I stuck to my schedule for the most part. School until 7, and then dinner, French, and domain. I'm about to go to bed because I'm falling asleep in my chair. Why am I so tired? And why didn't I stick to my schedule? I went to bed 25 minutes late last night, which might have something to do with it. I also didn't sleep well, which I can't directly control. I didn't work efficiently enough at school today, so I got stressed out and tired. Overall I did decently though.

Ambition vs. health. It's tough to balance these interests, which often conflict. Sometimes I want to redo Artist's Way for the sake of health, but the time commitment would mean that I couldn't do anything else, including work on the domain name. Is it worth it? Putting aside the argument that doing the program again would ultimately enhance my creativity and thus allow me to fulfill my ambitions, I'm conflicted about this. Part of me thinks, "Just do the domain, then finish the book, and then your extra projects will be done and you can reduce your work load down to one thing--design and planning." The problem is that projects always come up and I always heap tasks upon myself. Specifically, as it concerns the present moment, it seems silly to throw away the opportunity to be a part of the website just to get a few extra hours right now. That's potential financial independence, at the low cost of maybe 20 hours. At least I worked like a champion today.

One point in favor of me choosing architecture as a career is that I like doing it. Today I listened to lectures on the topic from 9-12 and then worked from 1 until 10, without really stopping. I had a bag of trail mix from the vending machine at one point, but I didn't get that hungry, and I didn't get tired really. This is a big plus. I like this shit.

It's good to see posts appearing again from the crowd.
Today was action-packed, and I'll only do a quick gloss: lecture on drawing, studied book on modern architecture, worked on multi-view orthographics for my model from yesterday, started taking measurements for our analysis of the Carpenter Center, and then continued to work on my drawings with model expansion. That shit right there took from 9am to 10pm. I'm tired. Peace.

Day 1 of my program is complete. It was great. We already made a model on the first day, and I think we're going to expand on it tomorrow. We were divided into small groups of about 10, and my group seems tight. It'll be intense, but excellent.
I was proud that I minimized my social awkwardness today. I wasn't Tom Hagen, but who is these days? One day I hope to get to that point, but until then I'll just do my best. There was only one real faux-pas, and it's debatable where the fault lies: I was talking to this guy and he mentioned that he was attending UC Santa Cruz. I asked him if he was from California, just because many of the UC students are from in state, and he was like, "Wait...did I say that?" but in a tone that sounded like he may have been offended. Then I realized that he may have thought I was stereo typing him, because he was drinking some kind of natural drink, carrying a skateboard, had a pony tail, and was wearing some slightly hippyish clothing. The truth is that people of his appearance can be found all over, so I didn't make any assumptions about his home state based on his appearance. Oh well, it was slight, but if I were Tom Hagen I probably could have prevented that from happening.
Not much else happened today. I did some push-ups. The walk from my house to school takes almost 30 minutes, so that's basically my workout right there. I might do a bit of French before bed, but I might not.

Back in PA. Greyhound was a little sketchy.

Today I spent most of my time preparing to leave. I had a lovely dinner with Jin and Andy. Before I go to bed I may analyze a Wittman poem with Mark. Tomorrow, it's peace out Maryland.

Outcome: "Win"
Record: 9-6
Streak: Won 3

Summary: I tackled the day like Brian Dawkins. In seriousness though, my day at work was high intensity, and the fact that I came home and promptly knocked out my personal stuff was excellent.

Outcome for the last two days: "Win"
Record: 8-6
Streak: Won 2

Summary: This period of time will be all about dynamic time management, meaning, I need to be virtuous when I can and not be tyrannical or overly rigid about apriori guidlines. If I make a schedule and something comes up, I need to be flexible and go with it. Right now I just need to accept the fact that my material circumstances are kind of in flux. Anyway, I got a lot of shit done in the last two days. I ate too many cookies at work, but other than that, my days were solid.

Outcome for the last 5 days: Loss
Record: 6-6
Streak: Lost 5

Summary: I know this sounds bad, and it is, to an extent, but it's not catastrophic. I mainly got losses because I was more sloppy than I would have liked, not because I was completely sloppy. So, ideally, I want to do 1 hour of sketching, 2 hours of GRE, and 1 hour of book--then my lost days might have 1 hour of sketching and 1 hour of GRE, or some other incomplete combination. I haven't read that much. I haven't worked on the domain as much as I could have. So what's causing this?
Things within my control: 1. discipline. I'm just not trying hard enough. 2. forgetting the importance of the little things. For example, I'll allow myself to slide and go to bed at 11:30 instead of 10:30, thinking it'll be fine either way, and if I try hard enough, it won't make a difference. Of course, that's wrong, and it does make a difference. This applies to sleep, morning routine, and diet. 3. anxiety. My anxiety has been out of control. I need to meditate and breathe deeply and calm my mind.

Things beyond my control: 1. the game cube. That thing is an asshole. 2. the sleeping situation. 3. the logistical difficulty of doing my homework, specifically my sketching assignment. The apartment isn't well suited for homework, but it's difficult moving the sketching tutorial, since it requires so much crap.

Plan to fix all of this: 1. try harder, try to remind myself of what's at stake in all of this. 2. be sharp and non-yielding on the little things. 3. prepare myself to be mobile and expect not to do any homework in the apartment. 4. knock out the domain thing as soon as possible so I can cross off another thing from my list.

Outcome: Win
Record: 6-1
Streak: Won 3

Summary: Bad wake up, which I must figure out, but then it was good. Wrote a letter, took care of a logistical issue, drafted an e-mail, worked on the domain, studied GRE for an hour, worked on my novel or an hour, sketched for an hour, and ran some errands to get sketching supplies.
I think my sleeping situation is such that bad wake ups are going to be common. If I keep having days like today, where everything but my wake up is good, I can live with that.

Outcome: Win
Record: 5-1
Streak: Won 2

Summary: Today was solid, although my behaviour is still a bit sloppy (the opposite of crisp and deliberate). I've had moments of both high anxiety and pleasant, meditative tranquility. Of course I'm striving to cultivate the latter.
I worked on the domain name, put in 15 minutes of extra time at work, finished section 3 of French, did a calesthenics exercise like the old days, did my laundry, studied for the GRE, and looked at the next assignment in my sketching tutorial.
When I woke up I felt like a mountain of assholes. I don't know what's up. Maybe I'm just not sleeping well in my new environment. Oh well, it's very temporary.

Outcome for 5/20: Loss
Outcome for 5/21: Win
Record: 4-1
Streak: Won 1

Summary: It's all good if I relax on my days off--that's the point--but there is a limit to how sloppy I want to allow myself to be. Yesterday was over the line in several ways. It's not really that significant in the larger picture.
Today was great, except or the fact that I woke up 20 minutes late. It's really true that a bad morning can cast a shadow over the rest of the day. I persevered though, and it was good in the end. I decided that at this point, my fitness goals have more to do with body sculpting rather than body weight. My weight is at least decent--maybe it could go down. But I'm not weighing myself anymore. I did the second part of the dialogues plus the audio part of the grammar for my current section. I wrote a career oriented letter, worked on the domain name for a bit, began writing a second letter, worked on my summer budget, picked up the GRE book, studied the sketching tutorial for 1/2 hour, and worked on my book for an hour. After this I plan to read until bed time.

Outcome for 5/19: Win

Record: 3-0

Streak: Won 3

Summary: I'm too hard on myself sometimes. I need to remember that I'm on vacation, for the purpose of relaxing and recharging, not to work. That said, I still had a decent day. I got up, worked out, called some people, went on a walk, read a bit (yes, finally I did some reading!), slept for several hours, read some more, finished Marius, read, played chess, and I think I'll play Madden until I go to bed. I thought about giving myself a loss since I decided to play Madden instead of continuing to read, but that's ridiculous.

Outcome for 5/18: Win
Record: 2-0
Streak: Won 2

Summary: There were several things that I did poorly today: I woke up late, which meant that I was late for work; I was not relaxed and confident in my conversations; at times I made decisions without clearly deciding on the principle to make them; and I was extremely casual at night with my time. However, there are two big reasons I gave myself the win. #1, I never gave up or gave in. This may seem small, but I know for myself it's significant--there were two cookies I got from work (huge cookies), and I ate one at the time I received them as my one dessert for the day. Then I battled with myself to refrain from eating the other one. The temptation to say fuck it, it's Friday and I'm on break was tremendous, but I stuck to my principle, and more broadly, I kept trying to be virtuous. #2, as I mentioned, my primary goal right now is to relax and recharge, so the fact that I played Madden for hours and hours isn't a terrible thing. I should have been reading, but oh well, it's not the end of the world.

Outcome: “Win”
Record: 1-0
Streak: Won 1

Summary: It’s been some whirlwind shit lately. I worked, did some preliminary finance management, picked up a few things I forgot at my old apartment, set up more stuff at my friend’s place, went grocery shopping, ate dinner, and now I’m getting ready for bed.
I resisted several food temptations at work today. I’m also doing this thing where I make myself manually input phone numbers when I’m calling people, because the other day I had to call someone from another phone, and I didn’t know anyone’s number, not even good friends. It’ll make me less dependent and have a sharper memory. Oh yeah, pretty big news--I’m at 169.9 lbs. I started at 210. I did three sections of exercises and went over the grammar lesson in my French books.
There was something I started thinking about today, and ethical question. I was reading the Washington Post and there was a discussion about cars, bikes, and pedestrians sharing the road. There were the usual comments, but the ones that caught my attention were the ones saying that bikers were assholes and basically “bullies” because they did whatever they want whenever without warning cars. I don’t consider myself a completely out of control biker, but I will go around people, cross at the pedestrian walk at times, and do other things that are probably technically illegal. Some people were arguing that bikers should be bound to every rule cars are. My first thoughts are several. First, even if I should follow every rule that a car does, I’m not going to, because it defeats one of the primary purposes (for me) of riding, which is that it’s fast (faster than my car). If I waited in line at every traffic light, it would take forever to get to work. Second, cars treat bikers like shit, not that it justifies crazy bike behavior, but if I tried to line up like a car and ride in the middle of the road, like I think you’re technically supposed to do, people would yell, flip me off, and run me off the road. I actually have to cruise the shoulder, otherwise I’d get run over. And since I’m cruising the shoulder, I don’t see why I should stop if the main road is blocked but the shoulder is clear, as it often is. Just preliminary thoughts. I’m tired so I’m going to bed.

I debated about whether to estimate the outcomes of the days up until now (i.e., whether to call them wins or losses) and I decided against it. I'm starting again, once again. Tomorrow will be a new day 1. One thing I'm trying to preserve now is the fact that I'm not behind on anything currently. Everything is either ready to go, not started, or where it needs to be, so I'm good--no more ridiculous workloads hanging over me due to negligence.

Outcome: Win
Record: 1-0
Streak: Won 1

Summary: I’m in the midst of a battle with my final class project for 111. When I got home from work, I spent nearly all of my time working on the perspective. It’ll be nice when it’s done on Monday. It is rewarding, nonetheless. My plan is to finish the perspective tonight or tomorrow night, transfer my drawings to vellum tomorrow night, or Sunday early afternoon, and finish the model late into the night on Sunday, possibly missing some work to get it finished.

In keeping with my mission to focus on what works as opposed to what seems like it should work, I asked myself which blog scheme produced the best motivational results? The answer is my win/loss and streak system. It pushed me in a way that others didn't. Therefore, I'm switching back starting tomorrow.
There was a concept I wanted to post about last night but I couldn't get online. It's inspired by Artist's Way and a concept she talks about called "resting on the page". It's when writing is what you do to relax, not what you do when you have enough energy or have the motivation to do it. I have applied this to myself, mainly in drafting, with good results. I stop worrying about deadlines or how far I am, and I just play with it, like a kid. Have that be my TV or video games. Repose in the drafting.

I did a good job today, if not an excellent one. I weighed in around 173, and worked on my French at lunch. I couldn’t quite finish the exercises for lesson 2, but I will definitely finish them tomorrow. I’m trying to go slower this time around to savor the points and really let them sink in. There’s no rush, really. I was ridiculously tired today. I’m psyched to be going to bed soon. I sold my car this afternoon, which takes care of one major logistical issue in “the move to Nevada”, or Philly via Boston in my case. Class was good, although I complained and made sour faces too much. I find that it’s hard to maintain a positive and enthusiastic attitude when everyone around you is complaining and making sour faces. The funny thing is, I actually like the project in a way and I’m getting a lot out of it, so I don’t really hate it, and I actually am enthusiastic about it, but I feel compelled to join in the chorus. Odd. I took a walk between classes in the forest area in the middle of campus. It was beautiful. I haven’t been in a forest in months, and it was very refreshing. Emerson said a man becomes a man again by returning to nature, and I can see what he’s talking about. In Philly I’m going to be in Fairmount park on a regular basis. We reviewed for the final in class 2, which should be easy, and to cap off the night I got a free sheet of chip board for my model, which means I don’t need to go out and buy any.