pshaw_raven: (Hell of a Butler)
Hey y'all! I was right, I was not even remotely close to awake last night at midnight. It's very cold here today (yay!) and I've got a lot of my regular household things done. We're waiting on it to warm up a little and for the dew to burn off so we can work on the deck. The cats are all freezing completely to death and will *literally die* if they can't sit on me. Silly kitties. ^.^

So, who's doing goal setting today? ME. Me me me me. Alas I don't have easily available posts about previous years, since I don't think I ever wrote much publicly about them. When I look back over the past few years I see a lot of positive changes I've been able to make, so I feel optimistic about making some new ones.

I have a set of smaller goals I've already started working on - instituting a no buy/low buy year, getting more comics done, and in general being more creatively productive, which goes hand in hand with one of my bigger goals, to spend less time online. I waste a lot of time on shit like Reddit, which while fun and occasionally informative, it's just social media for people who hate social media. I'm not planning on closing my account, but I am going to put a site blocker on it that will allow me an hour maximum each day. And the way my mind works, I'll tend to not want to "run out" my time in case I want it later. So I'm more likely to use that time reading, drawing, playing with the cats, picking my nose, or doing yoga.

The yoga goal is an interesting one, as it's very open ended. I've been a self-taught yogi from the beginning in 2000 when I first picked up a couple of how-to books and started doing yoga in my apartment after work. I've never gone to a class and never felt like I needed a teacher. This is anathema to some folks, but I'm content with being self-guided and working on my own, so I'm going to continue in my own way. I do wish to reach out to other yogis, especially the more like-minded sort. After some searching and reading, I decided my "deep dive" into yoga need not include teacher training - yoga teacher training is mainly there to teach you how to teach other people to do yoga. So its goals aren't the same as my own. I would also like to try a retreat at some point, especially since there's a retreat center near me in the Ocala area. I think it's in the national forest/WMA.

No buy/low buy is pretty easy to define - stop buying dumb shit. Did I buy dumb shit today? No? Good, I met my goal.

Last year, my personal "color of the year" was a bamboo green, or a yellowish spring green. This year I'm going with teal blue because I wanted something a little darker, but still cheerful. A good teal makes me think of vacations, relaxing times, and clear mental space, so that's the vibe I'm looking for. Sorry but I couldn't figure out how to actually embed the color chip this time.

And finally, this is the guide I have found useful for habit-building. Heck the whole site is useful, but be forewarned that they're pushing their one-on-one coaching pretty hard. If that's something that works for you, then I'd look into it, but as I was saying above, I'm usually pretty good with self-directed and self-paced things. I understand some folks like having the extra accountability built in, though.

Now, let's go forth and do awesome stuff!

Good Finds

Dec. 11th, 2018 09:22 am
pshaw_raven: (Purple Gryphon)
Yesterday's errands went well. Sometimes running errands makes me extremely peopled out and cranky but I was all right. My book store visit was also excellent - a lot of good finds and I still have fifty-five bucks in store credit. Someone had dumped the first seven volumes of Lone Wolf and Cub in withdrawn library editions so I snapped those up. They have sticky label residue on the covers but they're in pretty good shape for public library manga. This has been on my to-read list for a long time, and I'm a fan of historical manga. In other bookish news, I completed my reading challenge for the year, completing my fiftieth book last night.

Other finds from Chamblin Book Mine are:
Glittering Images and Glamorous Powers by Susan Howatch, the first two volumes of her Starbridge series
Little Saint by Hannah Green
Buddha by Karen Armstrong
Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines or Seven Books of Wisdom of the Great Path According to the Late Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup's English Rendering - edited by WY Evans-Wentz
They had a copy of The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, but I didn't buy it because I'm an idiot, and clearly I need to go back for that one.

Then at Jax Oriental Market, I found this. It was an impulse buy from a display that also featured the same cakes with a small pig on top, and I recognized it as something both Japanese and New Year related.

Two-layer rice cake with a lucky cat on top

I found that it's a mochi cake that's meant to be displayed until either the 7th or 11th of January, at which point you break it up with your fingers or a hammer (never use a knife) and eat it by using the unflavored mochi in a soup or as crackers, or honestly however you wish to prepare it. It says "keep refrigerated" but I think that's an American thing. It's actually sealed up in plastic, and it's literally just rice flour and citric acid. They also had green tea noodles, which I had not seen there before. I know those are typically more of a spring dish, but given the sheer simplicity of a lot of the green tea noodle recipes I've seen, it's worth my while to practice a couple of times to make sure I have the balance of flavors right before "officially" serving up a spring noodle salad.

Today's plan includes a five-mile easy run, making almond butter protein bars, not freezing my ass off, and taking care of a slew of little chores I put off over the last couple of days. However, I feel sort of like a slug, and I just want to sit near the fire, drink coffee, and read.

June 2025

S M T W T F S
12345 67
891011 121314
15 16 17 18192021
22232425262728
2930     

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 19th, 2025 08:37 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios