Stats

Cash: 10.8%
Core: 78.7%
Explore: 10.5%
Workout: 30min dog walk (I'll be well enough to work out again tomorrow)
Alcohol: None
Sleep: 12:30am to 8:00am, rested (thank you again NyQuil, maybe one more night)

Deep Thoughts

@halcyondaze recently asked about the "Stats" in my daily #steemit journal entries, so I figured this is a good time to offer a bit of an explanation. I like to quantify progress and make abstract financial concepts as tangible as possible. My first job out of college was writing code for high frequency trading systems for an investment bank, and I put my first bonus in mutual funds and started tracking it in a spreadsheet. That spreadsheet has evolved over time and migrated from Excel to Google Sheets and currently looks like this:

The main stats I report daily are the Cash/Core/Explore numbers, which I delved into in this post. Long story short, it simplifies my financial decisions and removes anxiety about timing markets. It doesn't really move around all that much, but I like to track the fluctuations and see how they correlate to my mindset while writing.

The Workout, Alcohol, and Sleep numbers are just a daily tally of what I had, and they're loosely tied to my pseudo New Year's Resolutions. I didn't want to make any hard and fast "do more of this" or "don't do this" rules, but rather apply a bit of awareness and mindfulness to my personal care. The only rule I'm being strict about is no booze on school nights. . . my work requires me to think on my feet at all times, so I can't afford the mental cloudiness of even a slight hangover. And again, the purpose is to see what effect these things have on my mindset and writing.

And for shits and giggles, I started adding my current number of Steem followers at the end of every post. I'm surprised how my audience has grown after 25 consecutive days of original content, and I'd like to keep track of that progress. Ideally I look back on these journal entries in December 2018 and say:

1. Wow, look how few votes those old posts got, I can't believe I kept on writing, but I'm sure glad I did!
2. Damn, that writing voice is pretentious as fuck, where did I get off thinking I could say shit like that?

We'll see how it goes as the year draws to a close.

Shallow Shelves

The mercury hit 70F in North Texas today, which gave me a chance to finish putting up some standalone shelving in my outdoor shed...

Empty

Full

I'll need to organize it a bit better so that I can store all my grilling and gardening supplies and be ready for smoking meat and growing okra when spring rolls around. Speaking of which, there's pulled beef on the menu for tomorrow, I'll bet y'all can't wait!

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