Blog Mission Statement

Hi everyone! This is a blog I’m deciding to start on something of a whim. I want this to be a place where I can chronicle my progress towards my own goals. I have wanted to do something like this for a couple of years, but I never got around to it.

I have a few reasons for making this blog:

• I’d like to hold myself more accountable for finishing the things that I start. Very often I will have a great idea for something, I’ll think about it a lot, I might even order the materials or get started, but I will never follow through, and I’ll leave my idea totally unfinished, thus spending lots of time and reaping zero reward. I’m hoping that by putting my ideas and projects here, I’ll feel more committed to finish them off. I am slightly worried that this might backfire- I did read a study a while ago about how telling people your goals or ideas (“hey everyone, I’m going to lose 20lbs this year!”) gives you the same “dopamine hit” or cognitive reward as actually doing the thing itself does, and therefore makes you less likely to follow through since you’re already been cognitively rewarded. Whether I feel more or less inspired to work on my projects after starting this blog is to be determined
• I want to somehow catalog all of my projects for my future self- if I need to repeat a project, I can look back on what I did and how I did it, I can see what worked and didn’t work, and I can reflect on my mistakes. Also, if someone else is interested in one of my projects, I can point them here, and hopefully they can get some of the aforementioned benefits, as well!
• This one is simple: I don’t think I’ve written anything as long as this first blog post since college. I’d like to improve (or at least maintain) my writing skills on my own, now that I’m no longer being forced externally to write long pieces of text!
• I think it’d be convenient to have one coherent place with a lot of the ongoings of my life, so I can update friends and family on what I’m doing while feeling more fancy and sanctimonious than I would just making a Facebook post 
• I want to get rich and famous from the millions of people across the world that will read this blog

So far, my categories are Projects, Fitness, Hiking, Chess, and Teaching. I plan to add or remove categories as necessary.

Thanks for reading!