J.D. Moyer

sci-fi author, beatmaker

Category: Life Purpose & Goals Page 2 of 8

2017 Personal Recap and Thoughts for 2018

By

On January 1

In Life Purpose & Goals, Personal Updates, Writing

Qoöl NYE 2008 at 111 Minna

Hello readers! Hope you had an excellent New Year’s Eve. I had a quiet celebration with my family this year–we made cheesecake, played Clue, and watched a Jane Austen movie on Netflix. While I fondly remember my nights hosting New Year’s Eve parties, deejaying afterparties until 5am, drinking too much whiskey, and trying to keep track of the night’s door revenues, I’m glad my current lifestyle no longer requires such excess. Those were good times, and I’m glad I survived them (and profited), but the stress level was consistently high. I remember the night one guest accidentally set her hair on fire (thanks Hsiao-Wen for dousing the flames). I remember the night when a huge wad of cash fell out of my pocket in the back room of the DNA Lounge (honest employees–it was all there when I went back to find it). I remember the stress of trying to serve five hundred guests free champagne between midnight and 12:10am (thanks Jackie, Beth, Dawn, Kia, and everyone else who made that happen year after year). I remember when a patron, exhausted and drunk, fell off his barstool and cracked his head on the floor. Ultimately the poor fool was fine, but my friend Aly fainted at the sight of blood. Her boyfriend Dave caught her in his arms and swept her away.

Read More

Goals Are Falling Like Dominoes

By

On August 21

In Life Purpose & Goals, Personal Updates, Writing

Regular readers of this blog will know that my journey toward becoming a published writer (and hopefully soon a published novelist) has been one of endurance and perseverance rather than overnight success. In other words, a bit of a slog.

Just like every other writer in the history of the world. At least 99.9% of us.

That said, in the last few months, good fortune has smiled on me. Or the hard work has paid off. Or a little of both.

Read More

A Few Things I’ve Learned in My Forties

By

On April 24

In Advice for Young People, Life Purpose & Goals, Mental Health, Metaprogramming, Writing


Getting older doesn’t automatically make you wiser, but there’s more experience to draw on. One theory suggests that this is why we appear to think more slowly as we age–the dataset is bigger but the processor speed is the same.

Sign me up for cybernetic processor enhancement.

Forties (mid, edging into late) is still youngish, and I feel young, despite more than a few gray whiskers in my beard. As long as I eat my berries, anyway. 100% foraged, either from my backyard or the shelves of Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods.

Here are a few of my hard-earned wisdom nuggets from the last few years, for your entertainment (and possibly +1 to your WIS score).

Read More

Activity Audit – Where Does All The Time Go?

By

On February 24

In Creative Work/Career, Life Purpose & Goals, Metaprogramming

At some point everything drops …

December and January brought more freelance coding and database work than expected, but now I’m in a quiet stretch. It’s given me the opportunity to experiment with my ideal schedule. That is, working on writing and music as much as I want to, without a heavy load of client work. For the moment (and as long as I’m comfortable with how much I have in the bank) I can pretend I’m a full-time artiste.

It’s fun! I’ve been writing fiction in the mornings (with more optimism these days–I recently had another story accepted for publication at a pro rate, bringing me that much closer to SFWA active membership). In the afternoon I head to the studio and make beats, or work on Loöq Records, or do whatever needs to be done around the house. Pretty much my ideal weekday schedule.

But large swaths of unstructured time can be dangerous. I’ve had similar opportunities in the past, and squandered them, losing whole days to video games or trying to read the entire internet. Those of you who are self-employed may be able to relate.

A few years ago, in response to my own “Where does all the time go?” question, I ran an “activity audit,” a detailed analysis of all the activities in my life that require work/effort. After listing all the major activity areas (database/coding work, fiction writing, music production, household/parenting, etc.), I asked myself a series of questions about each activity.

Honing on in the what, why, and how for each activity gave me a great deal of clarity. It also improved my focus throughout the day (especially my ability to resist distractions), and helped me decide what to do each day, and in what order.

In the long run, the activity audit was more effective than any other productivity technique I tried, like locking myself out of certain internet sites, or depriving myself of coffee until I’d started writing. If I’m clear on my purpose and intended direction in life, and how the things I spend my time on fit into that picture, distractions are less of an issue. I still use quotas and have production targets, but I don’t rely on those for motivation.

Here are the questions I asked myself in regards to each activity:

Read More

Five Things That Made My Life 10% Better (Each)

By

On January 9

In Life Purpose & Goals, Mental Health, Metaprogramming

Our new puppy, a possible #6? We’ll see!

I used to make myself miserable in ways that turned out to be easily fixable. Sometimes it took ten, twenty years to see the obvious and do something about it. But that’s not even exceptionally slow. Many people go through their whole lives suffering huge amounts self-inflicted misery.

Here are the major quality-of-life improvements that have worked for me, so far:

Read More

Page 2 of 8

Previous

Next

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén