days. I don't really have a set goal for this, but I also wanted to make sure I'm doing something physical every day. Most days the walk around the neighborhood is good enough for this, but combined with going to the gym regularly I don't see myself falling down on this any time soon. K. and R. are both dedicated, and I like having a more-developed core, the ability to kneel and stand and sit without too much difficulty. The only down-side is that exercise is time-intensive, so if I'm not feeling it that day it's easy to make an excuse for "productive procrastination" where I carve out the time for something else.
Self-Improvement: 0/7 days. Another goal that's been too squishy for me to really put effort in. I changed the "S" in my BuJo from "study" to "self-improvement" to broaden my perspective on what counts. Usually my goal for this is at least 30 minutes of Duolingo, but there's so much else out there I should be learning. I'm still signed up for MasterClass, so any one of those would do; I also have a ton of Udemy courses, a Udacity Nanodegree program on SQL, even just workbooks on Cognitive or Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. There's even LinkedIn Learning, which I'd regain access to if I took advantage of the free Premium offer a friend working there gave to me.
The thing is I don't want to just learn things for learning's sake. I'd like to hone in on something that would bring me tangible benefits.
Right now, Duolingo is an easy, low-hanging way to tick that box. But I think learning how to write better should be the goal here. Focusing on business/technical writing OR devoting time to deliberate practice will be the thing. So maybe: Duolingo, Neil Gaiman's MasterClass, and a business writing course should be the three projects this counts for.
Overall, things fell apart in the back half of the week due to a lack of sleep. R. was snoring heroically a few nights in the middle of the week and things came to a head on Wednesday night. I got maybe five hours of sleep (after a similarly sleepless Tuesday night) and just crashed on Thursday. I did manage to meditate and exercise then, but after that I was just coasting.
The thing is, by the weekend I was kind of tired of it. It felt good to actually clean up a bit on Sunday, review the week before and plan for the week ahead. Just coasting has diminishing returns at this point; even when I'm in that pleasant weed-haze I'm still thinking about the things I could be doing. That feels like progress, like I'm internalizing the need to be done with mere "existence".
Overall, I'll take it for the first week of the year. It wasn't perfect, but I did put enough effort into knowing where my trouble spots were. This week will be a bit rough as well, but for different reasons: FC 2024 is this weekend.
I'm taking off Friday to hang out, and Saturday E. will be joining us for his first furry convention! I'm planning to be his guide as much as possible on that day. The weekend will be tough to manage for writing and meditation, but I'll do my best to find a way.
Meditation: 5/7 days. I'm in a place with meditation where I see the obvious benefits play out through the day. I'm more focused, more emotionally stable, and I catch myself indulging in bad habits a bit more quickly. It really does help to anchor me to the world, helping me be more present with things.
I skipped Friday and Saturday this week; Friday just because I fell into BlueSky scrolling instead of meditating and didn't do it once the window for it had passed that morning. On Saturday, I just didn't feel like it. On Sunday I really wanted to set up the next week in my Bullet Journal and get some organization under my belt, and it really helped with that.
Writing: 3/7 days. An improvement over the final few weeks of the year, but not by much. My total word count: 1108 words on "Swiftie's Intergalactic". Wednesday was a tough day and I think it heightened the time pressure I feel with writing to the point I couldn't push through the anxiety. Also, a couple sleepless nights really doomed me. More on that later.
Reading: 1/7 days. Just terrible with this, mostly because I'm so squishy on what "counts" as reading. I'm just going to go ahead and codify a reading list so there's no confusion. I'll allow a maximum of 3 books for my stack: one for fiction, one for non-fiction, and one for furry lit. All The Pretty Horses is my current fiction read; Being Black, a primer on Buddhism from a Black American perspective, is my non-fiction read; and "Carmine & Jet", a short story from Dissident Love, will be my first furry fiction for the year. Any one of those three counts towards the goal.
Grooming: 2/7 days. This sounds worse than it is. Each day I set a grooming goal for myself -- mostly, flossing every day and doing my face wash. I...have not been great about cementing that habit, though I'm also seeing the benefits of it when I actually follow through. I'm hoping to use this first week as a baseline that I can then use to mark my progress.
Exercise: 5/7 days. I don't really have a set goal for this, but I also wanted to make sure I'm doing something physical every day. Most days the walk around the neighborhood is good enough for this, but combined with going to the gym regularly I don't see myself falling down on this any time soon. K. and R. are both dedicated, and I like having a more-developed core, the ability to kneel and stand and sit without too much difficulty. The only down-side is that exercise is time-intensive, so if I'm not feeling it that day it's easy to make an excuse for "productive procrastination" where I carve out the time for something else.
Self-Improvement: 0/7 days. Another goal that's been too squishy for me to really put effort in. I changed the "S" in my BuJo from "study" to "self-improvement" to broaden my perspective on what counts. Usually my goal for this is at least 30 minutes of Duolingo, but there's so much else out there I should be learning. I'm still signed up for MasterClass, so any one of those would do; I also have a ton of Udemy courses, a Udacity Nanodegree program on SQL, even just workbooks on Cognitive or Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. There's even LinkedIn Learning, which I'd regain access to if I took advantage of the free Premium offer a friend working there gave to me.
The thing is I don't want to just learn things for learning's sake. I'd like to hone in on something that would bring me tangible benefits.
Right now, Duolingo is an easy, low-hanging way to tick that box. But I think learning how to write better should be the goal here. Focusing on business/technical writing OR devoting time to deliberate practice will be the thing. So maybe: Duolingo, Neil Gaiman's MasterClass, and a business writing course should be the three projects this counts for.
Overall, things fell apart in the back half of the week due to a lack of sleep. R. was snoring heroically a few nights in the middle of the week and things came to a head on Wednesday night. I got maybe five hours of sleep (after a similarly sleepless Tuesday night) and just crashed on Thursday. I did manage to meditate and exercise then, but after that I was just coasting.
The thing is, by the weekend I was kind of tired of it. It felt good to actually clean up a bit on Sunday, review the week before and plan for the week ahead. Just coasting has diminishing returns at this point; even when I'm in that pleasant weed-haze I'm still thinking about the things I could be doing. That feels like progress, like I'm internalizing the need to be done with mere "existence".
Overall, I'll take it for the first week of the year. It wasn't perfect, but I did put enough effort into knowing where my trouble spots were. This week will be a bit rough as well, but for different reasons: FC 2024 is this weekend.
I'm taking off Friday to hang out, and Saturday E. will be joining us for his first furry convention! I'm planning to be his guide as much as possible on that day. The weekend will be tough to manage for writing and meditation, but I'll do my best to find a way.
