Tag: reading

2020 goals check in pt. 1

kate2 Comments

Remember back in January when I posted a long list of goals I had for each month this year? Well, I’m delighted and surprised to announce that I’ve actually kept up with them. Aside from missing a couple days of yoga in January, I’ve actually done the rest of the goals every day each month. Here’s what I’ve been doing:

  • January: Do yoga every day
  • February: Meditate every day
  • March: Read every day
  • April: List to a podcast every day

Not only have I stuck to each monthly goal, but I’ve even kept them up in the following months. I wasn’t really planning to do that when I first thought this project up, but I’ve been enjoying having each of these things become part of my daily routine. I guess I unintentionally stumbled upon a great way to build good habits.

The next four months will be a little more challenging though:

  • May: Go for a walk every day
  • June: Wake up at 7am every day
  • July: No TV for the month
  • August: Talk to/text/message a friend/family member every day

I doubt I’ll end up adding this set of habits to my daily routine after the month commitment is up, but I guess we’ll see what happens!

February & March things

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The last two months have been a blur. Let me quickly summarize:

Top three things I read

HTCYM

How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan. This book made me want to do LSD. And if I do, I’ll now feel totally validated that there is a real, science-backed reason to do so.

Thick

Thick by Tressie McMillan Cottom. Smart, brutally honest, heartbreaking essays that will change your mind in some way or another.

TOG

The Throne of Glass series by Sarah J Maas. An 8-book fantasy series that I flew through in the span of a month. It’s exciting, romantic, and thoughtful. Exactly what I wanted from a series about magic, evil kings, and epic quests.

Top three things I watched

Aniara. A bleak, all the way human answer to what could go wrong in space travel. You won’t be able to stop thinking about it.

Into the Inferno. Werner Herzog makes a documentary about volcanos. It’s exactly what you want it to be.

Billy on the Street. It just brings me so much joy.

Top three things I listened to

(Aside from PUP, because we already talked about that).

Alaskalaska – The Dots. So groovy and not like anything else I’ve heard before.

Elbow – Giants of All Sizes. This album transports me away every time I listen to it.

Velvet Negroni – Neon Brown. Chill and moody jams. The best soundtrack for a night alone at home.

A thing I read

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You’re Not Lazy, Bored, or Unmotivated

“Just Do It” is the best advice because it’s the only advice that works.

When I started writing, I gave lots of specific tips in my articles: how to set goals, have a morning routine, be productive. But specifics are full of hindsight bias. I’m only giving you the final 10% that worked, and that worked for me in particular. The messy 90% of the journey that led me there? I left that out completely.

I struggle a lot with motivation and feeling disconnected from my work and goals. Up until recently I spent a lot of time reading articles about “productivity hacks” and defeating procrastination.

Eventually it occurred to me that most advice is garbage. Everyone lives in different circumstances and definitive instructions for your work schedule or morning routine make no sense. The only way to succeed is to try a bunch of tactics for yourself and mix and match until something feels right.

I keep my phone next to my bed and check Instagram every morning, first thing when I wake up. In the world of morning routine advice, this is a cardinal sin. But it works for me.

Since puberty, waking up has been a unique form of torture. I’ve snoozed and slept through countless alarms. I’ve even tried putting my alarm across the room, only to discover that I can turn it off, get back in bed, and easily fall asleep again. My preferred wake up style is lying in bed for at least 10 minutes, getting myself accustomed to the idea of consciousness before I’m ready to throw off the covers and rise from my pillow nest. The trouble is actually staying awake for those 10 minutes, which is where Instagram comes in. It’s readily available and mindless enough that I don’t really need to be awake to scroll, but it’s just engaging enough that it won’t put me back to sleep.

Waking up has become much easier since starting my morning Instagram routine. But it’s clearly not for everyone. I’ve got solid enough boundaries that I don’t check anything else while in bed—no work email or news. And I’ve made sure to curate my feed so that I’m only seeing stuff I actually like and that makes me feel good (here are a few that bring me the most joy: cute foxes, bird comics, happiness + food).

For a while I felt bad about my morning Insta habit, because EVERYONE was talking about how bad it was to look at your phone upon waking up. But now I’m comfortable with the obvious realization that (duh) everyone is different, and I just need to do what works for me (after going through a lot of trial and error to figure that out) and forget the other advice.

What I read: Dec–Jan

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Trick mirror

Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino

This collection of essays made me feel like Tolentino was inside my brain, pulling out all my half-formed qualms and questions about modern culture and turning them into deeply smart, well-researched speculations about what the internet has done to human society. She peels away the layers on topics like the performance inherent in social media, the ridiculous extravagance of modern weddings, and the surprisingly similar experiences offered by religion and the drug Ecstasy. It’s a dense read and worth taking some time to fully digest. 4/5

All souls trilogy

The All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness

I was expecting to like this series more than I did. I’m usually a sucker for fantasy stories with magic and witches and prophesies, but this one just wasn’t that exciting. The world-building was inviting, but the story dragged a bit and the romance had me rolling my eyes every few chapters with its Twilight-like undertones. The heroine spent a good portion of the books being a wet noodle and literally got swept off her feet too many times to take any of it very seriously. 2.5/5

americanah

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Running 600 pages, this book had the confusing problem of being too drawn out while also making me wish I’d gotten more details on certain plot points and characters. Until the last part of the book, the narrative felt more like vignettes of the characters’ lives instead of a cohesive story, making it hard to stay engaged. There were, however, some really fascinating character relationships and illuminating points about race and the immigrant experience that definitely makes this book a worthwhile read. 3.5/5

my year of rest

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

If internet memes are any indication, lots of us can relate to a desire to forget the incessant traumas of the world and sleep a year away swathed in easygoing movies and a full bank account. This story is bizarre and unsettling but also tender and hopeful. Writing style is a big factor in whether I can really connect with a book, and Moshfegh’s unsentimental boldness telling this truly weird story totally captured me. I’m looking forward to reading everything else she’s written. 4.5/5

A thing I read

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Here’s a thing I read recently that I think is true:

Workism Is Making Americans Miserable

“We’ve created this idea that the meaning of life should be found in work,” says Oren Cass, the author of the book The Once and Future Worker. “We tell young people that their work should be their passion. ‘Don’t give up until you find a job that you love!’ we say. ‘You should be changing the world!’ we tell them. That is the message in commencement addresses, in pop culture, and frankly, in media, including The Atlantic.”

But our desks were never meant to be our altars. The modern labor force evolved to serve the needs of consumers and capitalists, not to satisfy tens of millions of people seeking transcendence at the office. It’s hard to self-actualize on the job if you’re a cashier—one of the most common occupations in the U.S.—and even the best white-collar roles have long periods of stasis, boredom, or busywork. This mismatch between expectations and reality is a recipe for severe disappointment, if not outright misery, and it might explain why rates of depression and anxiety in the U.S. are “substantially higher” than they were in the 1980s, according to a 2014 study.

I’ve been struggling with this a lot lately. It seems right to want to love your work and find intense meaning in it. Most of us spend the majority of our waking life at work. To do something you don’t care about for 40 hours a week seems crazy and self-defeating.

But for most of us, work isn’t fun. We might enjoy it sometimes, but even us freelancers have to go through the daily slog of email and invoicing and often mundane projects that don’t even attempt to light up our creative brains but do pay the bills.

The article sees the solution to our happiness as working less. Once our culture shifts enough to allows for fewer work hours, we’ll be able to spend more time on our friends, family, and hobbies. That seems a pretty long way off for many of us who have piles of debt and insane rent prices to contend with and a government run by conservatives who are the worst at worshiping Work. Are we doomed to be unhappy until the economy catches up with our humanity?

That’s bleak. I’m still going to try and love my work in the meantime, because even if I’m only doing my job 15 hours a week, that’s still a pretty hefty chunk of my life. I’d like to enjoy that time if I can.