#missingmotivation

As with a lot of people in quarantine right now (and even before all this), I have trouble getting out of bed and doing the things I actually want and mentally planned to do. This ends in disappointment as I unwittingly bar myself from enjoying the things I know I enjoy. So, I want to hold myself more accountable by starting this blog. 

While I have a long list in my head of things I want to become an expert in, a lot of it is unrealistic and puts too much pressure if I were to start learning them all at the same time. Right now, I want to dive in and enjoy the following (in no particular order):

Learning “Dance of the Little Swans” on piano (Halfway through learning it)

Stretching every other day for the side splits

Drawing - aquarelle and pencil (I’m just a beginner though)

Learning German via Duolingo

Reading The Hobbit daily, at least a chapter

Reading L’Elegance du Herisson every other day, at least a chapter (This is in French, a bit advanced for my reading level so I have to use Google Translate quite often 

Practicing my longboard dancing (where I live, I can go outside without interacting with anybody

I only work about once a week, so I should be able to find time for most of these things.

While the above are things I would really like to do, I have a task I’ve been putting off as it relates to my upcoming schooling when the crisis dies down. I am scheduled to briefly join about a few biological sciences labs before school starts to get an idea which one I’d like to permanently join so I need to actually find labs I’d be interested in rotating through. 

If I feel good enough about my progress on the above mentioned activities, it’d be cool for me to:

learn python

complete Nand2Tetris, a hardware and software theory course

learn historical costuming

learn ASL

I’m also terrible about keeping myself fed, so I’ll be trying to keep myself accountable for that here too. 

With talk of all the things I wish I was doing, I want to mention that I’m proud of myself for finishing reading 12 Chairs by Ilf and Petrov in Russian. 

11:54am  I woke up

2:13pm  still in bed, but did about 10 minutes of work emails

4.:01 ok i’m hauling myself out of bed

4:00-9:00 i ate and did laundry and played and won some scrabble games

11:00 German on Duolingo, a few lessons

1:00am working out a few measures of Dance of the Little Swans on piano

2:15-2:40 splits stretching while reading a chapter of The Hobbit

It wasn’t the most productive day as I watched a random youtube, but I got three out things that I like to do done. 

Tomorrow I’ll try to keep my German streak going, will stretch, practice piano further and try painting with watercolors

So day 6 was a miss from the current productivity standpoint - I binged all of @paracosim TAB and current chapters of the sequel. But I was very content doing it, so I’m not going to be disappointed in myself for not doing the other things I had planned. Instead, I’m mentally adding reading this fic to my earlier list of things I wanted to get done and, voilà, I’ve just accomplished something I had planned all along!

A very moody day... but I got some things done.

I was planning on watercolor painting on the roof today but I thought the art would come out weird so I just sat in the sun for an hour, listening to Rammstein, Ghost, The Weeknd, MUKKA, and Maybe Baby (quite a variety).

I’m actually really pound of my piano progress, especially since I was capable of sight reading a good portion of the piece (albeit slowly but usually I’m even more stuttery). Now I’m really close to playing the entire Dance of the Little Swans.

I also spent a good chunk of time sketching out Sailor Moon. I’ll try to color her with pencils, and work on a few more sketches so I can be comfortable sketching her on watercolor paper and painting her in. Kinda surprised I never went through a Manga-styled drawing phase in middle school, but here I am now.

Barely did Duolingo German, but kept up my 6-day streak. If tomorrow’s a success I’m gettin a new 7-day badge, and honestly, these little in-app incentives really work on my brain.

Weirdly, when it comes close to bed time, I get really motivated to get everything I haven’t yet done done. So I got a bit of about workout in and a very quick straddle split stretch.

Saturday was all hanging out and day drinking Bailey’s which is why I passed out at 8:00pm and woke up at 11:30, with just enough time to do a few Duolingo German lessons. Below has been my progress this week:

I’m going to try to finish the Duolingo course maybe in the next two weeks so I can move on to a more structured course with more in depth explanations of grammar. I think Duolingo will be a good base for doing that.

Since it’s now 2:03am and I’m nowhere near sleepy I’ve been reading The Hobbit - a third of the way through. It’s a lot easier to read than I expected from Tolkien. And look at this beautiful cover art by Johan Egerkrans.