Paperwork, navel gazing, long weekend

[flexagon]

Reward for last round of paperwork: I'm cleared for Novasure ablation. Next round of paperwork: rolling dollars over into Vanguard.

I read a so-called "Time Mastery Profile" a while ago, the result of some pretty in-depth work heisenbug did... it's cool how it splits up time management into pieces like goals, prioritizing, scheduling, handling interuptions, adddressing procrastination, etc. One sentence I circled and kept coming back to is this: "The things that people value can be divided into eight broad areas: family, career, spirituality, social life, financial stability, health, personal development and leisure. Are you satisfied with the way you distribute your time across all these areas of your life?" I... no I'm not, but largely because those don't seem like the right categories. Bleh. And most "wheel of life" assessments are even worse. It seems pretty clear that if I want any kind of category-based way to check up on my life it'll have to be home-rolled.

I spent the long weekend seeing friends (and introducing Helios to some more of them, over two different brunches), talking to parents (mine and the bug's) and doing workouts for my Aussie coach. It's been mostly peaceful. I am watching some things dissolve, which is sad, in particular a 10-year-old cohousing arrangement that suffered during the bad parts of covid... if last year's theme was "hold it together somehow", this year's theme is apparently "burn it all down". Sigh, and who am I to talk? I just ended an 8-year thing and I'm planning to end a 14-year thing. The future looks pretty unknowable.

For the most part I'm still keeping my schedule very chill. Starting to feel little urges to add projects and commitments back in (do I want to find a video game?) but, aside from a flexibility class, I'm still resisting. I did take an hour out to draw a squirrel yesterday, from this video, and it felt nice to put pencil to paper.

Comments

[justplainuniverse]

yay ablation! hope it's easy and effective!

and oh yeah DEF make your own categories! mine are creative practice, health/body care, friends and community, pursuit of passions, and general stability (includes financial stability but also things like having a tidy home and routines)

[flexagon]

Thanks! Will update!

I think I can get my categories from the yearly retrospectives I write. I seem to always cover the following: work/career, health/fitness, creativity, sex/marriage/poly, finances, cats. I like the idea of always remembering friends & community, which does matter to me but I don't tend to think of when I write the summaries.

And since I do tend to cover the best books/movies/whatever of the year, I think it might make sense to also think about cultural consumption instead of always just fretting about my own productivity. Enjoying and learning about what the world has to offer is good too, right?

[justplainuniverse]

i love the idea of taking the categories you have already been drawn to in reviewing your year!

and yeah for me "pursuing passions" is definitely about just plain enjoying and learning about what the world has to offer.

[flexagon]

ah, that makes sense. I'm afraid the word "passion" for me has been permanently tainted by the tech industry (which is sooooooo twee about the notion that we all must be passionate about our jobs) but I like what you mean by it!