Staying up until 3 AM twice a week is just not working. I gotta figure out these weekends. But you know, I’m havin’ a good time, so…
Follow-ups: The schedule is definitely helping, even when I don’t fully adhere to it. As I stated in the last check-in, having the plan makes it so much easier to stay on task, get back on task when I fall off, and figure out where I need to aim my focus when there just isn’t time. My music practice is a great example, because I’m definitely falling short of that section of the plan, but just having and keeping the plan in mind makes it so much easier to mitigate the impact, if you don’t mind a smidge of corpo-speak. In fact, I’d say it’s proving its worth, because music has had to move aside a bit to make room for some temporary priority shifts. The thing is, even though the music priority has been lowered, it hasn’t been left behind. I’m still practicing. Without the plan, I almost never practiced. When I did, it was always the same, mostly aimless re-treds of the same junk-riffs I always go to. Now I’m better at just picking it up, because I know I have something to practice. And it’s a shorter list with a wider variety of areas to work on, many of which I’d been meaning to work on for years. So some days I just pick up a guitar and practice strumming, sometimes it’s chords and voicings, or a song or just the hard part of a specific song, and so on. I even have a day in the schedule where my practice is basically to just read and/or watch videos, which helps keep up momentum. I’ve put similar structures across all of my areas of focus, and it’s really kept me from wasting a day. It’s really helped me get back on the Math horse, particularly during those early sections of Trig where I was really starting to falter.
Fitness/Health: Let’s get a number in here, 243. It’s taken much longer than I wanted, but I’m back down to 243, and I’m pretty happy about that. At this point, if I can just make it back under 240 and stay there for a while, I’ll consider that a win for the year. Of course, the goals remain, celebrating every 10 pound increment until I hit 200, then reevaluating where I actually want to take things. For various reasons this year, I lost ground quite possibly by more than 10 pounds, and it’s been a real slog to claw back down, as evidenced by my still not quite being there. So I think the recovery and setup for that difficult Winter maintenance phase is the real goal. Not that I’m giving up on another 10 pounds beyond – I’d love to get under 230 this year. But I’ve got to manage my various stresses, so I don’t want to over promise to myself on a goal that I might not be able to make even with a hard, dedicated effort. If only I’d had this type of fortitude when I was healthy. Well, healthier.
Academics: It looks like any school credit I might have received from my military service probably won’t count at this point. I mean, it has been like 20 years. I’m not entirely sure any of those credits ever really would have counted. If I recall correctly, the bulk of them would have been in Communications. That would be nice, but would those apply to an Engineering degree? I suspect not. There may have also been some electronics credits which, honestly, shouldn’t. Well, I don’t know, I guess it’s a pretty big field, so maybe some of it would make sense. I’m thinking about stuff like circuits and stuff, and while my time did teach me some pretty awesome things about radio wave propagation, I don’t think I could really explain any of it without making hand gestures and saying “it’s like, you know” a bunch. So that’s probably not credit worthy. So I guess I’m not really bothered by that.
What I am bothered by is that I’m still not seeing any sign of the school accepting my credit from the online classes I took recently. It wouldn’t devastate me if they don’t take any of it, but it would really bum me out. I’d rather not retake those classes in particular. So I think I need to check in with the school to make sure I submitted this stuff correctly. I kinda suspect that I have not. And if I did and they aren’t taking them, then I guess I need to take those placement tests. Which I’d also rather not do.
Side social note: Mostly things have been pretty good and I think I’m making progress on the areas I’ve been working to improve. However, there have been a few missteps. I had a few times I held a door a bit too early and a few other times when I should have held a door and didn’t even offer. In each of these cases, it became obvious to me far too late. Many of those doors were metaphorical in nature, but the general idea of extending a courtesy or performing a standard politeness eluded me in frankly ridiculous ways. Sometimes I wonder if my public persona is that of a barely aware goblin.
Also, I think a woman might have been trying to have a conversation with me on my walk and I was rude. I was moving at a good pace and there were some owl-like hooting coming from the woods as I was passing a woman with a dog. The woman seemed younger than me, but mature and put together like the adult that I pretend to be. Medium-biggish dog, like a yellow lab or something? I guess I didn’t really get a look at either, but the dog seemed like a real sweetheart and the lady seemed nice enough.
Now, my experience in public is that noone except my close friends and family is ever happy to see me, and it’s my job to get the fuck out of stranger’s business before they feel like I’m harassing them. So I just assumed she was being nervous when she asked me about the noise. So I gave a response that, while on topic and nominally reassuring, was obviously implying that I wasn’t sticking around. And I kept moving ahead, as indicated. As I’m trying to be less curt and standoffish, it did occur to me that this may have been a dick move, and I later brought it up to a couple of friends. They think I was meant to slow down and chat for a while, though some of those theories really took some liberties . But I don’t know, that doesn’t seem right. Is that right? I’ve walked around on this path for years and not once has anyone ever reacted positively to my being there.
It also bothers me that I never stop to pet the dogs. I just assume, not just assumption, actually, I’ve heard people walking their dogs want to be left alone. So I leave them alone. Is that not the polite thing to do? I’ve been noticing people being more friendly with me in general over the last year or so, not just on the walk, but everywhere. I really don’t know what to make of it, or how I should respond to it. Do I somehow look more friendly? Should I? Is there a way to react that I should have learned by now, but missed because I was wallowing in my sadness for so long?
Well, in a few months, I’ll have an overload of social interactions. So I guess we’ll figure things out then. I’ll try to be a tick more present on the path, though. I wouldn’t want to be rude.
Next Time: Gosh, I hope mostly nothing. I’d really like to spend this next week just studying, making progress on my other school preparation, working on my projects. And cleaning, I really fell behind in a couple areas of cleaning. I spent a big chunk of Saturday cleaning my kitchen. I pulled out the fridge and stove, and man, I gotta do that more often. I gets so gross back there! I need to put together a home maintenance schedule. I bet that would slide right into my plan. But I’m probably not doing that this week, I’ll probably mostly do the plan as is, best as I can, and try and get some rest. I’m so tired.