Halfway mark

Driftwood whorl

Driftwood along the 804 trail in Yachats, Oregon. I still haven't been doing more picture sorting, but thankfully I'd already identified quite a few pictures I wanted to post.

It's about halfway through Christmas vacation, so a good point to take stock of how I'm using it, what's been working, and what hasn't. I also am using this vacation to clear my head and refocus my life, so I'm now through the unwinding phase and moving into the phase where I start working out goals for after I return home, and more generally for next year.

One thing that's worked well is catching up. I haven't been putting large chunks of energy into it the way that I was hoping that I would, but I've been fairly successful anyway. My non-work to-do list has shrunk considerably, particularly after a bout of productivity on Saturday, and I'm completely caught up with Lintian for the first time in quite some time (last May at least). That's taken a lot of psychic pressure off.

I've been doing well with reading, although my pace of reading has now dropped off. I've been doing reasonably well with reviewing. I still have a two-book backlog, but I feel like I've gotten that sorted out and am getting back into a rhythm. For some reason, if I go for too long without writing a review, writing reviews starts feeling intimidating and I have a harder time doing it. Writing them fairly regularly seems to reduce the pressure.

Pictures are somewhat in the not working category. I haven't taken any on vacation so far, and I haven't done anywhere near the sorting of older pictures that I was hoping that I would. Maybe something to focus on for next week.

General relaxing is going very well, though. I'm feeling much calmer, much more centered, and much more emotionally grounded. I've shed the constant feeling of pressure and need to push myself, and I think I'm getting into a fairly good mindset for planning for next year. Tuesday or Wednesday, I'll sit down for a while and do some serious thinking about that.

My main goal for the rest of the week is to spend some time reading each day, write a book review each day, and cross a couple of things off my to-do list each day. That's fairly aggressive, but if I do that, I'll clear a ton off my plate, be completely caught up with reviews, and take a big step towards re-establishing some habits that I want to have going into the new year.

I hope everyone who celebrates it had a wonderful Christmas, and everyone who doesn't celebrate it had a wonderful and hopefully long weekend.

Posted: 2009-12-27 23:20 — Why no comments?

Last spun 2022-02-06 from thread modified 2013-01-04