A number of years ago, I started a reading challenge for myself. A little creative, a little classic, a little gamification to up my reading quotient and broaden my reading selections. Then it morphed into a group and about 20+ people joined. Because of some personal issues, I left that group last year and let others run with it. I have no idea if it’s still active, but I went in search of “other sites” that I could haunt to get my reading-discussion/virtual-book-club fix. It didn’t really work for me. It turns out that when I’m not part of a group of friends and family, I don’t care much what OTHER people are reading except in a generic sense. If someone raves about a book, I’ll consider it. But it doesn’t make me want to read it at the same time or in close temporal proximity if I don’t know the person.
Which means…dun dun dun…my 2023 Reading Challenge is ONLY ABOUT ME. 🙂
For inputs, I have a lot of possible books to choose from. I have dozens of lists from my early Reading Challenges, including classic lists from Time, BBC, Guardian, etc. Plus of course all the award winners. And then there are new books, genre books, friends’ suggestions, etc. Plus I like the gamification options, sort of like a bingo card where you track what you’re reading against some arbitrary tracking category.
Soooooo, my reading challenge comes down to three parts for 2023.
A. How many books?
Well, that’s a funny thing. I set myself a goal of how many BOOK REVIEWS I would write in 2023 at 52. But some of those are books I have in my “to be reviewed” pile. They will not all be reviews of “newly read” books. So if BRs are at 52, should my list be less than 52? Or do I accept that not all of my newly-read books will get reviewed at the same time as I finish them? I’ve been trying to stay on top of things, but there are other things that intervene. I think that I will aim for 52, aka the one-a-week option, even though it might not directly overlap with my list of BRs. Weird, I know. I’ll be the only one who likely notices.
B. How will I track them?
I’m going to go with the classic “double alphabet” list i.e., I will aim for the 52 books to have at least 26 that have the first substantive word in the title starting with A, B, C, etc. I’ll make some allowance for books like Erle Stanley Gardner titles where the titles all start with “The Case of the…” and go with whatever comes after that intro for the title. The second list of 26 is to do the same but with the name of the author. I’ll primarily go by last name, but I might have to be creative for certain low-usage letters in names (like last names starting with X!). So that’s easy enough to do. And in a perfect world, with double-counting, you COULD do it in just 26 books, but it’ll go past that, I’m sure.
But I’m going to be a little bit more creative than that…I’ll add in indications if the books meet other criteria too (like classic or award-winning, or mystery or sci-fi!).
C. What books am I considering?
I don’t want to ignore serendipity, so I’m only going to pre-plan the first 26 books and let the last 26 come from other sources for now.
The Sleeping Car Porter by Suzette Mayr…I’m already working on this one (with tags for mystery, historical, award winner, and diversity);
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky…I have been reading this for some time and am about 2/3 of the way through-out. I want to finish, but it is quite slow going (classic genre);
Book 1 by Jacob Horton et al…it’s terrible, but I never finished the first book that he wrote as part of a group. And I’ve even forgotten the name of it now. Sheesh, I’m a terrible father (local author);
All’s Fair in Love and the Nuclear Apocalypse by Jacob Horton et al…I’ll read this one too, likely in March (local author)
Make: Getting Started with 3D Printing (2nd Edition) by Liza Wallach Kloski and Nick Kloski…I have the 3D printer, but I don’t understand enough of the theory to help me understand the practical instructions of my printer (non-fiction);
Something by Agatha Christie, time to dust off the classics and start the ride (good for mystery);
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child…we’re going to the play in March, I’m trying to decide if I should read it before or after (fantasy, plays);
A book by Lawrence Sanders…for classic mystery or thriller);
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters…from a classic list;
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green…from a classic list;
Something Wicked by Carolyn G. Hart…from Agatha awards;
Lost Little Girl by Gregory Stout…from Shamus awards;
Beat Not The Bones by Charlotte Jay…from Edgar awards;
The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley…from Edgar awards of sorts, this is book #1 of a two-book series;
A Case of Loyalties by Marilyn Wallace…this might be hard to find though, from the Macavity list of winners;
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton…from a classic list;
Rabbit, Run by John Updike…from a classic list, but frequently referred to by Lawrence Block;
The Postman Always Rings Twice by James W. Cain…from a classic list;
Neuromancer by William Gibson…from a classic list, a rare sci-fi style story;
Still Life by Louise Penny…the first of the series;
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid…from the popular seller’s list;
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir…latest top seller for sci-fi;
Winterhouse #2 by Ben Guterson…part of a YA series I’ve been reading slowly;
The first book in the P.C. Cast series about young vampires;
Next book in the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch that I started over a year ago; and,
A Stephanie Plum book by Janet Evanovich…it’s been a while since I caught up.
And I guess I need a tracker!
So that’s my starting point. Feel free to follow along.
As part of my plans for the year, I have been reading the latest tips and tricks articles on goals, time management, etc., and one thing that frequently happens is evident in my list for the year. I have too many commitments, in short. Almost 100 big and small ticket items for the year. Some are huge, like building an observatory; others are small, like doing a backup. But it’s a huge list for a year.
If they were all the same size, I would have to do one every three days to get through it all. And if I did them all? It would probably take me close to 2 years of solid work, assuming I wasn’t actually working for a living at the same time. They’re big and ambitious plans, deliberately so. “Unrealized potential” and all that.
One thing that has been niggling at me is that I also try to update things weekly, which is often too short a timeframe. I can parse out, say, 15 steps to building an observatory, and one of them might be the design phase which itself could take 2-3 weeks, with several sub-activities for it too. And thus, on a weekly basis, the pieces are too big and numerous, and the timeframe is likely too short. One of the tips articles talked about the difference between work goals and personal goals, particularly when you are balancing work/life on a daily basis. It noted that while work activities might break down into week-long or even daily progress tracking, personal goals might be better grouped around the month. And without over-committing. It got me thinking about the difference between larger projects (like an observatory), ongoing repetitive tasks (like exercise), or one-off tasks (like cleaning up the basement). Is there something in there that will help me plan more effectively on a monthly basis?
So what would happen if I picked a small subset of the 100 yearly goals to focus on in January? And then perhaps grouped them as I said above? Well, you’d end up with this list.
Larger projects
Ongoing repetitive
One-off tasks
Finish organizing basement New doctor, meds, shingles question Start Lego Colisseum Setup my Reading Challenge for 2023 Use my 3D printer Hang pictures around the house Observatory: Figure out a pier
Walking 3x per week Bowflex 1x per week HD backup x 5 Complete 2 more sections of HR guide Blog: 1 MR, 1 recipe, 1 TVR, 5BRs, 2 QotD, 2 JoTD, 2 articles curated Upload 1 year of photos to Flickr Complete 2 lessons on GIMP
Finish Sleeping Car Porter Setup TV and stereo in basement SunLife account, submit health claim Go to Magic of Lights Assemble exercise bike Assemble work-out bench Resolve Website memory resource guide Update AstroPontiac Renew website domain
Hmm, a subset of 29 is probably too high a commitment. But I am off for another week. Some of them are also for delegation, like hanging stuff around the house — we’re using TaskRabbit to do that, not doing it ourselves. Plus 14 of them are virtual computer thingies.
I think it’s doable. And, not for nothing? Two of them are already done. 🙂 Happy January!
I mentioned in my post about my plans for the year that things had gone sideways on me for my website earlier in the day. I’ve got an intermittent gremlin hiding in my website somewhere. And finding the little b****** is like a game of whack-a-mole because it can be almost anywhere. Fair warning, this one is mostly for people who are interested in solving website problems aka the technical bunch.
For context, my blog (and just about every other site out there) is really made up of thirteen basic components:
The hoster’s server hardware
Hardware settings for the overall server;
The hoster’s server software;
Settings for the server space I’m using;
The WordPress application software itself;
The settings for the core WordPress application software;
A theme for the website;
Configurations for the theme;
Multiple plugins for the back-end of the website;
Configurations for the back-end plugins;
Multiple plugins for the front-end of the website;
Configurations for the front-end plugins; and,
My posts, pages, media and comments aka the content.
Most of my time and energy is devoted to #13, the content.
Over the years, I have had as many as 45 front-end and back-end plugins running (#9, 11), adding features or tweaking the look and feel here and there. The theme itself (#7) has been relatively stable for almost ten years, I love the one I use, and I have the pro version that lets me tweak it in a hundred different ways. The first six elements are the infrastructure of the website, and I tend to leave them relatively stable, upgrading pieces when I need to, etc. General maintenance.
When I’ve had major meltdowns over the last ten years, it has been one of three things:
a. I didn’t like the distribution of content across the two websites; b. Something changed in the server software that messed up my site; or, c. There was a problem with the hardware.
At times that has been where the company’s systems were hacked, or some setting got changed in the system’s back-end where I can’t see it, and suddenly my site started running REALLY slow. I switched from two hosts because their support for #1-4 was inadequate. But I’ve had an ongoing gremlin of sorts for about five years, and I don’t know where exactly it lies.
When the gremlin appears, things start running slow
As I said, I used to run about 45-50 plugins. But the back-end of my website started running slowly, so I cut it back to about 35 and then 30. Each time, it felt like I was cutting off a limb. I had spent a fair amount of time on the choice and configuration of plugins (#9-12) and liked how everything worked except when it didn’t. I eliminated plugins where there were conflicts and used single bigger / better plugins that could replace several smaller plugins that didn’t play well with each other. A few tools? I just dropped them.
Now here’s the twist in the tale. I don’t care about the speed of the front-end too much. That speed affects a lot of rankings in search engines and is part and parcel of search engine optimization, but most people coming to my site are doing so simply for MY stuff, aka either friends or family or people wanting to know about HR for the government. I’m not going to suddenly go viral because my website ranks higher in a search engine; I’m too niche for that type of concern. My REAL concern is the speed of the back-end.
Here’s what happens for any editing process. I open up an edit window, and the post appears. Then, some of the “configurable settings” for THAT post start to appear — like a featured image, categories, tags, and a few other key pieces that I need to set. Each of those uses up a bit of memory to load on the server. The amount of memory I have available on the server (not storage space, but RAM, basically) is controlled back at the #1-4 stage. As the post loads, it uses up that memory. Those are the basics.
About five years ago, I could run 45 plugins with no problem. I could even edit 10-12 single posts at a time if I wanted to do so (and sometimes, when I was tweaking the format, that made life WAY easier). Then the site started to slow down on the back end, often because of the size of the security plugins. It shouldn’t really affect the BACK-END, but it does for some reason. I cut it to 30, and it was all good again. I’m down to about 25 now. But anything I cut now is really painful to remove. Yet about a week ago, it started to run really slow in the background again.
My post loads, no problem. But whereas the image, categories and tags load within 3-4s if I’m running 0 plugins, with about 15 plugins running, it is about 8-10s for the rest of the pieces/settings to load. Slow load is still manageable at that rate, as I can work on other pieces while those elements load. Except at 25-30 plugins? Some of the edit windows NEVER finish loading. I can sit and wait and wait and wait.
I loaded THIS post, copied over from a previous one and edited it, and I’ve been working on it for almost 20 minutes of writing time. My Featured Image has loaded, while the categories, tags, and reusable images have not. I’ve installed a cache, can save the file, reopen it, and some of the rest or maybe even all of it, will load because it’s cached. (I just tested it, 40s to get my Featured Image to load, a reusable block timed out, and nothing for categories and tags yet. Closing and reopening? Everything loaded in 5s). This is NOT a resource-intensive site; it should NOT take those first times to load, no matter what is running.
Hacking the diagnostic loop
When you try to resolve this type of problem, the first two pieces of advice are (a) changing to the default theme and (b) removing all plugins.
I’ve done that so often (out the wazoo!) that I can eliminate the theme as the cause. It doesn’t matter right now whether I have the default theme or my premium theme installed, it still takes the same amount of time to load on the back-end (I can get a small performance bump on the front-end). I spent a huge amount of time this week testing out some other popular lightweight themes to see if I could get a huge performance improvement and truly eliminate my theme as the cause. I tried approximately 25 different themes, with the same result across the board. If I get above 15-20 plugins, it slows down. Unfortunately, none of those themes works as well for me as my current model. And for what it’s worth, my PolyWogg site has almost the same config WITHOUT the same slowdowns. It happens from time to time, but like I said, it’s intermittent, and NOT as frequent on the PolyWogg site as this ThePolyBlog site.
Now, everyone on the ‘net who knows anything about WordPress will say, “A-ha! it’s a plugin problem!”. Except it’s not. I’ve done the scientific method of loading them one at a time. It makes no difference. And so those with more experience will say, “A-ha! it’s a plugin conflict problem!”.
In other words, it is not one plugin causing the slowdown, it is two of them interacting with each other that is causing the problem. If you are into math and you want to test two plugins, the purest form of those tests would be N plugins * N-1, divided by two. Sort of like scheduling a tournament of 30 plugins in a hockey tournament where they all have to play each other once, which would be 30 teams * 29 opponents divided by 2 teams in each game = 435 games. Yikes.
It’s a nightmare to do that, obviously. I can’t test 435 combinations of 30 plugins, or even 300, if there were only 25. So you can hack the combo pattern. Instead of testing Plugin 1 against Plugin 2, there are a series of variables you can make fixed. For example, of the plugins currently running, I can triage the list into “musts”, “needs”, and “likes”. I have 34 currently installed, but rarely all active.
MUST HAVE
HIGHLY WANT
NICE TO HAVE
FRONT-END
AddToAny Share Buttons Display Posts Display Posts – Date View Flexible Table Block Weaver Xtreme Plus Weaver Xtreme Theme Support
Photonic Gallery & Lightbox wpDiscuz Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
Simple Lightbox Stackable – Gutenberg Blocks
BACK-END
Akismet Anti-Spam LiteSpeed Cache ManageWP – Worker Media Library Assistant OG — Better Share on Social Media Really Simple SSL WP to Buffer Pro Wordfence Security Yoast Duplicate Post
Advanced Editor Tools Health Check & Troubleshooting Nested Pages Redirection MailPoet MailPoet Premium WPForms Lite WP Mail SMTP
Dashboard Wordcount Simple Blog Stats Broken Link Checker Media Replace Press This WordPress Importer
Obviously, I can install the MUST HAVEs, which are 15 plugins and test those. Since I have to have all of them for my current functionality, I might as well test with that WHOLE group running, minus the Caching program (not much of a test if the Cache is running). With those running, everything loads in about 9 seconds. Not bad, right? Not awesome, admittedly, but it loads fast ENOUGH that I can be working on other things while those are lazy loading, so to speak. So those 15 “work”.
Then, I can try adding them either in bundles (3-4 each time) and see if anything happens OR perhaps some of the “bigger” ones in the back-end first.
For Bundle 1, I focused on the WPForms, WP Mail and MailPoet as they all work together. As I added each one of them, the site got slower and slower but not immeasurably with each one. Some added a second or two, some added no increase. I continued with other bundles of three or four at a time, seeing what they did to my load time, and as I added more and more plugins, creeping up into the high teens and early 20s, the site started to hit what I consider my magic threshold. Anything above 21 right now was bogging it down. Hello gremlin, my old friend, you’ve come to annoy me again.
Technical support has entered the chat
Oh, I know what you’re thinking. Can’t you get tech support to help? But here’s the rub. Tech support is good for #1-4 (the server setup). Occasionally, they’ll help you diagnose something where it is a WordPress configuration issue (#6). But after that? The rest of that is YOUR website and YOUR problem. And since it is almost impossible to find WHY it would be doing this, particularly as it is intermittent, it would seem like a plugin or theme problem.
I’ve also come to suspect that the gremlin has friends, of sorts. Or perhaps grandchildren.
About four years ago, the problem turned out to be a security plugin that was doing something funky on my site. I think it was mis-interacting with other plugins, but it was going into an infinite loop. It had done that before on another hoster’s servers, and they couldn’t tell me what was going on, they claimed it was my site causing the slowdown but not how. That was the last straw with them, so I shifted to a new host. Everything was fine so I thought that was the proof that it was the previous host. Except then it happened on my new server. So much so that the host contacted me and asked, “WTF you running over there? It’s slowing down the WHOLE shared server!”.
But I got lucky…one of their Level 2 supports looked, quickly realized the security plugin had created an infinite loop of calls, and disabled it for me (with my permission). Everything went back to normal. I checked online and this was a known gremlin for that security plugin. One of the biggest and most popular ones would occasionally futz itself and mess up a config file. You can disable it, uninstall it and reinstall from scratch to fix it — or just use one of the other security plugins. I was running a huge overhead plugin called JetPack which divides the WordPress community in two — those who love it and developers who HATE it. It’s really intrusive. Well, the security plugin was conflicting with it, as was two other smaller plugins to a lesser extent, and I changed security plugins and eventually dumped JetPack anyway. Unfortunately, without JetPack, I have all this other mail stuff to run just so I can get email versions of my posts when I post and allows people to get my posts as newsletter feeds. Not that I have that many people doing that, most get it from Reddit, FaceBook or Twitter. Or referrals from friends.
Anyway. Where was I?
Oh yeah, killing gremlins. Another time it was a legacy of a hack. Another time it was a misbehaving plugin that has since been patched, but I don’t let it run all the time, just when I want some specific stats.
But, as I said earlier, the dang site was bogged down so I reached out to Tech Support earlier noting that I was overloading the Physical Resources AND my IO process limit. Did they see anything that was amiss?
Often I end up using Tech Support as a catalyst for brainstorming. Since they don’t know my site inside and out, I ask questions and they give me crappy answers at Level 1, I eventually get up to L2, and then their responses often trigger something in me.
This time, while I was chatting with them, I got the standard popup in my file manager asking me if I wanted to upgrade to the next level of website performance. I didn’t, it’s almost double the price. I talked to them about it about 8m ago when it started going slower for awhile, and I would love to do it for a month to see if it would make a difference, but alas, they don’t have a trial option to do that and I’m already on a really good discounted plan. If I give it up, it’s gone. I can return to my current lower setting, but at more money than I’m paying now. There’s no simple way to test it to see if it works. And honestly, the improvements will only help me in this area, if at all. There are lots of other “perks” to the higher package but are not anything I need or want or will ever use. Sigh.
So we go around and around, ask a few questions, when I notice something amiss.
My comparison of the three models of plans that are suitable to my situation show that they have three levels of resource availability. The first is 512M, the second is 1G, and the third is 2G. For I/O processes, 2MB, 4MB, and 8MB versions per second. I’m on the middle tier, so 1G and 4MB / second. Except, wait a minute…as I’m going through the allocation process for memory, the piece that is being overloaded right now, my internal server dashboard is showing me 512MB and 2MB/s. The lowest plan settings. I double-check, and then triple-check with a comparison to PolyWogg.ca. The other site? My main site for HR that works? It’s set properly. This one is not.
FFS, is that REALLY it? I ask, they go into conniptions and embarrassment and make the switch / upgrade overnight. Today, everything is loading in 10s.
I should be mad, right?
So, it looks like most of the problem has been a misconfigured server on their end. Instead of being on the higher plan, they’ve had me on the lower plan for some time. I’ll write to the billing people, just for sh**s and giggles, but honestly, I’m not sure I can be that mad at them.
First and foremost, the error has almost NO effect on my website for the user. It’s a wee bit slower than it should have been, but not noticeable as I don’t have that many viewers. I don’t pay for the higher tier for front-end performance, I pay for the backend.
Second, I know how it happened. Way back when they got hacked, they had to create what they called LifeBoat servers. They suffered a massive attack from a former employee, something very hard to defend against if not impossible (the person had access in the building to the servers!), and they could have been dead in the water. They managed to find a way to make things work again, and while frustrating, they created lifeboats to get us up and running as fast as possible. They have customers that are WAY more important than me, but they got me going pretty quickly, all things considered. And when it was “over”, they moved lifeboats back into the main hubs. Which I’m pretty sure is when I got downgraded to the lower-tier plan for space. It shouldn’t have happened, but it’s understandable how it did.
That’s hard to generate anger around…little front-end effect and an understandable reason. Plus, I’ve seen that information in my dashboard for some time. I just didn’t realize what it meant. As I said, I’ll ask for a retroactive credit of some sort, or they’ll extend my expiry date by a month or two or three, but I’m glad that part is fixed.
Oh, right. I left out the important part. There ARE two plugins messing up my load time on the back-end.
I already knew one before I started was a likely culprit. Stackable. It’s a plugin that lets you add a whole laundry list of really good extra style blocks. Back in the dark ages before the Pandemic, I tested a bunch of “block” plugins, and Stackable won by a country mile. I bought the lifetime premium membership option. But, well, it is designed to add things to the back-end editor. Of course, it slows things down. That’s what it does when it adds that functionality. I’ve reached out to them, and they’re working on a speed improvement, but for now, I just have to pare back what I use.
The second one was another likely suspect. I was pretty sure my Mail bundle was screwing things up. I have MailPoet that formats my email newsletters (emails of my posts), WP Mail SMTP that lets me send mail as an authorized sender less likely to be caught in spam filters, and a WP Forms plugin that lets me add a nice contact form to my site. Do I need all of them? Meh. It’s more professional to have them than not. And it means I don’t have to run JetPack. What I should do is find a simple integrated plugin that does all three in a lightweight fashion and pay for a lifetime subscription. But that’s a problem for another day. In the meantime, I put up with MailPoet, as it is the one that slows things down.
I’ve stripped the two suspects down to their skivvies, and the site is loading. Maybe that’s all I can ask for now. Other than my rebate from my hoster.
It’s almost midnight on January 1st, and I started this post almost 14 hours ago. Then a little cyber gremlin intervened, and I lost most of the day. Not an auspicious beginning to my year, but that is a topic for another day. Today, I’m writing about my plans for the year instead.
Last year, I created about 20 separate “mini to-do” list trackers in OneNote that I used for a few months before Andrea started chemo treatments. Then I kind of tossed them aside and only referred to them sporadically after that, but that’s about it. I played with tracking results, I played with trying to come up with separate “project” lists, but in the end, my priorities were elsewhere. Going back to them, let’s see where there are some ideas to inspire plans for this year.
Self-organization was a list of little things I could do to improve my life, and for the new year, I like the idea of stretching and making something from scratch. Two items, that’s all. They could probably fit under other categories, but they’ll suffice here for now.
Learning could be a huge category but I filed some of the directed learning under other headings. What remains at the top of the list is learning to use my 3D printer.
Reading is another category where I could have a huge list of individual books. But instead, one of my first commitments is to make a list of books to read in 2023! Starting with finishing Crime and Punishment and the Sleeping Car Porter.
I kind of dropped the Astronomy hobby in the last couple of years and it is time to pick it back up. I have 30+ “items” in my tracker for astronomy, and I’m committing to some big ones, including building an observatory this year.
For our Computers, I need to setup our smart devices and improve my backups with cloud saves. I also want to finish setting up some stuff in the basement (TV, music, video games).
I mentioned we had made some improvements on Finances this year, but I want to do some simple clean-up of accounts and files, do a pension buyback, and have some structured end-of-life discussions with Andrea and Jacob.
On the Family front, I’m hoping there is a LOT less work on the health front, even with some pending surgery for Jacob. We have some outings planned, maybe even a small trip, and some fun stuff with Jacob (remote control car, board game design, and Lego: Colosseum). Plus a large “classified” project around some Xmas gifts for next year.
We’ve been putting off some minor and major Home renovations in recent years, and we’ll knock some of them off the list over the course of the year. In the short term, there’s some stuff to get going in the basement.
Website Setup is a bit tricky and misleading. It is short but there are tons of other things that tie into and thus are listed elsewhere (like reviews and general writing). I’ll write about one aspect of that for the month of January, but I also have some new branding to figure out on the Astronomy Guide front.
Writing is a narrower category than it first appears, as it is mostly about “books” more so than blogs. So, I’ve got ideas for my HR Guide, an Astronomy Guide or 2, and a fiction title I’d like to do more on.
For my other writing, including Blogging – Reviews, I have plans for more movie reviews, recipes, TV season reviews, book reviews (of course), music reviews, quotes, jokes, and even restarting my PolyWogg gallery links from Flickr.
Beyond reviews, I also write about other topics, and I generally track it under the heading of Bloggables, aka topics based on my experiences or curation of good articles on the web.
I have a general heading for Photography but if I’m completely honest with myself, it is more like “managing photos”. I plan to learn how to use GIMP, which is a really long series of lessons that may take me more than a year. I want to upload more family and astrophotos to Flickr so I can cross-link them to my website and create some photobooks. And, I probably should wrap my head around the best place for long-term backups and storage of my photos.
My Volunteering hat is almost non-existent for the new year. AstroPontiac has had zero need for me in the last year, and I need to audit RASC Ottawa’s books, which is about an afternoon’s worth of work. I think I can handle both of those.
On the Health side, it’s a bit strange. While I have lots of things going on for health, almost all of it appears under a separate heading (fitness, which is next). In the narrow area of health, I’ll meet my new doctor and review medications and a potential need for the Shingles vaccine. However, I’ve also had a “weekend retreat” for myself as a mental health holiday on the planning list since before the pandemic started. I’m hoping to squeeze that in for the Spring.
For Fitness, I’ve already mentioned assembling the exercise bike, and stretching, but I also want to use my BowFlex, ride my exercise bike, and go walking three times a week each. I also want to start using my Scooter. And it’s about time I did a proper clothes purge too.
Each year, I have grand plans for Cooking more often through the year and trying out lots of new recipes. It almost never happens. This year, I want to do more with bread, crepes, ice cream, and 15 other recipes in general. It should be manageable.
At the end of the list, I created a catch-all called “Activities“. They tend to be things that don’t exactly fit the other categories, although some could be shoe-horned here and there. I want to learn to play a song on the piano. complete a memorization challenge, assemble some models including a Robot, and fix Andrea’s Xmas Carousel (it needs simple gluing to work). But I also want to figure out a big Raspberry Pi project that will likely involve the 3D printer too. That’s for later in the year when I have time to work on stuff while prints are going on. I doubt I’ll get to it, but it’s nice to dream.
So that’s my list of big items for the year…about 100 in total, give or take a few (depending on how you count). My list of “possibles” for the year. Now, let’s see tomorrow what I’m going to work on first.
Self-organization Stretch in the morning and evening Make something from scratch
Learning Use my 3D printer
Reading Finish Crime and Punishment Finish Sleeping Car Porter Reading Challenge: 2023 tracker Expand TBR tracker
Astronomy Use new telescope #1 (refractor) Use new telescope #2 (reflector) Assemble astro cart Build observatory Start on Explore the Universe course with Jacob Write introduction to the moon, including photographing 28d cycle of the moon Complete 1 astro project with 3D printer
Computers Echo setup throughout house (basement, office, first floor) Computer backups and cloud saves Setup up video games in basement Setup TV, music in basement
Finances Health Claim for 2022 Clean-up SunLife account Fix registration with CRA Pension buyback End-of-life discussion
Family Go to Magic of Lights Go to Park Omega Go to Harry Potter show Consider trip option Support Jacob for surgery Support Andrea for RTW Make a board game with Jacob J’s remote control car Assemble Lego – Colosseum Xmas gift planning for next year
Home Repairs: Andrea’s Kobo cover, J’s charger station, compression socks Assemble exercise bike Assemble work-out bench Hanging pictures around the house — basement, playroom, living room, main bedroom, stairwell, guest room Bathroom renovations (ensuite, main) Curtains (front door, basement, playroom, living room, office, guest room, main bedroom+) Landscaping back-yard, front-yard Replace back fence Set up trampoline in Spring
Website Setup Resolve memory resource issue New branding: PolyWogg Guides to …
Writing Complete the revised HR Guide Work on fiction book (Moot Point) Create outline for Astronomy Guides
Blogging – Reviews 10 new Movie Reviews 10 new Recipes 10 new TV season Reviews 52 new Book Reviews 2 new Music Year Reviews 20 new Quotes of the Day 20 new Jokes of the Day Restart upload of gallery
Bloggables 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 25 curated articles
Photography Upload Family and Astro photos to Flickr Learning GIMP Scan estate photos (loose) 2 photobooks by year LT backup options
Health New doctor Review medications Shingles vaccine Weekend retreat
Fitness Use Bowflex 3x a week Set up my Scooter Use exercise bike 3x a week Walk 3x a week Clothing purge
Cooking Bread – with my hands Bread – with bread machine Crepes Try 15 new recipes (Dutch oven, Instapot, Toaster Oven, Air Fryer, other) Ice cream
Activities Play the piano ê Memorization challenge Fix T-Rex, assemble a wooden model, assemble a metal model Assemble a robot Build Raspberry Pi Project Fix A’s carousel (Xmas store) project
I mentioned in a previous post that I’m often looking for metaphors to help me describe an experience. When I read the book Change by Jeffrey Kottler, one of the things that resonated with me was the idea that much of what you get from a negative or positive experience depends heavily on what you tell yourself. Sometimes even while it is still happening to you. The story you tell yourself shapes your reality, it defines your narrative.
I was recently reading an interesting article from Entrepreneur entitled “How Are You Measuring Your Success in 2022?” by Kate Isler and while it is hardly revolutionary, it got me thinking. In the article, she talks about framing your narrative around celebrating the wins, knowing when to pivot and where to focus, and identifying the real measures of success. As I said, hardly revolutionary headings. But the prose resonated with me as she frames it around building a sustainable business model, a resilient organization that will deliver on its core mandate, not a simple profile / loss measure nor even success / failure model.
I regularly fail to celebrate wins. For me, life is often about “what’s next?”, similar to the way the phrase is used in the show the West Wing. One of the classics is an episode worrying about the Bartlett administration’s approval rating. The whole episode is about how big the “bump” might be, fearful it could have gone down but hoping for one to three points up. The final numbers are revealed in the last 2 minutes of the show, and Bartlett is up nine points. They all smile at each other, Barlett nods to CJ, and then says, “Okay, what’s next”. There is no victory lap, there is no self-congratulatory pat on the back, there is just a small nod and then you move on to whatever is next on the horizon.
When I finished my MA degree at Carleton, my brain and life treated it as “what’s next”. So I forced myself to go to graduation. To take the photos. To take the victory lap, so to speak. To acknowledge the accomplishment after the work was done.
Everything I said in the previous two posts was true. It just isn’t the whole truth nor the only perspective.
Focusing on the wins
A. My stint as Acting Director
I went after, obtained, and completed a stint as an Acting Director in my old planning division. I handled all aspects of the job, proved to myself that I could do the full job that I had always believed I could do and, more importantly, delivered on a major project during the eight-month stint. Was it an unqualified success? No, but it WAS a success. And I did it while there were a lot of competing pressures.
B. A 3D printer
I worked through all the parameters that I could for a 3D printer and chose one. When life intervened and I couldn’t get to setting it up, I set my ego aside and paid a local expert to do it for me. I’m set for the new year.
C. Reading, book reviews and TBR lists
I found a bunch of new online fora discussing books which have introduced me to some new ideas and books for 2023. I also republished all my book reviews on the PolyBlog site, while also copying them all into a OneNote setup that I can access on the go. I’ve even got a good handle on my enlarged TBR list in the same tool.
D. Purging and sorting the basement
While the pace could be faster, in the next week I will complete my sorting and purging of a ton of disorganized crap in my basement. I’ll have the electronics area re-established, plus I have a crafting area for 3D printing and other projects that I’ve been wanting to do. It has been an albatross around my neck for the last 3 years, and even though I dread the project, I have made extensive progress this year, with Andrea’s help and painful drudgery.
E. A new financial advisor
Andrea and I have been looking to move to a new financial advisor, probably going on for ten years now. We have the basics covered, but we are not doing what we can to maximize our returns. We finally got our sh** together this year, moved all our RRSP investments over, and feel like we are in a much better place than we were a year ago. Almost like adults.
F. I redesigned my websites…again
At first blush, I could dismiss that as just noise. Except that the trigger for the change was a “dropping” of a lot of other things I was hoping to do, which allowed the two websites to crystallize into a better division of content. For lack of a better word, I simplified my approach for the long term. It created some short-term challenges, sure, and some extra work I would have rather not done. I even had to “undo” some successes from previous years. But the new model is way more stable.
G. I took on a challenging new job
Way back in 2017, when I went looking for a new job, I had very little luck finding the type of job I was looking for, and it was demoralizing. This year, it’s five years later, and I had divergent paths in front of me. I could have taken the easy path and just gone back to my old area; instead, I put on my big boy pants and put myself out there to see what was available. Unlike in 2017, I got lots of nibbles really fast. Within four days of making the decision to at least see what was out there, I had six soft offers. I could have firmed them up, and I would have had what I think were two challenging offers, two moderate offers, and two easy offers. Of the challenging offers, I pursued, was offered, and accepted the most challenging one of the bunch. For someone who thinks he is 3-5 years from retirement, that wasn’t the most obvious of moves. And it surprised me that I really wanted it. And while I haven’t felt at the top of my game, my bosses are happy with my performance.
H. Helping Jacob with his health journey
I have felt that we have been failing Jacob over the last two years. He is back to school with his own little posse of friends; he is also actively gaming with a different subgroup of friends. So he is doing pretty well overall socially, a previous and ongoing concern. But where I have felt like we are failing him is on his legs. He can’t wear his ankle-foot orthotics right now because the post (aka heel) would be too high for him to remain stable. They could make one, but he’d likely be falling often. So, that’s not a great solution. The best solution is surgery, and we’ve been on a waiting list. We met with the surgeon in early December, and Jacob is now confirmed to be a “go” for surgery, likely sometime in the next six to nine months. The type of surgery and timing are still to be worked out, but we have a more definitive plan.
In the meantime, we tried to treat the symptoms through massage and increased the frequency earlier this year. It helps him, even if it isn’t “enough”. Exercises help too, and it’s all we can do until the surgery.
But there is a mental health component to his journey too, and earlier this year, I reached out to EAP and got a referral for him to the woman that I talk to sporadically for my own mental health. I didn’t know how it would go, she’s an older therapist, and I wasn’t sure how he’d find her for chemistry, but she has a lot of experience with his issues and situation. He liked her just fine, and he’s done several conversations with her since. He’s maturing and growing, and he’s handling things pretty well these days.
I know what I did helped him, and while it isn’t much in the grand scheme of things, and the journey is still his, I’m counting my involvement as a success.
I. Helping Andrea with her health journey
I cannot take Andrea’s journey for her. Nor is there any credit to be shared with me for the journey she’s on. It is, by its nature, primarily hers. All I can do is be along for the ride and help where I can. It has been hard and long, and the journey is far from over. But I have helped.
J. I survived the year
Back at the beginning, I mentioned one version of the year’s storyline is that it sucked canal water. And it did. I hoped for rebirth, but I had to settle for mentally defragging my cerebral hard drive. At one point in the fall, I thought survival was going to be a literal issue. I had a massive digestive attack that felt like a heart attack, way stronger than the digestive issue I had back in 2005 or so. It freaked me out, thinking I was going to leave Jacob and Andrea without help. That feeling has stayed with me, but with everything going on over the last two years, and this past year again with the added non-COVID stuff, survival itself and not even buckling too much are both wins.
Flipped
I don’t know if the script above is enough to counteract some of the other thoughts from the previous post. But it IS a different narrative. One of real success, one that I can be proud of when I have moments where everything is racing at once. It has also given me some ideas for the new year. I’ll see where it leaves me.
