No livestream today, focus is on celebrating the New Year with the family. Taking a moment to write this on the actual day of though, so feels very "final words of the year".

No other activity to report on either aside from that I've put my noted project into production for handling my notes and am improving it as I feel pain. Currently fixed the editor and broke the layout. You know, web dev.

The year in some kind of review: Great for Underjord, it has evolved in good  ways. Amazing but hard work for me and the family, becoming a family and making that work. Rough to try and find joy in the middle of a pandemic that puts asterisks on any attempt to responsibly meet other humans.

Committing My Self

Things decided on New Year's Eve have essentially no weight, no staying power. Having time off before the end of the year has still let me relax, think and feel into things which has led to things I want to change. I know wanting to change things don't help me follow through very well. I need some kind of vision for the thing, I need something to strive for, I need a picture of myself as something more when I follow the intended path.

If I wanted to learn how to work on cars I'd have an absurd vanity-image of myself glistening with sweat and with perfectly aesthetically pleasing spots of grease in my mind. Or possibly about the vehicle I want to have or the things I want to be able to do. I don't have to reach an unrealistic ideal but there's always something I strive for that I'd hesitate to say out loud when learning a skill. At least I'm honest with myself. I think I've written previously about being driven by aesthetics, it's not all about that but it needs that component.

It's probably an ego thing. Doesn't really matter exactly why I'm like this or if other people are as well. I still have to contend with it. I had a good groove 2 years ago when I did a lot more hands-on stuff, got away from the computer, had more time off and spent my spare time doing gardening, weights, baking and cooking. This was coupled with the picture in my mind of who I wanted to be and who I could become. I want to be someone who is comfortably outdoors in spite of the sun, the rain or the cold. I want to be someone who can work hard physically. I want to be someone who makes their own food, at multiple levels.

Recently that clarity of vision has faded. That's not a big catastrophy, it is likely a consequence of buying a house, having a kid, living in a pandemic and taking my business to new levels. I've had both immediate things that are not negotiable take focus, house, kid, pandemic. And have committed myself to important things such as ensuring we're bringing in enough money to build the life we want while doing it in a way I can sustain. That is, fun enough, engaging enough and doing it my way. The only vision that has felt clear to strive towards and at all feasible has been to work on making Underjord as good as it can be, as a business, employer and working life.

It has worked and I will keep evolving and sustaining my business. I still have a house to care for and I still have a wild little daughter to wrangle. But I'm definitely at a point where I need to take a look at things and decide what I'm trying to achieve next, where my ambitions are, what's needed of me and what a vision of self is that will take me in the right direction.

Some of the actual needs are absolutely pedestrian fare. I need to form exercise habits again. My body is breaking down due to carrying a kid and the assorted poor ergonomics of parenthood as well as sitting still too much. The current trendline isn't sustainable and I know I only exercise if I feel inspired to or manage to form a habit. Inspiration is the spark and initial fuel, the habit is what makes it stick and tick.

Another thing is diet, so very exciting. I eat too much sugar, my stomach doesn't like it (seemingly chronically doesn't like it) and it is a habit of a lifetime to break. I've failed this one often. I don't have a weight problem thankfully, not much stigma or anything, just health consequences from gastro-intestinal stuff. Lining this up with a vision of self is a tricky one. I think it involves being stoic, disciplined and stuff and that breaks down really easy when you have a bad night's sleep. So the first system to put in place is to get rid of all the easy snacks. The vision, supported by a system, making or breaking a habit.

I also feel the need to better separate work time and personal time. I do an okay job but I fall into my phone easily. There's a lot of potential dopamine in my inbox, my Twitter, etc and I'm a sucker for it. It is challenging to entirely exclude that stuff from my device as well since I fairly often benefit from handling something quickly on the phone. But I should do it. My brain has a monstrous appetite for inputs but I'm a much more present parent and partner when I can't go away into the glass. The vision for that is clear enough. I want to be the kind of person that doesn't succumb to distraction and instead spends most of his time living life. With family, with friends. And if I need distraction I can read a book.

I may need to find my way back to some kind of journaling. I've done the Cortex theme system and variants of that when I've been doing pretty well with this kind of stuff. Having a daily moment of reminders, when I sit down and grade my day on factors I care about, make notes about gratitude, what I'm enthusiastic about and what has been hard today. Prompts like that can help keep me on track. But finding a moment for that recently has been challenging. My evenings tend to be a blur of logistics and leisure.

Happy New Year or however you celebrate the end of December, I'm looking forward to the new year. I welcome your thoughts on the coming year and the year that has been at lars@underjord.io or on Twitter where I'm @lawik.

Thanks for your time, I appreciate you reading this.

- Lars Wikman