First 2024 Check-In

It turns out that journaling on Sunday morning is not as easy as I had hoped. The past two weeks have been somewhat abnormal though. I have made it back to this resolution, although it has turned into afternoon and evening. How am I doing so far?

Reading the Bible and praying has been consistent. Bible memory has been more difficult. I have only gotten over 50 verses one day. Right now I'm averaging 20-30. I'll try to keep over 20 for the next week--at the moment, I don't have a plan to do more. I do it for 10-15 minutes in the morning and 5 minutes or so at night, but when I'm fighting uphill against verses that I can't remember, it goes more slowly.

Bedtime reading has also been satisfactory. Sometimes I have gone straight to sleep, but mostly I have been reading a book surveying Chinese history. It's dry, but I am still in BC. If it doesn't pick up near the end, I just won't buy the second volume. For my other books, I have the book club book, Jonathan Edwards, and I'll probably re-read Desiring God again if I feel inclined to avoid the other options. I have barely read any webfiction since the beginning of the year, and then only my favorite two stories. Fanfiction hasn't had any appeal.

Although I have several gripes with the HabitNest app, I have been using it to good effect. I have been tremendously sore everyday since last Tuesday. I do feel stronger, but I should be stretching more. It's hard to do that when it isn't built in to the routine and I already feel like 30 minutes of exercise is more than I want to spend.

It turned out that the welding class is not available at any community college within driving distance. So, I think I will dedicate some time to regularly studying Spanish. I just made this decision today, so I don't have a plan in place yet. This is not only to help me do a good job teaching World Languages this semester, but also to prepare me for going to Colombia later this year.

I broke a string on the guitar, so I haven't been able to practice recently. Hopefully I'll remember to pick up a replacement sometime this week. No progress has been made on the social front. I'm going to visit Grandpa during Easter vacation, so I think that fills up my travel plans for the year.

Nothing particularly interesting has happened these past two weeks. Last weekend we did have a big book club meeting at Jordan's house. It was fun. However, hanging out with those guys incites me to spend money on alcohol. I really don't need to do that--I certainly can't justify it. In other news, I got all the wood cut yesterday for the J-term woodworking class, and I'm looking forward to that. I guess that is all for this week.