I’m not going to lie, this week was rough. It was productive, but rough. Since I am a corporate accountant and December 31 is our fiscal year end, the time between the turn of the year and the filing of the 10-K is the busiest, most stressful time of year. I was ahead going into the week with my normal monthly and quarterly responsibilities completed. However, when I switched to the annual tax file, it became a larger burden than intended. This is an exercise, though, in reaping the rewards of doing the hard things. While I don’t want to even think about that tax file until next year, I put in extra hours to make it clearer and more standardized than it ever has been. I spent some time on a call with one of the Tax department managers and we had a great discussion about the file and the timing of what they needed throughout the year that I have not been able to have in the past. In total, I spent around 12+ hours on that single file. I still have a few outstanding requests for year-end, but I am in a good spot going forward.
As busy as this week was, I was still able to work on my goals. What I’m thinking of doing here is going through different categories of my goals each week to talk about what I’ve done, big or small. Let’s see how this plays out.
Learning the Violin
I have put in around 4-5 hours of practice this week. Something had been bothering me about the sound of my violin and I knew I was missing something. I had tuned it to the appropriate notes…or so I thought. Tuesday before I tried to start playing, I spent some time tuning some more and realized what the issue was. I was tuned to the right notes (G, D, A, E), but it was a full octave lower than what it should have been.
One of the risks of buying your violin and starting on your own I guess. Once that was fixed, I worked on bow hold and the open string notes. I used videos on YouTube to get some open string exercises. What I didn’t realize was how hard it would be initially to fully stop one note and switch strings before starting the next. I knew it in my head, but it was definitely difficult to slow myself down and commit to the movement. I would end up starting the movement before I had fully switched strings, which resulted in more of a slight slur from one string to the next. I’m definitely a lot better at it now but it still happens sometimes. There are six exercises for open strings that I work through every time I practice and will probably continue to do so for a little while.
The other issue I ran into was on Thursday. I was having problems bowing straight across the strings. I kept getting a weird screech when moving to E. I think part of the problem was moving my arm too far down when trying to avoid A. But the bigger issue was that I would end up bowing at an angle which causes its own weird sounds. It’s definitely a balancing act between not pressing too hard, but not too softly; keeping your wrist fluid but not too fluid, etc. It’s just going to take time and practice, but I’m thankful for my ability to do some self-diagnosing.
For my remaining practice time, I repeatedly went through the six open string exercises at varying speeds. I played around some with first string exercises as well. I’m starting to be able to not look at the violin when playing at least the open strings. I had been memorizing the short exercises and looking at the strings, but that’s a crutch. I should be able to look at the music and play. Again, time and practice, but I did make attempts to trust myself and not look at the strings while playing.
Health and Wellness
For the first two days, I made myself get up early and do both yoga and meditation. By Wednesday, though, I was back to sleeping in as late as I could before needing to get up for work. I knew it was going to a hard thing to do until it becomes routine, but the added stress of the work week and lack of sleep that came with it was too much for me. My gaming group also started back up this week. I don’t think we’ve talked much about gaming yet, but I’ll get there in a bit. What that meant was going to bed an hour later than I have been and being in front of a screen until right before bed. Once I was in bed, despite being exhausted, I couldn’t sleep.
Another thing I’ve been unhappy with in terms of health and wellness is my weight. I’ve always been a bit bigger, but this is definitely the biggest I’ve ever been. I can’t stand to look at myself in photos. I rarely feel good about my appearance and when I do, I can look at a picture and immediately realize that I don’t look as good as I thought I did. Even when I was wedding dress shopping with my bridal party, I felt great in the dress I chose even if I resolved to lose some weight before alterations. However, when I look at the pictures they took, that’s not how I saw myself in the mirror at all. This is all set up to say that we received our engagement photos Saturday night and the same pattern happened. I felt good going into the pictures, but when we got them back I felt mortified by my weight. After taking closer looks at them, there are some that I like and I’m comfortable with, but some I just can’t stand to look at. I don’t have any grandiose ideas of losing 80+ pounds before my wedding, but I do want to trim down some and the engagement photos really showed me how badly I need to work on it.
This coming week, I think I need to establish some form of exercise above and beyond yoga. Normally, I have about an hour in between feeding the dogs dinner and showering for the evening. I typically spend that time reading, but maybe it would be better spent on cardio or weight lifting.
Art
I spent some time researching how I want to go about my journey here. I think I want to buy a MacBook for my digital outlets such as Blender and Unreal Engine. I don’t have a personal laptop and I don’t really want to be shackled to my desktop any time I want to play around with artistic things (or write a blog post). I have been following Marc Brunet’s YouTube channel for a while now and I even purchased his art school program at the beginning of last year. My plan is to start working on the new version of his 30-day challenge this week. After that, he has one that is another 30-day challenge for character drawing. I’m not sure if I want to do that one or dive into the art school program. I’m almost positive he goes into everything in detail in that program anyway.
Reading More Books
This week between working and gaming (I promise I’ll get to it soon) hasn’t left a ton of time for reading. I am currently reading Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao and it was, I think, the best possible choice for a time that I was going to be stressed and exhausted. It has been more of a cozy, easy read and I will finish it tonight. I haven’t decided yet what I want to pick up next, though.
On the subject of reading, I did start my 2025 recap as promised. I thought I would do it as a recap because some books I haven’t read in several months and I didn’t think I’d have enough to say to warrant individual reviews. I was very wrong! As I started on each book, I found that I had way more to say than I expected and I felt like I was cutting it short each time for the sake of brevity. I decided to give each one its own proper review and maybe combine books in a series. The recap post was growing longer and longer and I was only about halfway through. This way, I can also finally post something and not leave it as “coming soon.”
Other Goals
I have spent some time planning this year’s garden, including making a list of what I want to grow. It is, of course, the middle of winter though so there isn’t much more I can do other than plan. Initially, I wanted to rearrange the raised beds, but with all of the wedding expenses coming up I’m not sure it’s feasible. We’re already going to be busy with fine tuning the details with each vendors, the shower, bachelor/bachelorette parties, etc. I think we have enough on our plate without adding that to it.
Starting this week, I am going to go through the tarot deck one card at a time and do a deep dive into its meanings. I’m hoping to either make a section in my weekly blog post to go over it or maybe start a dedicated page for it.
On Other Personal Things
OK let’s finally talk about the role of gaming in my life. Getting to the backlog is on my list for the year, but I do have some existing games going. I have played both World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV which are online MMO’s. That means they are ongoing, more social games that require a time commitment. As a matter of fact, Final Fantasy XIV is where I met my fiancé. We played in groups together on and off for almost 2 years before we met in person and started dating. Currently, I participate in group content with his former group (known as a “static”). I have played with them for a little over a year now. How it works is that the game releases patches on a specified cadence. The more difficult content requires premade groups. You can find groups of random people to join with at any given time, but it’s generally better if you find a group to stick with. That way you can get on a call (Discord) and communicate in real time. I have been on a break from the game since we completed the previous tier back in summer 2025. The new tier started before Christmas and the difficult content released this past Tuesday. So while I’m hard at work all day, I also have to come mentally prepared to tackle these challenges Tuesday through Thursday for 4 hours each. It’s great mental exercise, but again requires a time commitment as well as time spent preparing ahead of time. I’ve always enjoyed this content, but it does take a significant time away from my other goals for those 3 days.
Let’s go back to engagement and our relationship for a moment because I haven’t talked much about it either. My fiancé and I have been engaged for a year now and have been together for 2 years. We spent our entire first year flying back and forth once a month to see each other and I ended up moving to him. I am lucky enough to work for a company that has always treated me well and allowed me to jump to fully remote. I still travel back to Ohio once a quarter to spend time in the office and it’s also great to get time with my friends while I’m there. I joke that I live in two cities. Our wedding is this coming October, which is unfortunately the busiest time of the year for weddings. Thankfully, we started booking vendors back in September and all of them are booked as of last weekend when we booked our DJ. We purchased our house in 2025 as well. We have two dogs and one cat and we’re still working on getting them used to each other. The bottom line is, life is busy and hard. We all have so much going on all the time and it’s difficult to get to everything. I feel like I need another 3-4 days a week to be able to get everything done and still find time to relax. I know I’m adding to it by having these goals, but I truly believe the end result is going to be well worth the work.
With that, I think I’m going to close out this post for the week. I will get the book reviews up as soon as I can and I have an idea for my first essay. Probably won’t dive into it for a while, but only a short time on this journey so far and I feel like I’m already engaging more deeply and having more thoughts that I’d like to explore. It was exciting when I came
up with this essay topic as it felt like I was really putting together themes that I’ve come across in more than one place recently. Until next week!
Leave a Reply