Goals 2019 -- August Recap

This month, K and I were trying to get things done through journaling.

Did it work?  Did we get things done?  Here's what I learned about myself:

1. I have very little control over my own time during the work day (and right now the work day is extending to encompass longer and longer hours).  I might have all the good intentions about what I hope to accomplish, but when it comes right down to it, it's not really up to me.  I'm putting out fires, and that's about it.

It seems that this book might be better suited for someone who is either not employed, is self-employed, or otherwise just has more free time which requires planning.

[Aside: I just listened to an episode of Hidden Brain called You 2.0: Tunnel Vision, all about scarcity and the changes that go on in our brains when we are faced with a shortage of something.  The obvious scarce item is money, which is how the show opens, but there is also a segment on time scarcity, which I am totally feeling right now!]

2. Despite not being able to control my own time, I am more interested in journaling if I get to use a collection of fun-colored pens to do it!

3. I realized how much different my weekday schedule is from my weekend schedule (more on this next month).  I could really only commit to journaling in the morning if I kept the journal in the car, so it was there for me to work on in the morning on the way to work.  But that meant that I almost never journaled on the weekend, because getting up and going to the car wasn't one of the first things I did in the morning.  On weekends, by the time I remembered about the journal, it was either too late in the day for it to be meaningful or I was elbows-deep in a project that I didn't want to interrupt.  Accordingly, most weekend days were journal-free.  That is perhaps a bit counter-productive when referring back to #1, since weekends are when I have the most available time!

4. Each day, I looked back at the previous day's goals to see how I did.  Overall, I have about 1/3 more green check marks than red ones.  Seems like something good.  But what I noticed was that I started setting very small goals that I knew I could accomplish, because I wanted to get that green check mark!  But, as K pointed out, isn't that kind of the point?  The whole goal is to make you feel productive, and if that happens by breaking tasks down into smaller and smaller sections so that you can make some progress, it's a winner!

I like that interpretation.  It might be as much justification as interpretation, but I'm going with it!

Apologies

Sorry everyone.  Work is kicking my butt right now.  Hope to be back to posting soon.

What I Watched -- I Am Sam

We picked up I Am Sam at the library.  I have wanted to see it for years, but just never got around to it.  S had seen it, and warned me about how sad it was.  I knew he was right, but I'm not really sure I was prepared, even after the warnings.

It's the story of a developmentally disabled father and his young daughter, separated by the juvenile court system.  The court makes an initial determines that Sam, played by Sean Penn, is incapable of adequately caring for his daughter, played by a young Dakota Fanning, due to his Autistic tendencies.  A high-powered lawyer, played by Michelle Pfeiffer, takes his case on a pro bono basis, out of shame if nothing else.

Since I spend some time in my professional work in juvenile court, I found it at once fascinating and horrifying to look at a case from the outside.  I supposed I am just too involved when I am in the middle of a case to look at it in a completely detached manner, which I was able to do while watching this film.

Bottom line: S was right -- it's worth seeing.

What I Read -- Am I There Yet?

I've started and finished my next postal book club book: Am I There Yet? The Loop-de-Loop, Zigzagging Journey to Adulthood.  It is part graphic novel, part memoir, and part advice book.

I think this may have been more meaningful to me a handful of years ago, but nevertheless it was enjoyable, if a bit inconsistent.  Parts were touching and poignant -- especially when she actually talked about her father's death (rather than mentioning it in passing, which got old) or had a real revelation.  Other parts were a bit simplistic and seemed unnecessary to the stories.

Let me return for a minute to my earlier description of this book as "part graphic novel."  It's really, now that I think about it, more "part adult picture book."  I think of a graphic novel as a book that tells the story through images, an elaborate comic strip.  In Am I There Yet?, the pictures are illustrations.  They do add something to the story -- my favorite ones were the double-page-spread summaries of the author's favorite things about various places that she had been or times in her life -- but if you were to remove the illustrations, everything would still make perfect sense.

Come to think of it, maybe she has a future in travel writing.

One final thought: there is something nice about a quick read. When you've been struggling to finish a few books lately, a quick read can sometimes be just the re-energizing jolt you need to get motivated to read again.

Goals 2019 -- July Update

Here's K!

M and I talked throughout the month about how surprisingly difficult it was to fit a little thing like walking into our daily routine. It seemed like a relatively simple task when we chose it, but it ended up being quite a challenge!

Overall, I would say that I was successful with this month’s goal. When I was in Europe, we walked miles every day. On the cruise ship, I gave myself credit for the walk from the restaurant to our evening activity and then to bed given that those little walks were more than the walk that I would have made at home from my kitchen counter to the couch. Then, when I came home, mom left to join E and A in awaiting the arrival of little L, so I was back on morning dog walk duty. There were many mornings where Argos did not want to take a walk, but whereas before I would have accepted his hesitation as an invitation for my own couch sitting, I made him go out whether he wanted to or not. And, like me, most of the time, once we got out there, he was happy about it. 

Even though this is a hard goal, I’m going to try to keep it as a part of my daily activities by putting my lunch in the refrigerator in the building next to mine. This will make me, I hope, get up in the middle of the day, step away from the computer and the demands of work, and squeeze in a little walk even though it might like the hardest thing in the world to do is to put one foot in front of the other.

Goals 2019 -- August Edition

For July, our goal is to get sh*t done.  We will do this, hopefully, with the help of Mel Robbins's 5-Second Journal.

K ordered this for me and it arrived the other day.  I have to say, I'm not sure it'll happen in 5 seconds each day, but I'm hoping to use my morning commute on the weekdays.  Weekends will be a little bit tougher; maybe it will be my coffee activity, instead of scrolling through Insta.

So, what exactly am I planning to accomplish?  I haven't decided yet.  I think the idea (though I haven't read the journal intro yet) is that it's whatever is most pressing at the time.

I'm not sure it's in the journal, but I probably will also spend the next morning recapping whether I accomplished the prior day's tasks or not.

Goals 2019 -- July Recap

This month, we were supposed to walk.

I thought this would be an easy one for me, because I love walking.  I was disappointed when I didn't do very well at this.  I do have some excuses, but really I'm just justifying my failures.  First, I didn't make this part of my schedule.  Since, I didn't, I noticed in retrospect that on a lot of days, I just forgot about it.  When I did remember, it was lovely to take an afternoon stroll to break up the work day and feel a bit rejuvenated.

Second, it finally got to be summer in St. Louis!  Those days of the 110* heat index just are not very inviting for walking outside.  Especially when I was in my work clothes.  Nothing feels rejuvenating when it's that hot outside!

In the end, I walked on 16 days, which is far short of the goal of 25 days of walking that we had set out.  But I did enjoy it, and I hope that it's something I can build into my schedule a bit more going forward!

What I Watched -- Inherit the Wind

One of my law partners has been extolling the virtues of Inherit the Wind for as long as I have been working with him.  I finally got around to watching it.

Some parts of the film are overwhelmed by that classic movie camp, the corny comedy that makes old movies feel, well, old.  Out of date.

On the other hand, the subject matter is spot on.  And it astonished me how directly the subjects of the Bible and Darwinism were addressed so many years ago.

And, at the risk of spoiling the end of this film, it all works out, but perhaps not as the viewer might have hoped.  And it's a courtroom drama, so who doesn't love that?

Bottom line: one of the classics that is absolutely worth watching.

What I Watched -- A Star is Born

I was not that interested in seeing A Star is Born when it came out.  It seemed interesting enough, but movies in theaters are just not something that I make a lot of time for these days, so eventually my interest faded.

Then the movie soundtrack (really just "Shallow") hit the radio waves, which piqued my interest again.  But -- same story.  Just not enough time, and my interest faded again.

Recently, S and I were at the library perusing the DVD section, and there it was!  It was never going to be easier than this, so why not?

And I am so glad I picked it up!

I am hesitant to say too much about the film, other than the basic plot.  He's a famous star on the back end of his career; she's an up-and-comer just breaking into the industry.  They fall in love.  It's just two people who meet, over a shared interest, whose lives are on two separate trajectories.  The rest is the movie, and you should watch it without me spoiling it for you.

Also, though, the music!  I had listened to the entire soundtrack but wasn't terribly moved by it.  But then I saw the movie, and it gave so much more context to the songs that I want to go back and listen to them again.  It's certainly a codependent relationship -- without the music, the movie would have been just a boring story; without the movie, the music lacks depth.

Bottom line: I liked this way more than I expected to.  I hope you do, too.

American Son -- Take 2

I have mixed feelings about American Son.

I'll start with the good.  First, true or not (and who, now, can say?), it does paint a picture of Jr. as someone who deeply appreciated the role his family played in the country's modern psyche, and who wanted to do something good with that.  What, exactly?  Again, who can say?  But something.  Second, it appears that John was a kind, thoughtful, and introspective person.  He was not perfect -- apparently he had one heck of a bad temper -- but he did not allow his celebrity to turn him into something horrible.  He was just a man, trying to be a better one.

Now for the bad.  First, this book is a snapshot.  It covers the author's time working with John Kennedy, Jr., at George magazine - John's late-1990s attempt to publish a political magazine for the average reader.  Our author started working there in 1995; John died in 1999.  Surely, it tries to extrapolate out from that time period, but does so with limited success, as John was notoriously tight-lipped about his private life.  Second, as the author himself acknowledges in his note at the end, this book can easily be viewed as opportunistic.  And that is how I viewed it, along with many other people.  It seemed more like the author's opportunity to promote himself, because this is as famous as he would ever be: the executive editor of John-John's magazine.  (This article from the Weekly Standard also points out that Blow [now Bradley] had signed a confidentiality agreement when he started at George.  So much for that.)

It's telling that the good things about the book were the subject himself, and the bad things about the book were the scope and motivations of the author.  Do with that information what you will.