You Need Goals in Times Like These

I hope that this blog post finds all of my readers happy and healthy. It feels really strange having to write that because of all the death that’s descending upon us. Covid19 is really hitting my state (New Jersey) really hard. If you’ve been reading my newsletter, you’d know that we’ve been self-isolating for several weeks. It’s downright scary.

There are some small silver linings to all this, I’ve heard from many friends that I haven’t heard from over the years. We’ve been catching up via Zoom video calls. My kids have been doing virtual schooling and I started taking an online class in Go Language. As a family we’ve been working outside in the garden (as weather permits) and I’ve been baking up a storm. I’m also spending more time studying Karate and working on my Kata.

One can argue that I’m doing all this stuff to keep my mind off what’s happening and I’d say you’re partially right. My wife introduced me to a new book called ‘Atomic Habits’ and it’s helped me ‘stack’ some goals that I wanted to get done for a longtime. For example, I wanted to learn GoLang, write more in my journal, and practice more Karate. So now I stack stack some these items together in the morning around my coffee habit.

In the mornings I make coffee and while it’s percolating I go practice the Kata I’m working on. Then I sit down and write in my journal anything I want to capture. The minimum I write everyday is my location, the temperature, weather conditions, and the time I wrote it. Then I add anything I want to capture. After that I turn on the computer and start my Go Language course. This the main reason why I migrated this blog away from Pelican in favor of Hugo, a Go Language static website generator. Granted, there are a few bumps here for the time being and I’m sure nothing a few .htaccess redirects can’t fix but in keeping with my Indie Web goal, I don’t give a damn about ranking anymore.

Some other notable personal changes I’ve made. I read every night before I go to sleep. I changed my behavior but simply putting a book on my pillow after I made my bed in the morning. When I slide into bed at night I open up the book and read a few pages. It’s those little hacks that make me get to all those “I want to” or “I need to” goals on my list. I guess that’s the trick, you need to have goals. No matter what’s happening in the world, in your community, or to you. Goals give you a direction to move toward and focus your thoughts.

Stay strong my friends.

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