Everything I'm Doing
15.05.25
Today, I was very productive. My two main quests are learning German and drawing ponies.
For German, I'm practicing my Anki deck, watching shows in German, reading German short stories, reading native German Discord conversations, and even doing Duolingo lessons. I've practiced on Anki daily for a little over three weeks now, and I've only recently gotten into Duolingo. It's easy to supplement my immersion with these lessons, and I've found it helpful to complete them in the morning before I spend the day immersing.
A good yardstick for the progress I've made is a book called 100 German Short Stories for Beginners. I occasionally come back to the same stories and understand more each time. The best feeling is recognizing a word the same day that you learned it. Learning German is not supposed to be stressful or even take a lot of exertion. It should come naturally with time, and I'm not in a rush to learn.
It's generally good to have something to work on persistently day-by-day. I found that language learning is an easy, fun, and rewarding activity to take up this role. I have more difficulty being consistent with my other main quest, drawing ponies. I prefer to have a structured plan to follow instead of drawing spontaneously, so I find it hard to draw on a whim. However, I have figured out a way to alleviate this.
For my quest to draw ponies, I'm working on a short, funny animatic that I'm really enjoying watch take shape. It's satisfying to work on something that I started a while ago. I'm also learning more about organizing projects. I'm keeping the details a secret, but I'm planning to kick off my new YouTube channel with it. I want to post a video or a blog every single day, so I plan to upload semi-frequently.
As for blogging, I've been writing much more lately. I plan to keep up this streak of daily posts, but I still need to write them earlier in the day, so I have more time to think them out. Additionally, I want to keep some posts in reserve, so I can exhaust my reserves while I work on longer, more refined posts. Blogging is good for reflecting, and it's good to keep a record to look back on.
I want to have a progress bar floating above my head. I want to see the person I've become unfold before me, and I want to see the person I was. I want to go back and remember what I was thinking, where I was, and what I was doing. Blogging is the crystallization of one's history. Blogging is how one becomes a real human being on the internet.
I recently moved my microblog from Bluesky to Mastodon. I made this decision because I prefer the higher character limit (300 vs. 500) and the privacy features of Mastodon. I'm able to prevent my posts from being discovered on feeds, hashtags, searches, and I can even prevent my profile from being appearing in search engine results. That's pretty much the main reasons I switched.
I haven't found any glaring issues yet, but I'm not a huge fan of the UI. I plan to use a CLI tool to post to my microblog from the terminal, so it will be a non-problem anyways. I want to streamline my blogging process and make it easier to get thoughts out. Additionally, I'm getting sick of writing short posts. I think I will accumulate short ideas and then post them all at once to make use of that wonderful 500 character limit.
I've been reading the Science of Logic every day since the start of the week, and it's been really fun to follow the logic in my head. I daydream about the Doctrine of Being when I lie awake at night and when I'm waiting in my car. Reading Hegel is more manageable when you skip the remarks and just focus on the development of the categories. It's also a lot more fun! I might make a post on what I've learned later, but it might be incoherent.
Additionally, I've picked up learning C recently. I want to chip away at Shaw's book Learn C the Hard Way and then move onto the K&R 2 book. I like the idea of knowing low level programming, so I will test the waters and if I can stick with it. I'm also reading a book called The Linux Command Line, and it's been enlightening so far.
I make use of a checklist to keep track of what I need to work on, and I've found it useful to consult when I'm bored and need something to do. In a future post, I will go over how I manage all these hobbies and how I stay productive.