I know I said that I was closing down the blog, but in the meantime it is where I am posting my Groundhog Day Resolutions, so I don’t see why I shouldn’t continue to do so. The eventual plan is to resurrect the website organized around projects, not blog posts. I am also planning to migrate away from WordPress to a “static site generator” called Metalsmith. WordPress just has not been very joyful to use for a long time, particularly with the number of hackers and spammers that try to break into the site every day. It’s also gotten quite slow, even on fast server hardware. I’m ready to get rid of it.

Anyway, if you’ve been following my Groundhog Day Resolutions journey this year, you’ll know that it started with grand plans for daily progress but collapsed around April as I was preparing for my trip to Taiwan for four weeks. This does not mean I have given up on my resolutions completely, however. I’ve been taking the time to reflect upon what is really bothering me. In the meantime, I’ve chosen not to push myself too hard.

What was on my plate for June

The goals that I defined in my Goal Tracker V2 still stand. However, in my last review I felt that I had too much other stuff going on to really focus on them. Today, I think there are three main issues I’m dealing with.

1. I am not satisfied with the quality of my creative output, which is frustrating.
2. I am also frustrated with my current working environment and sense of creative isolation.
3. I have a lot of intense programming work to do, which demands my full attention AND demands creative isolation

I’ve decided to focus on completing the living room cafe project, which is about making my home office much more conducive to project collaboration and coworking. I’m not really sure if it will help, but finishing this project—it’s coming up on a year since I started this conversion—will bring a sense of closure. I am also hopeful that having a comfortable and inviting space will help break the creative isolation, as I will be able to host my own private events.

That said, I’m still having trouble dealing with the third issue. I’m feeling isolated creatively from other people who like to do what I do. However, to do the programming work requires creative isolation for me to do the work. It’s very demanding and requires my full attention, and I don’t want to “go in the box” so to speak. It’s quite a conundrum. I have in the past used livestreamed coworking to break the feeling of isolation, but the current work is exceedingly boring and I don’t think is of interest to anyone. It’s not even that interesting to me. Plus, my living room is a mess again and streaming from this location creates more stress.

New Unplanning System

Since I was feeling overwhelmed with the number of projects, I tried creating a new tracking system that is loosely inspired by Mark Forster’s AutoFocus System.

I’ve been feeling very anti-planning these days, and thought that perhaps I could just focus on tracking just the things that were “necessary but boring”. That is the idea behind the notebook. Every day, I write down something that I didn’t want to do for one reason or another. It’s exactly the system I need for right now; I don’t have the energy to do anything more. And things do seem to be getting done, at least. As more unpleasant tasks are getting taken care of, I am feeling lighter in spirit. I’ve been doing this for about a month, and it’s providing me with the bare minimum of disciplined focus. It’s been still difficult to start these tasks.

Plans for July

In my original Groundhog Day Resolutions schedule, I make the month of July an OPTIONAL month. The summer is short in New England, and July is that time of year when one takes the greatest advantage of the sunny weather. I sort of took June off already, but I think I will continue on with it. There are three main goals:

• Contract Work — getting at least 40 focused hours into the project would be great.
• Living Room Cafe — Finish painting the walls, move the computer standing desk downstairs, clean up the downstairs and put a futon bed there, soft open with co-working event in August.
• Take Care of Chores — accounting, continue to take junk to the dump and to Good Will, continue to organize and optimize all spaces in the house, get the home maintenance out of the way for the hot water heater, windows that need replacement, car detailing, doctor visits and tests, etc.

Bonus goals would be releasing new ETP products on Amazon along with transitioning my WordPress site to Metalsmith and relaunching, but I am going to have to prioritize the above main goals. I don’t seem to have the energy to deal with all of it this month.

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I’m back in the United States after a month of visiting family in Taiwan, and it’s time to review my Groundhog Day Resolutions in the context of that trip! I had originally thought that I would be stretching my wings as a “digital nomad”, getting work done remotely and exploring the language and culture while spending time with my dad. To my surprise, the time spent abroad was far less about testing my mettle in exploration as it was about re-examining my priorities. A big takeaway is that I am going to close down the blog because it’s no longer working for me. Everything comes to an end, and I’m hoping that something else arises in its place. I have some ideas about this, but I’m getting ahead of myself. First, let’s review my Groundhog Day Resolution Goals, and then examine what I’ve learned from my Taiwan trip. (more…)