This week I am really trying hard to get everything back on track the way it was in January in terms of blog posting. That is not to say, of course, that I haven’t made progress in other areas. Since I don’t have a ton of time to write today, let’s jump right in:
- Reading – I just finished Wild Reverence by Rebecca Ross. I loved this book. There was a calm, steady pace to it that felt delicate, like a fairy tale or stories of myth. As usual, I’m going to take a day to let the book sit and process it before picking up the next one. That will be The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow. I feel like both of these books have been on the periphery of communities like BookTok and are now really starting to shine. They have been on my TBR for a while and I felt the strong urge to read them and a couple of others before heading back to The Faithful and the Fallen and Red Rising.
- Violin – I’m not going to lie, I haven’t played in a bit. I started to pick it up again on Thursday, but my fiance came home early that day. I don’t really like to play when he’s in earshot because I don’t want to subject him to the terrible beginner sounds I’m sure I make. What I did do was get my music stand ready to go and I’ll probably start playing again on Tuesday.
- Health & fitness – Yeah, no surprise to anyone I’m sure that I haven’t figured this out yet. I’m not giving up, though.
- Art & Digital Design – I ordered a laptop! This is really where I made headway this week. I did a ton of research because I was really desperate to have a personal laptop for a multitude of reasons. I purchased one that will be able to handle any Blender and Unreal Engine projects up through the intermediate level. My intention is that if I get to more advanced, graphics heavy projects that I will start using the laptop as a front-end and offload the more intensive jobs to my desktop.
- Gardening – I scheduled time off for mid March to get the garden cleaned up and hopefully a new layer of compost. I’ve been terrible about taking my PTO ever since Covid started and I’ve needed a break that isn’t consumed by holidays or engagement photos, or anything specific that had to get taken care of during that time. The past several times I’ve taken a week of vacation, it’s been playing catch-up for things I couldn’t get to while working.
- Tarot – I posted the deep dive on the Magician yesterday. I feel like I’m starting to hit a good stride there. Spending the time to sit with the card on Saturday mornings has been nice and I think that’s the cadence I’m going to continue.
- One surprising thing – I mentioned that I found a topic that could potentially turn into a larger essay. I spent quite a bit of time mulling it over and setting myself up with a plan. I used a notion template designed for PhD thesis work and adapted it a bit, pushing it down to an undergraduate capstone type project for now. I picked up a few books to read as well. A couple are more general phenomenology introduction books to set up my base understanding, and a couple are specifically related to the topic. I committed to reading a chapter each day because the material is so dense and I haven’t critically read philosophy texts in some years.
As you can see, I definitely made progress even if it was in some unexpected places.
And don’t think that I missed the fact that yesterday was Valentine’s Day! I’ve never been one to go overboard, but I think it’s nice to give small gifts and have a fancier dinner together. We made reservations about three weeks or so ago and still ended up with having dinner later at night, but it was delicious and worth waiting all day for it. We also got to send out our Save the Date cards for the wedding. A little bit behind on that, but it is fun to think that we sent them out on Valentine’s Day.
My goals for this week are to push myself a little harder. I’m still working out what my daily schedule looks like, but I think I need to push forward with the good habits I’m working on and slowly add more to it. Maybe start setting myself up better. Oh! I know it sounds trivial, but I did get a chair to set up in the bedroom. I’ve envisioned being able to sit in the chair to read (I find myself getting uncomfortable reading in bed), and sitting in it while writing the blog post or any other writings on my agenda. I’ve done the tarot posts from that chair and it has been helpful to have my little cozy spot for writing.
Now I’m being summoned for dinner time by one of the two dogs. I’ll finish the post here, but it feels good being (mostly) back on track.
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