I noticed from my list of entries that it has been a full year as of yesterday since I started this blog. I honestly never thought I'd stick with this project for this long. I have no special celebration in mind for this anniversary, except to review and reflect with this entry. I clicked back to my pilot entry to compare what I started my mission notes to what I have been doing in reality in regards to applying myself to improving my writing skills. It turns out that I found using dictation to be too much a pain in the ass in the beginning, so I dropped using it all together. As for developing my skills with CSS and HTML, they have been confined to drag and drops of blocks of code and simplistic editing and format corrections; nothing too magical, in-depth or detailed terms of study or implementation. Other than those failures, I think I've been more or less committed to meeting the objectives that I set for myself in creating this thing.
In the past couple days, I've been messing around with lots of complicated formulae*, for building analysis spreadsheets for my training progress. Ordinarily, I love using MS Excel, except when it comes to creating equations and formatting for unique elapsed time variables. I have to custom make such things. I couldn't find, through any search engine, any (free) prefabricated templates from which to strip apart and salvage usable stuff from to suit my needs. Any formula I create soon tends to get a little crazy and festered with lots of nested conditionals, logic bombs, and spaghetti code when it comes to using the variable of elapsed time within a function. The Help icon becomes a very close little friend; even then, sometimes it doesn't live up to its moniker for me. Enough of this digression.
Back to this review. . . Generally, I guess I can honestly say that there have more improvements than setbacks since I've been doing this. There were so many ways some things could have turned worse should I have allowed it to happen. For instance, I could have let my health decline had I not written things here that prompted me to think about and be more mindful about my condition. I've found that with the exercise of writing, one becomes more instantly mindful of one's choice of words on the screen (or paper), which in turn reflects in one's tone and manner of speech. I've come to respect intellectuals a lot more. When I write something out of anger, I'm automatically relegated to note how it would be perceived by someone who was listening to me if I were to spew the same words out loud verbally. I can't ignore how aweful I would find it to see myself dumping the toxic emotion of anger on someone without any reason, or if it only served to worsen a problem instead of correcting it. The goals that I write down are more likely to be achieved (and surpassed) than the ones that just remain passing thoughts. When I write something out of genuine happiness, gratitude, and compassion, sometimes any one genuine written thought, within such a scope, is enough to prompt me to carry myself with a more positive demeanor throughout the day (if not longer). Writing has such a vast potential to be a powerful tool (or weapon). It makes allies or enemies; its power to move and transform things should never be ignored or underestimated.
The biggest weaknesses that I have now in writing are: not recording enough higher goals with greater clarity, and I allow myself to be too easily stricken, crippled and defeated by doubt, instead of allowing myself to dream and hope for bigger things. I write too much with the analytical/logical side of me, and ignore, or fail to explore topics that fall within the realm of emotional instinct. I think I'd be way too reluctant to ever post any of those things.
*- Geek speak alert: skip this paragraph if programming doesn't interest you.
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