I plopped my $5 down for a month's worth of access to Todoist Pro. It's good to offload all of the content in my head and scour around for my Post-it notes to add more. Unfortunately, most of it is spatially organized in my head, which lends itself to a bit of a slow retrieval.

Yesterday, my site had several updates. Some of it was structural for organization and consistency. Overall, I wanted stuff that's useful to me, like bringing back ἁγιασμός as a page. Or with a hotlink to adventures with tunes. Then there's the re-organization of fit that should propel me forward.

That said, I'm revealing my hand early on a '24 resolution by listing my Nested Loops reading plan. It's an ambitious plan with a sunset of about when I hit 83. We'll see how the first year goes, but in context to how ALL of this is just a very brief leadup of ἁγιασμός to what I'll really be doing with my life, it's an outstanding idea.

The reading plan contains the very living words of God—how can I NOT read it every day? These words are of the One who designed me and chose to adopt me as his son. How can I not spend my time in this airport lounge receiving his words before the adventure that awaits?

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Hebrews 4:12 ESV

I set Habitica aside as my task management aid. While a fun site that is better than most in its category, it neither does fantasy RPG well nor task management. Sure, there are hit points and all, but it does not do a favorable job of questing for weapons and armor (the true goal of any RPG).

There's no adventure feel. It's all...pets. Copious amounts of pets. At first, the 8-bit graphics were nostalgic, but it began to come off as lazy. Bard's Tale from 1985 looks better.

On the task side, Habitica feels like the intended audience is a teenager who is just learning about task management. There is not the complexity/structure in place for projects. Just a smattering of discrete tasks.

But, I suspect the #1 reason why I left the platform is that it incessantly promotes questing with others, which made me feel a bit alone. I didn't want to team up with strangers again after my last experience with Habitica, making it the Demotivation App of the Year!

I'm on Todoist for now, though its freemium model and its 5 project limit inspire me to create a spreadsheet—(lemme punch that into Todoist). Don't discount the value of holding a hardcopy in hand to check off. I used it for my strength program and found it satisfying to mark things off. (Whichever way I go, it'll be part of my Software Standards release for 2024.)

What's the point of tasks that contribute to projects? Too often, we neglect the end game, we think the journey is greater than the destination, that hard work beats smart work.

It's all about dreams, isn't it? Visualizing the dreams of the day that's far off while closer in the sunset of the horizon...putting forth the investment necessary to achieve that end...I'm afraid that I've spent far too much of my life on the journey—well, far too often for my liking. A flutter of activity to just achieve the flutter is not a place—a destination.

Welcome to November '23! May it be the prologue of 2024.

I've been cycling the existence of this website. At night, I want to tear it all down; in the morning, the pendulum shoots across the stars and I want to build the site up further. I'm going to have to trust one of these fellas. Since I'm writing this in the morning: "Hey, Night Guy. Keep this place running."

(—I'm sure he'll listen.)

These reflections are different at 45 compared to age 25 in 2003. I do not know whether my world is larger now or if it is smaller. I really hope it cannot be said of me that in 2023 I look back more than the 2003 me who gazed out onto the horizon at the adventure ahead. I don't think I have changed in that regard, though the destinations are different. At 25, my peers and I had bucket loads of vitality shoved into our pockets. In these days, can the same be said of all? A life of vitality is the life of a risk taker. And I've got that in spades. We just cannot play it safe. Inaction is the harbinger of atrophy.

And so it is, what I left behind for the denizens of Facebook:

So here, I stand, I'm ready for anything
Just, a man, but I'm giving everything
We're here only for a second and then
We're gone when we least expect it
So do more than survive
Let's live like we're alive

-Nevertheless, Live Like We're Alive

The other day When I wrote Best Of, Volume I: the Rule of Three, I wasn't just talking. What I didn't do in that post is to scaffold it accordingly to show that it is the mindset that's important. And that mindset, a focus propels it over the finish line. Perhaps that's the chief end of this website.