2023 Entries

I've kept an informal journal for many many years now. It's a habit that I picked up in an English class in high school and have kept to for the most part since then. I would say 90% of my entries are notes on books I'm reading. This year was interesting because I just noticed that my current journal started on January 9th, so it offers a very convenient look at 2023.

For as long as I've had this habit I very rarely look back, though it's always interesting when I do. I have a terrible memory, and a terrible sense of time, so seeing what was happening and what I was thinking about is usually eye-opening. Inevitably I'm reminded about the fact that what seems all-encompassing and all-consuming at the time is often completely forgotten in short order. That reminder alone, however infrequent, probably justifies all of the time and effort of keeping a record.

So, skimming through this past year I can pull out some interesting trends.

First, a ridiculous number of entries started by talking about how tired and exhausted I was. I feel like this trend has been consistent since covid. It's to the point where I started adding "What a day™" to my posts.

Second, and probably because of that, I very much leaned into "comfortable" media in terms of books, games, and shows. Some of those include:

• Legends & Lattes - a totally feel-good fantasy book about an adventuring Orc who decides to retire and start a coffee shop. I loved this
• Pillars of Eternity, an old RPG that I started way back when but put down. Chipping away at that game was great fun
• I started watching shows on my own to relax, which I almost never do
• I picked up Magic the Gathering with some friends

I had some nice work and volunteer wins in spite of how busy the year was.

There were a lot of big changes this year. The extent of those only really hit me as I reviewed things (and probably contributed a lot to point 1 above):

• My son moved out to college
• We went through multiple restructuring events at work
• Our local volunteer group had a lot of changes
• We did our first full in-person lobbying event in several years at work

A smattering of quotes from this last year, which I'm seeing leaned heavily into several topics.

Mindfulness/philosophy:

There is always compassionate space available to you, in every moment. Space to pause. Space to breathe. Space to reclaim your attention. To communicate with wisdom and skill. To forgive yourself and others. And to remember that joy is your birthright.
- Mindful Magazine

Question mind reading - "When we think we're reading someone else's mind, we're often reading our own, and projecting it onto them"

It's very hard if everything around us is a constant chorus of hope vs. despair, or optimism vs. doom. Actually I think that kind of binary thinking is a form of violence.
- Renée Lertzman

And work:

When getting started feels almost effortless, we know the steps are rightsized.

Know what your duty is and do it without hesitation ... if you want to be truly free, perform all actions as worship.
- Bhagavad Gita (quoted from somewhere else)
...
Work is love made visible. And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God [...] For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life's procession.
- The Prophet

You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results. [...] Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits. Your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits. Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your learning habits.
- Atomic Habits

Apparently, I'm a very boring person. There aren't many quotes at all from the several great sci fi and fantasy books. Time War, was easily one of my favorites:

One spared life might be worth more to the other side than all the blood that stained Red's hands today. A fugitive becomes a queen or a scientist or, worse, a poet.
- This is how You Lose the Time War