Sign Language?

 I decided this week that I wouldn’t write a journal entry on Sunday. Sunday would have been a fine day of relaxation, but I still had half of one more assignment and almost no motivation to finish it. I spent very little time on it and submitted it as incomplete. On the one hand, I feel like I worked hard during the week and yet didn’t make a lot of progress on this assignment, so I was frustrated and fed up with it. On the other hand, I think I could have broken down the steps more. Even if I’m not directly working on the assignment, considering how to approach it should trigger ideas. If I can write those ideas down, I think I’ll be more motivated to work even when the assignment is frustrating.

On Monday I was drowsy and had a sore neck, plus I wanted to finish the fanfiction that I was reading, and I felt like I was in scheduling limbo because I was depending on Mom to tell me when she was going to go to the grocery store so that I could cook dinner. By the time I finished the fanfiction it was the afternoon, so I didn’t get around to writing or doing much other work.

In my textbook reading this morning, I read about deaf students. I had no idea that it had such a big culture. The textbook makes it sound almost like a church should be—close-knit, helping one another, with their own events and standards. I want to learn ASL—it seems very useful, as not only could I communicate with deaf people, but if I taught it to my children I could possibly communicate with them more easily, and my parents if their hearing weakens. Thinking about it practically though, I can’t really imagine my parents picking it up (well okay, maybe if Dad retires…), it probably won’t have a long-term advantage when it comes to children, and I don’t know anyone who uses ASL, and even if I did I would probably be too shy to try to talk with them. That’s a lot of negativity and fear of failure, though. I’ll do some more research on it.

SCHOOLWORK
I was distracted, but even so, I worked over two hours yesterday. On Saturday I put in four hours, so I can’t complain about that—the total for the week was about 19 hours, a lot more than any week before.

EXERCISE
I finished the 30 days of beginner-level planking after 3 weeks in total. The last two days were so difficult that I had to do half and then take a break. Now I’m starting the intermediate course, which was very easy on day 1, but I have no doubt it will get harder. Once I get to the point of needing to halve the workout again, I might return to day 15 or so of the beginner course. I really should row today, but I’m also cooking dinner, so we’ll see.

SPANISH
Skipped on Sunday and Monday. Saturday I listened to the podcast while sanding and rowing. It was from the Alchemist by Paul Coelho, and it was okay, but the American’s lack of reading fluidity combined with his straining attempt at varying his voice made it a bit painful. I’ll probably skip any book reading that the podcast does in the future. I learned some weather expressions and idioms with tener in grammar.

RUBIK’S CUBE
I haven’t practiced much, but I feel like I’ve opened myself up to faster ways to solve F2L, even if they aren’t making me faster yet.

DIY
I finally broke down and used 60 grain, the roughest grain of sandpaper. It made things faster, but the wood is still a bit rough in places. I think I needed to get better wood. Anyway, I’ve now sanded everything to some extent, but I’ve still got a lot of sanding to do.

PROGRAMMING
I found some great Android tutorials, and I finished one which helped me learn how to program a button to affect class variables and display a message called a Toast, which pops up briefly without taking focus. This is all very interesting, easy, and satisfying, but I’m in a bit of a rush and this pursuit will probably take a while to have a direct impact on my portfolio. I need to show that I’m working on something, and I need to start now. Hence, it should be a Java project that is fairly simple and which I can potentially finish in a week of diligent work.

CAREER
This will hopefully be a short-lived goal, as I won’t be working much on it if I do find a job. On Saturday I listened to two courses on SkillShare about personal branding. One was more personal business focused and thus not really helpful for me, but the other was inspirational and gave me access to a couple of worksheets to help me develop a way to present myself. I brainstormed some responses to these questions last night. I’ll try to put these thoughts in more coherent form tonight, and perhaps brainstorm some more. My goal was to apply to a couple jobs on Thursday, but it will be difficult to make that deadline.

MEMORIZATION
I worked on this on Sunday and Monday. I finished Psalm 23 more or less and reviewed Psalm 24 as a gap fill.

BIBLE READING AND PRAYER
I skipped on Monday. This morning I read Luke 3, about John the Baptist. I was easily distracted, and very sleepy while I was reading.