This month I didn’t end up using intend much, as I’ve had shown through in A long, lost Easter weekend and later on in Modes - A Manual for Myself, this month was mostly dissatisfying as the early days of the month just had me stuck in a waiting-loop until my supervisor would get back to me and I could finally start doing things again and make progress on the goal that I mentally anchored to (finishing up my thesis and be done with it), whilst later on I felt stuck in the aftermath of that and not having engaged with goals yet, just [[Modes - A Manual for Myself#drift-mode|drifting]] along to a large extend.
Fortunately, there are still a couple of things that were good:
Transition
The goal is to make progress in my transition, to try new things and find out what I like and want to get out of the transition. How I want to present myself to the world and to myself.
- learned a lot on injections and considering to switch
- mostly finished the main parts of voice training, now we’ll finally start to put the pieces together and start crafting a new voice!
- went to the women’s toilet a few more times (mostly just bc there were so few opportunities, but I took them where I saw them (gender neutral bathrooms really taking away my opportunities for getting used to it here!))
- went to humana (thrift store chain) 5 times, sold old, boy clothes and basically swapped out my wardrobe for things I really like!
- started coming out to more family members (basically done w my regular social circle)
Social Goals
The goal is to make new connections and deepen those I gained, to be more social, to discover what kinds of people I enjoy being around, to work on social anxiety and related issues.
- met a bunch of new people, primarily at EAGx Nordics, at meetups on AIS and protein-transition, as well as at LARP Crafternoons
- also met a new prospective-partner through said LARP discord group and we went out a couple of times which was really nice!!
- arranged plans for next month that have me travel a bunch (Paris, Oxford, London, maybe also Ghent) and see ppl I’m excited about!
Career & Impact
The goal is to gain further experience in operations (Ops) work, to find out whether this really is one of the best fields I can work in, to finally find out after many years whether I can actually, reasonably contribute to AI Safety or not. To have a positive impact on the universe’s future, and to have resources.
- I went to EAGx Nordics and volunteered there, had many great and inspiring conversations, made new connection I enjoy and personally value (i.e. not based on career utility) and got lots of appreciations for my apparently quite good volunteer work :)
- Also went to an AI Safety talk and perhaps got offered a job at Safe AI Germany (SAIGE)? :O
- Did go back to following the bluedot course more, but not as much as I hoped :/ (due to anchoring on my thesis as the key goal and then losing sight of the others for a bit)
- Started organizing a screening of The AI Doc
- Created a Proof-of-Concept for some improvements on the AI Safety Atlas
- quiz prototypes; these will get expanded and made much better soon
- much improved experience for going back-and-forth between listening and reading by having each word highlighted as it’s spoken by the pre-generated TTS. And inversely, we can select a word in the text and have the audio jump to there. (The listen button at the top right)
- In touch with CeSIA to work on this more and make changes they’d actually implement
- much more for me to learn! :)
- created an Automated Transit Time Scheduler (no public version yet)
Health, Self, and Wellbeing
The goal is to work on myself and identify my inner issues, to realign or minimize them and the impact they have on me. To actualize more of who I am, to find out who I want to be, but also to life a live I enjoy and to avoid burning out again, and to maintain or increase Notes/METs as those are crucial for this and all the other goals.
- The April Writing Challenge went really well, I did much more writing than usual and not even bc I burned through all the old ideas, but also bc there were so many new ones! Also, see Themes (the Writing Challenge, and Commitment Devices)
- Whilst a lot of this month was neither fully resting nor being fully active, it did provide some calm and recuperation from all the last months, and also in anticipation of next month
- Could sort a bit more through internal issues (even if not as much as I’d have hoped given the time available)
- Dancing has now become much more second nature!
- Whilst I still often end up imitating things others do that seem cool to expand my portfolio and try new things, even those things I try without imitation but just come to me in the moment have much less of a social-awkwardness twinch to them.
- At the EAGx Nordics afterparty I was sometimes one of the most engaged ppl, which was interesting; I really don’t feel like I really know what I’m doing, but perhaps it at least now has that appearance to some others, which is kinda cool to think about.
- Next thing to try get better at would be leg work!
- I’ve experienced a new type of partying and dancing: very sing-able music and every loudly sings along; whilst it felt much less danceable, it was a cool new experience
- Also, had a cool moment where me and some other girl started air-fist-fighting each other every time the lyrics went back to “fighting” in the chorus. Escalating each time, culminating in me getting “shot” and falling over onto the tables behind, lifeless. Until the song said “revival”. Was a great moment, not just for me and her, also the others in our circle really enjoyed our little impromptu performance :D
Exploration and Discovery
This is the arc for this year. I want to explore and discover more about myself. The other goals all serve this one to some extend and have this aim woven into them. Yet, not all things directly serve one of those other goals, but mainly match this main purpose.
This month still had a lot to show for, perhaps not that much less than the other months, but it still feels hollow, not only bc I overall felt deflated, but also bc between these really good things, there was no feeling of progression on my thesis, nor anything that took its place.