May 30th already? Sigh.

If I’m going to attempt to make this a daily thing, I think I’ll add more day-to-day details to make this a true chronicle to look back on and remember the specifics of my current experience. It’s weird how my thought process always lingers on the current moment while delving into the potentials of the future, but never thinking of either of those contexts’ inevitable velocity into history. It would be good to remind myself of this.

Nic’s visiting today with his family, which will be a blessing. It’s been far too long since we last met. The weather is cool and the sun is out. The flowers are blooming and everything is green and growing. Summer is about to break out, and it’s shocking to me how fast things are moving. I remind myself of how fast winter will be upon us once again.

This morning was a success: good breakfast, good cup of coffee, good workout. My muscles are sore in all the right ways. I still haven’t come up with solutions to the dilemmas I thought up yesterday, but I shall ruminate on them today. In fact, let’s work on some of them for the next posting.

This may sound like a strange thing, but I find myself stuck in a creative rut. Since being left to live alone in my house (my brother has moved south to Philadelphia), I’ve drastically reorganized my life. I’ve cleaned the house, I’ve set a schedule of chores for myself (that I’ve mostly kept to), I’ve begun concentrating on exercise and a healthier sleep schedule, and I’ve been noticeable losing weight. However, I’m finding that there’s a disappointing gap in my own productivity related to my creative aspirations (both in fiction and in programming) despite the positive impact elsewhere. This hurts me, because I think of my creative development as of the highest importance (and the most gratifying aspect of my personal abilities), so stagnation in this way casts a bad light on the rest of my achievements.

I’ve been spending some time generating more ideas – on the level of broad, question-begging, overly-complex ideas that are impractical to immediately begin implementing. I haven’t been writing them down or doing more elaboration on them than the surface level, finding-my-first-principles level of probing into their possibility as paths worth pursuing. It’s time I started doing both of those things.

Right now, I’m becoming more trapped in thoughts concerning which technologies I should use rather than thinking about what project I want to tackle (or which aspect of a larger project I should tackle first). This type of thinking is obviously premature, and it truly reveals my creatively productive paralysis.

** IDEA: I should write more about my thoughts in this vein. Whether or not it is in itself a creative output, at least I’ll be able to lay out and productively analyze my own thoughts on how I could become productively creative in a way that is gratifying and efficient.

OK, so, that being said, I’ll start working on some thoughts to write down.

“The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.”

-Bilbo Baggins, The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien

I have officially submitted my notice to the monastery, informing them that I plan on leaving after saving up some funds for my inevitable self displacement. It’s time to look for warmer climates, a place to create softer wares, and a church that is less filled with attendees of the masculine (monastic or seminarian) variety.

My long list of potential new living regions included, in no particular order:

– Buffalo, NY

Pros:
– I know it – perhaps too well.
– Aaron’s there! (My brother – number three in the line of succession).
– Many friends I’ve had for years are there.
– The housing is CHEAP, especially if I find roommates with people I know.

Cons:
– Winter and snow.
– The parish is nice, but relatively empty of people my age (ahem; feminine people my age).
– The software industry is flooded with degree-clutching prospects to compete with (even though UB and Buff State are horrible places to learn how to program).
– It’s still in New York, which is horrible for my brand of politics.
– It’s Buffalo, and Buffalo is kind of crummy. Kind of? Sometimes violent, mostly dirty and miserable, and with very few redeeming factors.
– Although cheap, you get what you pay for in the housing (and caretaking).
– Far away from everyone in the family but Aaron.

– Albany, NY

Pros:
– Relatively close to home, in case I forget anything or want to visit the monastery.
– Relatively close to people I know (including some old friends).
– Good amount of job prospects.
– Great, flourishing parish with lots of old Orthodox friends.

Cons:
– Winter. And snow.
– Far from MOST people I know and love.
– The housing is a bit on the expensive side.
– Politics.

– Philadelphia, PA

Pros:
– Close to all kinds of family!
– Lots of jobs!
– Nowhere near as much snow!
– Lots of cool historic things to see and do! (Franklin Institute! Yeah!)
– Decent parish, but is within reasonable travelling distance of several other parishes as well (Manayunk to Howell: 1h24m, assuming a quiet Sunday morning).
– Pennsylvania has some of the best politics in the region! Plus, it’s swing state.
– Pennsylvania is awesome! (happy moodlet added because writer thinks of Pennsylvania memories of old with fondness!)

Cons:
– I’m… I’m having trouble thinking of any, except maybe that there are places in Philly that aren’t safe. But I could just as easily live outside the city!
– There’s a LOT of people around the area, making claustrophobia a real deal potentially. But there are parks too, I’m sure. Safe parks though? I could always take shelter in the Academy of Natural Sciences…

Some new prospects (that I’ll be adding to):

– Boston, MA

Pros:
– Boston is a wonderful historic city! Like Philadelphia in that way, but more… tealess.
– I’m sure there are plenty of jobs out there – and Aunt Barb wanted to hook me up with opportunities!
– I’m not completely familiar with the parish, but I know of it (and know of some of the people that frequent it – but mostly by virtue of knowing everyone that comes through the monastery).
– It’s an easy (but long) train ride to most known cities.

Cons:
– Still rather far away from the rest of the family.
– Weather is… variable, or so I’ve heard. It’s on the coast, a ‘dollop of hills in a spoon of marshes’ (Neal Stephenson, ‘Quicksilver’), and a bit frightening to think about in the case of a Nor’easter.
– I know next to no one there!

Also potentials for the list, but not fully fleshed out yet:

– Dallas, TX (or any major city in TX, really)
– San Francisco, CA
– Herkimer, NY (lol!)

Some things to think about. In the meantime, it’s time to a) get to work (hard!) on my new website (the one that will REALLY showcase all my talents), get some time learning MongoDB and NodeJS and ReactJS more thoroughly (enough to get cool things to happen on a website). I could probably do that by finishing the Udemy course. I should get on that!

Cheers for now.

Yeah, yeah – there seems to be a pattern of ‘post that you haven’t posted in a while and then promptly produce an even longer gap between posts’.

Well, I’m posting now, darnit.

I’ve been listening to a couple of new podcasts, one of which is ‘Impact Theory’ hosted by Thomas Bilyeu. He’s an ex-screenwriter/director who now co-owns Quest Nutrition (the ones that make Quest protein bars). Impact Theory is a program that interviews highly successful entrepreneurs in an attempt to break down what strategies they used in order to change their own lives and become not only more productive, but exponentially more productive over time. The discussions most often cite scientific research into motivational strategies, planning strategies, as well as daily habits and habit-breaking strategies that these ridiculously productive people use in order to become superpowers and achieve their dreams (and more).

Anyway, I wanted to write a little piece to remind myself of one interesting lesson from Eric Barker’s interview. Enjoy!

Wishing and dreaming are critical, but they’re like alcohol: they feel good in the moment, but by themselves, they’re not practical.

Once you have a dream, the next step is to think about the outcome of that dream, the FINAL outcome, with plenty of specific details. I.e., this is what I want to be, this is what I want to do, in as much detail as is realistic. Think of it as if you’re imagining a scene of yourself in the future – what are you doing every day in this dream, what does your environment look like, what do you look like, and what kind of people are around you? What does your daily work look like? What kind of person would you be in order to be doing the work you would be doing and living this lifestyle?

After that’s as clear as you can make it, only then think about the obstacles that are keeping you from immediately becoming that person. Obviously, they aren’t all visible at the moment, so identifying the most immediate and obvious obstacles is practical. Specifically identifying the obstacles allows you to set up a clear and defined plan to spend time every day improving yourself and chipping away at those obstacles until they’re no longer in your way.

The plan should be simple, basic, and should have the following characteristics:
a) The activity of carrying out the plan should be directly reflective of the dream or wish you had. This allows you to spend time testing whether the joy in that dream is realistic. If the dream acted in reality doesn’t bring you joy, then that allows you to quit it and iterate faster to a dream and outcome that work for you without hesitation or regret.
b) The plan should mimic a lesser version of the outcome that you envisioned earlier as well to make sure that you can shape yourself into a person that lives that lifestyle you imagined. This might sound too similar to the above point, but the introspection is different: above, you want to consider the excitement and spark involved in fulfilling the dream or wish. Here, you want to consider the satisfaction in the change in environment, change in lifestyle, and change in your day-to-day activities and mindset that would require you to accommodate your plan. Above, you test the satisfaction of the dream, and here, you test the satisfaction of the reality.
c) The plan should directly attack the obstacles at their core, because behind those obstacles are more obstacles that you want to get to. This one is complicated, as many obstacles can be a mix of the specific and the abstract. For example: ‘I’m pretty lazy’, ‘My writing skills need improvement’, and ‘I’m easily distracted from my current activity’. All of these obstacles can be translated into a plan to spend a set amount of time every day in a distraction free environment writing in a way that would help you grow into your outcome-self. Daily activities like this can not only kill many birds with one stone, but also set you up to form habits that change your moment-to-moment mindset throughout the day.

Wish. Outcome. Obstacle. Plan.

The likelihood is that the obstacles will start out being tough to conquer, and perhaps you’ll accidentally skip some smaller obstacles that will trip you up while you’re trying to break down loftier ones. This is fine – worked into the planning stage (and plan execution stage) is something of vital importance: assessment of progress and reflection on the process itself. This activity not only helps you stay in the right mindset, but will also give you an idea whether or not your plans are working and whether you should consider changing your plans to battle different obstacles.

Do the wish and outcome energize you enough to iterate through such planning stages and finding ways to overcome the obstacle? If so, then failed plans are nothing to worry about – you can always reform your plan and fit it to overcome your obstacles.

Base the choice between ‘grit’ and ‘quit’ on how much your dreams and specific outcomes excite you and energize you towards activity.

Eric Barker interview:

Mel Robbins on the 5 Second Rule (and, more importantly, there’s a link to the Million Dollar Morning routine she hints at in the description of the video):

Today was one of the most productive days I’ve ever had, I think. I woke up, went to church, came home, and then proceeded to clean the dishes, straighten up the kitchen, mow the lawn, wash and hang the laundry, make supper, put away the leftovers, and ponder what I want to do with the rest of my week.

First plan: be at least half as productive as I’ve been today. That would make for an awesome week! Anywho, manual labor gave me enough thinking time to realize that I need more thinking time before I can hop straight back into programming (which is fine, because there’s still a lot of housework to do after work this week). BenjaminMarquardt.com is not even close to being 100% (in fact, it’s really only a facade over a completely fake establishment) but that’s OK because it’s still in the building phase. I don’t need it to be practically functional for some time.

On Friday morning, I started the day by getting my heart rate up to the optimum range (55-85% of maximum, according to some heart organization) for 30 minutes. The entire rest of the day my mood was pretty amazing. My goal is to try to do that every day this week without stressing myself out too much. Good feels make for good days! And also make for reinforced behaviors that help future development.

I’ve started using a quirky little gamified habit former app called Habitica. I’ve yet to progress for any length into the game, but it looks interesting and part of my inspiration for doing the things I’ve set out for myself in the app is to see what happens when my character gets more powerful. I guess that’s a good enough sign that the app’s premise is solid.

Anyway, hopefully I’ll be posting more often now that the good feels train is here. Here’s to some good exercise tomorrow morning, and a productive day!

Of course – I post about needing to post more often, and then I neglect posting for an even longer period of time.

A few things I’ve noticed I need to clean up in my habits: I seem to have a lot of trouble sitting down and reflecting and reviewing my performance and success at the end of the week, when I presumably have large amounts of free time. One of the goals I’ve listed that would be worthwhile pursuing reflects my wish to become a bit more financially responsible and reflective, and thus be able to save more money. Reflecting on the things I could learn… it’s something I need to learn in and of itself.

More tonight, I think.

Oh, darn. I’ve got to go back and paste in check marks!

For those that might not be aware, the check mark is a bit of a crazy thing to track down if you’re looking to make them yourself. They’re kind of buried in the Unicode ocean that exists beyond keyboard labels, ASCII-codes, etc., unless you’re willing to work in Wingdings or perform Internet wizardry to jimmy out.

I’m curious as to whether this will work, but whatever, here goes:

In order to write it, you’ve got to use in-line CSS styling with an inert HTML tag (since you don’t want your platform – *cough* WordPress */cough* – to cramp your style with its style after the fact). So I use this:

<inert style=”font-family: Wingdings;”>ü</inert>

Apparently, the ‘inert’ tag is pretty much ignored. The Wingdings font has the check mark character within a reachable range (of ASCII numerics, at least), so styling in this way allows you to get a nice visible checkmark without copy pasting from other places or the like.

I do have a pregame plan that I’ll be posting later, but for now… I’ve got to post my checkmarks from yesterday!

Happy Thursday! Today I can happily report that I’m suffering from drowsiness and lethargy and afternoon drifting due to another horrible night’s sleep (I actually remember waking up on my back a few times). Time to break out my awkward fanny-pack-and-tennis-ball trick for staying on my side while sleeping.

Anywho, I just wanted to announce my intention to get exactly two things done this afternoon after work: I want to finish the dishes, and I want to walk on the treadmill for long enough to surpass a daily step count of 10k. Stretch goals: maybe install an OS on my new Raspberry Pi 3? Maybe work a bit on my JavaScript projects (as I AM listing them on this website…)? Maybe get some *gasp* other housework done?

Looks like I’ll need to hunt for a good video to listen to to keep me going.

• Dishes ü
• 10k steps
• Install OS on RP3
• Get some programming done
• Get some other housework done

Well, I knocked off all the things on my list (mostly, in some respect). I didn’t spend hardly any time on the computer, but I did spend a lot of time doing things. Partly, perhaps, because I was listening to a live-recorded interview with Jordan Peterson, but I think there was more to it (an idea I’m working on): getting into warrior mode.

I look around myself and I think of my environment as target-dense; what can I take a swing at? But then I fall into a habitual mode where I sit on my wide hind parts, and then that little voice in the back of my head says, “There are more things to take a swing at.” And the thought is gamified, it’s a provocation, it’s a challenge. “Can you do chore X? Yes. Really? Obviously. I don’t believe you. Prove it. Fine. I will. It’s sitting there waiting to be done. Get to it.” And then I’m off.

Part of it wasn’t thinking about productivity vs. unproductivity; it was more like pondering what spending time doing activity x was actually, consciously doing for my own improvement. And was it actually fun enough to justify it? Because fun and productive should go hand in hand. Practice and challenge and fun should include practical improvement. And in some way, a lot of the stuff I did today was like practice. It was productive. It may not have been fun the whole time, but it’s more like knocking down goals was fun and I was able to watch Youtube at the same time.

Edit: Tomorrow’s a one-month anniversary for the new iteration of my blog! Yay!

More good news-bad news: the treadmill has arrived, it has been assembled, and it works fine. I have been testing it all weekend, and have finally settled on placing it in front of the TV so that I could watch Bosch while acclimating to an exercise schedule once again.

Unfortunately, I did not get many household chores completed this weekend. I did begin watching/reading some programming books (mostly on the subject of algorithm design), and have tentatively decided to start programming in Java on my free time (despite my distaste for the language and its inefficiencies).

Anyway, this morning was hyper productive and a fantastic beginning to the week: I woke up, had coffee, worked out (cardio, pushups, and crunches), helped Lyudmila with a small phone problem, breakfasted, showered, shaved, and still managed to get to work about 10 minutes early. If only every morning would be like this! Granted, I only got around 5 and half hours sleep last night, but I’m hoping that that means that I’ll be able to go to bed earlier tonight without any real problem.

I’ve decided that I need to find some system by which to tag or label the time I spend doing various activities in such a way as to directly connect them with my future authoring goals. This should help me evaluate my past performance in a much more accurate way, and help me tailor my schedule to allow my progress towards each of my goals consistently.

Signing off for now. Hopefully, I’ll be able to report on continued progress tonight. But I’ll definitely post tomorrow morning.

I’m swiftly learning that my problem at the end of the day is simply fatigue, probably inspired by my being completely out of shape. On the plus side, my new treadmill comes today. On the downside, my foot mysteriously explodes in pain whenever I put weight on it, despite my never recalling how I injured it (in my sleep?). Anyway, the obviously dismal beginning to my post here is in testament to the fact that I got next to none of the things done last night that I wanted to (except, partially, for helping that friend – although, not in programming, but with moving large amounts of packages to the post office). I essentially napped on the couch and dragged myself about the house all night before going to bed. Am I ill? I don’t know. Do I need the treadmill coming today? Most definitely. My body needs to be challenged. If only my foot felt better.

I’ve got to stop titling these if they’re just basic updates. They’re either going to be “I was bad,” or “I was good,” or “Things are good and bad, here’s why.” It’ll be just dates from now on.

Anyway, as my silence testifies, things got sloppy this past weekend. I’ve skimped on chores a bit (half because there really just aren’t many chores to begin with, half because of laziness at the end of the work day). However, I did knock a few goals for the weekend off the list: getting out of the cave, getting a good number of errands done on Sunday afternoon, and visiting a friend to help them out.

I’ve learned something about the Toggl timing: I really should only be using it for tracking the voluntary, non-vital work, studying, and other goal-chasing tasks I ought to be doing – as opposed to the things that I NEED to get done and don’t really have a choice (like taking the trash out at midnight the night before it gets picked up, or doing a manic cleanup for an impending visit from someone) or the things that really should count (eating, sleeping, or being unproductive). That will give me a metric for a successfully productive week.

Anyway, there are a few things I’d like to get done this week:

1. I’d like to learn how to make bar-style pizza in my horrible oven (after purchasing all those ingredients while waiting for Walmart to finish with my car).
2. I’d like to put at least 2 hours (each) into:
   1. studying algorithms –
   2. programming my project
3. I’d like to bring out my sax and keep it handy for some scales practice.
   1. buy a mute (CHECK – est. delivery Monday)

That should be good for now. I’ll see if I can’t knock something off this list tonight.

Greetings! I’m Ben, and this is my blog. Below you’ll find my recent posts, wherein I dump my thoughtpieces on politics, technology, interactive media, and philosophy; random idea-branchings off of my currently-running projects and struggles therein; and commentary on my progress towards becoming a better programmer, a more organized and conscientious human being, and a stronger, more powerful, and more productive and engaging person.

I’ve been working in JavaScript to test its capabilities (as well as my own in the process) and to see if I can build a decent engine using only front-end code and builtin HTML5 functionality. I’m currently studying web frameworks (NodeJS, MongoDB, ReactJS, etc.) to develop my skills towards the ‘full-stack JavaScript developer’ level.

If you’d like to receive updates when I post new content,  I would highly recommend the Feedly app, as it has a very handy browser plugin that links well with WordPress’s RSS feed.