Tag Archives: Writing

Pseudorandom

You’ve Got to Start Some Time

It’s been a long time since I’ve sat down to write.  So long, in fact, that I just noticed my 2020 blog notebook is empty, even though it’s already September.  There are a lot of reasons for this, and they all boil down to “I haven’t made time”.  When I look back to when I was writing regularly (not just the scattered posts of last summer) and further back to when I was posting regularly, I have to ask myself what the difference is.  Then, I laugh, because there are a lot of differences.

There is, of course, that the world is different now.

Continue reading You’ve Got to Start Some Time →

Pseudorandom

Switching to Irregular Updates

It’s been a week and a half since my last post, and here I am again with a post about the blog.  I haven’t really been prioritizing my writing as much as I have in the past, mostly because I have other things I’m spending that time on for now.  As I mentioned before, it’s not for lack of things to write about, but I’ve decided that it’s just not my top priority any longer.  So, rather than feel bad about not posting regularly, I’m changing my setup to irregular updates for the time being.

I’m not shutting down my blog, and I’m not going away, I’m just planning on writing less often, and am not going to promise a regular schedule.  Once I figure out my new patterns, I’ll probably get back to writing at least at some regularity, but, for now, expect only irregular updates when I really want to write.  I’ll likely update my resolutions on the right for those that are really observant, mostly because that’s less effort than a full post (and also it helps keep me on track), so if you’re curious, you can always stop in and check that.

Until next time – Have Fun!

The Plaid Mentat

Looking Back at 2017 – In General

Well, here it is, the last week of 2017, so it’s time to kick off my retrospective of the year.  All things considered, this year was pretty decent to me if a bit on the rough side.  I made some pretty significant life changes, and managed to come out the other side in good spirits.

Here are a couple of sweeping generalizations around how 2017 worked out: Continue reading Looking Back at 2017 – In General →

The Plaid Mentat

Looking Forward into 2016

Just as I looked back at 2015, I am also looking forward into 2016. I’m not really a goals-oriented person, but I wanted to write down some of the things that I want to do in 2016. Of course, life changes, so I’m not sure I can really levee these as expectations of my future self, but they are things that I plan to make time for this year.

Finish a Game Design Project

Last year, I started and completed Ticket to Ride: Iceland. This year, I want to complete another project and get it printed. I have a couple of smaller projects that I have designed from the ground up that I could finally get printed, or, alternately, I may make myself a copy of Dune. In either case, I want to create something cool this year. Continue reading Looking Forward into 2016 →

The Plaid Mentat

Looking back at 2015: Part 2

Health, Work, and Life Balance

Over the course of 2015, I feel like I have been able to improve my healthy habits better than I ever have. I’m exercising more, eating better, and generally taking better care of my body. While my habits and work are still mostly sedentary in nature (and I don’t expect that to change), I feel better about the time that I take to be healthier, even if it cuts into all those things.

As with most people my age, my job takes up most of my time, but I still love what I do. I work with great people, I get to do cool things, and I feel good about the work that I do at the end of the day. I don’t know that I have anything more to say here that I haven’t already said – it’s good. Continue reading Looking back at 2015: Part 2 →

The Plaid Mentat

Aside: Sometimes I Wake Up at 4:00am

As many of my friends and family know, I’m a morning person. When I wake up in the morning, I’m awake and ready to tackle my day. Not only that, I’m at my most productive in the morning, especially early in the morning. One way this manifests is that occasionally I wake up between 4:00 and 4:30am. Oddly, this is something that has happened to me for a fair amount of my adult life, but I’ve never really understood why – it’s simply that, some mornings, I wake up, completely ready to face my day much earlier.

Even though I typically end up with less sleep from the night prior, I actually look forward to these mornings. As you might imagine, there is almost no one else awake at that hour. In particular, anyone in my circle of friends is either at work still or just crawling off to bed (most people I know fit in the “night owl” category). So, with no distractions and my mind at its peak, I find that I’m able to get a lot more done, and be a lot more creative. It’s also early enough, that I’m not typically distracted by my imminent departure for work. As such, this is a windfall of free time that I can use to tinker with something, try something new, or even get some writing in.

I’ve occasionally thought about planning my day so that I could consistently get up this early by going to bed earlier.  Since I’m more energized in the morning than I am in the evening, I’ve often thought that if I could skew my schedule so that I went to sleep at 8:00 and woke up at 4:00, I could get the best of both worlds – enough sleep to make it through the day, and wake up at 4:00am.  The more pragmatic part of me knows that this wouldn’t work though – between my job and family time, it’s not really feasible to get to bed that early.  Instead, I just roll with it, and when my mind and body say that I need to wake up early one morning, I do.

The Plaid Mentat

A Day in the Life: Part 1

There are no typical days, but my days have a pattern to them that make it so that I can expect what’s coming. As part of getting back into blogging, I wanted to write a bit about what that looks like. The next few posts might be incredibly boring to some, but maybe a few people will enjoy.

Morning Glory

For me, a typical day starts at 6:00am… …Sortof. One particularly bad habit I have been trying to kick is my morning battle with the alarm clock. It starts sounding at 6:00am, but I get a lot of use out of the nine minute snooze button, and I don’t actually fully wake up and get out of bed until around 6:45. Once I’m actually out of bed, the rest of my morning ritual is pretty pedestrian – get dressed, brush my hair and put it in a ponytail, and grab my cell phone off the charger. With the exception of grabbing my flannel and work bag, I’m essentially ready to go at this point, and it really takes me no more than about six minutes (which is why I have a tendency to sleep past my first alarm).

Continue reading A Day in the Life: Part 1 →

Projects

What Am I Doing Besides Blogging?

It turns out I have a bit of project mania. I’ve got a lot of ideas for projects, some of which I start, and a number of small ones I have finished. But, it turns out, the last thing I typically think to do is to write about those projects. The struggle here is simple – why write about a project when I could be working on it (or the next one)?

The difficulty is simply that my writing and my project time have typically been the same. As a result, I was forced to make that choice every time I sat down to work on my projects. My hope is that this may be mitigated by writing on the bus. Now, these two are not coupled, when I’m on the bus, I can’t really work on my other projects! So, here is a brief outline of some things that I’ve been working on:

Continue reading What Am I Doing Besides Blogging? →

The Plaid Mentat

What are my good habits?

After my last post, I started thinking about what my good habits were. I could also write about my bad habits, but I find that bad habits are harder to think about because they can tend to be more subconscious. Also, I want to like writing, so I think I’ll write about my good habits instead.

Below, I’ve compiled some of what I think of as good habits. These are changes that I’ve made in my life that I hope have a net gain. How do I judge this? Well… …It’s completely subjective. It’s whether I think it’s a net gain, and that’s what matters to me right now. Feel free to disagree in the comments.

Continue reading What are my good habits? →

The Plaid Mentat

Habits

I’ve been thinking a lot about good habits lately. Over the last few years, I’ve been trying to cultivate more good habits. I know I’m getting older (not old yet), so I have felt the need to make myself a better person. However, it seems like the more good habits that I try to squeeze in, other things drop off, like it’s some sort of zero sum game.

For instance, I recently started taking the bus to and from work every day. This takes about twice as long as driving (-) but I save on gas (+), I get time to read while I’m on the bus (+), and get more exercise walking to/from the bus stop (+). However, it also has ripple effects – I haven’t been cooking at home as much, so we have been eating out more (-). Also the bus is on a fixed schedule, so I tend to stay late at work more often (-).

This isn’t so much an expression of frustration, so much as a recognition of where I am when I say to myself, “I want to make time to write.” This is an experiment – can I make time to write without giving up too much else? In this case, I’m giving up some of my reading time on the bus in the hope that I will be able to update my blog more often. The tradeoff, of course, is that it will take me longer to finish anything that I’m reading…