Weekly Summary 1/7/11 - 1/13/11

It's been a pretty good week. I did well to try and reestablish my ability to concentrate, but I have yet to recapture the enthusiasm I had last week and the ability to burst out of bed. On that latter, I've been getting up quite groggy this week, so there might be an issue in my nutrition. Anyhow, I completed two chapters of Good Calories, Bad Calories, completing 12 conceptual exercises in total; read approximately 20-25 pages each of my new library books Capitalism Unbound and Becoming a Chef, wrote a rough draft of that significant essay (it took nine hours!), cleaned my living area, did a special thing of a sort for my Project, and fasted in sweet foods except for my chocolate tasting, though this last item won't be truly complete until midnight. A moral effort, but not my ideal. As can plainly be seen on my blog, I did a significant amount of writing this week. To achieve the ideal, I think I just need to continue on with my exertion and wait for my subconscious to reconstitute itself.

The only goal I failed upon is figuring out how to create a venture to help solve a short-term memory difficulty I have, and I didn't manage to write about it either. I'll write about it now. It seems I have great difficulty in holding together a body of information when I'm given the data piece by piece. For instance, I'll have great trouble in recognizing a word if it's spelled out to me rather than said as a whole; it's almost as if I can't hold onto the individual letters as I'm being fed new ones. However simple the word may be, after having it spelled out I then have to work hard to put the pieces into a coherent whole. This poses a particular difficulty in my restaurant job when I'm replenishing items for the buffet, as I have the same problem when being fed a list of separate items to cook. It's no obstacle to my competence right now, but it is something to improve on and fix nonetheless, so I'd like to pursue to cure this difficulty in pursuit of making myself a better cook. I have yet to figure out exactly what to do, however, so all I can think to do right now is just try harder. I'll keep thinking.

Regarding the Project, I may have a lead in my efforts, though talk about the means is still progressing slowly. I have the utmost patience in waiting since I'm keeping myself productive otherwise, but my energy is making me quite itchy: I'm so ready to act! If all goes well, good things could be happening this month or part of the next, so we'll have to see. I'll try to keep you posted, but again if good things do happen I might hold a silence in order to make matters progress smoothly. However things may turn out, I am still prepared to face other outcomes. As foolish as it may sound, given all the obstacles my Project has an aura of unreality around its completion since I've come close to it so many times, so I've thought, and met with setbacks. Oh well, it will get done. I'm damn sick of the Circumstance.

For this upcoming week I intend to restore my ambitiousness, though at the same time recognize a happening in my Project could take up my attention. If so, then I might need to forgo some of my goals for the sake of a greater value or push myself even harder; I'll roll with any surprises. For this week, I'd like to complete one chapter of GCBC, read up to chapter six in Capitalism Unbound, read up to page 100 in Becoming a Chef, begin editing that long essay (will it take nine hours?), and read two articles in my latest issue of The Objective Standard.

How about a smattering of self-improvement goals as well? This week I'd also like to begin a trial of a food diary by writing down everything I eat in my notepad, record my rubberducking conversations in the car and then listen to them after work, establish a list of what I consider be perfect personal traits and keep a chart tracking my behavior (much like my honesty and conversation categories), and do ten minutes daily of deep breathing to see if it affects my productivity. For the second item, I have a hypothesis that listening to oneself speak may make one more comfortable listening to uncomfortable conversational topics; I'm going to test and write about it. For the third item, I've gotten some advancement in my thinking of how I'd view my own form of perfection, and would like to work to establish a chart to track my behaviors. Again, I'll write about it later this week. On the final item, I've noticed that since quitting my deep breathing exercises that my productivity has fallen, so I'm wondering if some causation might be involved. I'm going to try it again to see if it does make a difference, and this time I won't limit myself to needing to do it before midnight, to avoid any "technical" failures.

Finally, why I don't make as my final goal to write about all those topics I promised above? I know it's too often a problem on this blog that I promise to followup on something but never seem to do, or else do so at a time way later than appropriate. Again, it's not that I'm being lazy, but rather that those followup posts tend to get pushed out by other topics I suddenly feel inspired to write about immediately. Putting those particular topics on my list of weekly goals might do well to keep my feet to the fire. As open as I am on this blog, it's tough keeping up to date. The progress I make in my thinking oftentimes invalidates the purpose of a certain post I planned to write.

Hopefully all this stuff on my plate restores my enthusiasm.