More good/bad: didn’t do a workout yesterday or this morning, and most of my “computer breaks” were spent cooking rather than cleaning. On the better end of things, I got to bed early and got what passes for a full night’s sleep last night (~7 hours; although not uninterrupted, they were quite restful). My hope is that I can continue to go to bed early and begin to truly solidify some morning habits.

Anyway, more good news: I finally managed to get my future authoring document printed out (12 pages! I had no idea I wrote so much), so I’m going to be posting my working notes on that sometime later today – i.e., what my long-term goals will be/habits I’ll want to form and what my day-to-day work on them will be in order to meet my deadlines in the future.

The real issue here is that the majority of my schedule making and planning must be malleable rather than firm; the plan mustn’t be the Evil Dictator that will crush my will for the rest of my life. It must be the platform on which my actual current self must negotiate and trade with my superego ideal self so that, each day, compromises must be made to improve the old but satisfy my own laziness and need for leisure.

Something interesting comes to mind from one of Dr. Jordan Peterson’s lectures: ultimately, when one thinks about a guiding philosophy for one’s own conscientiousness, it comes down to a basic dichotomy: do you accept no responsibility or all the responsibility? One can choose not to accept any responsibility, and then only live in order to maintain the bear minimum aspects of their lives, spending all of their free time and inactive moments nurturing their own basic instinctual pleasures. Alternatively, one can say that they are responsible for the direction, energies, and outcome of every moment of their entire lives, turning every opportunity for action into an investment into their environment and the well being of themselves and those around them.

Obviously, the truly balanced person comes out as a combination of play and productivity, but being more weighted towards productivity generally lends itself towards a significant increase in life expectancy and lifelong success. It’s time to change my fundamental principles and get to work.

Welp, I don’t think I knocked off any of the bullet points I set up at work yesterday. However, this morning, I did a few things, including (somewhat) organizing my desk, sorting out my laundry, and, well, getting around to writing this blog post.

Tonight’s plan: do a workout.

Also: post again.

I should begin my day with this, but I’ll have to live with doing this at work right now:

Here, I state my intention to follow a plan to make a plan for the next week this afternoon. Part of that plan will involve me printing off my list of goals/intentions slaved over through the self authoring program. So: things I need to do today:

• print off that future-authoring result (at least a couple copies)
• get dishes cleaned (after meals and such)
• clean up my desk area
• make another update once these things are done
• do evening prayers
• relax and enjoy family time in between (possibly eat steak?)
• Go to bed at a reasonable time (before 11:01PM)

Let’s start with that. Should be enough, eh?

Been sick and meditative – i.e., unconscious – the past few days. Will probably organize a massive schedule on Sunday night after work (and feasting).

It’s time to plan to plan out a plan for my future endeavors. It’s somewhat interesting that this process is beginning on this week of all weeks; for those that are unaware, it’s Pascha season for the Eastern Orthodox Christians that follow the old calendar, so that means a LOT of church, a few late night/early morning services, and then a crazy midnight service punctuated by a massive midnight (or, more accurately, 4AM) feast.

Not exactly conducive to drastic lifestyle changes.

Anyway, It’s about time I made a hard copy of my goal list and started sorting through ALL of the details as to how I want to implement work on them.

“Hello, world!” is a befitting first title, WordPress. I think I’ll keep it.

Hello, traveller. If you’re reading this, my first post, soon after its posting date, it’s probably because I haven’t posted enough times to move this first post down which means I’m being irresponsible. If you’re reading this because you’ve read all my most recent posts, and this first post is old, and you’ve have read all the way back to the beginning from my latest posts, then there might be something wrong with you (because I doubt someone’s devotion in attempting to read all the way back to the beginning of my posts). First blog posts are probably the most neglected of all  – they represent the beginning of what will hopefully become a transformative journey, so… why read the writing when the writer is in a lesser state of perfection than may otherwise be expected?

Anyway, I’m already getting ahead of myself. I’m Ben. This is my blog. I’ve started blogs before, but they died, or they sputtered out, or I lost interest. This one is different.

My goal in beginning this blog – and replacing my entire website with it – is to keep track of my progress in achieving personal goals, write out my struggles, and write out my thoughts, and write out my revisions to plans, all to refine and pragmaticize my daily life. That is my goal: to increase my capability for conscientiousness, because I am a horribly disorganized and chaotic person. This is my medium for self-reflection and, hopefully, self-actualization as well.

Many posts may not be visible, and it may appear that there are gaps in time when I don’t write. Either this is because I’ve abandoned my struggle to perfect myself using this blog (which, hopefully, I would mention in a post towards the end) or I’ve begun posting privately rather than publicly as may occur. If the former, I would encourage the reader to nag me by sending an email to admin@freneticetchings.com and be scornful and cutting with your comments as I respond well to negative criticism.

Anyway. That’s all for now. I’ll hopefully write more tonight, or possibly tomorrow. It’s good to dust off the default text and take these Google Fonts for a spin.