“Resilient”
Leafy green banner,
verdant flag in the desert,
remains, defiant.
Steve D
Tag: resilience
September Write Day: Return to Normalcy… I think
School has officially started, and at least one of our neighbors has already started preparing their Halloween decorations. We need to start planning ours.
We took our boys to Boston and Salem just before school started, a much-needed trip that was hectic, but enjoyable. We rode the train from Baltimore to Boston (and overall had a positive experience), toured Boston for a couple days, visited the Lego Discovery Center (our four-year-old’s favorite part of the entire trip), stayed in Salem for a few days, and had dinner with an old college friend and her family.
Now we’re figuring out our school-year routine and making plans for the autumn, primarily in our garden and cleaning out the house before we’re inundated with new toys for Christmas. I’m not ready for any holidays, but I’m glad September has arrived.
Last Month’s Goals
- Finish three books.
- Survive until the start of school.
- Enjoy our last big trip for the summer.
- Try to exercise and stretch.
Finish three books?
I finished the final book in Manda Scott’s Boudica series, Dreaming the Serpent Spear, which I obviously reviewed already, because it was fantastic. That’s it. I’ve made some good headway on another novel, which I’m excited to review, for very different reasons.
I’m doing alright on my Goodreads reading challenge: 13 of 24 books completed; less ambitious than last year, which has turned out to be a good thing. I’ll need to finish almost three books per month to hit it by the end of the year. Time to find some shorter novels on my To Be Read list.
Survive ’til school & enjoy our last trip?
Success! See above.
Try to exercise and stretch
Success! After aiming low and just trying to figure some basic stuff I could do for August, I ended up picking a couple of calisthenics type exercises to do after my main stretching routine. These I counted as 10 minutes of “stretching” in my fitness tracking app, just to make it easy to count up how many times I did it.
10 times throughout the month of August, plus one brief weight-lifting session in a hotel fitness room, and a whole lot of walking on our trip.
The brief stretching/resistance routine has definitely helped me feel like I accomplished something on those days. What’s missing is longer yoga sessions or weight-lifting sessions.
But progress is progress, and with a more normal routine at home, I feel like I can make some more happen this month.
Goals for September
- Finish three books.
- Current reads: I, Jedi by Michael A. Stackpole; A Promised Land by Barack Obama; The Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Alan Poe, by Edgar Alan Poe and Benjamin Franklin Fisher (editor)
- Likely next reads: The Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar for fiction. I’m not close enough to finishing Obama’s memoir to consider my next nonfiction read.
- Stretching & exercise. I’d like to continue with this basic stretching and resistance routine just as a filler for my busier or lazier days. What I need to work back in is longer yoga or weight-lifting session. I’m thinking 20 minutes at minimum, twice per week.
- Organize around the house. Build shelves in my shed and get shit off the floor. Get rid of old clothes and toys we’ve collected. Organize the new shelf in the basement.
- Community resilience. I’ve alluded to this and related themes in many of my haiku of late, but it’s been pressing on my mind all year. I need to find ways to contribute more directly and proactively in my community. I know there are lots of options out there, so I think I just need to pick one and start doing it.
Steve D
March Write Day: On a Track
February came with the flu, hitting myself, my wife, and our oldest in rapid succession. I feel like I lost an entire week due to drained energy, no appetite, and just trying to keep our household afloat. I definitely lost a couple pounds.
We’ve been preoccupied with a lot of external priorities. A theme and focal point that has crystallized for me over the last couple weeks is resilience. I can’t control much of what happens around our family, but I can control our response to it or at least guide it.
I’m looking into ways to build resilience, in our household, in our friends and family connections, and in our community.
As expected, these thoughts and anxieties and external pressures have taken some of my focus, and that will need to continue.
Last Month’s Goals
- Finish three books.
- Small acts – Exercise.
- Small acts – Writing.
Finish three books?
I read two books in February, and one was a doozy. I finally, after several months, finished reading The World of Ice and Fire, by George R.R. Martin and others — Martin’s encyclopedic history of his fantasy universe, written as if by a Maester of the Citadel.
I’m not going to review this book; if you thoroughly enjoy A Game of Thrones and other attendant books in that universe, and you love world-building, then you’ll find this an interesting read. My one gripe is that there was no detailed map of Essos, despite there being about 75 pages on the civilizations of that continent.
I also read the comic collection of Star Wars: The High Republic, Phase II, Vol. 1: Balance of the Force. I happened to pick it up in a local bookshop one weekend, and I knew it would make an easy read for my monthly goal. It was solid. I haven’t read anything else in the Star Wars: The High Republic series, despite there being at least three “phases” of comics and several novels. I think I’ll continue with Phase II, at least.
Small acts – exercise?
February was a slow month for exercise, what with the aforementioned illness. I recorded exercising about three times, although I definitely stretch more consistently than that.
I’m already off to a much better start for March.
Small acts – writing?
I didn’t do any note-taking or writing/revising of my current novellas-in-progress.
I did quite a lot of reading of emails and articles following everything that’s happening in the US — leading me to focus more on resilience.
I posted three times on this site, after getting it back up and running, but again, illness. I’m once again off to a solid start for March.
Goals for March
- Finish three books.
- Current reads: Aspects by John M. Ford; and We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Likely next reads: A friend at work just finished reading The Hobbit for the first time, and we’ve been talking about it, so it feels like time to pick it up again.
- Small acts – Exercise. Bare minimum: stretch and meditate every day, and if I do any of the following in addition, that’s ideal.
- Bronze medal: short yoga session
- Silver medal: longer yoga session and/or resistance training at home
- Gold medal: 1-hour gym session
- Small acts – Writing. Bare minimum: get back to posting here every Wednesday and Sunday, and not just haiku. Achieving some combination of the following throughout a given week is ideal.
- Bronze medal: basic admin for this site, my email, my imprint, etc.
- Silver medal: take notes, or organize older notes
- Gold medal: Revise/rewrite my duology in, at least a 15-minute focus session
- Continue daily meditation/affirmation. I’ve started doing this very recently. I have attempted a meditation routine in the past, but it has been quite a while since I’ve tried to stick to a daily routine. I think t really does help put things in perspective and center my mood.
Steve D
Evening Satellite Publishing 