To-do Twenty Twenty-Two

I’m so bad at making and keeping New Years Resolutions that I typically put them off until February. I’ve always been a procrastinator and I’ve always told myself that I’m going to change, but not today. Tossing Calvinistic guilt aside procrastination isn’t all bad, it gives you time to mull over your plans before making them public. Well, my mulling is done and my plans for 2022 are itching to embarrass me. Hang on cowgirls, this is my agenda for 2022.

For 2022 I’m limiting my goals to one big job and a handful of smaller tasks. My big job: write the first draft of a short book that uses LEAN to formally prove some ancient geometric theorems. This is a continuation of my LEAN studies from last year. I am fully aware that I may be setting myself up for colossal failure as this may be utterly beyond me! It will take a sustained effort to master an unfamiliar tool and translate informal proofs into a strictly formal language. I’d say it’s comparable to assembling a hobby computer from component parts and then writing a new small OS, from scratch, in an unfamiliar assembly language. I expect lots of hard slogging.

I don’t slog well!

This is where my smaller tasks come in. I’ll use my little tasks to give myself breaks from my big job’s anticipated drudgery. Here they are:

1. Observe as many Messier and other objects as weather permits. I’ve seen 66 Messier objects. It’s time to complete the list, (yeah I’m keeping track), and get my RASC Messier Certificate.

2. Learn more proper northern hemisphere star names. I live in a light-polluted suburban area. Light pollution is an abomination in dire need of elimination but that’s not going to happen. Light pollution, like plastic crap in the ocean, and global warming will be here long after I’m not. If you cannot eliminate an abomination work with it. Light polluted skies are what I call beginner skies. All but the brighter stars are washed out and, to no one’s surprise, it’s the brighter, magnitude three and below stars, (bright objects have low and negative magnitudes), that have proper names. Every night I go out on my little patio and attempt to call out all the properly named stars in view. It’s a silly thing but it’s amazing how much you see by simply looking.

3. Continue shooting and adding captioned images to my pictures site. I should pass 5,000 online pictures this year.

4. Read at least ten books. This is about half the number of books I typically task myself with. My book reading rules are strict. I force myself to completely read books before counting them. Sadly, this rule ignores much of my reading. Like everyone else on Earth, I spend hours reading my goddamn phone. This year I will be partly reading many books in pursuit of my main goal; they will just have to go uncounted.

5. Blog more! I keep nagging myself to write more, maybe this year I’ll listen to myself.

In 2023 we’ll gather here, at the old Drivel Dome, to review my accomplishments or lack thereof.