2023: The Year of Balance

Aka the Year Nemes tries to not do everything and chill out. The Year of taking the time off to rest. The Year of Unplugging if for a moment.

One existential episode later, I am once again making a blog that is hopefully less ranty. Christmas has come and gone, I have slippers. I am content.

Now it’s time to look towards the New Year Evaluate what I want to accomplish and my intent to do a yearly theme this year!

Cozy slippers.

The Yearly Theme

The concept of a yearly theme is nothing new. It’s probably been around of a while as people come to realize that making a strict rigid goal to complete for the end of the year set people up for failure. It’s a recognition that the ever improving self is a long gradual process that, if there even is an end goal, might take more than one year. It is a rephrasing of the question that aim for more general self improvement than an static success/fail expectation.

Chances are if you know this concept already then you’re a fan of CGP Grey or The Cortex Podcast that has popularized it through it being a yearly tradition (and journal sales).

It’s something that I thought I might as well try at some point. Though I struggled to think of a theme. Then one day after realizing that I beginning to feel over tired from a long day of work, and be coming ever so distraught due to twitter’s treading tab (What garbage) it occurred to me this might not be the healthiest thing for me. No matter how chronically online I am.

And so… The Year of Balance

Or maybe more accurately, the year Nemes stops trying to do everything and chill out of a second. The Year of taking time off to rest. The Year of Unplugging if but for a moment.

Maybe the year of Balance is only a working title at this point, but I think I get the point I want to make. I want to

I have a terrible habit as with many people in the Modern age face, is not doing nothing. Like at all.

Instead of being in the moment, I need to be on my phone, or playing a game, or watching a video. Something, ANYTHING at all!

Apathy’s a tragedy and boredom is a crime. Anything and Everything, all of the time!

And even when I do want focus on something like a game or show, I’m doing something else. My attention span is SHOT! I like to think it’s not TikToker bad, but YouTube Shorts have slowly been gripping its claws around me. Might want to nip that trend in the bud or at least be mindful how much time spend I scrolling. Limit in some way I’m not sure.

The point is I came to the realization that want to be doing less things that might be lessening my quality of life, and actually start doing things to improve it. Like rest. There’s a novel concept.

What should “Balance” look like for this Rambler?

In short, I feel like my main goals in trying to trend towards is for the following:

Let’s break this down.

Better Rest:

I need to start taking better care of myself overall and this partially starts with me taking sleep more seriously. Due to my job I can simply have a constant sleep schedule as I work some mornings and some nights. I can however, try to prep for bed better and try to get more hours of shut eye.

Even then rest isn’t just sleep. It’s taking the time to do nothing! And I’m BAD at this.

I think I can use the multitasking to my advantage at times, but for a lot of the time I need more deliberate focus on stuff I’m doing and less distractions. I may need to start separating my spaces more (I basically live in my room, and that’s not good even with the air purifier I got for Christmas) to I can mentally get in the zone more give if it’s time to work, play, or rest. Though I current don’t think I have a room for my own office in the house, most rooms are filled with stuff.

Maybe if I can’t seperate the spaces 100% I can start having like… a “totem” that says if I have [THIS ITEM] it’s time for [X] state to which I should not do [Y] activity. Just a thought for now.

Better Use of My Time:

With my job moving towards a 4 day a week schedule, I hopefully should have more time overall. With that being said, I need to use my time better!

It hit me the other day just how much I scroll on twitter. Part of this was because I’ve been using mastodon and the key thing about the mastodon personal feed is that there’s an end. It’s not trying to algorithmically show me the posts

While twitter is systematically designed to enable that behaviour, it is habit I need to break. For that site and YouTube.

Part of me wants to get off twitter entirely but I still have friends on that platform I want to keep up with. So instead I’m going to have train myself with this, and all social media to treat it like more like email and less like texting. I check it at once or twice, and then it is something I log off.

I plan to use RSS as a way of training myself to do this, as RSS feeds will only show to a “timeline” in chronological order. I also plan to make a video showcasing how but I have made a blog post about RSS feeds and how to grab them.

I hope by doing this I’ll form better habits and try to be more productive. Maybe instead of scrolling I’ll go for a walk or bodyweight training. Maybe I’ll write one of these blogs or work on video? Or maybe I’ll just lay in bed for once and nap. That sounds nice.

Better Mental Health:

Before any of my discord friends message me like “OH MY GOD ARE YOU OKAY?! DO WE NEED TO TALK!?” I want to start by saying I’m in state of mind now than where I was at the beginning of the pandemic or even in college. Things are stable. I’m actually trying to ease off of how hard I am to myself. Accepting some things about myself and the world.

… But there’s always room for improvement right?

I’m hoping that with the aids of the first two goals this can help me with being like… idk 20% happier? Because I’ve had a bad habit of doom scrolling thus making me feel worse and blah blah blah. Also Lack of sleep does not help with mental stuff either, so if I’m more rested I can hopefully not feel as burnt out all the time.

This ones not overly complicated, I just want to stop doom-scrolling and feeling like world sucks for 5 minutes.

But I Still Want to Get Some Stuff Done Though…

Just because I want to relax more doesn’t mean I don’t want to do anything (See: Better Use of My Time). There a few key things I want to do in no particular order:

And I hope that by lessening my distractions and bad habits I have more time for these things in general. I already know I can tackle the video goal so long as I can pace myself. I might even do more, but I’m aiming for six as that is the guideline I set for myself when I took a break from videos.

I have a few main ideas and topics picked out that I want to work on:

I have no shortage of ideas, and some will likely end up on RWW in written form. as well. For instance, while I do want to make the RUP Video that will take some time and I will likely make a blog post here about it as well. The voting topics might seem a bit out of left field for those that watched and enjoyed my tech and gaming content, but it’s something that’s been in the works for awhile and Proportional Representation (Especially in Canada) is important to me.

In addition to that, other topics that I either don’t have time to make into a video or fit the channel will likely end up here on RWW. This includes supplementally material when for both RUP and the linux video I have planned.

I’m on my Tech Arc, guys

One thing that I found out is that I want my content to move toward Tech topics overall. I found this out with the capture card trilogy where I had some of the most fun making a video and so far the best numbers I’ve had on the channel. Thus I’ve started bit of Tech Arc on the Channel. I even got a few videos lined up in the vain.

And to that effect I’ve realized… Not only am I in my Tech Arc, I’m in my “Tech Enthusiast” era. I’ve been that way for a good 5 years now but I’ve really been feeling that way in the past year, and I really want to lean into it. So while the video game content is not going away, don't be surprised if you see me detour into stuff like rss, linux, and maybe software that I use.

Overview

So TL;DR

I want to break some bad habits. I have a bit of a plan on how to tackle that. I’m using Yearly theme as a framing device. I’ve yet to decide if I’ll be tracking that with those journal pages or I’m just fully winging it. Probably wing it.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. I'll see you all in the New Year!

#yearlytheme #newyears #resolution

A Nemes Content Blog 2022.