Hello!

This has been week 10 and 11 of my 52 week-long attempt to document my progress, in order to be more conscientious with how I’m living my year.

It's been a bit of a rocky two weeks, not following up on last week being emblematic of this fact. I got sick and decided to just rest and not write about last week, since there wouldn't be much to say anyway. Luckily the sickness didn't last too long and I'm now back on my feet. And a few things have actually been going my way despite it.

The good:

• Be it the slowly approaching spring sunlight, or me actually being exhausted enough to go to bed on time, but my sleep schedule is pretty good right now. I read a little before bed or just go out like a light a before 10pm, and wake up on my own at 6. This might be a silly notion, but somehow my brain registers the days as being longer now that I wake up earlier. Since I have a lot to do, I appreciate the quiet early morning hours.
• I decided to stop fretting and just get on with my studies. I'm still behind, but at least I've been putting in the effort to really understand what I'm learning and focus for long hours while doing so. Not gonna lie, it's currently taking all my time and energy and shows no signs of slowing down. But I want to get the degree, and will be better off having it. Even if it means putting my other ambitions on the back-burner.
• I don't know if it's correlated, but my skin continues to show signs of improvement after I cut refined sugar out of my diet. I've also been consistent with my skin care routine every day. I notice that I feel better about myself, and not avoiding looking myself in the mirror as much. I don't want to put the cart before the horse, but I'm really hoping my skin will continue to look better.
• This is not related to any of the goals I set for the year, but I went on a date, and it was really nice! An infinite increase of my usual dating rate 😂 I don't know if my dedication to self-improvement lead to it, but it probably didn't hurt to have pulled myself together a bit before hand haha.

The bad:

So the main tragedy in my life right now is that I'm studying an extremely stressful and high-tempo program, and it doesn't leave much time or mental bandwidth for my desire to write and make videos. My classmates are also feeling the heat, so I've at least realized that it's not just me who's struggling to do anything but study to make in time. I live alone, so in between chores and necessary things like exercise, it doesn't leave much to work with.

Like I've said many times before, I don't want to give up, but I might have to come to terms with that's it's just not in the cards for me to do everything I want to right now. I got full-time school, as well as a full-time job lined up for summer when I also have school. At least there will be a bit of a break in May-June, in which I'll be moving cities, but I'm hoping I can use to focus on my creative projects.

Conclusion:

Right now I'm just chugging along, long days of studying from dawn to dusk trying to catch up. At least I'm developing the ever-useful skill of being able to focus without being interrupted for hours on end. That might be the single most important skill one can cultivate. So when I finally have the time to focus on stuff other than school, I should be able to make good progress with my newly developed workaholic tendencies 🤪

Other than studying and crying about first world problems, my main goal for next week will be to get back to running and lifting after being sick. I'll need a lot of exercise to deal with sitting long hours at my desk studying. Nothing too exciting to read about I realize, but I really feel myself doing better in a lot of ways. I'm a long ways from being in the throws of depression, like I used to be.

I'll see you next week. Until then!