It’s maddening that it’s already mid-March. The passage of time has begun to feel like a chase, and I’m not sure which side of it I’m on. Let’s hurry up and check this in, lest we dwell too long.
Fitness/Health: Seems static, which coming off of my Winter phase, I’ll take as a win. I do seem to have peaked on my weight gain, which is good, because that shit is driving me nuts. I no longer drink, I mostly eat quite healthy, and I exercise regularly. It’s infuriating when the numbers don’t seem to align with the effort. But also, I haven’t been doing all of that so tightly, and a thing I’d started to notice as I aged, even before my health turn, was that my fitness indicators seem to lag my fitness actions. I don’t know if that corpo speak makes sense, so let me put it another way. When I’m sedentary and eating poorly, my fitness suffers, that’s obvious, but when I was younger this would happen right away. The other side of this coin was also pretty immediate. If I started working out, I would start seeing results in my desired direction right away. I’m older, so it makes sense that it takes a few days for effects to catch up with me, but up until recently, there would at least be a moment between the bad fitness and the good fitness where things would level off for a while. I don’t know, I’m really just complaining to complain now. It’s fine, and I’m getting back on that proverbial horse, and it’s fine. I said it’s fine.
Academics: I still haven’t turned in my CS50 final, and it’s obvious to me that I’m dragging my feet. Two reason, both are silly, but that’s nothing new for me. Reason 1) I feel like my project isn’t good enough. Multiple sources tell me it is good enough, but I’m unsure. I wonder if there’s a way to check with the actual staff what they think?
Actually, I just googled it, and it turns out I was maybe supposed to submit a form for a project approval before I even started. So maybe I’m not done. You know what? I’m going to check in on that and see what’s up.
Anyway, the second reason is because it requires a video for submission. And I don’t wanna.
Algebra is going quite well. I’m a little frustrated because I continue to make some very silly mistakes, but as I’ve (mostly) stuck to my new plan of Math is Every Day – a thing that I’ll need to find a better name for, or at least a name that makes a fun acronym – I’ve been making fewer of those mistakes. I’ve also been finding it a little easier to pick up concepts that I’d previously missed or misunderstood. And that’s quite nice. It’s really starting to ease my concerns for my future Calculus classes. I hope it doesn’t start going to me head, though, because I think that being thoroughly humbled may be my personal key to Math. I guess we’ll see as I continue.
Other stuff: My recent successes in various projects has me hungry for more projects. In particular, I really want to give a shot at a project that I might be able to publish. I’ve been writing some fiction for a while, which does satisfy this want, but all of that will take a good while before it’s done. I’d really love to put together a tiny little app or game or something. Something I can put on an app store or itch or something. Or maybe a custom theme for WordPress. I don’t know, I want to make something that I can put my name on and start building a portfolio or body of work. I do, however, feel like this is still quite premature. However, it might be that this is where I start linking and personalizing my learning. I’ll get started on some projects, maybe bring back some of my favorite unfinished projects from back in the day, and see if I can make some progress on them. When I hit a wall, I’ll have a better idea of what to learn next. That seems like a good idea.
A part of this has to do with this project – the idea of documenting my progress and also just finding reasons to write. I have a whole bunch of other things that I want to write about, and maybe share some of that fiction I’m working on as I go, but this blog, at least as it appears right now, doesn’t seem like the right place for it. Maybe if I could spruce this up to support more than just standard blog posts, like if I had something like a media zone or a more easily parsed category system. Or maybe I should just start shoving those thoughts onto one of my un-or-underused sites like cookiesandramen.com. I wonder how long of a project that would be? Spruce up that ol’ site and start posting some stuff over there? I’d love to get to doin’ some old-web stuff. Right? Wouldn’t that be fun?
My romance situation has taken an interesting turn. Not that I’ve found any, no, I’m still quite pathetic in that way. But I’ve started internalizing that if I ever want to reclaim my old rizz or, perhaps a better and more doable plan to have new rizz, is to treat it like a project as well, and let myself work and learn my way into a better me. I mean, that’s the point of all of this anyway, right? I’ve already gotten a bit of positive feedback from this. Just trying to be the generally and genuinely interested and open person has compelled me to actually converse with people and in situations that I ordinarily wouldn’t. I’ve had a handful of conversations at the checkouts of shops and other places I’ve visited. I think I might have engaged in a smidge of mutual flirting late-ish at a Royal Farms. I feel like flirting with someone while they are on the job on your are their customer is kinda shitty, which is one of the reasons I’ve not really done this, but you can be a smidge flirty or at least charming and conversation with anyway, unless they’re clearly giving the “leave me the fuck alone” eyes. Right? But don’t worry, I am still an idiot and really didn’t get the vibe that she might be flirting back until after I was already driving away. Not that I would have done anything about it anyway. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to tell for sure when it’s flirting vs. just being friendly. Also, I’m not sure it’s ever cool to hit on someone in that situation even if they are returning the flirt. Also also, I’m not sure how old she was. She seemed like she was in her 30s. I’m in my early 40s, so I think that’s fine but about my bottom limit. I guess, presuming we’re both legal adults (it was late enough at night that I think she legally would have to be), I maybe don’t care if it’s just a smash. But I’m also finding that, as desperate as I am to just smash, at this point in my life, I would like… I don’t know, but not that. So flirting with a mid-20s woman while she’s working seems ill advised.
My wardrobe refresh project is also continuing, though perhaps in fits and starts. I think it’s fair to not want to spend a lot on clothes that I’m hoping won’t fit me in the near future, so I’m trying to focus on stuff whose fit won’t significantly change, like shoes, or stuff that being oversized might actually be preferred, like most of the sweater and coat styles I like.
These last ones are also part of wanting to gin-up a new blog theme. I don’t know, maybe I can find one close enough that already exists. I mean, this place really needs a fix up. The picture of me up there is over a decade old. I don’t even have those glasses anymore, let alone the hair. But also, in the event that I want to come back through and read my way through a specific topic, I’d love for everything to be more cleanly and crisply organized before I start differentiating posts that are just about my clothes or just about my school. Maybe that’s also silly. It’s true that I am a very silly man. But it seems like a reasonable thing to want from my point of view.
This post is way too long. That’s yet another reason for the want to fix things up here. I end up taking more time than I want between posts because I don’t want to make a bunch of tiny little micro posts. But actually, maybe I do, because then I end up making a way-too-long post that rambles around and still manages to miss some of the things I’ve been thinking about. If this place had room for a wider mix of post lengths and types in a way that didn’t feel totally obnoxious, I’d be pretty happy about that. It kinda reminds me of how utterly disappointing I was with what social media had become before I eventually bounced the fuck off of it. There should be room to just drop my thoughts and also encourage engaging and fair discourse without things turning immediately hostile and packing full of Nazis. But the internet is and has always been full of Nazis, so… I suppose that’s just a pipe dream. But I don’t need to solve the engagement and fascism problems with my stupid blog. I don’t need to solve any problem here, I would just like to widen my options without limiting my utility.