at the start of 2024, I made a post setting a couple of goals for the year.
my first goal was more mindful computer use. I'm not quite where I want to be yet with this - for example, I'm writing this post during a plane flight home after the holidays, and I instinctively hit my hotkey to open firefox in spite of there not being any wifi to browse the web. I still have days where I waste too much time on youtube. That said, I still have made progress. I'm not obsessively checking some problematic sites, and I've put in a lot more work on code and reading rather than mindless scrolling.
Helpful, also, has been the changing of the spaces in which I "hang out" online. I'm getting a sorta-social experience from having joined tilde.town and started posting with the gemini protocol. I've had some interesting conversations with cool people (though I need to send more emails out), and I even attended town con in october, meeting several people and putting faces to names in an experience that was intensely valuable for showing me how I like to socialize, and how people like me behave in person. It has been wonderful.
I still want to reduce my intake of scrolly sites, though. I've noticed over the course of the year that my worst days often coincide with the days I spend the most time on youtube watching videos in particular. Learning how the break myself out of the loop of clicking on the next video, or better yet, not go on in the first place, will be the next big step for me.
The second goal was to work on my social life and spend less time alone. I think I've passed that with flying colors - I joined a songwriting club on top of my book club, and have been more involved with music on the whole. The friend I talked about asking about open mics in my hometown - I ended up playing a gig and going to a classical music concert with her. I started a pen-pal situation with a friend from high school. I have a regular coworking arrangement with my best friend, and she lived with me for a couple weeks between homes. I've been really good at this, on the whole.
I still want to push myself a little bit on this. Particularly, I still have issues with being unwilling to ask for help or reach out - one woman I met this year correctly assessed that when asking my bestie if she could reach out to me after we met. I've even made a tiny bit of progress there, though - I recently sent another gal a link to a website about the moon and how it's seen from earth after seeing her post astrophotography to her instagram feed. Is this sliding into her DMs? maybe, but she asked how I'd been doing and we chatted on programming a bit, so I think it's okay.
Funnily enough, nearly all of my small goals I have not achieved. I did not get a job, instead I decided to go back to school for a master's degree. I chickened out and didn't move this year; I'll have to find roommates this summer, instead. But, after living with my best friend for a couple weeks, I think I'm a lot less afraid of the concept than I was. I haven't done any recording, though I played concerts as a member of 3 different bands.
Life has a way of upending my plans - I didn't meet the small goals I set, but those all changed anyways, and I learned so much that it's hard to argue it was a bad year, overall.
text/geminiThis content has been proxied by September (ba2dc).