Hello y’all. I hope that those who celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas had nice holidays. I know that this time of year can be fraught, but I hope that you made the best of it, and that it was not a total disaster.
The classroom portion of my course is over. And I feel bittersweet. I learned a lot and made some new friends that I hope to stay in touch with for the foreseen future, but proximity creates intimacy in a way that is hard to sustain, so we shall see. I have made at least one friend who is now a reader of this newsletter, so maybe that will help us to keep in touch. Fingers crossed.
Ordinarily I would apologize for the long time between posts, but I really have been so busy with school, my day job, and my internship. I have been without the spoons to write this blog for the majority of my course. And I just didn’t know what I wanted to write about for several months. I have a new inspiration to start back at the beginnings of this newsletter and dust off the Ten Trials that I first set out to accomplish in October of 2019. Here is a link to that post:
https://toolatesmart.substack.com/p/the-ten-trials
Here is the list of the trials:
Learn to play guitar with enough mastery to play complete songs by ear.
Write a song, then perform it, accompanying myself on guitar at a musical open mic.
Write three feature-length screenplays.
Design and code a game/app.
Finish a century bike ride.
Start a profitable at-home business.
Do 100 push-ups.
Do 10 pull-ups.
Produce and distribute a completed web series.
Learn how to draw well. From life and my imagination.
This list is a window into my mind from 2019. More than a few of these just don’t matter to me in the way that they did over four years ago, while for some, I have a burning desire to achieve them still—let’s examine each one in some detail.
Learn to play guitar with enough mastery to play complete songs by ear.
There is a reason why this was on the top of my list. I really want to be able to express myself musically, and I happen to own four guitars (one is left-handed) and a ukulele. I really want to do this, and I have decided that 2024 is the year that I break through into playing guitar competently. I have tons of cool gear and accessories that spent most of 2023 just gathering dust. I have a new inspiration to practice and how to practice in a way that is fun and will keep my attention. I have been inspired by the mighty guitar YouTuber Rachelf. Rachelf came to my attention when I watched her one year guitar progress video on YouTube:
She began playing almost seven years ago at the age of twenty-two. Every year she puts up a progress video, and by year two she really comes into her own. She has over 239,000 YouTube followers now, and at this point she’s just an awesome player. She loves metal and heavy rock and she can really shred at this point. She doesn’t make it look easy, but she does make it look doable. Her onscreen persona is friendly and approachable and her production values have become very professional at this point. Rachelf just posted a wonderful video entitled: The Ultimate Beginner Guitar Lesson that really inspired me to pick up the guitar again:
2024 is the year that I learn to learn to play guitar with enough mastery to play complete songs by ear. I also want to relaunch Jeremy’s Guitar Fiasco next year.
.The second trial:
Write a song, then perform it, accompanying myself on guitar at a musical open mic.
Honestly, I do not care about writing a song right now, and certainly not performing it in public. I read most of Jeff Tweedy’s How to Write One Song a while back on my Kindle. When I bought the e-book, I got the audiobook for just a few bucks more. It was pretty fun to listen to Jeff Tweedy talk about his creative process, but ultimately it did not inspire me to write a song. In fact, it kind of put me off of songwriting, period. I don’t blame the book—it really is quite well-written, but for whatever reason I no longer care about writing a song right now. That may change as I become a more competent guitar player, but who knows? Maybe I’ll revisit Mr. Tweedy’s book again. Maybe while on long walks—spoiler alert.
The third trial:
Write three feature-length screenplays.
I do not wish to write one screenplay, much less three of them. Maybe I am in a particularly fallow point in my life, but I really do not have the burning desire to create much of anything. Definitely not three screenplays. Not one idea is tumbling away in my head waiting to be put into words. Which is really sad, I think. Maybe turning fifty has flipped off a switch in my head, but I never really think about movie ideas any more. There are easily a couple of dozen screenwriting books in this house. I own a copy of Final Draft 11 and I’ve considered myself a screenwriter for decades, but my desire to write films is effectively dead in my head and heart. I wish that I knew the solution for how to rekindle this fire, but I do not.
The fourth trial:
Design and code a game/app.
That I had a desire to code four years ago is so alien to me that I can hardly believe that I wrote this trial down. I own a couple of video game editing programs that require almost no coding, but I still have no desire to make a game or app at this point. This must be part of the writing fallow period. This lack of creativity is really troubling to me.
The fifth trial:
Finish a century bike ride.*
*My only goal in 2024 as far as bikes go is to take a bicycle safety course and to learn how to feel safe riding again. The fact is that I am terrified of riding a bicycle at this point and the idea of riding 100 miles on a bike in one sitting seems absolutely unattainable. Riding even a mile on a bike next year will be a victory.
The sixth trial:
Start a profitable at-home business.
Did someone else write this down for me? I cannot imagine ever wanting to start an at-home business. Maybe it was growing up in the house of an entrepreneur that turned me off of self-employment. Or maybe I’m just not motivated by money, but this goal is so laughably foreign to my way of thinking. I certainly don’t want work that follows me home. Man, 2019 was a completely different world, wasn’t it?
The seventh trial:
Do 100 push-ups.
For whatever reason, I really want to do this. I’m not sure why this is a milestone that I want to cross, but the fact is that I do. So, I’m going to have to hit the weights really hard to get strong enough to do even one push-up. I’m a big guy and I have pretty weak arm and chest muscles, so I have my work cut out for me. But I think that I am up to this task. 2024 is the year that I do 100 push-ups in one sitting.
The eighth trial:
Do 10 pull-ups.
I think that this goal is physically impossible, but I want to try it anyway. Again, this means hitting the weights like I never have before. 2024 is the year that I do 10 pull-ups in one go.
The ninth trial:
Produce and distribute a completed web series.
This was such an important goal to me in 2019, but now it has no resonance with my spirit. None. The writing fallow period continues.
The tenth trial:
Learn how to draw well. From life and my imagination.
I really want to learn to draw with mastery in the next year. No ifs, ands, or buts. I have all of the supplies and instructional materials that I need to do this. And my motivation is strong. My desire to create is still there, but it has changed art forms. I will draw daily and practice with purpose. 2024 is the year that I learn to draw well. From life and my imagination.
I have only four of my trials that I wish to pursue in full and one with a very large asterisk by it. I think that these four-and-a-half trials are going to be plenty for me to tangle with this next year, but I do have one more that I would like to tackle:
I would like to walk 5 million steps in 2024. One of my instructors this fall had this goal in 2023 and last week he was on pace to complete it by the end of the year. That is a pace of about 13,700 steps a day for a regular year. I have an extra day next year, so my target would be about 13,661 steps a day. This is walking about 2,200 miles in one year. Just over 6 miles a day. Can I do that many miles in a day? It remains to be seen, but I want to go for it. I currently only average about 2,929 steps a day and almost none of those are deliberate exercise, so I will have to work up to this amount over a couple of months. And those are the worst months for weather in Chicago. But I just bought an excellent Columbia parka, I have barely used waterproof hiking shoes, and a reliable Fitbit knockoff, so I think that have all I need to start. Wish me luck.
In the new year I have given myself the goal of writing two posts a week. Even if they are short check-ins, I resolve to write them faithfully. Until then, see you next year!
Thank you, as always, for reading.
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Hey Jeremy, happy Christmas and New Year!
Congrats on finishing your course, that's awesome. I like the way you've gone back and re-evaluated your old goals in this post - it's an interesting way to benchmark personal change over time. I very much relate to the "what was I thinking?!" reaction to my past self that you have going on with a few of these 2019 goals!
I just wanted to throw a resource your way in relation to the fitness-related goals you have, since two of them (push ups and pull ups) specifically relate to strength. Casey Johnston a.k.a. Ask A Swole Woman is pretty much the only fitness-influencer-type person I can tolerate. Her whole thing is demystifying strength training / weightlifting and making it more accessible for people who might be intimidated by its macho associations, and depgrogramming her audience from fatphobic diet- and beauty culture while she's at it. Her "Couch To Barbell" programme is specifically designed for people starting from a lower level of strength, i.e. people who might need to work up to handling a 20kg barbell, people who might not be comfortable in a gym, etc. Also she has a great free newsletter. (If you're interested in the Couch To Barbell programme but it's not in your budget right now, I am happy to send you a copy!)
She is more focused on lifting weights than bodyweight exercises, but in the pursuit of strength in general I think she is a great guide (and she has some resources specifically about pullups). Also, just a good writer regardless of whether you use her advice for fitness :)