Journal

Welcome to the new year! As is tradition, this is my yearly aspirations and goal setting blog post. Unlike in past years, this year I’m in the mood to keep it concise. Also, I don’t have much interest in engaging with my goals for 2023. So I won’t. Bye 2023! As for what I’m interested in focusing on in 2024, I’ve realized that I really want to continue being intentional with my time this year. To me this means—

I will use more of my free time reading this year

Whether non-fiction or fiction, whether books that are simple or complex, I think that reading is a great use of my free time and helps me unwind and (sometimes) learn. I will intentionally keep various types of books around me so that I don’t get stuck when I run in to one that makes me want to avoid reading. I won’t be afraid of spending money on books either.

I will avoid using the internet aimlessly

Such a waste of time. I’ve done a good job avoiding most time sinks on the internet, but find myself sucked in to Reddit and YouTube more often than I would like. I won’t stress if I find myself aimlessly on these sites, but I’ll work to have better things to do with my time replace them (namely reading, gardening, …or even just sitting about).

I will continue exercising with the intensity I did at the end of 2023

Near the end of 2023, I was rowing around 50km a week. And I felt great doing it! I want to keep this up, whether I am running, rowing, or doing whatever else I could be doing for my body. If I’m feeling up for it, I might even push further. But that’s only if I’m feeling up for it.

Achieving these goals

Introducing some techniques into my life can help me achieve these goals. I will work to maintain routine and keep an active log of where I’m spending my time (retrospectively) to attempt to force myself to engage with where I am and where I am not being successful with the above.

Sometimes this book was too smart for its own good. I found the writing style, which often referenced the subject rules by breaking them, to be a little distracting from the content.

The first half was better than the second half. The chapters that consisted of long lists of words alphabetized were a bit of a slog to get through.

The book was fun though.

Clichés should be avoided like the plague.

Tiếng Việt

Xin chào!

Tôi đang cô viết một bài viết tiếng Việt. Tôi muốn thử nghiệm điều này và học hỏi.

Đây là một câu chuyện vườn.

Vườn của tôi yên tĩnh. Đã có rất nhiều mưa, nhưng cây cối không phát triển. Thời tiết lạnh đã làm cây cối chậm lại. Mùa đông đang tới!

Đó là tất cả. Tạm biệt. Hẹn gặp lại!

November garden update in Vietnamese

Hello!

I’m trying to write a journal entry in Vietnamese. I want to experiment with this and learn.

This is a garden update (story).

My garden is quiet. There has been a lot of rain, but the plants do not grow. The cold weather has slowed down the plants. Winter is coming!

That is all. Goodbye! See you later.

I loved this album, and the novel was the very latest from one of my favorite authors. But for some reason I couldn’t settle down, couldn’t focus on either the music or the book. I considered watching a movie I’d recorded, but couldn’t find one I really wanted to see. Some days are like that. You have time on your hands, and you try to decide what you want to do, but can’t come up with a thing.

Overall this collection of short stories was a mixed bag—more so than typical short story collection from Murakami. The start was particularly slow for me, making it hard to build momentum.

The concluding story First Person Singular was certainly the standout.

Ranking the three books in the series, this would fall squarely in the middle, with The Dark Forest being the highlight of the series and The Three-Body Problem being my least favorite of the three. All that to say, stopping at the second book would be a reasonable choice (and clean ending).

This book was a little more empty than its predecessor. It had lots of interesting ideas, but never really explored any of them—and their implications—in depth. I would love to learn more about this universe of Liu’s creation and was left craving to learn more about it. The book accelerates in time and space as you go through it, leaving many details to the imagination.

As many Goodreads reviews point out, there’s some weird gender representation in this book. Those reviews represent this better than I could ever hope to.

Overall it was fine. It definitely drew me in and kept me turning the pages. But it could have been so much better.