Goals from Last Week – How Did it Go?

Writing

• work on blog at least five days – two, maybe three?
• at least five sessions of digitizing old writing – Six.
• work on disability letter for the school – not at all.

Music

• four guitar practice sessions – none.
• get up through song 8 of Book Two of my Hal Leonard Guitar Method Complete Edition book – the new lesson focuses on the dotted quarter note – no.
• four piano practice sessions – none.
• get up through the first exercise on page 64 in my Keyboard Musician for the Adult Beginner book – no.

Lifestyle

• sleep without the phone (a struggle you can read about here) – this will put me at 210 nights (30 weeks) in a row – oh boy, yeah, I broke my streak after 206.
• write Morning Pages every day – YES.
• don’t look at phone until after Morning Pages every day – did this a couple days, until I broke the phone streak above.
• do an Artist Date – yes, went to The Differentialists group, which I love. It’s a group started by some classmates where we work through medical mysteries, and it feeds my imaginary life of being House.
• finish sorting through clothes – still in progress.
• finish sorting through books – still in progress.
• sort through file cabinet – Yes, completely.
• sort through storage – not started.
• sort through kitchen cabinets – almost done.

Reflections on the Week

Last time, I said that things were real flexible and up in the air because I wasn’t sure what would happen with moving–how fast it would happen or if it would happen at all.

Well, it happened. I got the approval on Monday, started packing Monday, signed the lease and moved the first load on Tuesday, packed on Wednesday and Thursday, took two more loads on Friday, did some organizing yesterday, and did more packing and today and also spent a lot of time arranging further moving trips for this week.

So, it happened fast, but is also happening over a somewhat long moving period. And I’m split between two places, with a lot of my stuff at the new place, but furniture still at the old place for now. So even having access to some of the things for these goals is an issue at the moment.

Because of this, a lot of things are on hold. You’ll notice my goal list for this coming week is bare bones. Mostly I’m just focused on the move and that’ll probably occupy most of my week.

Other things are on hold too, like Better Call Saul recaps and the mid-month Spotlight On posts. I’ll get back to Spotlight next month, just going to have to miss October, and for BCS I’ll resume either next Sunday or the one after, depending how long the move takes, and on my internet situation (turned out to be much more complicated than ever before to transfer service).

Some things are not on hiatus. I’ll still do the goal posts, even if they’re bare bones like this, and a weekly post that’s not part of any column, and the Artist’s Way Reflections posts (I planned that out way too carefully to get off track with that). Depending on the internet situation, I can’t say for sure when they’ll get posted, but I will post them when I can.

Moving really makes me wish I could drive, so I could just get it all done quickly. Living split between two places adds a certain amount of stress for sure. Sometimes it takes quite a bit of advanced planning to coordinate things, either aspects of the move itself, or what needs to be done at what place, and so on.

But! I have really good friends I’m really thankful for that are helping! And that makes all the difference. I would be totally lost without them, and I’m so thankful.

Mercury Retrograde

Some things this week have been so classic Mercury Retrograde that I almost have to laugh. One of the main things Mercury Retrograde is known for is communication breakdown, including technology, and such troubles have hit me hard in the last week.

First, setting up internet at the new place was a much bigger pain in the ass than I anticipated, or than I’ve ever experienced before with a move. Even just the talking it through on the phone took almost two hours (last time I moved it seemed so inconsequential in my memory that it had to be less than a ten-minute call), and then there are issues with timing, with covid protocols, and so forth, so that’s still a bit up in the air.

I also had a weird phone breakdown. My phone stopped being able to text or call, or even see texts or calls coming in. My friend Sam was able to fix it a few days later, which I’m very thankful for. It freaked me out not having that connection. And texts and calls stopped working from my computer soon after they stopped working from the phone. So I couldn’t communicate those ways at all (though could still email, and message through social media).

And it was in that time that I went back to sleeping with the phone. When its main functions no longer worked. It just stressed me out so much to think that I couldn’t call anyone in an emergency, or for anything, that the craving of the comfort of falling asleep to its podcasts, and to scrolling, overwhelmed me and I gave in. Since I fell off the wagon, I haven’t gotten back on.

Once I got my phone back in working order, it turned out I was never able to recover any of the texts or calls that came in during that time. Apparently texts went through to me (on other people’s end) Tuesday night still, but I was never able to see them. I was told that after that, on others’ ends it showed texts not going through at all. So it’s a bit frustrating to not know what I missed. It also took quite some time for it all to re-sync with my computer (which is where I usually text from). But, knock on wood, all seems to be in working order now.

As I find myself so often saying, it’s been a week.

Goals for this Coming Week

Writing

• at least five sessions of digitizing old writing

Music

No goals this week. I hope to get back to it before this time next week but just not sure if that’ll be realistic.

Lifestyle

• Get back on the wagon of sleeping without the phone (a struggle you can read about here) – if I can get back to one day, I’ll be happy
• write Morning Pages every day
• do an Artist Date

Well, with that bare bones list, I’m off to eat dinner and then read Week Seven of The Artist’s Way. Have a good week, everyone!

-April

PD: At the top is a picture of an old-school TV screen with the colored bars and it says “temporary hiatus” to reflect that most of these goals, and some of the posts on here, are on hiatus until I can sort out this move.

Notes:

• Morning Pages, referred to in the lifestyle section of these goals, is the practice of writing three long-hand pages right after waking up in the morning.
• You can read about them in this post where I introduce what they are and my history with them, and you can find all posts that mention Morning Pages here.
• The practice comes from The Artist’s Way, the seminal creativity book by Julia Cameron. I’m doing a weekly column called The Artist’s Way Reflections, which was introduced here in my blog re-entry post.
• Artist Dates, the practice of doing a solo activity to take time out and connect to your creativity, also comes from The Artist’s Way.
• Moonchild is the name of my memoir project, which you can read about in more detail on my Memoir page or on this old post with a rough sketch. You can also find LOTS of other posts about it here.
• digitizing my writings is first introduced here.
• You can check out other posts about goals (goalposts?) here.