Month: January 2023

The Year of Intention

I took a lot of inspiration from my friend Adam who spent last year taking his photography to the next level.

Despite the outcome of 2022’s final months, I still believe in the potential of the yearly theme. Having a single concept to drive goals, ideas and action can eliminate distractions and set priorities. After the year of Foundation petered out, the word Intention was the first that came to mind. With this theme for the year ahead, I hope to act more decisively, set a functional schedule and prioritize my ever expanding list of goals.

Resetting and Moving Forward

While the year of Foundation started off well, the latter part of the year didn’t live up to my expectation. It took a few weeks into this year, but I’ve set myself back on the right path. Returning to weekly reviews, monitoring habits and writing these posts are just the start.

Looking on the year behind, there were several mistakes I made along the way.

Goodreads goal of 40 books. I’ve done this multiple years in a row where I’ve gotten so close, but fell off pace in the middle of the year. I’ve set some stakes this time around. If I fail to hit my goal, I’ll be giving my brother $100. I might change up where the money goes, possibly using a tool like stickk or donating to a charity, but at the end of the day I’ll be out $100 if I don’t make my goal.

I’m planning on a similar approach for other action oriented goals, but am still deciding where I want to focus.

Finding my Purpose

This is a silly question all of us ponder at least once in our lives. For me it’s been a rotating answer for the last ten or so years. If you asked me to answer what I wanted to do with my life, I would have given a different answer dating back to my senior year of high school. After several milestones in my life (college, first jobs, new cities, and so on), the answer changed at an increasing rate.

At one point, I looked into opening an escape room, and another I considered making a waterless soap for anti-car commuters. All of these ideas exist in an ever expanding library in the back of my mind. While none of them are eternally off the table, the constant pivoting has led to a rare feeling of progress anywhere.

I’m turning the big 30 this year, and while that’s far from a death sentence, it’s definitely a milestone. Donald Glover has a joke in his standup about reaching your 30s,

Once you get around your 30s, that’s who you’re gonna be for the rest of your life pretty much. If you’re a conservative and you’re in your 30s, you’ll probably be a conservative the rest of your life. If you’re a liberal in your 30s, you’ll probably be a liberal the rest of your life.

The rest of the joke takes a turn about blowjobs, but I don’t think it detracts from the above message. I fear getting caught in this spiral of pivoting is a habit I’d like to break before it becomes “who I’m gonna be for the rest of my life.”

This year, I want to not only find an area of intent, but make it my priority. Perceptive long time readers may have noticed that the URL of this blog has changed. No longer the mouthful “tryingoutbeforebuyingin.xyz” I’ve “rebranded” to QRyguy.com. More on the name and what it means in a future post. The intent behind the change is to use this site as more than a blog, but a homepage and portfolio of the things I am working on. With the pressure of public facing progress, I want to make more substantial progress on specific goals.

Intent in the Moment

Intention not only includes the big picture ideas, but acting in the moment with intention. A part of last year’s theme, Foundation, I created an ideal schedule for a week, day and even hour. As I fell into the funk of the end of the year, those schedules collected dust.

I don’t expect to stick to these schedules by the minute, but having a frame for how I should spend my time should help from getting lost. If I plan to go to the gym certain days of the week, that helps plan recovery days, meals, evening plans, and so forth. Setting a few key tasks can help decide surrounding tasks as well.

Speaking of time, I’ve found myself relying heavily on algorithmic content for entertainment and learning. Algorithms can be useful for discovery or reduce decision making, but relying on them can be a dangerous way to waste an afternoon. Doom scrolling for something to watch or read is a dangerous time sink. Going forward, I hope to be cognizant of how I engage in content, both sought out and algorithmically presented. Whenever I find myself doom scrolling, I need a plan or fallback if I spend too long searching for that perfect item.

You can say it’s sad that this much mental attention is spent on scrolling through YouTube or Twitter, but these websites are designed to keep our eyes on the page. I’ve fallen victim to the algorithms’ snares far too many times and want to create a plan for next time I find myself in their court.

The year of Intention is off to a good start. Thinking about things critically has me ready for tomorrow, the next day and beyond. I hope to have a clearer focus by the end of the month and can’t wait to share my progress with you.

Back in the Saddle

Caught off guard during one of the many trips in my downtime. Photograph by Adam Varnas

This post has been on my to-do list for the last few months. Each week that passed was another dose of embarrassment for being away from writing for so long. The new year is upon us, and of course that puts pressure to put the previous year’s mistakes behind us and start anew.

On Foundation

As prior readers know, last year began my attempt to apply the concepts of a yearly theme, as opposed to new years resolutions. I came upon the idea of foundation, envisioning the process of developing a good base of operation in my life when it comes to my health, habits, and relationships.

The first half of the year started off great. I was consistently writing, working out, and trying out a wide range of trials. August hit, and then I missed a week. Beginning a trial on logging workouts, I drafted up a post with little to say and little excitement about the topic. Not every post needs to be fueled by passion, but it felt like a slog. I thought to myself, stepping back for a week to formulate my thoughts would be best, and here we are five months later with those thoughts still not formed.

In that time, I took an unexpected turn. Not only did I stop writing, I stopped a lot of tasks I found to be part of the foundation I’d been building, including tracking my habits daily, having a consistent sleep schedule, and even my weekly reviews.

The time wasn’t spent completely idle though. I went on a number of trips with friends, started a consistent workout schedule, and even took my rock climbing to the next level. While it’s not the foundation I anticipated at the beginning of the year, I found myself in a good place despite the drastic change.

On Writing

For the last few years, I’ve been writing on and off for this blog and don’t plan on completely stopping anytime soon. However, I don’t know that I’ll always be going about things through the trial approach. Those posts give me a jumping off point of a topic to discuss, but I’ve often found myself with little to say about a trial, especially not much to say over the course of four weeks.

Over the years, I’ve tried to create a structure to these posts relating all of them to the trial at hand. I’ve always circled back the structure of an introduction, brief progress reports, and a conclusion on if I plan to continue the new aspect in some shape or form.

Something that has fluctuated has been my day for publishing. This I do plan on changing once again, as I don’t plan on committing to posting weekly. Instead, this year I want to focus on writing posts with a particular goal or question to answer, rather than a weekly commitment. These might be thoughts on trials, as I still plan to sprinkle them in, but the primary driver of topics will be ideas that arise from various sources. These could be from books I’m reading, media I’m watching or even a walk in the neighborhood.

Stay tuned for a more extensive post covering for my 2023 theme. For now I’ll give you the theme name: “Intention.”