Time to do a quick update, here at the end of week 7.
I’m not doing that well on my two big goals — better engagement with Jacob and random acts of romance. While I’ve made some progress on both, I haven’t yet rolled over the tipping point to make it 3-4 times per week, which was the goal.
On the social side, I’ve continued to reach out to my siblings, and to my male friends for the “mid-month meat madness for men” i.e. wing night. Tonight is my second outing for the wings, and since my brother Mike is coming along, I’ll double-count that as a win. On the sibling front, I think it will be a difficult time for one sibling + sibling-in-law over the coming few months, and while I certainly don’t want to get actively involved in their reconfiguration of their life, I also want them to know that they have my relatively-unconditional support and empathy for the journey.
My plans for my big social campaign are progressing slower than I would like, and I’m considering forming an advisory panel to give me advice on a few things. Of course, I’d have to swear them to secrecy on pain of wet willies, because I don’t want the campaign leaking before the launch, so I have to figure out how to get them to swear to not tell anyone before I tell them what it is. Trusting little sort, aren’t I?
AstroPontiac has been relatively silent for me, although Stephan is working away at it with encouraging results. I’m optimistic it might bear some fruit before the summer is out.
I moved away from the charity focus, but I didn’t really plan to do much on that before April / May or so, so not too worried. Equally, not surprisingly, I haven’t thought at all about the summer Corn Roast plans.
Overall, as with the mind, I’d have to rate my progress at a very weak yellow, bordering on red.
Time to do a quick update, here at the end of week 7.
For my astronomy, considering that I haven’t actually dug the telescope out and got it set up yet, mostly because I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that I’m a fair-weather (i.e. warm-weather) astronomer only, I’m doing okay. I’ve played around with a few things, even managed to get a photo of the Mars / Venus / Moon conjunction on the weekend. While I had hoped to be doing something astronomy-related at least once a week, I’m at a combined total of 3 so far.
For the kitchen reno, we got going a few weeks ago with our first meeting with the designer, but haven’t heard anything in the last two weeks (contractor needs to come talk to us about moving a wall, see what the options are). I’m going to follow up this week and see about booking them for a specific 2 weeks in the summer.
I managed to sort some of my photos a few weeks back, but then stalled, which is same for my backup schedule. I’ve taken a couple of photos and managed to get a bunch of work done on a photobook, but nothing in the last couple of weeks. I also started on the origami in mid-January, although I originally planned that for later in the year.
Other than that, it’s been a pretty light 7 weeks on blue — nothing on my active use of the tracker, “honey do” list, scanning, ripping, knitting, learning to juggle, or planning for a meteor shower.
Overall, I’d have to rate my progress at a very weak yellow, bordering on red.
I confess, as excited as I am by my year-long quest, I lost faith this weekend. I did, I completely and utterly lost faith. The cause? I got sick.
I’ve been fighting a bit of residual congestion from a cold a few weeks ago, and since meds that I’m on prevent me from taking anything resembling a decent decongestant, I’ve always had trouble clearing congestion anyway, and it lingers. Annoying, energy-sucking, etc, but manageable. Which doesn’t mean I don’t probably whine about it more than I realize. But just annoying.
Saturday was different. Got up, felt relatively okay, climbed in the car and off I went to the Nissan dealership for service. It’s been on the list for a few weeks, but wasn’t urgent. Small rotational noise in the rear passenger tire area, but not affecting driving or anything, just a noise. Turned out to be bent dust plate, nothing of consequence, easily fixed, no charge, probably bent when I had the winter tires put on. I was thinking about getting the car washed, but I was starting to feel a little queasy, so headed back home instead. Went to the washroom, felt really unsteady about 30 minutes later, had to lie down.
That’s when the fever and chills hit. Temp went up, I went down, and I was out for a few hours. Got up, thought I’d have a shower to clear my head, still congested and cold. So I had a really hot shower. Steam bath time practically. Which knocked me on my butt, almost literally. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, like I just wasn’t getting enough air. Of course, man of my age and weight, with a family history of heart disease, doesn’t take the Amazing Kreskin to figure out where my mind was going. Immediately started looking for other signs. Anxiety? Well, I was feeling it now! (Just kidding) Pain? No. None. Nausea? None. Dizziness? Not really. Cough? Not really either. Weakness? Yes, but the shortness of breath was causing that. Anyway, lots going through my head, and I had Andrea come and guide me to the bedroom. As soon as I left the hot steamy shower, I almost instantly started feeling better. I could breathe again, and the fever was still present (39.4) but I just wanted to sleep. Which I did, and woke up feeling hungry. Since I had basically skipped lunch, not surprising, but was still pretty weak sitting up in the chair so had to ask Andrea to make me some soup.
Back to sleeping. I basically slept almost 30 of 48 hours. By Sunday morning, feeling pretty good. Head and chest had cleared, mostly felt ridiculous that the cause of my freak-out was basically a hot steam room. Which isn’t uncommon, I have the same problem at places like Le Nordik. I can’t breathe in them, my lungs really don’t like it for extended periods of time, and I’d just had a long hot shower.
But the faith part goes to the time when I was awake. When I’m sick, or really tired, I find it really hard to keep squirrels at bay. And they are doubting squirrels. Squirrels that sit on my shoulders and mock me. “Really? PolyWogg 4.0? You can’t even perform at 1.0 right now. Look at you…you’re asking your wife to make you soup, go to the basement and get you stuff from the freezer. Hell, why don’t you turn into a complete Neanderthal and tell her to get you a beer or something.” I hate having to depend on others but, more importantly, I really hate having to impose on someone else and ask them to do something that I can’t. I don’t care about simple things like if you’re going upstairs, can you bring me down a sweater. I mean like asking Andrea to go get something from the basement because I’m feeling too weak to try the stairs by myself. Yet I’m also not stupid enough to do it myself just to be stubborn.
At any rate, I lost faith. I started questioning a bunch of things, not so much the writing goal as I’m doing okay on that one but just about everything else that I’ve committed to. Particularly red goals which are more physical since it was the physical that was kicking my butt. Of course, I completely discounted the fact Andrea had it before me and I should have been potentially expecting it. Some of my lost faith was that I just completely lost two whole days more or less. Certainly wasn’t progressing on much on my list while I was sick.
And yet you know what inspired me? Parts of the Super Bowl. I could say it was Chris Matthews, who was picked up by the Seahawks while working at a Foot Locker, who caught his first professional receiving catch on Sunday as practice for his second one which was for a TD in the Super Bowl. He was over 100 yards receiving, might even have been leading receiver for Seahawks for most of the game. Or the rookie Malcolm Butler, who blocked the pass that Krause eventually cradled anyway, and then redeemed himself by stepping in front of Krause to grab the interception that finished the game.
But it wasn’t either of those people. It was Pete Carroll. All over the internet, the blogosphere, the videos, the football pundits, the live game announcers — everyone was calling him an idiot for passing with 1 yard to go rather than having Marshawn Lynch try to punch it in. And yet it was a great call, I don’t care what the Monday morning quarterbacks are saying from their recliners.
He explained it right after the game, exactly as I was expecting him to do. NE Pats were expecting them to run it in, so they sent in their maximum running defence. Carroll had 30 seconds to play with and he called the pass with an expectation that if it didn’t work, he still had a play to run with Marshawn, and the defenders would be one play more tired while Marshawn rested, plus the Pats weren’t set up to defend a pass. Add to that the fact that the short distance decreases the likelihood of an actual interception — maybe a batted down ball, but not an interception, and you have a pretty good chance at two plays, either of which might get you the win. If that pass had landed, Pete Carroll would be the king of the internet today, blogged about all over the place, didn’t take the safe play, gutsy, visionary, whatever. Celebrated. And if it was not caught, he still had Marshawn, who if successful, would have been pointed to as having been fresher, a good strategic rest before plowing into the endzone.
But what happened? The rookie from a school that nobody at the Super Bowl had ever heard of before (Hinds Community College, via West Alabama), Malcolm Butler, saw the play, abandoned his actual receiver, took a huge risk that an experienced veteran probably wouldn’t have but instead would have trusted in the protection routes they were running, and stepped forward, literally knocking the receiver out of the way of the ball and catching it himself. Make no mistake — that was a game-winning TD that was a split-second from making Pete Carroll that guru of football strategists, and Butler jumped in front of that game-winning train and brought it to a grinding, almost bone-crushing stop. If he had merely knocked it down, or just caused the receiver to drop it, the story would be a minor footnote to the next play when Marshawn would have had his shot at greatness.
But Carroll made the call he did based on what he saw before him. Lots of people are ripping him apart in the media world today and will do so for a long time to come. Diehard Seahawk fans are going to want to crucify him perhaps. But what did Carroll do, minutes after the game? He gave an interview where he said almost exactly what I laid out above — he didn’t like the matchup, tried the pass, figured if it failed he would still have 2 more plays with Marshawn to punch it in, let’s go for the win. And then he did the act that restored my faith in my quest.
He displayed 100% integrity and accountability. He said initially “We made the call” to go with the pass, but when he finished, he said, “The decision to go that way was me, it’s all on me.” He took full responsibility and accountability for the loss. Never mind the idiot Bennett working on his defensive line who not only gave Tom Brady a free first down by jumping offside on a 3rd down situation but who also gave up any hope of a touchback at the goal line by giving them another free five yards, after a season where he got dinged 14 times (second only to Browner on NE who had 15 infractions). His teammate was even trying to hold him back from jumping offside on the second-last play of the game, and he STILL went offside. Blown plays, missed opportunities, a whole season coming down to it, and Pete Carroll says, “It’s all on me.”
That’s the kind of faith I can get behind. Because whatever weaknesses I have in my personal arsenal to transform myself, the end result is the same. It’s all on me.
Let the quest continue. I’m not 100% ready to win yet, but I’m ready to keep fighting.
Let’s check in on how I’m doing on my goals…Spoiler alert — the big news is under the yellow goals!
Starting with the Blue / Mind goals, I’ve done a bit on both of my two big goals: re-engaged with astronomy (Mercury and Venus observing with the naked eye, collimated my scope, charged batteries, and sorted out my astro gear) and exchanged emails with the contractor for the kitchen renovation –> green for the past two weeks. On day-to-day stuff, I’ve started using the tracker, organized a photo book, did a partial backup, and enrolled in a Coursera course, but nothing official on the Honey-Do list, photo scanning, or ripping –> yellow for the past two weeks. On my bucket list, I started doing some origami, but nothing on photography, knitting, juggling or the meteor shower –> yellow for the past two weeks. Overall, I’d rate my mind goals at YELLOW for my early progress.
For the Green / Heart goals, my first big one has been re-engaging with Jacob. I have had two Boys Nights with him, although the project one was a bust. I had hoped to make snowflakes with him (construction paper with hole cut out for a picture, trimmed edges, wool on top) but I described the project to him on the weekend, and he did it without me, so he had no interest when it came to Boys Night to do it again. He liked the idea apparently, and couldn’t wait. This past week though we had an impromptu games night while Andrea was at NAC, and when we were done, we talked about what he likes in various games and what he wants in the game we’re going to design together in February. It’s a decent start. But I’m not stepping up for the night-time routine as much as I had intended, so overall of yellow. For the random acts of romance, my second big goal, I have to grade myself a Red so far…Andrea and I have done a few more things together, but it all came to a screeching halt on Saturday night when I was sick, and had to bail on our NAC date. Fortunately, a friend was able to go at the last-minute. Between the two, I’ll give myself an overall yellow so far. For the day-to-day activities, I’ve organized a wings outing for this coming week, updated the AstroPontiac site for the WP software, did a bit of work on my social campaign for November, and researched a bit of my charity plan. Nothing on siblings, corn roast planning –> Overall yellow. Which gives me an overall yellow for the category.
For the Red / Body goals, I pretty much suck. I’m way behind on my exercises and I’ve done almost nothing on organizing my physical journey — overall flaming red. On the day-to-day stuff, I haven’t got myself organized for french nor found a new dentist or doctor, but I did do my sleep test when my squirrels were knocking at the door, so I’m giving myself a yellow. However, I did nothing on organizing myself to give blood, use a rappel/zipline, or for a polar plunge, so again RED. Which leaves me with an overall red for the category.
Despite my “failures” above, I’m not really surprised. My priority for this month so far has been my goals in the Yellow / Soul category. I’ll go in reverse order, as I want to save my writing challenge to the end. I hit the ground running on my creativity challenge in the day-to-day stuff, working on clip art, two goals memes, finding a Daddy and Jacob project, posting photos from December, doing a photobook, and designing trackers for goals and the Creativity Challenge itself. On blogging, my goal was 10 new blogs; I did 32. In 18 days. For reviews of TV episodes, my goal was 10 for the yearly average but my Creativity Challenge boosted that temporarily to 25 for two weeks –> I did 35. With more pending. I’ve only done 4 memes so far, out of my 200 for the year, but I didn’t really expect to start this soon. I’m about 2/3 of the way through the first book (Monogram Murders), I’ve completed 11 entries in my Gratitude Journal with an impressive 8 entries in a row, and I’ve tried out 2 recipes with Andrea. And as mentioned, Jacob and I are working on the game design I wasn’t planning on starting until February. On the other side, nothing on movie reviews or book reviews, or the photography / movie weekend / HR guide. Nor have I done anything on my Spiritual questions quest for the year. Nevertheless, if this was my only progress for the month, I’d still give myself an overall Green. That list alone is enough to give me a sense of accomplishment.
But all of this has been a side-show to the main attraction, which is my ultra-scary, how-the-heck-am-I-going-to-reach “500,000 words” goal. Working it backwards, that’s 10,000 words a week x 50 weeks. So I have to put up about 10K words a week to stay on track.
Week 1 launched with a vengeance — 2 memes, 8 gratitude entries, 9 reviews of TV episodes, 26 posts, 35 e-mails, and innumerable numbers of Facebook posts and some other projects combined to give me, wait for it, 24,620 words, with 19,500 coming just from the blog. Week 2 was a bit slower, and I confess I didn’t meet my writing target — I only accumulated 7054 words, with 5500 coming from the blog and the rest coming from Facebook, emails, TV episode reviews and memes. But overall? My grand total for the two weeks is 31,674. Not including a few reviews and things that will post in the next few days already. That’s two-thirds of my previous total on the blog over the last few years, and way above my yearly average alone. That’s a big GREEN for the category by itself, although the others were already green.
So, summing up, Yellow / Yellow / Red / Green. Since my green is as impressive as my red is sucky, I’m going to call it a very promising yellow so far. I have to admit, I’m surprised. I lost momentum after the first 11 days, as I started week 2. And this week I’ve mailed in my performance in a few places. Yet, overall, it’s already looking promising for my month-end report, with two more weeks of progress to come!
I like this new PolyWogg 4.0. He’s a productive little tadpole. I feel almost giddy! 🙂
Thanks for clicking, that was method #1! An interesting thing happened last week. I posted a FB and Twitter link to my “red” goals for the year and how I was embarrassed by them. Nothing unusual about the link to me, just part of my process, I wasn`t trying to be innovative or manipulative. Yet twice as many people clicked to read that entry as compared to my other posts (oh, you scandalous readers!). And since people create blogs in the hope that people will read them, yep, I’m going to try to write more compelling titles that will manipulate you into feeling an almost irresistible desire to click. 🙂 Aren`t you glad I told you in advance?
On a related note, I have just finished an interesting article by Jon Morrow about “headline hacks” that get readers to click. Some of them seemed too cheesy to me (“How safe is your wallet on vacation?”) or other people’s approaches seem downright silly (“(person x did y) and you’ll never guess what happened next!”). SO there won’t be simple click-bait. But I think it isn’t out of the realm of comfort to have some of the other types of headlines — lists of things (5 resources for x, etc.) that I have curated, how to do x, six mistakes applicants make in their resumes or a top 10 list. Not really “manipulative” but it got you to click this far, didn’t it?
Method #2 — I’m hoping to inspire you somewhat. I don’t normally think of my blog as deliberately trying to influence people, but this is a different kind of year. At the same time that I’m publicly committing, I’m hoping the journey is entertaining at least, inspiring if possible. More that I’m hoping it’s a journey that COULD inspire someone, that I’ll be successful enough that it MIGHT inspire someone. Maybe it will just be through candor.
Method #3 — I’m hoping to wow you a little on the astronomy side. I’m hoping I get some great pics of the Moon or planets and that you’ll decide to attend a star party sometime.
Method #4 — I’m hoping my spiritual journey might prompt you to share some of your beliefs. I have no monopoly on spiritual insights, and my sister-in-law already sent me a good idea to add to the list. Others may have some too that they’re willing to share.
Method #5 — I’m hoping my wing nights will encourage some guys to come out for wings and a beer, or even just eat meat with friends.
Method #6 — I’m going to steal an idea from Jon Morrow and focus on hacks for charitable giving. I already have what I think is a good one — a relatively easy and somewhat “free” way to help out, just by doing what you’re mostly already doing. I need to test it, but I like it. So I’m wondering if I can find 10 other hacks like it for the year.
Method #7 — I keep vaguebooking about a large social campaign that I’m going to try this year. And when it happens, I’m hoping to influence your personal behaviour. It’s an easy campaign to support, you can do it in your own home, and it doesn’t cost you anything. It’s also a safe, no-brainer. But you know what? It’s as serious as death. So I’m not revealing details until I know I’ve got it right. It deserves my A-game, not random haphazard blog entries or messages. It will be organized, sustained, clear, and I hope persuasive. I don’t share messages about international development or human rights which are good ideas, nor the ridiculous “share if you are easily manipulated through guilt” memes on the opposite end of the spectrum. Truth be told, outside of regular humour, there’s no underlying theme to most of the stuff I share. But this idea is worth a campaign. So campaign I will.
Method #8 — I may, for the first time ever, ask you for money for my participation in a charity fund-raiser. I don’t normally do that, although I’m always happy to help others do “event” fundraising. I admire your efforts. But I’m not a participatory-type donor. But don’t worry — I won’t ask until December when of course lots of people have extra money lying around. I didn’t say I was EXPECTING money, I just said I would ask.
So that’s my eight ways. I hope it wasn’t a let down that there was no brain-washing robot or voodoo magic involved. Stand by to be lured, inspired, wowed, enticed to share, fed, taught, influenced, and (potentially) solicited.
