- My classes are now squarely in the past. You’d think I’d feel massive amounts of relief, but the job search is taking good care of that, let me tell you. Still, it’s nice having one less thing to juggle, and (barring some ghastly surprise) I’m on track to graduate with a 4.0, though that I don’t see how that ends up mattering in any substantial way.
- Progress on my portfolio was dragging along until I decided to set a goal to spend ninety minutes a day on it. The heretofore daunting, seemingly mammoth size of the project is now rendered down into manageable chunks. And it’s working. (As evidenced by the novel-length post that preceded this one.)
- I’m planning to take the same tack with my writing, aiming for a set number of minutes spent writing each day rather than a word count. At least for now. Pretty soon, though, I’m going to have to own up to the fact that I’m just avoiding the work.
- Art-wise, I’ve got plenty of ideas in the works for religious pieces. Metering the releases is working well for me, too, I think. (I’ve got a board in Figma where I plan out when to release each piece.) Getting back into doing more whimsical art is proving slightly more difficult than expected, but that’s mainly my perfectionism getting in the way. Hoping to have something new to show soon.
- This week it dawned on me that my youngest kids may very well live to see the year 2100. Goodness.
- Nonfiction reading: I just finished Longitude. A delight. Books like that — about invention and engineering — are very much my jam. Recommendations welcome. Also, I learned (to my jaw-dropped horror) (okay, that’s overstating it a bit) that Earth’s rotation is gradually slowing down, thanks to the moon.
- I’m about to start Ray Kroc’s Grinding It Out, a history of McDonald’s. I don’t care much for their food, but stories of making things — businesses, food, what have you — intrigue me.
- I’m also a sliver of the way into Walter Isaacson’s Benjamin Franklin biography. It’s great. Apparently I really like reading about the 1700s.
- Halfway through the Neal A. Maxwell biography so far. I could read it much faster — it’s very readable — but I usually don’t have much time for reading on Sundays, so it’s turning into a long-haul book. And I’m okay with that. Gulping down books is great, but I sometimes wonder if slower reading — stretching a book so it lasts throughout a longer period of my life — is better at making a dent in my memory. Or at least a different kind of dent.
- Fiction reading: I finished A Deadly Education and really liked it. Looking forward to the rest of the trilogy.
- I also read Cory Doctorow’s Radicalized. The last story was a bit much for me, but the others were good and thought-provoking.
- I’ve barely begun Matt Haig’s The Humans. I started reading it last night, minutes before going to sleep, and as a result I have absolutely no idea what I read.