A Happy New Year!
- The Archivist
- Jan 1
- 5 min read
And to a new 13-week experimentation period of sorts.
I received a yearly planner as a gift, and so, even though the aesthetic isn't much to my usual taste, I'm going to attempt to use that in place of my Quarterly Journals. I don't want to waste a gifted planner! Plus, since my other Quarterly Planners are undated, I can start using them at any time if this one doesn't pan out well for me, but enough of that for now. Let's get to what I was doing the last couple of weeks.
December 20th - 31st
Boy were the last 11 days of December busy. Today doesn't even feel like it's the start of 2025 despite the couple of hours I took to set up a tracking method for my new planner.
Cael's Journals
Most of the journals, excluding the 17th, I rewrote and/or edited through Christmas Eve Day
12th of Nudon: 2,565 words
13th of Nudon: 833 words
14th of Nudon: 842 words
15th of Nudon: 554 words
16th of Nudon: 745 words
After we returned home from visiting family and with my usual routine interrupted, I crashed hard for a couple of days, not something I wanted to have happen, since I anticipated the 17th would be a longer entry, but I managed to rewrite, edit, and post it on Dec. 29th.
17th of Nudon: 1,859 words
Total Word Count: 7,098
It's a toss up on whether or not I accomplished my goal, because I still have the 18th of Nudon to write. However! I couldn't write it until we had our most recent session, which took place on Monday, the 30th, so up until that point, I actually was caught up. Yeah, I'm counting it. Now, it's just a matter of not falling behind again.
Transcribing
Since the days leading up to Christmas were so packed, my partner and I had our sessions at the very tail-end of December, on the 28th and 30th respectively. Session Day → Transcribe Day → Session Day → Transcribe Day was an interesting format I'm not eager to repeat.
Session 103
Dec. 28th
3.3 hours
14,000 words
Session 104
Dec. 30th
3.2 hours
13,853 words
I have since learned that a 3-hour session will take me ~5 hours to transcribe, for anybody interested in those little details.
Fitness
Here's where I plummeted, though I did try to maintain my workout routine as best I could! Having the treadmill out in the open space of the living room instead of it facing a wall elsewhere has made a significant difference. I can choose whether to read, watch TV, look around at the other visual stimuli, etc...
If it was between trying to slot in a Built With Science workout or walking, I almost always chose the latter.
Walking at least 8k steps: 12.20 - 12.24, 12.27, 12.29
BWS: 12.20 (Workout A), 12.22 (C), 12.24 (B)
I honestly don't know if I've mentioned it yet or not, but having a dedicated workout bench instead of using a piano bench as a makeshift one is really, really nice, and I no longer have to improvise inclines with using kitchen chairs! The bench has corrected my form on some of the exercises, which upped the intensity without adding more weight tremendously.
A Peek into 2025
While I don't intend to sit on my laurels now that I've completed my writing sprint, I'll be lifting my foot off the throttle a smidge so that I don't burn out. Beginning a new journal, planner, or organizer always reinvigorates me, but I'm using that burst to keep me working into the new cycle at a more manageable pace. Putting on that cruise control~
The yearly planner I received as a gift doesn't have dedicated "goal" pages, so I repurposed each page of "Notes" at the start of the planner to write what, in general, I would like to accomplish this year, with the hopes that, since I'm caught up with Cael's journals, I'll be able to slowly fill other meters. Because it's a yearly planner instead of a quarterly, I didn't limit myself to 3 main objectives to complete. They're not even "S.M.A.R.T." goals or whatever other systems exist. These pages are just dedicated to the 7 interests that are most important to me:
Develop Fear No More
Read More Books
Work on Skies Over Aefala
Practice Japanese
Improve Physical Health
Start Composing Music Again
Build a Drawing Routine
Develop New Skills (AKA: Keep Learning)
Under every category, I listed my motivations for why I want to make strides toward each of them, what makes them important to me. I also listed a loose "End-of-Year Objective", a somewhat more concrete goal that should be feasible if--key word there--I remain consistent with the category.
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Example Page
Develop Fear No More
Motivations: Your Why
I want to keep a place for my project W.I.P.s and blog about the mundane day-to-day effort that goes into completing various projects to show those who are struggling that the finished piece and the skills required to finish it are not acquired in a day/week/month/etc...but that it takes time and, most importantly, patience.
End-of-Year Objective
Have a fully designed & functioning site complete with logo, favicon, blog icons, homepage, W.I.P.s page, Portfolio page, etc...
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Some of these categories may change as the year progresses, and some of them I may cross out altogether because too many of them require too much of my focus, but this exercise helps orient me to which of my interests I most naturally lean and those that require more effort to pursue.
Thankfully, the planner has tabs for each month, and it has a monthly checklist that I've repurposed as a weekly-objectives page by writing the current week's window and what categories I want to make progress toward that week. It also includes daily pages that I can organize in a similar fashion to my quarterly planners, though I do wish there were more lines. The final page of each month has another "Notes" section, which I'll be using for my weekly reflections: what is/isn't working, the 3 biggest wins of the week, highlights of the week, what needs more attention, etc...
If the world isn't set ablaze before the end of the year, I'll be excited to review the changes I've made and in what areas I've improved. You know, just trying to be optimistic while crying tears of pessimism.
Questions for Contemplation & Discussion:
What are you looking forward to this year? Celebrating a loan payoff? Graduating from school? Releasing an album? Getting married?
If you're making New Year's Resolutions, what is the "why" behind it? Is that "why" strong enough to see you through the difficult days? And is the reason healthy?
For example, if your reason for setting a New Year's Resolution to exercise is to "look lean," is that really going to keep you going once the initial excitement wears off?
In terms of healthy, are you making this goal to enrich your life or to satisfy (or spite!) someone else, to prove them wrong in some way? While wanting to one-up someone or prove them wrong might be strong motivators--I've definitely used them in the past--at that point, you're giving that other person control and power over you. If this is the case, try reassessing your "why" and see if there's not another reason you can devise to replace the one that's poisoning you.
This Week's Obligatory Cat Pic: Salad
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