Hobbies Mk.II

[alaterdate]

Salut! Je ne peux pas croire que ça fait un mois depuis j’ai fait un post....

Well, August was an okay month. I did come up with some goals for stuff I'm working on and though I didn't complete them all for the month, keeping track of it actually let me see that I have made some progress. I used to keep a bullet journal and do daily habit tracking, but I stopped using it a few years ago and while I don't think I want to pick it back up just yet, figuring out monthly goals and noting them down in my journal is just as useful.

First I sorted my hobbies into broad categories and came up with several: Instruments, Art, Reading, Writing, Gaming, Coding, and Language. Seven categories with multiple items inside (especially in Writing, I sorted a lot of things into it lol) is, uh, most likely a lot to try to do at once. In my quest to corral my hobbies into something manageable I read the advice that it's best to have 4-6 core hobbies that are worked on everyday. Even whittling it down I still don't think I could work on everything every day. So, I chose a few things from each category that I want to work on and came up with goals for them. Of course, gaming doesn't really have a goal, but I thought I'd keep a list of games that I'm currently playing—perhaps to remind myself to play those instead of searching for something new lol.

Here's what I finished in August

Art

Crochet — 27/47 Granny squares
Drawing — 1/1 Prompt

Language

French — 80/80 New vocab
ASL — 1/3 Lessons

Reading

Books — 4/3

And my September goals/progress

Art

Crochet — 7/52 Granny squares
Drawing — 0/1 Prompt

Language

French — ?/80 New vocab
ASL — 0/1 Lessons

Reading

Books — 4/2

Writing

Fiction — 0/1k Words

Coding

Website — 0/2 Mockup designs for a new interface

Art

I'm currently supposed to be cranking out about 200 granny squares to make a blanket and I have about 60 made so far.

They're 76mmx76mm, they were supposed to be 50mmx50mm, but instead of using a 5mm hook as the book I got the blanket pattern from suggested I'm using a 6.5mm, so instead of a baby blanket size it's gonna be nearly twin size I think.
I want to finish the granny squares by January so I can start sewing the blanket together next year. Thus I have to up my monthly count because I didn't hit my goal last month. I was planning to crochet while listening to audio books, and I've already finished a few books, but, uhm, I didn't crochet while listening to them lmao. I do have a podcast I need to catch up with though.
As for drawing I'm doing monthly challenges with a friend to draw at least one thing a month based on a prompt. Last month's prompt was cartoon characters and this month is birds.

This isn't a goal, but just something fun I've been up to recently. I took some makerspace classes in a nearby city and I got to make this pencil holder and a book plate sticker. I'm very happy to have made them both Dragon Age 2 themed :^D

Language

Still studying French. Right now I'm using a Routledge frequency book with physical flashcards and anki to boost my vocabulary. I still have those French novels to read and I got a couple translations of books I've already read too. I want to have 400 words from the Routledge book down pat by the end of the year, and I'd like to read one of the books because I think I could, but I might try to finish Dragon Age Origins in French too because playing Dragon Age 2 in French was really fun and I learned a lot.
Last month I learned the ASL alphabet (and memorized the NATO phonetic alphabet while I was at it lol). I worked through lesson one of Dr. Bill Vicars ASL courses. I wanted to do three lessons a month so that I could finish the ASL 1 course by January, but it just wasn't a priority over the month so I decided 1 lesson a month is enough for now.

Reading

My reading goal for the entire year is 26 books. I've been barely keeping pace, but I knew there was gonna be a period where I'd suddenly read a lot in a little time. I thought it'd be over the holidays, but I'm on a pretty good streak right now. So, I don't need to read too many books in the remaining months to hit my goal, 2 a month will do it. And I've surpassed that already this month!

Writing

I haven't done much creative writing in a while, but I've been thinking about one of my stories often, not as often as when I was working on it, but it's slowly creeping back. I have some creative writing snippets in my journal, but haven't been tracking word count or writing days (even though I'm... technically still participating in Get Your Words Out). So I decided on a reasonable goal and will see how much progress I make!

Coding

I haven't been working on any little coding projects recently. I did get the No Starch Press Humblebundle of Python books a while ago so I have those to go through, but mostly I want to spruce up my website right now. I've seen so many more cool websites since making mine so I want to do a refresh of mine with the new knowledge I have of HTML5, CSS, Javascript, and webdesign rather than keeping the one I made when I had almost no idea what I was doing. Then I think I'll have the confidence to join some webrings too.

Gaming

While gaming doesn't really have a goal for me here's a list of games I've been playing on and off in August and September: Baldur's Gate 3, Volcano Princess, Kingdom Two Crowns, Rune Factory 3, Cozy Typer.

Comments

[neotula]

nice pencil holder! That's real cool!

[alaterdate]

Thanks! I really like it. I think that dragon design looks so good on it. I'm happy to have been able to make it