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Journal.Kim —A Metasystem Experiment

It gets easier. Every day it gets a little easier. But you gotta do it every day, that’s the hard part. But it does get easier.
—Bojack Horseman



Twenty-Five: Bees, JAM, and Gardens

 | #twenty-fifth-week

Week Twenty-five! I was feeling a little down and tired during the middle of the week (two derailments!) but I feel like I got a pep in my step again! I’ve got a lot of things going on, probably too many, but oh well!

Re FOSS projects: Is it possible that you (Brennan) are still on some level wondering “can I find somewhere where I can make myself useful”?. The answer is yes: FOSS projects are an inexhaustible ocean of work people would love you to tackle that you’ll be able to do. Projects people would love to have you help out with, projects people wish somebody else would create, projects people didn’t even know they needed.

First, I wanted to address @halfplane’s excellent advice. The world is filled to the brim with open projects that are looking for help, or even revival–and I do need to get out of my little bubble. It might be a good idea to beemind contributions / pull requests?

The Code Newbie podcast just released an episode on the subject to! Talk about serendipity. Here are some other good resources as a note to self:

  • Article https://dev.to/janessatran/a-beginner-s-guide-to-contributing-to-open-source-4fen
  • First PR Opportunities: https://github.com/MunGell/awesome-for-beginners

Speaking of, actually I’ve been seeing this really cool trend of “Digital Gardens” after reading a post by Joel Hooks and Tom Critchlow on the subject. I definitely need to start centralizing my scatter-brain thoughts, and I’ve still been neglecting to start using Notion or Roam Research.

Also kinda related is the JAMstack, since that’s a pretty easy and good way to get one of these kind of sites up-and-running. Similar to my ideals with FOSS, I love seeing ways to make it easier for people, tech-savvy or not, to have their own website and internet real estate–instead of having to rely on the social media oligopoly.

That being said, I’m realizing the importance of social media for connecting with others and finding different projects as well.

Anyways! Let’s talk about the bees. Just the bees. That’s the entire point of this, after all. I haven’t done a comprehensive systems review since May. 😱

Systems Review

Writing:

  • Writing: I’ve gotten into the habit of using Draft for all my writing now, and it’s going great! Folder organization is simple, so I can’t over-complicate things for myself.
    • Blog: I’ve been writing articles more consistently, but they’ve been informational posts the past few weeks, I want to get back into doing longer and more opinionated pieces again. I also really need to update the layout of my Jekyll blog, I’m probably moving it over to Gatsby.
    • Journalbar: This has been going great! It makes being accountable fun, in a way, and it’s entertaining to try to think of things to add each week.
    • Poetry: I’ve sort of been going into a longer form with my creative work, which I like. I think I need to add a new beeminder to curate my previous stuff to start organizing hundreds of previous small works over the years.
  • Twitter: I think it’s helpful to do small, daily updates and then have that to synthesize into these weekly updates. Although I do think I’m going to actually have to start using Twitter as a platform instead of a journal.

Productivity:

  • Productive Time: Been going well! I’ve found there’s been an upward trend of productive time use on my computer for the past few months, using the limited amount of data the free account provides.
    • GitHub: In spite of how good this seems to be going, as described by the quirk I found last week, I’ve actually been committing less this month. I probably need to stop spreading myself so thin.
    • Courses: Going very well! I’ve been completing a lot of courses recently. I just have to go back and retroactively add them in.
  • Distracting Time: Orobably a lot lower than it should be, since I can’t use RescueTime meaningfully on iOS, but it does deter me from using my computer for distracting fun, at least.

Fitness:

  • Weight: In spite of keeping track of both my daily activity and diet, there seems to be an upward trend! I have plans to fix this, though.
    • Foodlog: I’m going to be more detailed and thorough in my logs, to make sure I’m not glossing over any unhealthy details.
  • Daily Activity: Right now, I usually average only around 8k-9k steps, so I’m going to bump that up to 15k to try and be more healthy!
  • Sleeping: This looks nearly perfect, but in reality it’s not, my cat wakes me up consistently at around 5am, and I’m going to bed way too late. I can’t really remedy this using Beeminder at the moment.

Lifestyle:

  • Gratitude: I find the longer I go at this, the more creative I have to be, as my one rule is never repeating any gratitudes, but I do think it helps me be more appreciative.
  • Duolingo: Still stuck in the Emerald League, and only doing around 30XP a day from my previous average of 50XP, I think I’m getting a little fatigued.
  • Books: Not going very well, as I have gotten back into listening to podcasts instead of audiobooks. I think going on longer walks as per /fitness will help with this though.
    • Photos: Although there isn’t much artistic merit to my Instagram, it’s still been to fun to take pause and really appreciate my surroundings.