I was still off Monday and Tuesday, back to work Wednesday, and I’m already getting emails for my new job, including the details on my acting assignment. Not quite the form I was expecting, but I’ll roll with it. I’m still in the too-excited-to-be-nervous stage. Work was fine for the week, as I managed to get a couple of big files out of the way. But let’s get to the personal stuff.
For January, I’m tracking 37 items that I’m initially prioritizing for the month and I made good progress on some digital ones:
a. I closed out the PolyWogg Reading Challenge for 2021;
b. I set up One Note notebooks for my home organization, and I’ll be using those throughout the year;
c. Andrea and Jacob assembled two of the three basement bookshelves that I had waiting to put in place, and the third will be done tomorrow (Monday) with a fourth bonus one from the bedroom moved to the basement too;
d. The big item for the week and likely the month is a complete reorganization of all the shelving and my desks in the basement. I completely rearranged the contents of 10 bookshelves, and physically moved six so far. Three more will happen tomorrow. But it’s more than that. I created a worker/craft table at the opposite end of my basement, rejigged my office so that my PC is opposite my work computer instead of L-shaped. I moved a massive amount of stuff from the second floor to the basement, purged some stuff. I’m exhausted, to be honest. And my work computer is still not assembled yet for the morning. If worse comes to worst, I can always just plug in my tablet tomorrow first thing to get going and reconnect the larger items later. My back and ribs have definitely had enough for the day. Huge progress, but still lots to be done when the three new bookshelves are in the right places.
e. Andrea bought me a Sodastream for Christmas, and I’ve been getting that going. I’m not sold on the Bubli bottles as much as the larger syrupy colas, but those have been good. I stocked up on lots of flavours to try in the next month. We’ve tried cherry (okay, but still have to get the dosage right), diet Pepsi, and root beer. I would say the root beer has been the best so far. I also did some Kool-Aid in one bottle (raspberry) that worked quite nicely too.
f. We did our first weekly cooking item, a chicken biryani in the InstaPot, and while it looked like 50 shades of beige, it was quite tasty. And not that much work once we figured out the initial steps for the first time doing the recipe. It was good, not sure it’s a full keeper for the website though. And I forgot to take pictures anyway. 🙂 Oddly enough, this is a double checkbox on the to-do list though as I had one for the new cooking item for the week and one for the chicken biryani recipe itself.
g. Another digital element was my first two series of the year — the first was the overview of the year’s goals by category, the second was a new feature I’m calling 7 Questions. I posted them all earlier this week, and they posted to FaceBook one per day.
h. I’ve been wanting
Two items I made partial progress on … I moved major parts of my astro gear to the garage, but I’m not done yet, and I also have been doing research into 3D printers. I think I know the model I would buy, if/when I buy one, but the reorg of my basement left me feeling too hoarder-ish to risk buying anything else for the basement until I can start weeding some of the other piles of crap. I have tons of stuff for 7-8 projects I’m working on, not sure I need to start a 9th just yet. I might hold off until my birthday.
I’m pretty comfortable with the progress of the past week, and I’ll start updating the list tomorrow to see if there are any other downstream activities that have opened up now and should be included. And finishing this post? That’s another one of my recurring items checked off — an end-of-the-week update!
I’ve been wanting to sit down and write a regular blog about interesting questions to ask myself, and some people do it daily. But a daily blog is a bit of a grind when the real intent is learning, so I’m going to ask myself seven questions a week. Let’s see what I can learn about myself.
001. In what area of your life are you most successful? What lessons can you learn from that?
An interesting question right off the bat. It goes to the heart of who I am — not in what I am most successful at but in defining what success looks like. It isn’t a hard one for me, ever since I was 33/34 and emerging from my tadpole years of self-reflection, I’ve always known what success looks like to me. Being true to my self and, where possible, achieving my potential. It’s inward-focused, as most of my thoughts are at first glance. The lessons that derive from that are obvious — I need to continually reassess my behaviour, my motivations, my actions, to know if I am being “me”.
002. What words of advice would your 80-year-old self give to you now?
I think my advice would be a further reminder that inward-looking leaves you alone. The most important roles I play — son, husband, father — are all by their nature outward-looking. They require me to be present, not to simply analyse.
003. What has been the main cause(s) for feelings of unhappiness throughout your life?
I think that depends on which part of my life I reflect on. When I was growing up, starting my life, building a new life in Ottawa, I struggled with what I wanted others to do or be, or how I wanted them to treat me, not based on who they were but on who I wanted them to be. Family, friends, lovers. If I had to articulate it, as I am forcing myself to do now, I think the closest I can come is to say that I didn’t accept myself to be myself, so I didn’t know how to accept them to be themselves. I struggled with disappointment, not for people not living up to some high standard or anything, just more people not behaving the way I wanted/hoped they would.
004. What has been the main cause(s) for feelings of happiness throughout your life?
There’s no revelation or insight there, it is the same cause for most people. Making connections to others. Family, friends, my wife, my son. Yet running a slightly distant second is connecting simply with myself.
005. Make a chronological list of the moments that made who you are today when it comes to love and relationships.
Wow, now THAT’s a question.
Being rejected harshly in eighth grade and being alone through high school –> It helped me start to understand my nature;
Realizing that I wasn’t strong enough to end things with a woman –> I realized at the time that I was afraid of being alone;
Reverting to lesser versions of myself in stressful situations –> I wanted to fit in more than I wanted to be myself
Three “pre-dates” one summer in Victoria where their intentions were not clear to me until later … one wanted a friend and never thought of another explanation; one wanted more but I was only ready for friendship; and one wanted more but really just needed a male friend –> I realized that I am not very good at reading people if I’m potentially interested in them;
The start and end of a long-term relationship –> I was initially only interested in friendship, and it probably should have stayed there, as we weren’t very compatible long-term, but life intervenes with no regrets. But the break-up made me realize that I wasn’t as weak as I thought I was, and we remained friends. I also came to realize that I view love different than many people. I don’t do break-ups. Each person who has entered my heart still resides there. Not everything ended well, some things done to me are not laudatory. Yet they have no bearing on the feelings I had, I don’t recast the entire relationship in a different light, I don’t second-guess my intentions or what we had or didn’t have. I realized, for me, perception was reality. If reality wasn’t my perception, it doesn’t really change much. The feelings were real, and they reside in my heart still. I don’t bear any of them ill will in any way, with the warmth of an old friend, not romance. It of course runs way deeper than this simple bullet, but it helped me with some of my rules. Trusting others to be who they are, not who I want them to be, for example.
Saying goodbye to my father and helping my mother afterwards –> I realized that with change comes new boundaries that have to be drawn, and I changed my role in the family from peace-maker to merely member.
A four-year period of self-reflection, where I deconstructed both my own psyche and my friendships with a large number of women over the years. I was friends with them, yet I wasn’t interested in them romantically. I would look at various ones and try to figure out — what was it about them that interested me in being friends with them? Which parts of them did I like that I would want to see in someone else, if I was to date? What traits or characteristics did I find “attractive”? –> Again, I realized that not everyone looks at relationships the way I do. Or more accurately, I don’t look at them the way most people do. People assumed if I talked about what I liked about person X, it meant I wanted to be with them. I didn’t…I was considering people LIKE them, not them directly. Hard to explain, and at the time, I didn’t do a very good job of it when people asked what was on my mind.
On three occasions with different women, none of whom I was interested in, I interpreted their behaviour pretty accurately and at one point, people were joking that I was psychic. –> I realized that if I paid attention to people’s word choices, verbal inflections, and body language, I could often pull disparate bits of information from a variety of sources and come to a realization that didn’t seem linear. But only if I wasn’t personally involved or interested — if I was, that ability was completely blocked.
A year of implementing the prototype me –> I realized that what “works” for modern day relationships i.e., drama rituals, casual approaches, etc., didn’t work for me. I don’t do drama, and I don’t do casual. I also realized that if I was going to be true to me, I had to say what I felt when I felt it, not waiting for the right time or for someone else to catch up.
My first non-date and date with my now-wife –> I realized that all the analysis in the world cannot predict life intervening.
A boat ride date with my now wife –> I was enjoying a simple boat ride, the sun was setting and reflecting off her hair, and I suddenly realized that the new me, rational and self-aware, was in love with her.
An afternoon in the Bahamas playing board games –> My now-wife but then-gf and I were forced to stay indoors on one of our vacation days as it was raining out and not much to do, and we had a blast anyway just hanging out together.
My wedding day –> Of course, for obvious reasons.
Every day of her pregnancy and the first two weeks Jacob was in NICU –> A roller-coaster ride of epic proportions.
Saying goodbye to my mother and acting as executor of the will –> Again, my role in the family changed again, and I realized that as important as family is, I have another family — my wife and son — and they are more important than the rest. I can’t be who that family wants me to be or pushes me to be while being who I want to be with my new family. There were parts I had to let go.
006. What has life been trying to tell you over the past few years?
It would be facile to say simply that I’m getting old. More pointedly, it is that I have fewer years left than I have already spent, and if I want them to be something unique, I can’t simply drift along. Not majorly, not a mid-life crisis or anything, I am far too self-aware or arrogant to feel like any impending crisis of faith in myself is looming. It is more, I think, simply that I am looking ahead to retirement in five years, and while I enjoy my work generally, I don’t want to do it forever. I will hopefully retire when I am eligible, not stick around because I have nothing better to do. I have lots of ideas for my retirement, even though I strongly suspect that I haven’t yet found my passion to explore in retirement. Writing will continue, I hope, maybe just in the form of this website.
007. What is the role of most news media in shaping our beliefs for this world? Is it a message of love or one of fear they share? Reflect on that answer.
Lots of people find this question highly profound. From the Medium is the Message to the role of Fox News, deep troubling “issues of society” are at play. Or so I hear. To me, it is more like a triangle between society, religion and government. Society is always in constant flux, the cutting-edge of change, and I think news media is constantly trying to understand it, and share the info as soon as it can. Is it “shocking” more than “warm fuzzies”? Change often is. There are constant battles on the margins. Religion, by contrast, tends to offer a core stability, something that is NOT changing with the times. Deep roots to hold fast during storms that rage around a church, but not in the church. And thirdly, government, which tries to manage the worst aspects of change, to reduce the negative effects of chaos, to keep the screams down to a roar, where it can. News media doesn’t exist in isolation as a randomly charged ion…it interacts with the rest of society, bounces off it and government, identifies areas where all the forces in that environment are colliding. The latest news, so to speak, is the latest collision. Assigning a message of love or fear to its role is too anthropomorphic for my tastes.
An interesting list of questions. Which one would challenge you the most to answer?
It seems a bit out of order to post about additional things I can do after I posted all my goals for the year, but well, an article came my way. Normally, I would reference the article with links but a good part of the article has a bunch of other bias built into it around a vegan lifestyle or getting back to nature in very specific but relatively ridiculous ways, so not all of the content are ideas that I would want to promote. Hence, I’m just lifting some stuff from the list that I found interesting.
Plant spring bulbs, even if they’re just in a pot…I have a desire to “plant something”, and have often thought maybe I’d start with a planter box on my deck or simply an indoor plant.
Keep a bird feeder by a window, ideally the kitchen…I’ve often thought about this, particularly if I could get some interesting smaller birds. The inlaws’ cottage has one, and there are hummingbirds that visit it, but I’ve only rarely seen them.
Set aside 10 minutes a day to do something you really enjoy – be it reading a book or playing video games. I waste way more than 10m a day, that’s for sure, but I’m thinking of something else entirely here. A “treat” I wouldn’t normally do.
Start a Saturday morning with some classical music – it sets the tone for a calm weekend…I do feel like I could benefit from some classical music in the week. My new setup coming soon for my office may make that a bit simpler to do.
Stretch in the morning. And maybe in the evening…stretching is already on my list, but I like the idea of doing it twice a day, at least for some of the stretches.
Make something from scratch…the premise is something like clothing or a bag, i.e., from crafts. I don’t have much luck with that, but I am looking at a bunch of kits and a 3D printer this year.
Listen to the albums you loved as a teenager…that’s an interesting premise all on it’s own for me. I am not, generally, an album person so much as a single song by an artist. There are a few exceptions of course, Fleetwood Mac, Michael Jackson, ACDC, a ton of K-Tel albums hehehe Maybe I’ll dig out the playlists for some of them and give it a go.
None of them are earth-shattering, but they are interesting additions to consider.
Last but not least, we come to the Body quadrant, including Health, Fitness, Cooking, and Activities.
Health
Most of my “health” stuff is actually going to be captured under Fitness for the year. I have a new medication they want me to try which would be injected once a week, so I have to be shown how to do that this month. I have a UV lamp to set up as well as a sleep machine that I got recently, some other basic stuff just as I age, a line on a new doctor, and some mental health stuff.
At the end of the year, I want to look back and feel like I kept good care of myself. Not very specific I know, but self-care tends to be more situational for me. Like with Family and Home, it’s hard to be too specific in advance on goals and targets per se.
ROCKS
Injection training Jan 19 @ 9:00
UV lamp
Sleep machine
GRAVEL
Meet with new doctor
Talk to Bruyere – Shingles vaccine
SAND
Meditation
Shirley
Weekend away
Fitness
As I mentioned above, my main focus for health for 2022 will be fitness. I have my BowFlex set up, and two routines (stretching and working out) established. I’m trying to walk a little bit every day so far, we’ll try to increase distances in February. I have a dashboard working, and I’m ready to go again after a slow fall. I still have some equipment to set up.
A year from now, I want to have monitored by fitness throughout, and although the primary goal is simply to be more fit in the short-term with more mobility and endurance, my goal is to get below 300 lbs for weight. I’m even hoping to get Tai chi stuff going this year.
ROCKS
January check-in
Update fitness dashboard
GRAVEL
Walking schedule
Assemble workbench
Assemble bicycle
Scooter setup
SAND
Tai chi, Yoga setup
Golf clubs for Jacob
Clothing purge
Archery
Axe throwing
Cooking
Some years, I would put cooking simply in the Soul quadrant, as an expression of creativity. This year, for no real rationale, I’m considering it more in the Body category, pushing me to DO it like a regular activity. I’ve already mentioned above a weekly cooking event (meal, something), and it is probably as much about generally being more comfortable in the kitchen with Jacob as a test subject and student, and doing some work on both full meal recipes and baking.
A year from now, I want to have tried every type of bread in the machine’s manual, as well as a couple of self-baked attempts, and established a list of 25 key recipes with Jacob. In the short-term, I need to make a cookie recipe and I want to try an Instapot recipe for some Chicken Biryani in the Instapot.
ROCKS
Christmas cookies
Indian InstaPot
GRAVEL
Raddish sets
Website pics / tests
Bread – machine
Bread Рwith my hands ̻
25 recipes
SAND
Crepes
Ice cream ê
Tiramisu
Peanut butter cookies
Apple pie
Dutch oven recipes
Insta-pot recipes
Short ribs recipe
Ground beef recipes
Cassata
SEB cookbook
Coconut Lagoon
Activities
Some of these items are ones that I had hoped to do with Jacob, promoting things that he might enjoy. I had them listed under family, but most of them are kind of just for “me” to do as projects, while Andrea and Jacob do puzzles.
The Soul quadrant is about expressing myself or engaging with my community, and includes my Website Setup, Writing, Blogging, Photography and Volunteering. It also frequently interacts with the other three quadrants as I write about all the categories as I go through the year.
Website Setup
I usually think of website set-up as part of the mind quadrant, but with the focus shifting from design to communications, I think it’s a different quadrant now. After surviving a large catastrophe last year, I rebuilt my site and simplified a bunch of elements. I likely need to transfer it over to a new server at some point in the distant future, i.e. 2-3 years, but for now, it’s fine. My focus is mainly on adding photos, but that’s not so much setup, as just populating content. I have some areas in my writing to add, but that is more about writing than how they go on the website.
At the end of the year, I want a streamlined system with simplified workflows.
ROCKS
Create single template for all blog types, ditch reusable
GRAVEL
Expand PandA Gallery index
Find solution for PolySpring
SAND
New branding: PolyWogg Guides to…
New branding: PolyWogg Trivia
Writing
I have already pumped out 50K words on my new draft of the HR Guide, and I want to finish it this year. I would love to plan to get to my fiction writing, but I think that is a topic for November’s NaNoWriMo. In the meantime, I’ll likely turn to my Astronomy Guide. I haven’t decided yet what I’m going to accomplish for my reviews and stuff, but I know I like writing series of posts (like this one, part 4 of 5).
By the end of the year, I want to have used my writing dashboard regularly, completed my HR Guide early, and written numerous series for the website. I’m also hoping to start on the astronomy guide but we’ll see how the research goes for that, over in the Astronomy heading (part of the Mind quadrant).
ROCKS
Update writing dashboard: 2022
NF goals
Blogging metrics
Bloggables
HR 2022: Introduction
HR 2022: Know yourself
HR 2022: Know the Government
HR 2022: Understanding The Process
HR 2022: Finding Jobs
HR 2022: Applications
HR 2022: Written Exams
HR 2022: Interviews
HR 2022: References
HR 2022: Language tests
HR 2022: The final answer
HR 2022: Spotlight: EX Competitions
HR 2022: Spotlight: Special tests
HR 2022: Spotlight: Managing career
GRAVEL
PWGA 2022.1a: Introduction – general
PWGA 2022.1b: Intro to the Universe
PWGA 2022.1c: Intro to Astronomy
PWGA 2022.1d: Practical Astronomy
PWGA 2022.x: Planning your night
PWGA 2022.x: S/L: The Solar System
PWGA 2022.x: S/L: The Stars
PWGA 2022.x: S/L: Galaxies
PWGA 2022.x: S/L: Clusters
PWGA 2022.x: S/L: Nebulae
PWGA 2022.x: Intro to A/P
PWGA 2022.x: Further Adventures
WD tutorials
SAND
Post my writing
Carleton book 1
Carleton book x: Feast or famine – a 4-murder week
DJ story
Local court – light was out, ticket, splashing in rain, same date, courtroom sealed for duration of all of the cases
Scifi: Planetary visit – after a catastrophe, special / secret tunnel access points
YotG: Grimm Tales, Mythology research
YotG: Character chart
YotG: Tracker for Gods
Blogging – Reviews
I noted above that I want to do a bunch of new reviews, and it is a bit anti-climactic for the actual list below.
ROCKS
Update BR index
Upload MRs, write new ones
Recipes: Workflow, post or page or both, indexing, tags
GRAVEL
Music for one year «
Music reviews: Workflow, post or page or both, indexing, tags
Update MR index
Write new TVRs
Update TVR index
SAND
MR: Highlander
MR: Matrix
MR: Percy Jackson
MR: Jurassic series
MR: Indiana Jones
BR: Swanson
Blogging – Bloggables
Under writing, I mentioned wanting to do more “series” of posts? Well, here’s the working list.
ROCKS
Who do I owe in life
Isolation as a precursor to retirement
GRAVEL
Humour
Quotes
Drake Equation
Psychology of retirement
Retirement planning
Retirement date
Honeymoon
Jacob’s father
SAND
What I learned in elementary school, high school, Year 1, Year 2, Year 3, Year 4, First year Law, MPA 0.5, MPA 1.0, MPA 1.5, MPA 2.0
Photography
I took very few photos in 2021 (or even 2020), nor did Jacob and Andrea. So most of my focus is really about blogging and putting the pics online. And I want to learn how to use GIMP well.
A year from now, I want all my photos organized and up on the website or at least Flickr, to have learned GIMP, and at least seriously started the scanning project.
ROCKS
Bloggable: Henry’s course
GIMP training
GRAVEL
Family photos to Flickr
Astro photos to Flickr
LT backup options
Bloggable: Free photography course
Bloggable: Free tips cards / Flash cards for learning
MOOC course (National Geographic)
Photography event / outing
New lens choice
Photo album to scan
Scan birthday party collection
Photo for Roula – father, Nico
Merry go-round photo for Andrea
Estate photos
SAND
Photobooks of all the years
Update e-frame
Print astro photos + family photos for the wall
Volunteering
I struggled with my volunteer work in the last year, and I’m going to back away from time commitments for it in 2022. I have a few things to finish off, but after that, I’m going to coast for the rest of the year.
ROCKS
End of year gift giving — Winnipeg, AstroPontiac, Church, Marney’s group
