Today is a very nice day to be alive. Woke up on the totally right side of the bed (with the exception of sleepy eyes) and got right to work with my routine. I hope it becomes a more solidified routine for me. It consists of waking up at 8 AM–I’ll gradually push it back to 7:30 AM–stretching, going downstairs to wash my face and apply lotion, and having breakfast. I didn’t check the time, but I’d assume the entire process lasts an approximate hour–a good amount of time.

Super hyped that I finally set some really decent, viable goals for the year and the week. My top 4 goals consist of ending the school year with all A’s (college classes included), earning $100 from ads/Adsense on my blog, producing a consistent income from YouTube, and learning how to balance work with self-care (because it’s important, I guess). Each of those goals breaks down into smaller checkpoints/subgoals that I either need to achieve first or that I should accustom myself to completing.

It really, really helps to make goals, subgoals, and whatnot because it effectively gauges your progress so that you can stay precisely on track for the bigger goals. I mean technically that’s all self-explanatory and obvious, but I’m the type to get ahead of myself very often, so for me, this practice isn’t just a cute little time tracker; it’s a stabilizer for my most extreme efforts that often end up derailing because I don’t have a target or generally a reason to work–and as I like to think, “don’t write just to write, write to achieve something.” I have often made plans to practice coding for at least two hours a day and work on uploading at least 5 posts to my blog, but it never worked because I never had targets to hit or reasons to work. By creating my list of semester goals, I’ve anchored myself down to work for the feeling not that my effort was worth something that day, but for the feeling that my effort is worth something every day.

But let’s visit some other cool topics today. First off, I plan to publish the first post of Morning Pages on my blog once I’m finished writing (this means I finished!). Later this morning, I plan to finish one assignment (the number of pages varies depending on what I’m doing) of Pre-Calculus homework. That’s already one of three assignments that are due this Friday, and I’m going to get it done on Monday morning. Now that is a score if I’ve ever known one. I usually procrastinate the hell out of my Pre-Calculus assignments and do them like two days before the due. I mean it isn’t killing me because my teacher is super laid back and lenient with work submissions, but it’s still my personal goal overall to put some speed into my work ethic. Next, I’ll take a break and then jump into researching and note-taking for my next YouTube video, which will likely be a “day in the life of quarantine” sort of vlog. Since my two Spring Term college classes, CSC-17A (C++ Advanced Objects and Data Structures) and ENG-1B (Critical Thinking/Writing), are starting up this week, I’ll give myself two weeks to work on the video and then upload it. I’ll spend the first week researching/brainstorming and the second writing the script and filming. After that, I’ll probably have lunch, take a rest break, and then go walking for an hour. The last notable thing I’ll be doing is working out, and then I’ll figure out the rest from there.

Overall, I’m super excited to finally get my work underway and actually work towards my ideal semester goals. I’m definitely gonna carry this practice of planning into college. This semester will really help me gauge my strategic ability to do so, so by the time I hit the big leagues, I’ll be doing laps around my aspirations like nothing. Well, that’s about it for this morning. It’s time to move forward into the day and accomplish new things, starting riiiight now.

~ Kai out