An Overhaul

I've been thinking and rethinking possible approaches to my blog. Overtime, it seems that my blog has changed, much like I have changed. It began with my meditations upon certain topics, continued into being a daily record of a large project, and has now become a combination of thoughts, records, and responses.

Now, I'm thinking I want to make my blog a record of the art I observe and the art I create.

I see almost everything that I do as a project. Every book I read, every film or TV show I watch, every piece of art that I make, these are all projects for me. I keep these all in a mental record in my head, which can be overwhelming. What can I do to remember my thoughts for everything that I do?

After writing responses to the books that I read, such as The Untethered Soul and Let Your Life Speak, I realized that writing blog posts is a very effective way of retaining important information. Not only does it help me retain information, it also helps me process the information. It takes the abstract thoughts that I have in my head and places them into a concrete set of words that I can reference whenever I like. What a miraculous tool that is!

Clearly, this is something that I ought to do more. It definitely helps me, and it may help you guys as well.

The only issue is that I give myself MANY projects. I can make a list of all the things I have done so far this vacation alone

• Watched The Passion of the Christ 
• Because a few friends recommended I watch it in honor of Holy Week so I can learn about Christianity
• Watched an episode of Sherlock Holmes 
• Because British television is great
• Finished a book about Irish folk music 
• Because I started it two months ago and I never got the chance to finish it
• Read The Little Prince 
• Because I renewed my library card for the first time in 2 years and I saw it while browsing the teen lit section. I made a promise to myself that I would teach myself enough French to read it, but frankly, that wasn't going to happen anytime soon, so I figured I would read it now
• Learned more Spanish 
• Because I want to be bilingual and I have friends fluent in Spanish so why not?
• Retaught myself how to knit 
• Because I have trouble sitting still during television shows like Sherlock and I figured, why not watch TV and do something productive?
• Cooked a tea recipe 
• Because I love tea
• Helped Danny make puppets for the puppet show
• Because that is my project
• Added more of my mom's CDs to my harddrive
• Because I have an ongoing project to convert all of her CDs to digital
• Watched Daniel Glover do standup
• Because Julian showed it to me, and he's excellent in every way
• Toured NYU and Columbia
• Because soon I'm going to have to become an adult

I'm a finisher. I'm addicted to finishing things. I think this is a good addiction compared to most addictions. I don't watch TV for hours on end, I don't watch youtube videos. I collect culture. I want to watch all of the great movies, read all the great books, know all the great actors, understand history from the creation of the earth until now, speak a number of languages, and keep up good fashion. It sounds like much, but with my small projects, I'm conquering the world little by little.

I specifically plan out my projects in a way so that I never feel overwhelmed. Though I do many things, I limit myself within my, genres? For example, I will only read one or two books at a time, watch one or two movies a week (sometimes less), and listen to one or two new CDs a week.

I read an interesting article that Shiana posted for my English class. It said that people work most productively when they work in 90 minute intervals, followed by breaks. When I spend enough time on one project, I switch to another. This switch re-energizes me, and allows me to be active constantly. I love it. By the way, if you are more interested in the connection between sleep, work intervals, and productivity, you can read the article here.

Because I do so many things, I probably can't blog about them all, or else I will spend more time reflecting than doing, and I am a woman of action. At the same time, blogging will help me slow down, because if I don't exert self-control, I can spin out of control with insane projects. It's all about following The Way, staying on the tightrope, finding a middle ground. Thankfully, years of experience and active self-observance have greatly helped me exert this self-control. I'm doing well.

Some final notes on organization and appearance. A friend of mine gave me two recommendations. First of all, he told me I should get a new theme. I've actually have a lot of difficulty finding a decent Blogger theme that wasn't covered with sparkling skulls, or wasn't too HTML complex. I do have vague recollections of HTML knowledge from my Neopets days, but the most I can do it edit a toolbar and change a font.

Secondly, he told me I should use more pictures. I hadn't thought of using pictures much because I'm so focused on writing my thoughts, but pictures would probably make it easier for other people to read, and it will make the post more active.