At the beginning of the year, I wrote Goals for 2024. It's amazing to me it has been over six months since I wrote that. It makes me realize how much time passes and how easily it is to forget things, or drop habits when something comes up.
My goals were as follows:
- Keep a public culture consumption diary
- Blog once a month
- Finish locative garden
- Make music once a week
- Go fishing once a month
- 30 minutes of exercise three times a week
- Remove all credit card debt
- Find a monthly in person social thing
It all seemed so reasonable! Some progress has been made, but also some stuff has definitely slipped.
Lets group these into to category and take a look at them:
Writing: Keep a public culture consumption diary, Blog once a month, Finish locative garden.
My friend Sumana has been a huge help here, she and I have been meeting roughly once a week to write over video-conference. I've made a lot of progress on locative, blogged a little and I had a stint where I was regularly posting #happy posts.
So by the numbers: In six months, I did two of six full blog posts. I also posted #happy posts 11 out of 26 weeks.
Mental Health: Make music once a week, Go fishing once a month, 30 minutes of exercise three times a week, Find a monthly in person social thing
For the fishing and exercise portions, I had fits and spurts. I messed up my ankle at one point due to not stretching well, which made walking very difficult for about two months. But I did go fishing a few times, and I had weeks where I regularly did exercise. Also a lot of weeks where I didn't. Lately Mel and I have been walking after dinner, which has been a good forcing function.
Music making has been much more of a success story. I'm pretty regularly making music once a week. Even if it's just a quick break before a meeting, having a little music station right next to my work desk has been great. I'm occasionally posting some of my practice on YouTube. For example, the other night I posted this little riff I discovered before bed.
I just recently found a monthly social thing though! Shout out to all of the friends and acquaintances who sent suggestions: Trout Unlimited Mid-Hudson, Sound, Lit Lit and Club Draw.
While they are all super interesting, and I went to some of those events, the real winner for me was finding the Gunks Gaming Guild in New Paltz. Their website kind of sucks, but I happened to join their discord, and a whole world was opened up. A ton of people looking for D&D players, board game aficionados, etc. So I've now played a few D&D sessions there, and it's been a great social outlet. I'm going to keep looking and trying some of the other events I mentioned, but I feel like I'm making progress.
Finances: Remove all credit card debt
We made some progress on this, but not much. Here's to the back half of the year.
Other stuff
Work continues to be very stressful. Depending on the day it's either fantastic or infuriating. Our Quarterly get together is next week though, so I'm hopeful it relives some of the stress.
Mel moves to London in September for a year to attend the London School of Economics for a masters in Criminal Justice Policy. So getting my mental health habits in place and sticking to them will be super important.
That's about it! I hope you are doing well wherever you are. Lots of love from the east coast.
/Nat