Tag Archives: goals

Today I failed to make choices

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
July 12 2020

I feel like from the time I woke up, to the time I’m writing this at night (9:33 pm.), I failed to make any good choices at all. There were choices in there, but I wasn’t conscious of most of them, and for the ones where I tried to make better choices, I feel like my internal scripts ran stronger than personal will.

The morning was relatively simple, since I had ordered groceries yesterday for pickup today. Nothing exceptional, basic stuff. Then I drove to a friend’s house who makes masks for friends and picked up new ones for Andrea, Jacob and myself. I had two, but had broken the strap on one, and the other is a bit small, plus Jacob had kid-sized ones that were too small. The new ones are both larger for the face (women’s sizes for both Andrea and Jacob, since they have virtually the same dimensions) and adjustable for the loop length.  » Read the rest

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Today I choose to blog (TIC00008)

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
July 12 2020

That doesn’t seem like much of a choice, does it? I mean, how hard is it to blog? Or why is it significant?

For me, it was an actual choice today. Well, almost last night really. I was thinking, “It’s the weekend…and although I’ve started the “Today I Choose” self-challenge, did I want to perhaps adjust it so it was only a Monday-Friday thing?” Could I do the Seinfeld method of the longest chain if it was 5d on and 2d off?

So I debated whether I would blog today, Saturday. Things are a bit odd already with the “choice” challenge I gave myself. I spend the day doing my choices, I write up the posts at night of the choice I made that day, but then I write in the “present tense” even though I already chose. I’ve been playing with it in my mind, honestly, whether I should go back and change all of them to the past tense grammar to be “Today I chose”.  » Read the rest

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Articles I Like: 10 Small Habits That Have A Huge Return On Life

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
July 11 2020

Given my interest in goal-setting and self-improvement, I am a sucker for anyone with articles that sound like they are easily digestible and might trigger some other personal thoughts. Since I use Firefox, and the opening page has popular articles on it that are being shared on Pocket, I frequently find one or two here and there to click on. If they’re about goals, I almost always click.

Today’s feed from Pocket included a reprint/repost of an article from Darius Foroux from September 2018 about which habits you can adopt which will have the highest rate of return for you (10 Small Habits That Have A Huge Return On Life – Darius Foroux). Note that we’re not talking about setting a goal, and deciding which method will get you there, this is about various habits that will get you to ten separate targets where the method is part of the journey itself.  » Read the rest

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Today I choose flexible meal options (TIC00006)

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
July 10 2020

We are fairly fortunate individuals, with a roof over our heads and good jobs with the ability to work from home, our son is safe with us, we have working internet, and our fridge and freezer are reasonably well-stocked. Once a week, I make a grocery run and we can make outings to vegetable/fruit stands to get some fresher food than the grocery store too.

We also know how to cook, with my wife doing the vast majority of the meal planning and cooking, with decently healthy choices, particularly with her Epicure options. In a non-pandemic world, Andrea and Jacob would have breakfast together, and I may or may not grab something in passing. I rarely sit down for a full meal with them in the morning. Dinners, as I said, are usually in Andrea’s domain and my job is to fetch the groceries she needs in order to cook. Lunches were more of a hybrid option.  » Read the rest

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Today I choose to support some social communities (TIC00005)

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
July 8 2020

Whenever someone is doing some fund-raising, I’m usually fine to support their efforts. I don’t often care too much what the organization is, as long as the person doing the fund-raising isn’t a whackjob that makes me suspect the outcome, I’m happy that they are engaging with some organization and want to support it. I don’t necessarily support the organization, or even care about it, to be honest, I’m doing it to support my friend.

$20 here, $50 there, whatever. It’s a social decision. Recently, our local astronomy group was wondering about membership fees for a number of members who might be struggling with their finances right now, so an option was created to allow others to give a bit of money to help cover those fees, since most of them are not waivable but go to cover per unit costs for magazines, books, etc. So I slipped them a couple of bills to help out.  » Read the rest

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