Update for 9/4/2016

Happy September! Here’s a tweet from my sister about an article on making a fresh start this time of year.

Project updates

• Math relearning – Life never misses an opportunity to disappoint my optimistic scheduling expectations, and so despite my diligent efforts I’ll need at least another week writing my math program intro, but let’s be realistic and call it a year. It turns out I have a lot to say about learning by programming, but I like what I’ve been writing, which might be part of the problem. One project management skill I need to work on is scaling back a project to fit it into a time frame while still producing a satisfying result. In any case, it’s turning out I care so much about this topic of learning by programming that I don’t want to move forward with any other intellectual project until I’ve gotten somewhere with this technique so I can use it in some way on those projects.
• Life maintenance
  • Diet – Lately instead of cooking industriously, I’ve been re-exploring the frozen dinner aisle with my TLC diet in mind, which limits only saturated fat and cholesterol, so it gives me more choices than my doctor’s old recommendation of a low-fat diet that limited total fat, back before he switched to low-carb. Annoyingly, for some of the products, the nutritional info on the box doesn’t match the info in my diet tracking app, so I’m avoiding those brands, which so far are Boston Market and maybe Chili’s. I don’t think I’m doing this diet quite right–not getting quite enough soluble fiber, fruits and vegetables, fat, protein, or even calories–but it’s hard to coordinate all the different factors and find time for food prep, and I’m procrastinating on figuring out a better meal plan until I can fit in some time programming a tool to help me, though probably by that point the initial experiment will be over and I’ll have started on another low-carb experiment.
  • Exercise – I’ve decided I have enough else to do that if I don’t get in my exercise in the morning, I’ll count it out for the day, and so I’ve skipped exercise a few days recently because I’ve slept extra in the mornings, but oh well, I’m mostly sticking to the schedule, and it shouldn’t be a problem if I can get my sleep schedule under control, though when has that ever happened? I do kind of like my walks, since they give me half an hour to let my mind wander, which is pretty much my favorite state of being, and it’s a major reason I walk instead of jog, since anything resembling intense physical activity takes over my attention with all the strain and pain.
  • Daily routine – My task tracking app tells me I’ve gotten almost enough sleep over the past week, just not quite at the right times, and I’ve spent a decent amount of time on my projects, but I still feel dissatisfied and a little depressed about my time management skills. Do other people have trouble getting around to everything important in a timely fashion, or is it just me? Anyway, as I looked at my messy apartment this weekend, I concluded I need to restart my GTD practices, which have been minimal for a long time, so that’ll be coming up in the next week or two. It’s my Steptember fresh start.
  • Clothing – My collection of t-shirts is old and wearing out, so I’m on the lookout for new ones–a few plain ones and some graphic ones, like this Justice League one I picked up from Target. One problem to contend with is a trend I’ve seen in several brands for the bottom of the sleeve to be super short, which pulls the rest of the sleeve awkwardly when I move my arms.
• Books – I’m pushing myself through Charles Stross’ Glasshouse, which for me had a slow start but picked up in chapter 9, so I can get to Lev Grossman’s The Magician King, which I checked out a few days ago when my turn finally came up in the hold queue. The first book in that series was so good that I’m expecting to glide through this one in a few days.
• Video games – I’ve been missing Minecraft the past few weeks, so I’ve been listening to the soundtrack a lot, and this weekend I rebelled and played some when I should’ve been doing other things like sleeping. For anyone who cares, I’m on a long trek through the Nether from my temporary starting base to the location I’ve planned for the central base in my network of biome-related homes, which is the point of this world, and I might post an article or video about it someday so you can see what I’m talking about. I also sometimes wish I could get into other games, such as RuneScape, so I can get more involved with the people I hang out with online, but I don’t know when that would happen.
• Religion – My holding pattern between faith and doubt and my general spiritual inaction have been wearing on me for a while, and my mind is slowly drifting toward the idea of doing something to move in some direction. For now that would mostly take the form of journaling so I can work out what I think I need and what next steps would be most helpful, and I’ve decided to put my morning meditation on hold, since it’s only been helping me in a very limited way, and replace it with some kind of actual devotions.
• Dusk – It’s not a forest preserve, but I found some pretty clouds during one of my parking lot meals.
  

  The clouds kind of match the towers.

  A photo posted by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on Sep 5, 2016 at 9:09pm PDT