Goal-less Update

[forestofglory]

So in the beginning of January I decided not to post a set of monthly goals here, something that I'd been doing for years but was feeling overwhelming. I've been meaning to write a bit about how that's going.

I generally have goals about writing, sewing, classical Chinese, and holidays and events.

I did a fair amount of writing in January. I'm still tracking how many days I write (A day counts if I write at least three sentences) and I wrote on 18 days last month and posted a 2.5k nonfiction rec list. February isn't off to a good start writing wise as I've been sick a lot but am slowly working on another post of Lady Business

Sewing has also been up and down due to hand pain. I finished another kid shirt (picture) and played around with two new quilt tops. Also I did a craft exchange with a friend where I traded a quilt top for having a quilt quilted! It looks so good! Currently I am very slowly working on a short sleeved top for the kid. I've been having a lot of wrist pain the last couple of weeks so I can't go very fast.

Classical Chinese has not been going very well. I've been doing my electronic flash cards everyday but not making progress in my textbooks. I'm running into the difficulties of studying a dead language, where I really want things to read that aren't my text book. Also I still need to learn so much vocabulary!

So I think that not having monthly goals hasn't made a big difference in how much I'm getting done. And I am really liking the freedom to just sew things with less concern about finishing on time. So I don't plan to go back to posting monthly goals. But maybe I'll try to post a bit more about my various projects in other contexts. I do like talking about them

Comments

[clevermanka]

Congratulations on all the writing! And your kid has the cutest clothes oh my gosh 🧡 Those fishies!!! Sorry about the wrist pain. Such a bummer 😩

[forestofglory]

Thank you! I really enjoying finding cute fabric for the kid.

[oracne]

I like hearing about people's projects!

[lunabee34]

I'm glad your new method is working out.

[forestofglory]

Thank you!

[sunshine304]

I think it’s a good idea that you’ve stopped setting these fixed goals when it felt like too much stress. It’s supposed to be hobbies, after all, not another chore to get through. :D

And I think you’re fine cutting yourself some slack if you’re sick or the wrist pain gets too much.

You’ve made progress in writing and sewing anyway, so that’s a win! The shirt looks really cute!

Ugh I feel you with Classical Chinese. It was similar with Latin for me, where it was always just the text book and those stories weren’t that engaging towards the end. In my last year, we finally got to actual original texts – and then you noticed that you were missing so much vocabulary. XD Translating some of Ovid’s poems or Caesar’s essays sure ended up with some interesting outcome. XD

[forestofglory]

I was trying to add a bit more structure to my life -- which I sometimes need, but it stopped working so it's time to try something else.

One good thing about every classical Chinese textbook that I've used is they all go straight to original texts! It was very exciting when I first started to able to go "I just read some Analectics!" but it does mean the vocabulary learning curve is very steep. Maybe it's time to go focus on Mandarin for a bit -- there's so many more resources for that.

[ofearthandstars]

Oh, I like the three sentences a day - I have writing on my habit tracker but most of the time it is journaling, and I want to do more creative writing. Three sentences almost sounds doable!

[forestofglory]

Yeah the three sentences works really well for me -- it's small enough not to be too overwhelming but big enough that it feels worth doing. Plus its often enough to get me pulled back into the writing mindset so that I end up writing more.