I Am Large, I Contain Multitudes

10 goals from 2017 (cf original list: LJ | DW): ( Read more... )

More things that happened in 2017: ( Read more... )

10 goals for 2018: ( Read more... )

In general:

Invest half an hour a day in doing something actually productive, instead of wasting 45+ baby-free minutes (before and after sleep) dicking around on Facebook &c.

The biggest problem there is Aria's still-unpredictable sleep schedule; the second biggest is that once I get up in the morning and sit down at the computer, I end up spending half an hour just to clear the decks (check email, pay bills etc) and then suddenly it's time to get in the shower and start my day. But, the last couple weeks at least (when she wasn't fluey and miserable), she's been sleeping through the night better, and that's been fantastic.

I would love to say things like "Get more exercise", "Drum up more freelance work" and "Rebuild my personal/professional website". But for now I don't feel I would prioritize those above doing more art, really. "Have a monthly date night", maybe that's something to strive for. :-)

My husband is a music teacher. He was a music teacher when I first met him 20+ years ago. I've gone to see him perform in bands. More recently, I have performed with him in bands. I've seen videos of him playing in high school talent shows. He made me this recording for my birthday last year. We have in the house an entire room dedicated to housing what must be 20 musical instruments (piano, organ, accordion, numerous guitars and bass guitars, an upright bass, ukulele, mandolin, percussion...), where he receives students two or three days a week.

But somehow, it's discovering him in the music room one December evening after dinner, noodling around on the piano playing jazz Christmas carols, that really makes my heart go "Holy shit, I married a musician." :-)

<3

I thought I would have tons of time to write once I was here, and the answer is probably that I *do* have time to write, but I have not really felt the inclination.

I have instead spent a lot of time doing crosswords, reading Game of Thrones, watching Game of Thrones, drinking coffee, dicking around on Facebook, practicing/learning songs for performing with etrace's band, cooking breakfast and/or dinner, baking bread (mostly bread machine, but also some handmade focaccia that turned out OK), petting the dog(s) and cats -- and snuggling with my husband, generally marveling at the state of my life.

Yeats wrote, "Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing."

I think this is a time not so much of growth as of... rooting in.

I've been overextended and undernourished for so long. There'll be time enough to Get Things Done later this year, when we start to work in earnest on growing the business and searching for an outside job for me. Right now, if I want to sit on the porch in my pajamas for two hours every morning, I totally can, and that's kind of the best thing in the world.

(Though I do think it would be good to pick up again the Artist's Way practice of "morning pages": writing three pages of drivel every morning without fail, in order to clear out the internal static and make room for actual creative work/focus.)

( Some productive things I have successfully done... )

Also, sometime late last week we went "Hm, we seem to have invited 50 people over for lunch next Sunday, better start figuring out what we're doing for them," so there's been a flurry of list-making and menu-planning and inventorying and shopping.

Coming soon is the related realization "Hm, we seem to be about to leave on this five-week cross-country roadtrip, perhaps we should make sure we've tied up any loose ends, reach out with a rough idea of schedule to the people we hope to see, stuff like that."

I have (no surprise) been thinking a lot lately about my medium-term goals in life, and had the insight that many of them (buying a house; traveling) are limited, at this point, more by finances than by waiting for a partner I can successfully do them with. ( associated ruminations )

So, between that realization and the fact that the moving (and resettling) process has been wildly expensive, I've started myself back on the discipline of tracking every single penny I spend, so as to better manage my finances on a daily, monthly, and ultimately yearly level. I did this for years on paper (I still have several volumes of "budget books" dating back to my old Prospect St. apartment), but for this round I've built a Google spreadsheet which keeps running totals per category and all that. It's already fairly enlightening.

I expect to spend a couple months just tracking my normal or baseline spending habits (modulo the observer effect in which the very act of writing things down makes you evaluate your choices more consciously, as with a food diary), and then figure out where the biggest changes should be made. -- Yeah, I know, things like "cook dinner at home more" and "bring leftovers for lunch" are no-brainers, but it's a lot more motivating to actually see the bottom line!

Meme: The sum total of towns in which I have lived (defined as "for more than four weeks at a stretch"):

Dayton, OH (1972-1973)
Hobart, IN (1973-1974)
Valparaiso, IN (1974-1989, with some overlap through 1992)
Waltham, MA (1989-1996) (3 different residences including one summer sublet, plus 4 different Brandeis dorms)
Cambridge, MA (1996-present)

I am tempted to start spinning out alternate theories as to future increments on the list, but it is painful to contemplate, so I will not.

Dilemma: zacheiss, maputi_pirate, et al. are trying to recruit me into the chorus of Yeomen. It would undoubtedly be really fun... but I'm also thinking that if I don't give myself some downtime between shows, I may regret it.

[Poll #433767]