Score: +2
Total: 23
Work hours today: ---
Work hours for the week: ---
Days Sugar Free: 1

Comments: Great wake-up, work, studied vocab at lunch, unpacked after work, went for a run in the park (beautiful scenery), started making dinner while listening to NPR, cleaned up around the house, went to Maxx's for some miscellaneous groceries and appreciated their clean and attractive store, finished dinner, wrote some emails, ate dinner with some wine and jazz compliments of WRTI, and soon I'll be going to bed.
Herbal tea in the morning and wine in the evening are great. Wine and jazz, eating and relaxing--it's a very beautiful way to wind down and get ready for bed.

Score: +1
Total: 21
Work hours today: ---
Work hours for the week: ---

Summary: I rebounded more or less from yesterday. I reviewed my system, reminded myself of the wisdom and experience that it was built upon, and recommitted myself. I also reminded myself that sometimes certain elements can be suspended to accomplish necessary short-term goals (although the whole system is required for a long-term, sustained effort). In particular, I'm suspending my "working hours" cap until I take me GRE. My plan is to make sure I cover the fundamentals, i.e., I'm going to make sure I get good sleep, eat nutritious meals, and get exercise. I will also take care of any necessary practical tasks that arise. Other than that, I'm going to spend all of my time studying. No leisure time until the test is over. I plan to take it the weekend after this weekend. After that I'll take a vacation to recover (I think that will be Thanksgiving weekend the following week, no? If so, that'll be perfect). So, for right now, I'm not tracking work hours, since there are no caps in place.

Score: -1
Total: 20
Work hours today: 0.5
Work hours for the week: 0.5/60

Comments: I need a house cleaner and a psychiatrist. Too bad I have no ducats.

Score: +1
Total: 21
Work hours today: 0
Work hours for the week: 53.5/60
Sleep time: 8.5 hours, will attempt next week.

Summary: Painted the apartment and watched the Eagles. I had some thoughts about my hours count. The point is to make sure that I do just the right amount of work. In theory, over 60 will compromise my humanity, and less will be lazy. So far my definition of what counts was based on an idea. I was thinking that since I have the limit to prevent burn out, essentially, I should count anything that feels like work. If it makes me tired, or sucks, or whatever, that's work. If it's fun, it's not. I'll put up with 60 hours of horse shit per week.

Score: 0
Total: 20
Work hours today: 0
Work hours for the week: 53.5/60
Sleep time: 8.5 hours, will attempt next week.

Comments: The sugar experiment is over. Even after 10 days, once I started eating sugar again, I was completely blown away by how different I was. I had no discipline, I was irritable, I had a harder time dealing with complexity and ambiguity (everything was black or white), and I had no energy. The affects of the abuse on my mind and body are so bad, that nothing other than strategy A is acceptable, because I can't handle any more. Starting tomorrow, I will go back to strategy A.

Score: 0
Total: 20
Work hours today: 8
Work hours for the week: 53.5/60
Sugar Liberation Strategy: Strategy A lasted 10 days; Strategy B lasted 0 days
Strategy C: cold turkey with holidays.
Sleep time: 8.5 hours, will attempt next week.

Comment: It didn't work moderating myself today. I'll comment more later

Score: +1
Total: 20
Work hours today: 11.5
Work hours for the week: 45.5/60
Sugar Liberation Strategy: Strategy A lasted 10 days
Strategy B: ween myself off gradually and then not taking holidays once complete: 0 days
Sleep time: 8.5 hours, will attempt tonight.

Comments: That was a prophetic comment you made yesterday Dan--in the end I couldn't resist the sugar. First it was actually a bag of chips on the way home from the parties. Eva wanted a milkshake, and I wanted one as well, but I didn't want to violate my policy, so I decided to get something equally appetizing but without the sugar, so I chose chips. Once I finished them, I felt like I was in a junk food state of mind, or rather, it was probably like a crack head who started out with weed, and tried to quit all drugs, but then decides to smoke weed again, and in smoking the weed, felt drawn toward the crack. It didn't help that my crack was right in front of me in the form of mind blowing chocolate and espresso powder cookies that Eva made. Anyway, I ate a bunch, ate more for breakfast, and then at work the candy dishes were overflowing and there were donuts in the break room. That was the end of strategy A
I'm going to score strategy B in the following way: since I'm looking for the lowest net intake of sugar, I won't count each day as "a day" for strategy B, because each day won't be a full sugar free day. Rather, I'm going to ween myself off in three stages. The first stage, starting tomorrow, will be close to full indulgence. I'll only hold back a little. This might mean 2 sodas, 2 candy bars, some gummies, and a cookie, for example. Stage two will be leveling off to a bit more than my ideal state, maybe 1 soda, 1 candy bar, and some gummies. Then stage three will be where I began strategy A--only 1 home made / quality dessert in moderation per day, maximum. For now I'll count stage one days as 1/3rds, stage 2 days as 2/3rds, etc. I'll try a week on each.
It was scary to see how much the sugar affected me. For a while, when I was first studying the GREs, and I was abusing sugar like crack, I made a great many careless errors, or "concentration" errors as they're called in football. Once I started strategy A they almost disappeared completely, except that I felt irritable instead, probably from sugar withdrawal. Today I made several incredibly stupid mistakes, making for a very frustrating sessions. I mean shit, I wrote out 6! as 6x5x3x2x1--what the fuck?! And it was funny because the book even had an answer that corresponded to the answer I got using that shitty expression. Anyway, sugar is a beeotch.
One thing I was considering--being on strategy A really changed my sharpness for the better. Should I retry strategy A, and continue to try it until I take the GREs, which will be in about 2-3 weeks? I say this because if I do strategy B now, I will still be relatively sugared up come test time, which concerns me. If I do A, then I might be mentally strong on test day, but it might inhibit my long term efforts to break my habit (since I'd be delaying the experiment). Maybe I could do A until the test and start again? Except if I do B, I'll be at the tail end of phase 2 or even into phase 3 by the time I take the test, so it might not be any different, or it might even be better, because I will have gradually come down from my addiction, so I won't be as irritable as when I insist on doing it all at once and being perfect without easing into it. Anyway, that was a jumble of shit, but comments would be appreciated.

Score: +2
Total: 19
Work hours today: 11
Work hours for the week: 34/60
Sugar Liberation Strategy: Strategy A, cold turkey with no holidays--day 10.
Sleep time: 8.5 hours, will attempt Thursday night.

Summary: Admin, Grad school, pushups, GRE, dinner, and soon off to Halloween parties with Eva. I'm going as Raskalnikov. I'm trying to switch to herbal tea in the morning instead of coffee. I'm not noticing any symptoms of withdrawal. Nothing much has happened really. Last night I got 8.15 hours of sleep, and it wasn't enough. Tonight is going to be a late night because of the party, so I'm voluntarily breaking my experiment sequence tonight. This will probably throw off the results for Thursday night into Friday, so I'll try 8.5 on Thursday and on Sunday/Monday.

Score: +2
Total: 17
Work hours today: 11.5
Work hours for the week: 23/60
Sugar Liberation Strategy: Strategy A, cold turkey with no holidays--day 9.
Sleep time: 8.25 hours, will attempt tonight.

Summary: Missed my bedtime, but only by 15 minutes (but that's the point, making sure to be precise for my experiment). Tonight I will do it! Worked, pushups, admin, halloween costume (19th century Russian student), burrito with Josh, Grad school applications, and GRE.

Score: +2
Total: 15
Work hours today: 11.5
Work hours for the week: 11.5/60
Sugar Liberation Strategy: Strategy A, cold turkey with no holidays--day 8.
Sleep time: 8.25 hours, will attempt tonight.

Summary: Went to bed late last night, shame. Tonight will go to bed at 10. Used Philly Car share to get house plants. Graduate school stuff. Meal planning. GRE vocab. Pushups. Was ok at being calm today. Stressed out driving.

Score: +1
Total: 13
Work hours today: 0
Work hours for the week: 60/60
Sugar Liberation Strategy: Strategy A, cold turkey with no holidays--day 7.
Sleep time: 8.25 hours, will attempt Sunday night.

Summary: breakfast, walk, 4th street deli, lorenzo's, calls, and reading after this. I gave myself a 1 because I didn't relax as much as I should have--I thought too much about work. And then when I was trying to do things, like shop for a costume for next week's party, I was indecisive and ended up with nothing. I haven't read yet. The walk was nice, and I stuck to my principles, so it wasn't bad.

Score: +2
Total: 12
Work hours today: 6.4
Work hours for the week: 60/60
Sugar Liberation Strategy: Strategy A, cold turkey with no holidays--day 6.
Sleep time: 8.25 hours, will attempt Sunday night.

Summary: I spend too much time writing on the blog, so posts will be quicker. Breakfast, coffee at La Colombe, Philly Mag, cleaning house, domains, cleaning bathroom, grocery shopping, laundry, dinner, GRE, after this grad school research until Eva comes home. Listened to Radiohead's new album while cleaning. I want to increase my knowledge of contemporary music. Even though tomorrow is a day off, will skip Eagles game to spend time doing something more valuable, like reading. Need to be less tense next week.

Score: +2
Total: 10
Work hours today: 10
Work hours for the week: 53.6/60
Sugar Liberation Strategy: Strategy A, cold turkey with no holidays--day 5.
Sleep time: 8.25 hours, will attempt Sunday night.

Comments: I stayed very calm today, which has been key. I've been trying to mentally embrace each activity as it is taking place, without worrying about what comes after, or what might go wrong after, as if I were doing whatever I am doing at that moment for eternity. That worked well today. I tried a hoagie from Tony Luke's in Center City, and all I can say is that they should stick with cheesesteaks. When I got home I did push-ups and unpacked and then watched The Devil Wears Prada with Eva, which was much better than I would have thought. I found it entertaining and thought provoking, although I wonder about it's correspondence to reality (like, where it would score on the realness scale, if you take the Godfather saying you can never be a real man without spending time with your family as a 10 and Redneck Zombies as a 1). After that I studied French for 20 minutes, with vigor, and then I worked on GRE for a little over an hour. I'm making less stupid arithmetic mistakes, which is comforting, and I annihilated this purportedly difficult problem involving standard deviation. Shabbat dinner was glorious (Eva cooked everything--matzo ball soup, garlic tomato kale, and challa with wine). Afterward we went over color schemes for painting the apartment, and if I have the energy, I'm going to clean up before going to bed. I might just go to bed.

Score: +2
Total: 8
Work hours today: 12.1
Work hours for the week: 43.6/60
Sugar Liberation Strategy: Strategy A, cold turkey with no holidays--day 4.
Sleep time: 8 hours

Summary: Got everything done exactly as planned. It was glorious. work, pushups, 45 minutes of French, 1 hour of GRE, wrote a letter to my grandparents, cleaned up a bit in the kitchen, and researched grad schools for 1/2 hour.
I had an amazing moment earlier when I was studying French. It was 4:45 in the afternoon, and I was dead tired. I was having a hard time concentrating, and I was tempted to go to sleep. I thought about drinking coffee, but I've already had my 1 cup for the day. I was trying to rationalize taking a nap. But then my reason told me that the only good choice was to power through, so I strained to stay awake and focus, and within about an hour (after moving onto GRE), my sleepiness was replaced by exhilaration at how much I was getting done. It was like opposite physical states traded within an hour of me not doing anything physical.
I'll finally get to read Anna K tonight. Hell yeah. I'll have at least an hour, and probably an hour and 15. I should also go to bed on time tonight (10:15), so I can have the first round in my experiment. If, a) I actually lie down at 10:15 to sleep, and b) I don't wake up naturally before the alarm, I'll try going to be at 10, probably Sunday night or next Monday night (weekend nights are relaxed). If I can't get up without the alarm after going to bed at 10, I'll move to 9:45 and so on. I don't give a shit if I have to go to bed at 6:30 pm, I'm going to get to the point where my body gets all the sleep it needs and wakes up comfortably without the need for an alarm.
Also, another significant thing that's going on is that I'm breaking my sugar addiction. This has God knows what kind of affect on my state of being. I have four different strategies for it. Plan A: go cold turkey and never eat pure shit (candy, soda) again. Actual pastries or desserts that are made with artistry are ok (so a Le Bus croissant is ok, but not a Tastykake, and only 1 Le Bus croissant per day, max) This principle goes for all 4 plans. Plan B: ween myself off in graduated steps, and once I'm completely free, never again. C: go cold turkey but allow myself a few holidays throughout the year where I can eat all the shit that I want to D: ween myself off and allow myself holidays. I'm going to try each strategy, write down how many days it lasts, and then whichever lasts the longest, I'm going to keep trying that one until it works or until another strategy presents itself to me. Actually, while I'm writing this I think I should record which one I'm on and how long it's lasting at the top of my blog. And I'll put the sleep thing up there for good measure.

Schedule for tomorrow:

French 15
GRE 1
Bike lock bracket and registration, up to an hour
Remainder on grad school research.

Score: +2
Total: 6
Work hours today: 10
Work hours for the week: 31.5/60

Summary: Did all the stuff on my schedule except get plants and pick up the card. I did more work on GRE than I expected--about 50 minutes. One major difference today was that I took it easy during lunch. I ate slowly, and read an article on the Inquirer, leisurely. It was great. It aided me to be relaxed for the rest of the day and conserve my energy. To try to cram work into my short lunch break, right after 4 straight hours of work, and just prior to 4 straight hours of work, is too hectic.
Unfortunately I won't hit the pillow until about 10:25, which is ten minutes later than I wanted to. Until I actually lie down at 10:15, I won't be able to judge if it's enough time. My plan is to scale back 15 minutes a night (8 hours, 8.25 hours, 8.5 hours, etc.) until I get to the point where I wake up without the alarm. Other things factor in to this, as I've come to realize. I'll blog about it later

Schedule for tomorrow:

I'm leaving the details up in the air, but because Eva is working again, my goal is 12 working hours tomorrow. At least 45 minutes will be French, and 1 hour will be GRE. I'll probably do admin for an hour or more, and grad school for at least 1/2 hour. HOPEFULLY I'll get to read some Anna K tomorrow night.

Score: +2
Total: 4
Work hours today: 10.75
Work hours for the week: 21.5/60

Summary: woke up late, still did my lunch stuff, went to local office supply about shredder, looked up stuff about it online, spent a lot of time researching health insurance, took a walk to get food, jogged, push-ups, and GRE vocab studying. I need to calm down and be relaxed. Breathe deeply. I'm wasting energy by being tense. I probably would have gotten up on time today if I had relaxed more yesterday, and I'm worried about the same thing tonight.

Schedule for tomorrow:

At lunch: reserve car, if needed
Right after work: haircut
Plants, bike store, card, figure out food.
1/2 hour GRE
Initiate contact with Aetna about chiropractic benefits

Score: +2
Total: 2
Work hours for the week: 10.75/80

Summary: The goal from this point forward is to persist, not to be perfect. Sheldon Brown once talked about how a cornerback must cultivate a short memory because even the best corners will get burned from time to time and you can't expect your game to be perfect, otherwise you'll get depressed and suck worse. Every snap is a new chance, just like every day is a new chance. In fact, every moment is a "new snap", so even if I'm riding a negative day, I should still strive to turn it around even at the last minute(who knows, a late save may earn points).
Another "procedural issue"--to protect myself from burning out, I'm capping off my hours worked per week at 60. Actually, I'm requiring myself to work 60, but not more. So I'll keep a running count of how I'm doing with that. To precisely define what counts as work would be difficult, but I know it when I see it. If anyone notices a pattern, the following would count as work: being at work, studying for the GRE, reading my French grammar book, walking to and from work, exercising, going grocery shopping, blogging, cleaning the bathroom, doing laundry, writing a letter, and paying bills. The following would not be work: sleeping, showering, eating, cooking, cleaning, reading, watching movies, walking around, messing around on the internet, and skateboarding.
Beyond regular work, I studied for the GRE for a 1/2 hour, did laundry, did 7 dive bomber push-ups, studied French for 15 minutes, read a paper my sister wrote and gave feedback, researched graduate school programs, and did some general planning.
I did well in the sense that I was disciplined. I could do better by being less tense. I think I contained my anxiety by not appearing anxious, which is key, but I was still wound up. I need to proceed smoothly, unhurried yet deliberate. It's a fine line.
Tomorrow Eva is catering at night, so I'm going to do extra work. Here's my schedule in outline form:

At lunch: call Clark Office Supply to see if they have a shredder and research barber shops.
4:15-4:30: deal with mail/pushups
4:30-5:30: pick up shredder or get a hair cut.
French: 15 minutes
GRE: 1 hr
Health care: complete a significant step
Grad School: 1/2 hour

Yeah Dan, we need to get on the ball, this is ridiculous. Oh god...I imagine being 40 and being like, "ok, starting tomorrow, we're going to be on point, and here's the new rating system we're going to use" on the other hand, throughout all of this, I have been doing things and have been progressing, so it's not a total loss, just not ideal.
I haven't been posting because I haven't had the internet. Finally, after over a month of trying to get it set up, it's working right now. On my birthday, Oct. 22, I'm going to start my +/- points system with a cumulative score. To review, each day gets anywhere from a +2 to a -2. +2 = totally solid effort, on point, disciplined, and moving in the right direction; +1 = net effect was positive, but it was rocky; 0 = I'm at the same place at the end of the day as I was at the beginning; -1 = slight decline, and -2 = total fuck up. It's good because my birthday is on a Monday, so I can simultaneously start a new week and a new year, each year being from oct 22-oct 21 of the following year. I'll do running counts and also keep track of other things. For example, I could do "books read this year", or something like that.
Between now and my start date, I want to build momentum. I want to flush out the crap from my body, get on a good schedule, etc. so that I can start running. I'll post again on the 22nd

Score for 9/6: +2
Total: 4

Summary: Most of the day was spent moving, but I also had a chance to study French and engage in enjoyable, philosophical discourse with Will. It's incredible being in Philadelphia finally. We walked out of the apartment this morning, through the park, and had a liesurely coffee at La Colombe. It's like a dream.

Score for 9/5: +1
Total: 2

Summary: I went for my job interview, spent time working on domains, and got a lot of exercise walking around the city. I didn't spend any unnecessary money, sort of. I had a 5 dollar bill, and I needed to get on the El, but they don't give change, so I bought 3 pretzels for $1 at Philly Pretzel Company to get change. The pretzels were delicious, and by using the El I saved $3, since it was about $2, whereas the regional rail would have been $5 (maybe a bit less because I could have bought the ticket at the counter). It would be great if I got the job. I'm just waiting for now.
In 12 hours I should be setting up my new apartment in Rittenhouse Square. I've been waiting a while for this.

Score: +1
Total: 1

Summary: Did a decent amount of work; ate slightly immoderately. Didn't spend any money and worked out extra to balance the overindulgence.

Score: -2
Total: 0

Summary: Back to zero, but the shame ends tonight. The score is due to the fact that I spent money and ate immoderately. I took my sister back to WC tonight, and Thursday I move to Philly, so I should be getting back into a normal schedule.

Outcome: -1
Total: 2

Summary: I was immoderate with my eating.

Score: 0
Total: 3

Summary: The good and bad were pretty balanced. I ate a bunch of junk food and sat around wasting time for a while, but then I went in and worked 3 1/2 hours. I didn't spend any money.

Score: -2
Total: 3

Summary: Although not an excuse, my sister coming home for the weekend encouraged me to slide. When we both hang out, the junk food inevitably gets consumed, and we made a run this morning for chips, ice cream, and tastykakes. It was out of hand. I spent money and diminished my health. I didn't do anything productive either.

Score: +2
Total: 5

Summary: Solid, solid day. I had a tough time falling asleep last night after my 16 hour sleep the night before, so I read Anna K for a while and didn't go to bed until 1:30. Needless to say, I was tired when I got up at 7, but my first triumph was getting up instead of falling back asleep. Starting then and throughout the day I ate well, I applied to 6 jobs, wrote one letter, took care of admin for 1 hour, ate lunch, read two chapters of Anna K, worked 4 1/2 hours at the shop while listening to one of the most exciting baseball games I've ever (Phillies won), biked for 1/2 hour, practiced Parkour for 20 minutes--I think I learned my first real trick, the kong jump, studied French for 15 minutes, used my white strips, and now I'm watching the Eagles.

Score: +1
Total: 3

Summary:

Something inexplicable happened today--I slept for 16 hours. I went to bed at 10pm last night and then got up at 2pm today. That took a huge chunk of time out of my day, but I still managed to have a net positive outcome. I applied to two jobs, studied French for 15 minutes, worked out for 1 hour, and worked at the shop for 3 hours.

It was great when I had my win/loss system: it motivated me to behave virtuously in order to keep up my win streaks, and it created a long-term way to notice trends and evaluate strategies. Also, for the reader, it's probably more engaging to follow a system that is used continuously over a long period of time, rather than one that lasts a day or so. In the interest of recreating this condition, I am trying once again to establish a meaningful, long running scoring system.
Each day I will award myself a score between -2 and +2, with the in-between values being -1, 0, and +1. The score reflects how much my actions on that day advanced my goals and were in line with my values. My values will undoubtedly evolve over time, but to start, I am imagining 6 broad categories: health, material stability (including financial status), honoring relationships, cultivating understanding/wisdom, happiness, and contribution to the world. This does not rate discipline in a vacuum, it is meant to describe concrete results toward achieving those ends. A zero is no movement, the negatives are regressions, and the positives are progressions. I will keep a running tally and perhaps state the total change for a given week, month, year, etc.
By the way--and this is totally a shot in the dark--I guessed that a significant improvement in my condition in life will correspond with approximately 700 points. Here's how I estimated that: a +2 means I had a really solid day--I stuck to my schedule, my schedule was well conceived, and I improvised and made adjustments as needed. Also, I worked hard when I worked and rested well when I rested. A full year of completely productive days would be 730 points. It makes sense to me that a full year of solid days, (every day being a 4 or 5 under the ancient system) would add up to a significant change. In a year I could easily write a whole book, complete a massive stack of books, get a major promotion, enter into a new program of study, save up a considerable sum, graduate from a certain level of study, etc. I mean, who knows about this, and different epochs will take more or less time, but I was just having fun thinking about how many points would be required to affect massive change.

Score for 8/28: +2
Total Score: 2

Summary: I wanted to start out strong. I followed my dietary principles of moderation and nutrition, studied French, organized some paperwork, did a Parkour warm-up followed by some trick attempts at Indian Lane, applied for another position (and heard back promptly--I got turned down), worked for 4 hours at my dad's shop, worked on the domain project for 30 minutes, started my Crest Whitening Strips, made a schedule for tomorrow, read a chapter of Anna K, ate dinner with my Mom, wrote to Eva, and now I'm going to try to do the second set of exercises in the Inspectional Reading section of HTRAB.

Outcome: "Loss"

Wins: 1
Losses: 1
Streak: 1 Loss

Quality of the day: Excellent

Days excellent: 1
Days not: 0
Streak: 1


Health: I got a great sleep, allowing myself to rise naturally without an alarm clock, ate a healthy breakfast, refrained from eating candy, worked out, ate a healthy lunch, and wore earplugs during the concert.

Material circumstances: I sorted out some things with my new bank account, made an initial deposit, updated my accounting books, made a phone call pertaining to my job search, interviewed someone regarding the same thing, and wrote an e-mail and letter to thank them. I was also frugal today and spent no unnecessary money.

Wisdom/Understanding: I read a chapter of Anna K, listened to NPR this morning, and read an article in Fortune magazine while waiting for my sister to fill out paperwork for her laptop repair. The interview also counts as a boost of understanding. I guess the concert gave me things to reflect about, which may lead to understanding.

Relationships: I spent somewhat quality time with all three of my immediate family members today, chatted with Dan and Will, and wrote an e-mail to Eva.

Improving the State of the World: This category was weak today. It will probably be weak for a while. I tried to be a good person around my family and my dad's friends--not swearing excessively and being polite. I made a point to be polite to the service people I interacted with today, i.e, at the bank, the repair place, concert, etc. One negative thing happened under the duress of my dad, which was when we were pulling out of the venue parking lot, I cut people off left and right because he was being impatient and telling me to go. I should have done what I thought was right and disregarded him, but that's not easy, especially when it's your dad.

Happiness: The concert was meant to bring happiness, but I don't like concerts that much anymore. It was loud, crowded, and idiotic, in a way. I liked Alice in Chains--they played a good set--but overall it was as harsh as it was enjoyable. Anna K and the rain made me happy. My egg rolls made me happy too.

Ok, breaking down posts by "ends" is too cumbersome, so I probably won't do that again. I will try to keep th excellent days count going.

Today was another good day, but I'm dissatisfied with my grading criteria. This has to do with an old objection that I had but I had forgotten about. Discipline is great, but it's a limited thing to focus on. Even if I follow all my orders exactly, did I go about things in the best way? What did I choose to spend my time on? How did I approach each of those things? I'm shifting to Excellent Days. While doing this, I'm not abandoning my struggle for discipline. An excellent day must be disciplined, or at least mostly disciplined. Things to think about: did this day strengthen or weaken my health? How about my financial picture? Happiness? Wisdom? Relationships? The state of the world? Can anyone else add some criteria?

Disciplined Day

Today was awesome. I got up at 7 sharp, got ready, ate a nutritious breakfast, read through a bunch of information relevant to my job search, e-mailed 2 people, created a contacts/networking database, applied for one position outright, had delicious Asian noodle soup for lunch, sent 3 more e-mails, downloaded Gimp, downloaded my trial version of CAD, messed around on LinkedIn, worked on domains for an hour, practiced French, worked out for 45 minutes, read a chapter of Anna K, wrote to Eva, now I'm cooking dinner (spanakopita), and at 7 I'm going to watch the Eagles game. E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES!

Disciplined Days: 1
Undisciplined Days: 7

2 Undisciplined Days

Yesterday because I didn't get up with enough time to have a proper breakfast and shower. As a result I was grouchy at first when Dan and I went into the city. I was pretty good the rest of the day and had a good day overall.
Today I woke and decided to take the day off. Taking a day off is fine, but I told myself that I would work today to make up for some of the lost time this past week. That's a little concerning, but I really do feel like I can get back on this tomorrow. 1) I underestimated how exhausted I would be after my summer program. Honestly, I think I needed 2 weeks off, at least. 2) I have done all the prep work and started my main work, so there's nothing stopping me from just going. Plus, on Sunday, most businesses are closes, which makes it hard for me to call people and set things up. The only thing I need to do today in terms of work is some laundry.

Disciplined Days: 0
Undisciplined Days: 7

Undisciplined Day

I'll keep piling these up, but I'll prevail eventually. I actually disqualified myself right away since I slept through my alarm. When I got up I was depressed that I had an immediate disqualification so I sat on the internet and ate a tastykake. I quickly snapped out of that, showered, brushed my teeth, and ate a very nutritious breakfast. Then I wrote up interview questions for the research phase of my job search, made 2 phone calls, wrote 2 e-mails, talked to one person for a long time, walked to Media, got my hair cut, got groceries, and set up a new checking account. In the evening I hung out with Dan at Borders and Dunkin Donuts. There was some productivity occurring there, mainly reading How To Read A Book and talking about Project X.

Undisciplined Days: 5
Disciplined Days: 0

Undisciplined Day

Same story: decent day, but not perfect. This one was weaker than the last few. TV is such a fuck. One of the best moves I ever made was not getting a TV when I'm not at my parents house.

Disciplined Days: 0
Undisciplined Days: 4

Undisciplined Day

I started strong today. I studied French, exercised even though it was hot as hell outside, and spent a long time taking notes from Parachute. I'm close to having a comprehensive gameplan now for the job search and I'm excited to get it fully underway.
The breech came when I started eating water ice around 5:30. It was a glorious treat, I was so glad to have it since the day was so hot. The problem was that I didn't eat moderately, as I intended to. The other thing was that I sat down to eat it in the living room, and half-way through, my sister came in and turned on the tv, which mesmerized me and made me sit there staring. I hate the television. Later I went to Pinnochios and Wawa and watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Drugs are such a fuck. I'll read Anna K for a bit tonight, and I've already set my alarm for 7 so I'll get up early and have an awesome day. The last three days have actually been pretty good--net result was definitely positive--but I'm still falling short of my goal. Tomorrow I want to notch my first victory.

Disciplined Days: 0
Undisciplined Days: 3

Undisciplined Day

It's a shame that this day needs to be marked as undisciplined, but I'm going for 100% obedience. When I woke up I complained to my sister and my mom about work. They were sympathetic, and the situation is less than ideal, but my complaining was not virtuous. I whined like a bratty child. Once I got to work, I was calm, methodical, and disciplined. After work ended, I ate a healthy dinner, wrote an e-mail to Eva, practiced French, went to Wawa with my sister (I had a small dessert from there), and before I go to sleep I will read a little bit of Anna K.
I want to work on appreciation. Taking a moment before eating to reflect on my good fortune for having food at all would be a good thing. I've been doing that the last few days. This would apply to drinks too, as many people don't have water to drink. Even under the worst conditions, it seems there are things to be thankful of, and wouldn't it be better to meditate on those things than to bemoan the perceived negatives? I really am incredibly fortunate, and if I am to be disciplined, I should not complain (unless the complaint will actually fix something that is unjust or unethical).

Disciplined days: 0
Undisciplined days: 2

I've said this before, and I'll say it again: discipline is my biggest shortcoming right now. I think my discipline is good, relatively speaking, but there's no reason why it can't be 100%. Dan advocates working 100% of our waking hours. I think this is impossible because of energy constraints on the body and the mind. However, I do think that it's possible to be 100% disciplined, which means that your calm, rational mind must give consent to every action before it happens. Does it take energy to muster force of will? When I put it like that, it sounds like it does. Who knows, maybe this is impossible, but I'm shooting for that goal.
Maybe I'll start a count of disciplined and non-disciplined days. To get a disciplined day, I need 100% discipline. I need to be like a fucking Roman soldier, iron willed, no weakness in my executive capacities. If I can continue to be perceptive and intelligent (allowing me to make good plans), and I can combine that with iron discipline (allowing me to methodically carry out my plans), then, "that's when you know it's on".

Disciplined days: 0
Non-disciplined days: 1

I'm back! I'm in Philly again, this time hopefully for good. Wow, it's surreal.
Yesterday I worked on domains, packed, had a lovely dinner, and watched most of Fanny pt.3. Today I rode the train in and read What Color Is Your Parachute, which I would recommend. Later we're getting Indian food at some new place on State Street. I meant to get a pretzel from a vendor at 30th Street Station, but I forgot. Oh well. There will be time for all of these things. I'm back, and things are about to get rolling. Today I want to regroup mentally and relax, and starting tomorrow I'm going to pursue the housing as priority #1.

It's on again.
Wow, my program just finished. I've never had a more "action-packed" 6 weeks. Actually, it was more like "full-throttle", beyond "action-packed". To my surprise my review went great, it seems like I did a good job. Maybe my instructor was just trying to push me, and I misinterprated that as dissaproval.
I need to relax. I'm trying to get back sleep and breathe deeply. There's a lot I want to read. Right now I'm waiting to scan pictures...and now it's ready to go, peace.

I'm going to stop blogging for a while. Here's the reason: the program here is absolutely ridiculous in terms of time demands. I can manage my time as well as I want, but the program still consumes nearly all of it. I know blogging is a little thing, but I want to reduce all my activities down to the most basic level so that I can do the best possible job while I'm here. And ultimately, if I can spend that 5 minutes thinking of a domain rather than blogging, that'll be for the best right now.

After I posted last night, I walked home, took care of my administrative stuff, and read some French. Shamefully, I gave into my temptation to eat a pop sickle, even though I had already had my dessert for the day.
Today I walked to the GSD, paid attention during an awesome lecture, sat through a second lecture, experimented with Photoshop, worked on my cube drawings, started working on my house project for Thursday, had Indian food for dinner at a place called Ghandi on Mass Ave, stopped by the art store, picked up the latest copy of Dwell magazine, and clipped out pictures to give me ideas for my design. After posting I plan to e-mail Eva, finish my cube 2 project, possibly do some more work on the house, and then walk home and possibly finish watching Fanny.
I haven't broken any of my principles yet today. The only thing I did was hesitate and act weakly for a short time this afternoon as I was getting frustrated with my projects.

I got in some walking on my way to class, listened carefully to a lecture on drawing, listened carefully to a lecture on perspectives, ate moderately and semi-frugally, finished my axon with good results, listened carefully during an informal pin-up/critique, completed my portion of the group assignment due tomorrow, e-mailed Eva, and learned some things on Photoshop. Before going to bed, I plan to walk back home, do 7 dive-bomber push-ups (they're an extreme version of a push-up that offers a much more comprehensive exercise), perform my nightly dental routine, and perhaps watch some of Fanny.
Shameful things: 1. being late enough to force me to take the bus. This was somewhat planned, since I allowed myself extra sleep, but still, I should have been able to make it without. 2. Taking too long at dinner--I was talking, it was pleasant, but I should have gotten back sooner 3. Not being as efficient as I could have been during the group exercise.
These are minor things.

So far today I enjoyed sleeping late, ate a healthy breakfast, talked to my Mom, walked to the GSD, created my block design, and enjoyed some pizza at Pinnochios (alas, not the one in Media). By the end of the evening I plan to create two sections and an axonometric of my design, which will complete my homework for the weekend. One thing I did shamefully was that I overindulged in snacks earlier this afternoon.

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.

I’m deep in the trenches right now. I carried myself like a champion thus far, and if I keep it up, I’ll come out the other end with a great project.
In other areas of striving, my weight is back down around 172 and I finished the second time through the dialogue and completed the grammar section in lesson 2. I think I will finish this lesson tomorrow, which is a new record--three days!
I’m considering adopting a new policy, which is to forbid myself from consuming artless sugary creations. Here’s why I use that term. I’m basically talking about candy or other things that don’t provide me with a rich experience but rather a hollow kick of flavor, almost acting like a drug. Foods like pastries or homemade desserts would still be fair game. Craft confections would also be ok. Straight forward soda would not be ok, but maybe a creative alcoholic drink utilizing a soda would be ok. I don’t know if this makes sense. I’m strongly leaning toward adopting this policy. One category in particular that I was wondering about was Tastykakes. They seem half-way between artisan baked goods and junk candy. I don’t want to stop eating Tastykakes, both for the flavor and for the sentimental value they carry. We’ll see.

I felt worn out when I woke up this morning. First of all, I haven't been getting proper sleep, which I can only realistically address once I finish my project, but for the short-term I think I get by with less than perfect sleep. Another thing that I would guess contributed to my state was my pace yesterday. I worked so hard and fast all day--today I need to tone back unless I want to burn out before the week's done.
I was also reminded this morning of how there isn't much buffer time between when I get up and when I go to work. I normally wake up at 6 to write and then start getting ready for the day at 7. On days like these, when I need to shift all my attention to one thing, I skip the writing and get up at 7. I need to leave my apartment at 7:50 to get to work on time, so I have 50 minutes. In that time I need to shower, get dressed, pack my bag, eat my breakfast, and pack my lunch. I've gotten into the habit of eating a huge breakfast to provide me with sustained energy throughout the day. I learned this in Canada, and it really works. Well, this morning I decided to sleep an extra 10 minutes and then compensate by rushing through my routine. In retrospect this was a bad trade off. It's true that I gained energy from my extra 10 minutes of sleep. However, I lost energy because I didn't have time to eat my full breakfast, not to mention the fact that I didn't have enough time to scrounge up a full lunch. The regenerative power of excellent nutrition outweighs that of 10 minutes of extra sleep. In the future I need to get up at 7 (or 6) promptly with this observation in mind.

Great all-around day. I didn’t indulge myself at all. For example, even though I allow myself 1 dessert, I didn’t take it. I also would have been permitted to watch the Phillies game on game cast, but I didn’t. I’m not trying to be needlessly harsh with myself. It’s more a question of trying to put myself into overdrive mode to do nothing extraneous until I finish my class project.
I got my grade in the second class so far and it’s solid--over 100%. The project for the first class is going well, and I think it’ll be great in the end. I studied the dialogue from lesson 2 in my French and went through the audio the first time.

When I got home from class I cleaned the kitchen as thoroughly as possible without pulling out the stove and cleaning behind the appliances. The best part was I did it vigorously and it only took 45 minutes to do everything--dishes, emptying the dish washer, surfaces, trash, and floor.
I need to eat more slowly and remember to breathe. I gave myself indigestion from eating too fast at lunch and between work and class. Admittedly, those two times are extremely tight, and I’m often under stress then. Maybe if I get a palpable lead on my UPS shit at work and just focus on eating and cleaning up between class (in other words, taking care of my work and eliminating extraneous stuff), I can reduce my stress.

I hope to be consistent one day.
My post last night seems ridiculous to me now. It occurred to me that I basically know how to be effective--schedules, budgets, policies, etc. How to think about everything seems less important than what you actually do. There's a basic level of pure will, seriousness--the opposite of the carelessness that the Godfather talked about--that is required to do anything. There's no trick to this. To treat your protesting mind as if it requires an answer is to give it too much credit, and it undermines your efforts. Just say fuck you to this part of your mind and start working. The real work of strategy and the science of being effective is to know how much of each thing is proper, or when to set deadlines, or what your policies should be. Say, 1 dessert a day as opposed to 1 every other day.
So, I'm still going to keep track of my progress. But I won't worry about how I'm thinking about it, or anything like that. I'll just do it, and we'll see how effective I am. I'll list total number of pages read, number of lessons, pounds lost (or gained), etc. as I go along, and I'll tweak my system as it seems necessary.

I'm going to try an experiment. I'm going to tone back my efforts to control myself. I will yield to spontaneity and resist the impulse to systematize my life. This will be difficult, but I want to learn the best means to live effectively, which means I need to try as many different plausible strategies as possible. I'll reign myself back in if I seem close to disaster. One element of control that I will retain, however, is that I will attempt to monitor my experiment vigorously.

Unless Dan pulls something out of his ass beyond what the Tattaglias can guarantee, I'm staying with my buddy Mark here in Annapolis until my program begins.
I'm kicking ass and studying hard. By the end of this weekend I should be back on track, and back on a normal healthy schedule. Word to getting past this ridiculous little detour of horse shit--a man in my position cannot afford to be made to look RIDICULOUS!

Another great day for discipline. I followed all of my basic principles, which in itself adds up to a lot. I went through some exercises in my French program at lunch, and I spent some time with my grammar book in the evening. The main accomplishment for the day was the progress that I made in my logistical planning for the summer.
For the rest of the night I plan to eat, do laundry, and go to bed. I want to be asleep by 8pm at the latest. I have a major sleep deficit at the moment.

I got into the summer program! I'm psyched about that.
Class went well tonight. I got helpful feedback on my first project, and then I gave a presentation in the second class, which the prof said was good. I was a bit worried because I only got 2 1/2 hours of sleep last night due to homework, and I thought I might sound drunk or something during my talk, but I felt fine and seemed to do well.
My discipline was excellent today.

I started monitoring myself around 5pm today.

Progress: I sustained a high level of focus during class and made inroads on my projects.

Ethics: Discipline was good. I would give myself two demerits--one for clicking my nail against my teeth during class and another for swabbing my ear with my pinky (both unsanitary and unsightly actions). On the flip side, not horrible transgressions, and they were both involuntary. Ideally I could eliminate the unsightly, involuntary things I do, such as cracking my joints, clicking my teeth, and picking my ear. My posture is also atrocious.
I had good humility in class (won't get into details). Unfortunately my tranquility was off. I have an anxiety problem, pure and simple. When I get good sleep, eat well, exercise, and give myself time to rest, it greatly reduces my anxiety, so until I can afford professional help, I can take these actions to minimize the problems. My vigor was exemplary, especially considering my sleep deprivation. My social grace was ok, but the above-mentioned bodily stuff lessens my social grace.

I'm ready to pull myself out of the senseless funk that I've been in lately. *cue Rocky music*

I collapsed last night. The people in class started bitching about the project and chatting about non-related crap, and I joined in. It was shameful. I need to be more disciplined.
Notwithstanding, I think there was a strong contributing factor to my collapse which was outside of my control at that point. The night before I had only slept about 3 hours (I had to stay up to do homework), and I ran out of steam once I got to class. I'm going to start generating my schedules with more consideration given to my immediate state. Like, in the abstract, maybe I could expect to do 3 hours of homework tonight, but because I'm sleep deprived and I haven't had a break in a while, I'll lower that to 1 hour, I'll rest for 1 hour, and I'll go to bed an hour earlier. This is all obvious shit, but for some reason it's hard for me to consistently observe it.

Days Since a Collapse: 1

Progress: Weighed in at 176.4 and completed a first read-through of my French lesson. I'm going back through my Living Languages Advanced French program. This time I expect each lesson to take 4 days, which means the program will last 80 working days.
My weight is shameful, but it's not a surprise since my eating and exercising habits have shameful. I intend to correct that starting now, and I hope to break 170 before I leave Maryland.
Tonight in class I will advance at least my first project, if not the one from the other class as well.

Ethics: I did well with social grace today. I was conscious of how I presented myself to others, and I think I did a good job.
I was also disciplined in general, since I had a virtuous day today after several weeks of only semi-virtuous days at best.
I suffered from my usual anxiety, but in a milder-than-normal form.
The main area that I could have done better in was patience. There was a slice of pizza up for grabs, and I was so eager to eat it, that I picked up the nearest plate, which was disposable, and popped it into the microwave. If I had paused for a second, I would have realized that I have a ceramic plate in my work area that I could have used, thus saving a disposable one. I was also impatient to get home to see if I received word from my summer program, which I did not. There's an anecdote from the life of Lycurgus that keeps re-emerging in my memory. It was said that when he received correspondence, even ones of great personal consequence, he would delay receiving it for at least one day in order to cultivate patience. That's real. If I get my response letter from the program, it won't be wrong for me to open it, but it will be awesome if I can put it aside for a day and wait in patience. I'll try to do it when the time comes.

Outcome: "Win"
Record: 3-0
Streak: Won 3

Summary: My weight is down to 174.1. I'm very surprised that it's not higher than that after the last two weeks. Tomorrow I should finish my current French program. I wrote a letter, and in a little I'm going to my classes. I still have As in both of them.
My emotions went ape on me today, but I powered through it. My monk/warrior paradigm serves me extremely well when I use it. To review, that's where my first move is to be tranquil, even meditative, and go about each task in a calm, orderly fashion, fully embracing each task for its good, and not paying attention to time or how close I am to being done. If this doesn't work, I switch to the warrior mode, where I power through each thing and almost punish myself with more work. When I start having anxiety about not finishing, or if I start being impatient, I'll stop paying attention to that and just tackle my assignments.

Outcome: "Win"
Record: 2-0
Streak: Won 2

Summary: So far so good. My weight isn't as bad as I thought, given how lazy I've been lately--it was around 174. I did a long lesson in French at lunch. When I got home I cleaned up around the house. I'm going to hang out with Eva tonight and then go to bed early.

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

Summary: It was a good thing when we were posting, so I'm reaffirming my commitment to it. I see the last few weeks as a steady decline in my self-control, so I am exerting all of my willpower to restore discipline. Today I obeyed myself.

I don't know what made me think of this, but I had an experience at a Wawa that would probably make Philly natives want to puke. So here's the story:
I went in and ordered a standard cheese hoagie: american, provolone, LTO, oil, oregano, sweet peppers, a bit of salt, and a very light amount of mayo. (All right, I know mayo is a point of debate, with most people probably saying it shouldn't be on there, but that's completely beside the point). Anyway, I went out to the car to eat it, and when I opened it up, the sandwich was a horror to behold. Not only was there just one type of cheese on there--american--but there were four of those fucking triangles on the bottom, Subway style. I almost hurled it down like Dan at Sarcones. I went back in, trying to stay calm, and I showed the person at the deli. She could barely speak English, so that made it difficult (either that or she was really tired). Then, she told me, "I gave you twice the amount of american which meant that I couldn't give you any provolone." I stopped being able to speak English for a second because I couldn't fucking believe what I was being told. After collecting my thoughts, I showed her my ticket and said that, #1, I ordered american and provolone, and paid for american and provolone, so both cheeses better be on my hoagie, and #2, if Wawa has changed its policies so that now they only put on a Subway quantity of cheese, I want a refund and I'm leaving. After I said that, she actually started getting surly. She mumbled something unintelligible, and finally she slapped down two pieces of provolone haphazardly on top of the sandwich. I should have made her reconstruct the whole sandwich with me watching, but I feel bad about wasting food, so I just settled for some added slices on the top.
Anyway, that was my latest Wawa story.

All right, forget about that shit, I'm going back to a win/loss system. I know it's ghetto, but it was effective in its own way. To review, a win means: generally good ethics, good discipline and following my plan, completing my work. Just following my plans and principles.

I'm going to roll old school like the cave man that I am.

It was good when I would post every day no matter what happened. I want to return to that. Even though I'm in the middle of upgrading my blog, I want to resume posting.

Eh yo,
So I'm waiting to unveil my new blog design before I resume posting, but for the rest of yous, what the hell is going on with the lack of updates?

I crashed and burned today. Overall, this was my worst day of 2007 so far. After Dan and Heroko left, I didn't want to work, and I sat there feeling extremely depressed. The house was empty, I had a mountain of work looming over me on what should have been my day of rest, and I was thinking about my dinner of brown rice that awaited me in a few hours. It was all too much and I said fuck it. I bought some candy and fries and messed around on the internet until 11pm. This royally screwed me. I can't believe I did this. I absolutely cannot believe this. This is a loss/1/straight 0s, or whatever. Here's how I'm going to try to salvage this:

1. The money I spent won't really be an issue. It's not as if I have absolutely nothing left at the end of the month. I have a small surplus, so that will absorb my junk food spree.
2. No desserts until at least Saturday, provided I'm back to my normal level by then. I need to eat only the most healthy foods between now and then to give me energy to make it, because...
3. I will probably pull an all-nighter tonight. I hate the thought of doing that with all my soul. I swore off that practice, but now, because I screwed up so bad, I'm faced with a choice: either I can not complete me work, or I can not sleep. Since not completing my work is not an option, I won't sleep.
4. The all-nighter plus the junk food will wreak havoc on my system. I'm "shutting down all non-essential systems" as it were. I'm only sleeping, working, or doing school stuff until probably Saturday. That means no writing, posting, reading, or leisure time this week. Any spare moments I have I will use to sleep. I'm also going to drink boat loads of espresso so that I can stay awake. I'll bring coffee to class with me so I don't fall asleep.

Godfather, please forgive me for this transgression. I'm an asshole. I don't know what happened. I completely collapsed. I'm brimming with self-loathing at the moment.

Regarding my progress for Friday:
My emotions frustrate my reason, but I would never wish to part with them. That doesn't mean that I don't wish to habituate myself to tend in various ways, Aristotle-style. I have a long, long way to go with my rigor. At least now I graduated to the next level.

3 lessons in French, weight at 171.8, 50% of a chapter, nearly complete on my wall/roof section, started preparing my list for model supplies, and assorted admin. I found out I have a 100% in one class and above 100% in the other.
I've observed a behavior in myself that I need to correct. I subconsciously pace myself so that I will finish exactly at the deadline. This sounds good, but it's not. The reason that's it's not good is that there are almost always unexpected challenges or things that take more time than anticipated. For example, if I plan to finish a drawing and build a model in one night, and I have from 5-10 to do it, and it's not quite 7 and I'm almost done my drawing, I'll slow down a little bit because I feel like I'm ahead and I can relax. Well, it's not quite that exactly, it's almost like an aesthetic thing, like I want to time my completion perfectly. Anyway, I slow down, and then the model ends up taking twice as long as I thought and I have to stay up late.
The solution is just to go for the jugular. I should come out of the gate with intensity, and knock that shit out just as fast as I can. Don't stop, don't hold back. This is what the Eagles needed to do more of early in the 06 season. They would do awesome and then kind of lose that urgency. And we saw what happened with that. I need to, as Brian Dawkins said, "fly to the rock, and hit cats in the mouth".

I'd like to revamp my blog both visually and in terms of the tools of analysis presented in each post. For the latter I would like to implement a template like the one Dan had for various virtues, except I would cover a broader range of things. To Derek and Dan: would either of you be willing, and have the time, to program a template if I sent you mock-ups of what I wanted visually?
Finished about a full chapter this morning, one long lesson in French, and weighed in at 171.8. I could have been more vigorous writing this morning, but it was good. Oh yeah, and I worked on my summer studio application for about an hour. I'm trying to find a Plato quote that's been eluding me, which is annoying, but I started on my resume.
I'm short on time because it's a Wednesday.

I'm still thinking about what type of rating/critique apparatus I want to use, if any. But regardless, starting tomorrow morning, if I post, I did my shit. That's the quantum leap. I'm not announcing completions, because that's the new minimum. Anything less, and I'm out of here, because I don't deserve to strive for greatness.

I'm going to implement a new system in the coming days. I want my blog time to simultaneously serve as truly productive self-reflection time, and in order for my time to be more self-reflective, I think my progress needs to be tracked in categories and in more concrete terms. I'm considering something like listing projects that are currently being worked on, their percentage completion, and the change in status for that day, kind of like a loading bar or something. Actually, let me step back for a second. I concluded that my striving falls into either the category of general moral behavior or productivity/achievement. Achievements would be tracked with the percentages. I don't know how I'm going to handle moral rating. Maybe a 1-x scale, or maybe a chart by virtue, like Dan used.
I finished watching My Architect for the second time, and it drives home the pathetic nature of my attempts up to now. Basically, I think we all need to make a quantum leap. Currently, the question is, "did you execute? Yes=good, No=Bad". Instead, we need to start asking, "is your execution optimal?" The question as to whether or not there was execution on any level is pathetic. That need not be a question; in other words, not doing something is simply not an option. Andy Reid can't turn to his staff, ask them to come up with free agency strategies, and then have them show up to their meeting without having completed the task. That's not even a fucking option. No one even wonders whether or not it will be completed. It will, but the question becomes, did you complete it as well as it could be completed within the given parameters? Same thing applies to any professional or serious setting. If you showed up to a review with Louis Kahn and you didn't finish...are you kidding me?
So for me, for example, I need to write. I shouldn't even post about that, because it should assumed. I need to complete my homework, as well as my French, and all my other projects. That should be assumed. The critique needs to shift to strategy and execution. The punishment for not programming because of comedy or something like that should be a lifetime sentence of being a fucking clerk or a programming monkey. One of my professors was telling me about someone who showed up to a review in grad school with only a partially completed project, and they gave him a quarter and told him to call his parents to let them know he wasn't going to be an architect and arrange for him to come home. That's the level that we aspire to, is it not? Do you think we're ever going to be Catos, or Kahns, or Ben Franklins by fucking around and wasting our relatively obligation-free days? No, that's a complete fucking joke. I don't think any of us even comprehend what it would be like to do the work that we're striving toward. I want to be better than Kahn, because I want to achieve that level of mastery, plus I want to be a good family man. So this is the quantum leap that needs to be happen before we can even talk about any kind of shit. I'm mentally bracing myself.

Outcome; "Win"
Record: 137-10
Streak: Won 19

Summary: Got up at 11:30, had pancakes, muffins, and coffee at a friend's house, read articles online, went for a walk in the snow, watched 400 Blows, read, made cheese fries and coconut stif-fry for dinner, and after this I'm going to drink hot chocolate and go to bed. It was a work-free and relaxation filled Sunday.

Week in Review: Bizarre things happened this week in terms of my energy levels. The only thing I can think of is that the car episode stressed me out, which led to me eating so-so in the middle of the week, which led to a slight but noticeable decline in energy, which freaked me out because I couldn't see why it was happening, which stressed me out more, which culminated in my near loss on Saturday. It's shitty because I feel like I'm on the cusp of being able to have an almost totally perfect week. I've achieved components off and on so far, and I don't see why I can't put them all together. Next week I'm primarily shooting for consistent excellence and pacing myself so that I'm still going strong from Wed-Sat.

Outcome: "Win"
Record: 136-10
Streak: Won 18

Summary: I slept in and tried to move at a leisurely pace this morning to recover my energy. Eva and I went and got cappuccinos, shopped for our groceries, and then I got down to business on my homework. I finished everything for Monday, and now I'm going to read until Eva gets back.

Outcome: "Win" (changed from loss)
Record: 135-10
Streak: Won 17

Summary:
*UPDATE*
Fuck a loss--I just constructed a cube that is so awesome and precise, that I think even Louis Kahn would have been happy with it. Seriously, I prevailed, I feel like a champion, and this one victory was so sweet that it negated the rest of my floundering around for the day.

Old post:
I feel like shit for losing today, but I don't know what I could have done. It sounds weak, but I was so dead tired all day today, I didn't feel like doing anything. Some days I can make myself work even if I'm tired, but today I had no strength of will. Oh well, the 100 was a quixotic goal anyway. Maybe someday I'll get it.

It seems to me that living well usually requires balance, but this isn't as simple as it sounds. Here are two examples that occurred to me:
1. This week I've been thinking about confidence. I tend to err on the side of being overly cautious, which at its extreme moments might really just be cowardice. Like if I'm building a model. I want every piece to be absolutely perfect, so I take a long time to draw each line, cut very slow with the blade, glue as carefully as I can, etc. I've actually found that if I'm too careful, or perhaps too timid, that can be just as harmful as if I were rushing through haphazardly.
The solution is balance. In this, and in other endeavors, it is important to be confident, and to work at a steady, vigorous pace--jump right in even if you can't envision the entire process in complete clarity. On the other hand, it is also important to be patient and exercise care while working. We must constantly reflect on the progress of the action and be willing to make adjustments. Applying the proper measure of each of these concepts is what produces effectiveness. On the overly thoughtful side you have those pussy generals that Pericles was trash talking in Thucydides, and on the over confident without being reflective side you have someone like George Bush.
Hmmm...no time to write about my second example. Maybe later. I want to give a recommendation for the film My Architect really quickly--great, inspirational movie. Plus it has a lot of Philly in it. Hell yeah on reading Plutarch Dan.

Outcome: Win
Record: 134-10
Streak: Won 16

Summary: Chugging along. I think the ghost of Lou Kahn might call me tonight at 3 AM to tell me my model looks like a piece of shit. I'm debating whether to do another one. I like it, but it isn't perfect.

Outcome: "Win"
Record: 133-10
Streak: Won 15

Summary: I spent so long responding to Dan's post that I don't have much time to write my own post. I almost threw in the towel and took a loss today, but in a last second miracle I persevered. Normal activities today. Weight at 173, three lessons of French. Class tonight. Action packed!

Outcome: "Win"
Record: 132-10
Streak: Won 14

Summary: Car is messed up again, so that's interrupting my schedule in a huge way. I excused myself from writing this morning because I would have fallen asleep at the computer even if I did get up. With morning pages I required myself to get up no matter what, since they work just as well if you're half-passed out as they do when you're awake. With my book, however, I need to be at least sufficiently alert so that I'm not writing total horse shit. As I said, the book is not a project or a requirement. It'll take all the time it needs. If I don't do it one day, that's all right. I'll try to do it as much as I can, but I'm not going to force it. Having said that, I might not work on it tomorrow either, since the morning would be the only time that I could potentially spend on it, and I'm already feeling extremely wiped out. We'll see.
In addition to the car, what else have I been doing that's wiped me out so much? Mainly class work. Working full-time and taking these two classes has been hectic to say the least. But I'm kicking ass, so it's all good. I did two lessons in French, weighed in around 174, spent 3 hours working on a model, and spent about 20 minutes touching up a drawing for a presentation tomorrow. I got extra credit in one class for having my project done on the date that we were supposed to have it done because almost no one else did.

Outcome: "Win"
Record: 131-10
Streak: Won 13

Outcome: "Win"
Record: 130-10
Streak: Won 12

Summary: I ended up not having a day off, but it's OK. I'm working on not pitying myself, because, first of all, I agree with Emerson that you can only be ripped off by yourself, and second of all, I have an extremely luxurious and wonderful life.
I went grocery shopping, did laundry, cleaned the kitchen, finished my drafting projects, and then went out to dinner for a belated Valentine's Day dinner with Eva. The dinner was fantastic. Everything else was solid and I'm happy with my completed projects.

Week in Review: I put in a completely solid week. It wasn't perfect--one day I didn't do French, I could have worked harder at times, I didn't write on Saturday, I didn't read, I didn't have a day off, and I didn't completely control myself emotionally, although I was better than normal. I was moody a little this morning, for example.
Next week will be more mellow since I'll be handing in my projects tomorrow, and then we won't have a test or a project for at least 1 week. Also, I'm getting my car back from the garage tomorrow, and I feel like odds are that it should be all right for a while before it needs another repair.
Goals for next week:
1. I want to focus on suppressing my feelings of self-pity.
2. I want to make it so that when I work, I'm working very hard, and when I'm relaxing, I'm completely relaxed and not worrying about anything. I've already vastly improved in this category, but I could get better.
3. I want to fucking read! Damn, am I never going to finish another book again? Of course I know I'm being dramatic. But I really would like to read. My goal, seriously, is to read from 4 pm until 11 pm on Saturday. Mark those words.
4. I just want to maintain all of the good stuff that I've been doing.

Outcome: "Win"
Record: 129-10
Streak: Won 11

Summary: I think I just saw a tumble weed blow past me in the cyberspace of our web ring.
Today I kept plugging away on my projects, with leisure mixed in. I got up at 11, made omelets, coffee, and fruit plates, ate with Eva, started listening to WRTI and my own music, and drafted until now. I just took a break to grab a snack and write this, but then I'm going to get back into it. At 7 I'm going to an employee appreciation party for my work.
I like my drawings. It's satisfying to work so long on something and then to see the results compressed into a single, beautiful object.