It’s time for the September 9 Groundhog Day Resolutions Report, covering the period of August 9 to September 9! My cat passed away three weeks ago. This has added to the deep sense of depression I’ve been feeling, but I have gathered a few observations and insights to keep myself oriented in a positive direction. (more…)

Goodness, it is already time for the August [GROUNDHOG DAY RESOLUTIONS][2021] REVIEW. I’m going to try a different format for this report, based on the poor readability of the [July][0707] report. I had tried to retain a conversational tone around themes I was having trouble summarizing, and I don’t think it worked well because I had rushed to post it.

Today I’ll try to get to the point more quickly. (more…)

It’s time for my GROUNDHOG DAY RESOLUTIONS REVIEW for JULY 7! :-) My focus for the month, as I declared in the [last report][0606], was to get a lot of Javascript project work done. I’m working on a rather large multi-system feature that affects the future direction of our codebase, and we don’t have a lot of time left to implement it. Stress! I am keeping last month’s mantra: “Not being done doesn’t mean I’m bad”. That helped a little. What helped a LOT was letting go of worry that indulging my curiosity to get started was perfectly acceptable. It’s taken several week to ramp-up.

In all other areas, I have not made any progress on the following:

• didn’t work on exercise and posture (though I have learned that standing up straight is different than I thought)
• didn’t do gender transition voice-related stuff (I have been feeling rather demoralized)
• forgot about the food portion thing I started (though I have been eating fewer carbs overall)
• didn’t work on the new personal website
• didn’t work on the DS|CAFE Discord bot
• didn’t update any of the tomes. I continually drop these so I’m thinking maybe they are not sustainable
• didn’t update the DS|CAFE Wiki at all after getting it set up

It’s demoralizing to see so many projects initiated but not having the time, focus, and energy to do anything on them. I don’t think it is due to the lack of TRACKING this year either; from 2007 through 2017 I used to track EVERYTHING and create detailed plans, and the “win/loss” was pretty much the same.

From 2018 onward, I started tracking less (tracking wasn’t working) and setting smaller objectives until I stopped tracking entirely. The pattern that stays is (1) failure to self-motivate to start and (2) failure to maintain interest and focus through the projects that did start.

What’s new in 2021 is the preliminary ADHD/AUTISM SPECTRUM diagnoses, so I’m revisiting some ideas about ADHD brain. (more…)

Happy June 6 Review Day, fellow GHDR enthusiasts! Last month went pretty well, though I didn’t focus specifically on any of this year’s TRANSITION goals. Instead, I was really trying to deprogram myself from the binary thinking trap from last month: instead of obsessing about achievement, I would instead embrace the state of achievement. This is similar to the old chestnut The Journey is the Reward but more specifically targeted to my own weirdnesses.

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Hello everyone! I apologize for the lateness of this month’s Groundhog Day Resolutions report. This was a complicated one to figure out, and I decided to take extra time to rewrite it for clarity.

This month’s review starts with a chain of insights I’ve had, starting with these two seemingly-unrelated ones:

1. I have enormous difficulty starting tasks that seem “necessary but stupidly tedious”. I thought of new productivity hack to try: granting myself permission to bail on the task as soon as it becomes annoying! This should work because I know I will come back to it; it’s the starting that is hard.

2. In my gender identity journey, I’ve started identifying publicly as non-binary. I would have thought this would trigger negative feelings because this isn’t where I want to end up in my gender transition. Surprisingly, I am actually feeling elated about it because it also offers freedom of a sort.

I had a hunch that there was more commonality to them, so I’ve spent some time teasing out the connections. We’ll kick off this Groundhog Day Resolution Report with a look at being trapped and finding choice, then get into the actual happenings of the past month.

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