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.

Last Day of 2023

Welcome to the end of 2023. I had no idea that it had been so long since I did any journaling--a full 18 months. I will honestly say that I had high hopes for 2023, but as usual the results were mixed. What did happen?

I finished my first year of full-time classroom teaching. Overall it was a good experience. I began a second year of teaching. I had a few reasons for doing this, but in the end it might be attributed to the sunk cost fallacy. Although, it may not have been a fallacy in this case. I wanted to do a better job with my science teaching, and I wanted to see how the precious students that I student-taught in their 6th grade year matured into wonderful 8th graders. Living conditions and a lack of monetary resources probably played into the decision as well. I would like to find my own place to live, but a single year of saving (after nearly emptying my bank account for grad school) was not nearly enough to satisfy the greed of the gluttonous housing market of 2023. As a result, I moved back in with my parents with the hopes of having better prospects in 2024.

In the summer I worked for a general contractor and learned the basics of several skills, especially cutting tiles for drop-down ceilings. There was more demolition than I like and some awkward interactions with a coworker, but I made it through and maintained a good relationship with my employer. Later in the year, I was called for jury duty and seated, thereby making me miss a crucial week (plus a couple of days) before midterms and Christmas break. It was a very interesting experience though, and I appreciated the variety. Throughout this whole year, Jordan, Cody, and I have had book club meetings. This tradition began last August, with the goal of reading a book that one of the three of us would choose and meeting monthly to discuss it. We started out with fantasy books, but have widened our horizons as none of the fantasy books really impressed us.

My traveling quota was met. At Easter break, Jared and I visited my cousin in Hendersonville. It was a good time, and I had fun hanging out with her and seeing Greenville, SC. In August, the family went to Warm Springs for a cousin's wedding. For Thanksgiving, we went to the Outer Banks, because I had never been before. The most distinctive experiences were climbing to the top of a lighthouse and surfing on sand (it did not work very well, but it was fun to try). Finally, for Christmas we went to visit cousins in the Nashville, TN area. I haven't spent much time with cousins since we all became adults, so it was nice to get to know how they matured. We mostly hung around the house, played games, and watched the children.

As I didn't journal at all last year, I am not exactly sure what my goals were. As always, I know that I intended to do regular exercise. I can say with some confidence that possibly discounting 2018-19, the years of biking and bouldering, I did more exercise than any other year in my adult life. I ran with Jared for about a month before I moved, and after I moved I spent a lot of time doing calisthenics, especially push-ups, chin-ups, squats, and handstands. I did exercises about three times a week from August until Thanksgiving break, and a little bit in the summer (though my job was sometimes physically demanding enough that I excused myself). Before Thanksgiving, I was able to do about five archer push-ups on each side without great effort, which has been a goal of mine for a while.

At a presently indeterminate point that had to be at least a year ago, I had decided that I needed to cook at least two meals a week (unless other circumstances render it unnecessary). I have kept to that commitment faithfully and intend to continue it. The leftovers are consumed more quickly now that I live with the parents, but since Mom also contributes to meals, it has generally worked out well.

Every year I make an effort to dedicate more time to the pursuit of Christ. This past year I feel that I was more successful than in the past. I prayed more consistently and read about half of a year-long devotion book. Waking up early helps this tremendously, and until Thanksgiving break and jury duty threw off my schedule, I was faithful in this. Since the new school year, I have also striven to devote my time on Sunday to the Lord. I have generally been successful at not doing work on Sunday, though my substitute for the work has not always been edifying. In April I began using a new Bible memory website, and for six months I consistently reviewed and studied new verses, for a total of 593 verses. I lost my drive when I missed a few days at the middle school retreat, and then I took a break entirely at Thanksgiving.

Unlike last year, I have many intended goals and habits this year:

1. Reading the Bible - going through the entire OT and the NT twice over the course of the year. I will read through a reading plan in the morning. I anticipate that it will take about 15 minutes a day.
2. Prayer--I am going to use a prayer app to help me stay on task with this. I will do it after reading the Bible.
3. Bible memory - I will review at least 50 verses a day and, once I get caught up on my backlog of verses (hopefully by February), I will begin learning one new verse a day. I usually do this right before getting up in the morning, so the time I spend on it varies based on how long I read and prayed. Generally I spend 10-15 minutes on this though.
4. Reading - At least five days a week, I will go to bed before 9 and read until I get sleepy. I will not touch my phone after 9. My reading choices will be varied, but I plan to have 3-4 options at any time. One of them will probably be Jonathan Edwards, and I will have a book club book (unless I have already finished it). The other two are yet to be determined, but I think I will have a lighter theological book and a historical book.
5. Fitness - For now, I will try using the app Habit Nest to do workouts 5 days a week. These workouts will take place before 8:30 PM, but probably after 7 PM on school days. I will not drink any special drink before I have completed the daily workout. I want to be able to do a handstand more consistently and longer, and I want to be able to do a one-handed push-up. I don't have exact dates for these goals--maybe I will update them later.
6. Learning - between teaching world languages and science, my quota for learning will probably be filled. But I also hope to take a welding course or two in the spring. Other goals will be revisted at the end of the school year in May.
7. Journaling - I am going to start writing a journal entry every Sunday. This should be easy to do in the morning after breakfast, because I usually have a couple of hours before church. I can write not just about the past week but also about what I am reading, what I am learning about in the Bible, and the progression of my prayer life.
8. Work - I will find a new job by the end of August. If it takes me a couple of months, I will probably do some interim work somewhere. I don't foresee that happening, but job hunting has a mercurial temperament.
9. DIY - I have to finish the table for the den by the time I move out. For now, my goal is to have it done by May. I will work on it during the weekend if I don't have welding class. That won't happen until after J-Term though, because I have to finish the adirondack chairs for J-term first.

This may seem like a tall order, but the first five are just slight increases from what I was doing before my routine was disrupted by Thanksgiving break. If I sign up for welding, I will be held accountable, and there is outside pressure to accomplish the work and DIY goals. The journaling is the only completely new habit.

There are other areas that I want to address but I have not mapped out a system by which to do so:

1. Music - I would like to be able to play guitar, piano, or violin. I practiced guitar consistently in the fall when I knew that I would play it at the middle school retreat, but I have only picked it up twice since then. I am afraid that I will need some sort of accountability. Thinking on it, guitar is definitely the most accessible, so unless I come across a reason to change to another instrument, I should stick with it. It would be good to have a regular practice time as a habit and some songs I would like to be able to play well as a goal. I will plan to revisit this after J-term.
2. Social - I need to talk to more people and have relationships with them. One way I can do this is by staying at church, which I should do anyway. However, I need to find other ways to socialize. This also needs a revisit after J-term.
3. Travel - specifically for Easter break. I will go to Philadelphia with the 8th graders in March. I plan to go to Colombia in August. If I can get off from work, the family may go somewhere interesting for Thanksgiving. Otherwise, Easter may be my last chance to travel somewhere for a year, but it will likely be the best time for job hunting as well. At the moment I feel a bit travel-weary, so I will need to come back to this too, probably after J-term.

If some of these goals seem like an excessive overloading of my time, that is intentional. There are several negative habits that I want to avoid, and filling up my time with other things helps me with those. My main two bugbears are video games and wish fulfillment stories, both of which lead to escapism and loathing of reality for me. If I can remember the goals that I have made, the appeal of these distractions will lessen. So there you have it, folks: a bunch of goals and resolutions for the new year. I should be back with updates next week, but if nothing else, I should check back in on January 21st to reconsider the areas of uncertainty.

Entertainment

 I really like the most recent system I came up with for keeping track of my activities. It’s a simple spreadsheet with activity categories in the columns, dates in the rows, and the cells contain activity details. It takes seconds to complete for each activity, and I get a good idea of how much I have invested and how consistent I have been. Quantifying would improve it, and that would not take too much effort I don’t think, but I’m not sure exactly how I would do it so for now I will just leave it as is. Unfortunately, when I started working overtime (at R.S. Johnson), I fell out of the habit of keeping track. That’s mostly because I barely did anything other than work.

This past week I overindulged in Terraria in my free time. I also read a few stories from Royal Road, which is my new go-to entertainment source (replacing fanfiction). I have read several excellent stories on there, the first (and highest-rated) being Mother of Learning. I’m not satisfied, though. “Entertainment” is so unfulfilling, beyond an hour or so. I think that’s partially why people “binge”—to forget how unsatisfied they are. I need to change my approach to address this in a healthy and responsible way. I guess my best option for that is to set a schedule or routine.

Lately I have been feeling a drive to exercise. However, tennis is the only real outlet I would consider, and I just can’t see myself coming home from work at 4 in the afternoon, in the hottest part of the day, and immediately going back out to play. After dinner seems even less likely, but I’ll give it some thought.

I finished sealing the door for Mom and Dad’s cabinet-table today. Home Depot didn’t have the proper hinges in stock when I checked yesterday, so I’m going to pick them up tomorrow on my way over to their house. There I will hopefully install it and it will finally be done! I’ve started thinking about other projects, but between the summer heat, unpredictable working hours, and the looming craziness of the semester’s start, I may be holding off for a while.

In other news, I am feeling disgusted with myself about two things: programming and socializing. Well, the latter is hardly novel, I am just feeling it more keenly this holiday weekend. In programming, I really want to get on with a few projects, but it has been so long since I touched them, and there are resources that I can’t find easily, and it’s just easier to go back to reading or something else fun.

Commitment

 I’m afraid of commitment. I guess that is true, now that I think about it. If I commit to something, I fully intend to follow through with it. On the other hand, that means that I am afraid to get out of my comfort zone because I am afraid that I won’t be able to follow through with anything. Speaking of which—church is one area where I should commit but have not been able to follow through. I might be able to chalk some of that up to the lack of commitment in other areas of my life. Maybe. In summary, I think that it would be a good thing for me to seek out more commitment. If things don’t work out because of other commitments, well, that’s probably still better than being under-committed.

In other news, last week was rough, and to recuperate (or rather, to revert to bad habits, or to seek out consolation in the wrong places), I have gone back to playing the cultivation simulator game. Hopefully the pit will not be as deep this time. I will also make provisions so that I have other things to do in the near future. I will talk to someone about being on the sub list tomorrow. I'll have a few last school-related tasks to take care of as well. Then, my joblessness begins on Thursday.

My goals for this week (Thursday-Saturday) are:

• Some kind of social activity
• Exercise in the morning, or afternoon if it's raining.
• 2+ hours Spring/Java
• 1 hour job search (3 x 20 minute bursts)
• Adjust website to be more professional
• Get website up and running

I think these are reasonable goals. Perhaps they are more modest than they need to be, but I am excited about doing them, and they are working up to full-time job searching that will take place next week.

Back on the clock

 I mentioned last time that I bought a video game but was frustrated by the lack of documentation. Well, I found the documentation and ended up investing three solid weeks of free time in it. Fortunately, I haven't touched it for a week, but I still haven't felt great. I've been back on the old fanfiction train, which never makes me feel good about myself. As of yesterday though, I'm working hard and living life. Part three of edTPA, my big teaching project, was due last night, and I missed the deadline. It was like pulling teeth to even start working on it, but I managed it and did (what I think was) a decent job. I submitted it at 11 AM this morning. Afterward I cleaned up downstairs and vacuumed up most of the hair cloud that covered the floor (from Jared's dog). Now I'm returning to the document that I started last month and mentioned in my last post.

I tried working on programming some this week, but it was frustrating. When I work on my own projects, I run into walls easily. I only have enough momentum to break through a few walls before I run out of steam. Furthermore, without noticeable progress I don’t have much incentive to come back the next day and try again. This past week I was working through a course, the goal of which is certification in a collection of Amazon technologies. So far (about 3 hours in) everything we have done is more system administration and has no connection to programming. I should start applying for computer jobs, but already I feel my confidence sapped. I have made a few more connections in computer programming though.

On a brighter note, I was shown how to make cuts for cabinet doors, so I will be working on that in the near future. I watched a movie last weekend (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) which was related to the Chinese genre I mentioned, and enjoyed it very much. Tonight we may watch another similar film.

Xianxia in real life?

I have one more full day of teaching that I have to do. After that, I hope to take a break from lesson planning and spend that time working on my teaching portfolio. This past week was exhausting. It could have been because I was distracted, but I almost wanted to give up on teaching entirely a couple of times. I have really enjoyed getting to know the students, but the language arts are a frustrating subject to teach, I’ve decided. Even so, I have been pleasantly surprised a few times at how enthusiastically the students attack writing assignments that I give them. In particular, almost all of them seemed to enjoy writing a proposal for a change at the school.

Two years ago, I came home from Japan, and now I’m almost 34 years old. The past two years haven’t been exactly what I had hoped or imagined, but it has certainly been interesting. Last year in particular might have been the most I started off 2020 with the intention of doing challenges to keep myself progressing. That year I read a peculiar book series in a relatively new genre (to western culture) of progression fantasy. I rediscovered that series when I encountered a few Worm crossovers with that series (Cradle), and from there discovered another web novel (Beware of Chicken) which I just finished this morning. After that, I bought a video game called Amazing Cultivation Simulator, which is like Rimworld in the world of Xianxia (the Chinese word for the cultivation/progression fantasy genre). Fortunately, I got too frustrated with the lack of documentation to really get absorbed with playing it. It and the web novel also inspired me to consider my own real life in terms of progression.

One thing I really want to do is keep a record of what I learn and what I try to learn every day. Ideally, I would also like to keep track of the hours I spend on my pursuits, but that would be tedious. I do have some hope of being able to accomplish it, though, now that I have come close to establishing a nightly routine. But first, I think I will start a spreadsheet I update nightly with my weekly activities and my learning foci in each by day. Then, perhaps at the end of the week, I can write a journal entry expanding on them as well as my weekly thoughts. Yes, that seems much more achievable than a daily entry. For instance, this week I memorized Psalm 31:16-24. I would probably write down leisure reading as well, which in this case would be Beware of Chicken, and I might as well list my physical activities also (mostly push-ups). I hope this format will also provoke me to work on new things more deliberately, particularly on the piano/guitar.

A gap year?

I thought about New Year’s Resolutions around Christmas, and then completely forgot about them until yesterday. I don’t think I have done that in a long time, at least not while I’ve been in the US. I still don’t have any at the moment, but I may come up with some in the next few days. Today is going to be a day of reflection and some looking forward. I’ve been sick since Friday, probably with covid, but I won’t know for sure until later this week because I’m just getting the tests done today. We had a long weekend already, and then we had an ice storm on Saturday night that is far from melting. Even if I didn’t have covid and school was in session, my symptoms are noticeable enough that I would be very reluctant to go. All that to say, I decided to log my thoughts for the day, because I’m unusually clear-minded. I was thinking about writing this around the time of my birthday, but chances are good that I will have forgotten by then. So here are my reflections.

I said on my 33^rd birthday that I expected to be able to start my life’s work, like Jesus did. Heh. Obviously, that didn’t work for me, and why should it? God certainly does not have the same plan for me that he did for Jesus. Anyway, by all accounts my 33^rd year (and I think I can project all the way to the end of it) was a gap year. I spent most of it doing electrical work as a complete novice, and though I learned a lot, there hasn’t been any firm progression in terms of titles, certifications, etc. My last raise was at the end of May, to $13/hour, which is probably less than I would make after 90 days at most fast-food places in the current job climate. I enjoyed the work, but I can’t see myself doing it for more than ten years as a full-time job, and the job environment was rather negative (though that could have just been the company I was at). I really liked the hours, the combination of intellectual and manual challenges, and the fact that there was rarely any work outside the job site. Oh, and the tools. I liked the tools, maybe a little too much.

What did I learn in my 33^rd year? I learned that hospital bills are expensive, seemingly never-ending, and to be avoided as much as possible (thanks, kidney stone). I learned that I could live off $13/hour, although having a reasonable living arrangement made it more feasible. Thanks to my job in electrical work, I learned that a consistent sleep routine is highly underrated. I feel so much better when I follow the routine of winding down at 8, start reading by 8:30, and read until 9:30 or I am tired.

In Florida, I learned a lot about trusting in God to be my strength. I listened to two books that challenged me immensely: Desiring God and Knowing God. I think I’ve read the latter before, but it is so dense and expansive that I need to read it a dozen more times at least. Desiring God, though, echoes my conviction about the necessity of God being first in my life at all times, which is also the most difficult practice. I have read the Bible too, and I think that is important, but maybe I am not spiritually mature enough to meditate on it and draw meaning from it alone. I need something else to help me apply it. So, if I were to reflect on my spiritual life of the past year and determine a resolution from it, that resolution would be to be constantly reading a book that addresses my faith in God. With that, I project that the rest (prayer, Bible reading, memorization) will come naturally because it will be in my thoughts.

I have built two tables in the last year, and I am thoroughly convinced that finishing is the most difficult part of woodworking. Maybe next time I will remember to try staining and sealing before assembly and that will make it much easier. The first table (my coffee table) has a very messy finish. I think that if I get an itch to do woodworking in the next couple of months, I might try re-doing the entire tabletop. That’s not likely to happen because Mom already wants me to do a mirror frame as well as a couple of electrical projects at her house, and those take priority.

My original plan for post-student-teaching was to consider a post in teaching if I liked it enough and could find one in an amenable location. Otherwise, I would look for a job in electrical work. Now that my brother is an IT recruiter, though, he has encouraged me to return to looking for programming jobs because they are easy to come by. Honestly, I would feel much better putting another year in electrical work, getting my residential license, and then getting a job as a programming contractor with electrical side jobs. In my life, though, the timing never goes the way I want it, so I think I will just have to seize the opportunity for a programming job if I manage to have one. With that in mind, I plan to do some review on my programming skills while I’m student-teaching. I think that will come after I finish this table, and possibly after I do mom’s playroom lights.

For the past two weeks I’ve been distracted by an idle game. I haven’t spent a ton of time on it like I would an active game, but I’m sure it has consumed way more time than it deserves. Furthermore, I don’t know if it is the guilt or the game itself, but it distracts me from spending time with God (and other worthy pursuits too, most likely). Why do I play stupid games? Because I don’t have enough other tasks to do, or because I feel like I deserve a relaxing activity. Therefore, I need to find something to do that is a relaxing treat, and I need to find something that can always keep me busy. Woodworking could be good for the first, but it tends to overwhelm my living room so that I feel like all my recreational time has to be spent on it. Programming would be a good option for the second, especially if I tell myself that I can spend money on it by taking Udemy courses. That seems like a really good idea, as long as I am discerning in my choice of the courses.