After cblgh tweeted at me, I figured now would be a good time to give a status report on my life and progress towards my various goals.

Ongoing Goals

As a refresher, these are the things that I outlined that I wanted to accomplish this year:

• Work less, achieve more
• No alcohol
• Read more
• Write more
• Practice my Mandarin
• Produce 1 song/week
• Continue to make one thing every day

Here is how I am doing on these various things:

Work less, achieve more

I have been trying to maintain a better work-life balance over the past two months. We have a lot going on at work, so this has been hard. But the good news is that I am not feeling as burnt-out as I was at the tail end of last year.

No alcohol

I have not had any alcohol this year, nor have I had the desire to. I will say that I have gotten some pretty weird looks from people when I have told them that I have stopped drinking for this year.

Read more

I have a number of books that are waiting to be read, but have not made progress on any of them so far. I will need to schedule dedicated time to read on a daily or weekly basis and then stick to that schedule.

Write more

If I am writing this post right now, does that count? Writing is something that I find hard to sit down and do. I think one thing that might help is brainstorming some ideas at the beginning of the month and then writing them over the course of it.

Practice my Mandarin

Haven't done any work towards this so far. Again, I am going to start scheduling time slots to practice my language skills.

Produce 1 song/week

This week is week nine of WeeklyBeats. I have had a lot of fun with this project in particular so far. There is something deeply satisfying about making music, even moreso than working in visual mediums. As the project progresses I continue to learn more about Ableton Live and music production in general, and aim to get better with each week.

I am also excited to announce that I am now published on Spotify! Be sure to follow my WeeklyBeats 2018 playlist to keep up-to-date on my new tracks as they are released.

Continue to make one thing every day

My everydays project is continuing along just fine. Today is day 276, and I find it hard to believe that I have already made it this far. When I first started the project I was worried that I might not even make it to thirty consecutive days.

One thing I have noticed lately is that I am more hard-pressed for ideas. Going into March I will be looking for more sources of inspiration that I can use to stir my creativity and inspire more of the pieces that I create.

New Developments

Work in Progress

I recently joined the community over at WIP. So far it has been a great motivator to help me get things done every day. I would like to start actually shipping more over there and practice building stuff in the open.

Other Projects

I have a number of other early-stage projects that I am working on, both by myself and as a collaboration with others. Hopefully one or more of them will be ready to share in the near future!

Personal

I am still soldiering through a lot of personal issues dealing with motivation, self-doubt, and caring for my physical and mental well-being. The past couple of months have been a hard-fought battle against myself, but it feels like I am starting to gain ground.