Category: Casual Thoughts
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Early Thoughts on My 2025 Reading Challenge
Impact Over Numbers My goal in 2025 is to read 52 books to see how my life improves. I will be documenting this year-long journey in blog posts. I am now only a few books in but I have some initial thoughts on this experience. For starters, my overall goal is self-improvement. I want to… Read more
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Additional Musings on “The Measure”
Would You Want to Know How Long You Will Live? The Measure by Nikki Erlick is a novel where one day, every adult receives a box containing a length of string that corresponds to the length of their life. The characters initially do not understand the meaning of these mysterious strings but once they do,… Read more
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Confidence vs. Self-Assuredness
I Don’t Want False Confidence, I Want Genuine Confidence I have been writing a lot recently about my low confidence and how I am struggling to get it back. While pondering this, I realized that I might be getting stuck in a negative perception of confidence and should instead seek a healthy self-assuredness. For me,… Read more
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Relief in the Realization: I’m Not Alone in Faking Bad
Stuck Thinking Things Are Worse Than They Are I was first introduced to the term “faking bad” in the book I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Sehee. It refers to a tendency to view yourself as worse off than you actually are. It describes my overall mindset perfectly. I… Read more
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I’m Not Ready To Forgive
Forcing Forgiveness Just Causes More Problems While reading Judgment Detox by Gabrielle Bernstein, I noticed a pit in my stomach anytime she talked about forgiveness. Overall, I have an upbeat disposition but forgiveness feels like a thorn in my side. I am not ready to do that yet. Also, I think so often people feel… Read more
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Why Wait?
The Cost of Waiting It has been a few days since I finished reading The Top Five Regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware and my overall feeling is: melancholy. My mind keeps wandering back to the stories of dying people who waited too long for something in order to live the life they wanted.… Read more
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Authentic Self-Expression
Thoughts in Progress I don’t want to get ahead of myself with this post, but I do want to get my thoughts down. All three of the books I have read so far have inspired what I am going to say: The Creative Act by Rick Rubin, The House of My Mother by Shari Franke,… Read more
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What’s in a Name?
The Complication of Sharing a Name With Your Abuser My latest post was a review about The House of My Mother by Shari Franke and something about it got me thinking. As I was writing it, at one point I was typing the author’s name: Shari… then I went back and deleted that to write… Read more
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Hesitation and Perfectionism
My last two posts have been musings on the book The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. As soon as I clicked “publish” for my latest post about four reasons for my own low creative self-esteem, I realized an incredible irony. I was unsure whether to post it and this hesitancy ironically revealed a fifth reason:… Read more
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Why Do I Have Low Creative Self-Esteem?
I drew this picture the other day but will regularly tell people “I am not an artist”. Sure, I do it as a hobby but I’ve never been formally trained. My general attitude toward my art is a sort of hands-in-my-pockets, playing-with-a-pebble-with-my-shoe sort of aww-schucks self-deprecation. Why? This low self-esteem is a terrible thing as… Read more
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The Types of Books I Will Choose
The goal of my Reading Challenge is to see an overall improvement in my life. What will that look like to me? Hopefully better relationships, greater happiness, increased creativity, and being a better person. As such, this goal will likely be reflected in the types of books I select. I will not however stick to… Read more
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How I Will Write
My Writing Approach During This Book Reading Challenge As I sat down to write my thoughts on the first book of my 2025 Reading Challenge, I felt myself being pulled into a familiar habit. That is, summarizing the book as opposed to focusing on the personal impact the book had on me. I am sure… Read more
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Measuring Success
Similar to my previous post about the rules for my 2025 Reading Challenge, I wanted to give myself a general direction for how to measure my success. This may be subject to change, but this is how I hope to see myself at the end of the year. Measuring Overall Success This may seem like… Read more
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Challenge Rules
I wanted to create a set of guidelines for my 2025 Reading Challenge, which is to read 52 books in 2025. I have decided that I am not going to give myself strict rules to follow, but I wanted to create a rough framework to give context to this challenge. As I look at these… Read more
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Getting Started… Late
What Am I Doing? My challenge to myself in the year 2025 is to read 52 books. I didn’t start the year off with this challenge in mind. It wasn’t any sort of New Year’s resolution. In fact, as I am writing this, it is currently February 26, 2025. So yeah, a bit behind schedule.… Read more