Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
It wasn’t that hard getting up on Monday morning at 5am to get to the gym. Coming back from a two week break didn’t hurt that much. But getting back into the routine of writing before I got to the gym at 6am has been a struggle.
It’s almost 11pm now and I’m laying down on my couch rattling this off to keep a commitment to myself to write every day.
The thing I am most looking forward to with retirement is time to write. The idea that I can schedule writing time that isn’t rushed excites me. Not having to think up ideas on the toilet first thing in the morning, or while washing my face and brushing my teeth. Not having to edit my work while on a treadmill. Actually sitting at a laptop with a coffee in my hand rather than hunting and pecking away on my phone… these are things I can’t wait to do as part of a daily routine upon retirement.
Before the March break people would ask me if I’m excited about my pending retirement and I’d answer honestly that I haven’t thought much about it. Now, after the break, I can’t say that anymore. I am thinking about it. I’m wondering how to design my days? I’m looking forward to finding a new groove that doesn’t involve a 5am wake up time and rushing to get my whole routine done before starting a long day at work.
The real test will be next September, when everyone is back at work and I’m home. I’m confident that I’ll build a routine that works. I’ll find my groove.
Anyone who writes regularly understands writer’s block. It is a scary thing to face and when you are in it, it feels like there is no escape. So when I heard of this paper, I had to look it up:
JOURNAL OF APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS 1974, 7, 497 Number 3 (FALL 1974)
THE UNSUCCESSFUL SELF-TREATMENT OF A CASE OF “WRITER’S BLOCK’‘ Dennis Upper
No abstract, and completely blank other than the word ‘REFERENCES’, of which there are none. A foot note mentioning that portions of this paper were NOT presented at a conference, and one more thing that makes this priceless:
COMMENTS BY REVIEWER A
“I have studied this manuscript very carefully with lemon juice and X-rays and have not detected a single flaw in either design or writing style. I suggest it be published without revision. Clearly it is the most concise manuscript I have ever seen—yet it contains sufficient detail to allow other investigators to replicate Dr. Upper’s failure. In comparison with the other manuscripts I get from you containing all that complicated detail, this one was a pleasure to examine. Surely we can find a place for this paper in the Journal—perhaps on the edge of a blank page.”
I can’t decide what I like best about this, the originality of the paper itself, the brilliance of the reviewer, or the fact that it was published.
I wish that I was clever enough to have written this when I was stuck with writer’s block! 😆
Meet the co-author of this blog, Oliver the Cat. He greets me at the couch at around 5:15am, and will meow if I don’t put my legs up on the table. When they are horizontal, he jumps up on my legs and waits for a good head scratch. Once he’s satisfied, he turns around to face my feet, and stretches out along my legs.
Alas, it only lasts about 3-4 minutes, then one little adjustment or shift in my body position is enough for him to get off me. But not until I’ve started tapping away words on my phone.
Oliver is probably the only part of my morning routine I don’t have control over. He can choose to sleep in, and avoid my lap for a morning. He can decide how long he wants a head scratch & massage. He can have the nerve to jump off me before I’ve written anything. Still, any time he chooses to run through this little ritual, I’m happy to make sure it happens.
Oliver isn’t just my cat, he’s very often my writing companion… there to support me in my daily writing, stealing just enough of my attention to put me in a good mood, but not too much of it to distract me from the reason I got on the couch… which is to write.
The only thing I use AI for when I write my blog is to make an accompanying image. I don’t use it for editing, and as a result I’ll often not notice a typo, or I’ll create a sentence that doesn’t flow, or I’ll repeat a word a little too frequently in a paragraph. What I’m saying is that I’ll make mistakes that could be caught if I used an artificial intelligence to aid in my editing.
That said, I already do use some AI because a little red line unner under a word lets me know I’ve misspelled it. We often forget that we’ve been using forms of artificial intelligence for a long time now. But I’m specifically talking about using AI as an editor or even as a co-writer. This is something I have not intentionally done yet. However, if I’m honest, the main reason for this is simply time.
I’m already pressed for time to get my writing done in the morning. I recently wrote about how frustrated I was with AI images, and the fact that they weren’t giving me exactly what I wanted, and wasted too much time. I don’t see myself in a position where I’m going to spend time using AI as an editor on top of this.… But it’s coming.
The reason it’s coming is because while I know writing every day has improved the quality of my writing, I’m sure it has also reinforced some of the weaknesses in my style. Doing something repetitively without meaningful feedback doesn’t necessarily make you better. I know that having an editor would make me better. And the reality is, I have an editor available to me whenever I want one. So now it’s just a matter of deciding when?
The ‘when’ is probably after retirement. I think that when I’m not trying to stick an entire routine of habits into under 2 1/2 hours before work, I’ll have time for things like putting my writing into an AI editor. I’ll probably be writing on my laptop instead of my phone, while enjoying a morning coffee. I’ll have the convenience of multiple tabs open on my browser rather than having to use my finger to copy paste information. And most importantly, I’ll have more time to learn, to get feedback and discern, does this AI suggestion make my writing better, or does it make my writing more vanilla?
The point is, it’s going to happen. To have a tool like this, literally at my fingertips and not to use it is silly. Especially when it can help me, with the right prompt, to become better at something I love to do.
These are the words I’m greeted with every morning.
Add title
Start writing….
I open the Jetpack App on my phone, click a little plus sign in the bottom corner and choose ‘Post’ to get my blog post going. On weekends I have a morning schedule that doesn’t allow me to write early, because I’m not choosing to get up at 5am. But my Monday to Friday morning schedule is bathroom, change for my workout, go downstairs to the couch and open the app.
I marvel how sometimes the muse hits me and suddenly I’m 300 words in and already know how I’ll end, and sometimes I’m fighting with myself to focus and not allow my phone to be a distraction as I sit staring at ‘Add title’. Sometimes a title is all I need to complete my day’s writing, and sometimes I change the title after writing something that meandered away from what I thought I was going to write.
Add title. Start writing….
Sometimes this is a warm, comforting invitation, sometimes a cold, daunting challenge. And no matter what it feels like, I write… I’ve seen that prompt about 2,400 times in the last 6 and a half years, and I still want to see it every day.
A few years ago I switched from looking for royalty free images to add to my Daily-Ink blog posts to using AI. The main reason for this is that I found myself spending almost as much time searching for images as I was spending writing my blog post. This was not efficient.
While I’ve had a few challenges along the way, for the most part, I got image creation consistently down around 3-5 minutes. This is great, and so much less stressful… except for when it isn’t. The past few days have been a struggle. I couldn’t get the AI to give me what I wanted. Even when I asked for clarification, and a description of my image was recited ack to me in incredible detail, the end product did not match what I hoped for.
Three of the last four days I was at the gym, walking on the treadmill and I was still trying to get my post published, delayed by failed attempts to get the image I hoped for. In all 3 cases I settled for something close. Actually 2 out of 3, for the other one I used a sample Wikipedia image the AI found for me. I can’t believe how hard it is to get AI to create the image of a clock showing the time 5 o’clock!?!
I was tempted to say that AI image creation is getting dummer, but I think what’s happening is that I’ve just started to expect a lot more. The clock is a bad example, but in many cases I’m expecting a level of sophistication I haven’t asked for previously. I want specific perspectives. I’m asking for complex scenarios, and I’m challenging the AI to create ‘unnatural’ situations, like a teacher in a circle of desks with the students all sitting looking out and away from the teacher.
That’s sounds like an easy request but in millions of reference images of teachers, the AI has been trained to have students face the teacher. So despite continued attempts, with the AI actually describing in detail what I’m asking for before giving it to me, I still got an image of the students facing inward, towards the teacher. Again, and again, and again.
So I’m going to dumb it down. I’m going to ask for less complex images. I’m going to settle for an image that might not be perfect, and most importantly I’m going to spend less time on images and more time writing.
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Post script: My one and only image request for this post – ‘Create a stylized, abstract watercolour image that looks like an AI image gone wrong, with an uncanny valley styled mishmash of items.’
It’s that time of year again where I go to my big tracking calendar and add up my totals for the year.
Once again I was very consistent with my workouts and meditation, and I’ve yet again maintained my daily writing for another year. I’ll break a few things down as I reflect on the year.
Workouts: After taking a look at my 2024 calendar, I realize that I haven’t missed 2 days in a row in over 2 years. This year I was a little less strict in my definition of a workout, sometimes only doing 15 minutes of cardio, and sometimes not doing both weights and cardio, but still committing to a workout 326/365 days in 2025.
In my 2024 post I said regarding one of two goals, “Gain 7-8 pounds of muscle… Now I fluctuate around 167-169 pounds and would like to bring that to 175 pounds.”
For the last couple weeks I’ve been bouncing around 173-175 but I hit 178 a couple months ago and I’ll get back there after the holiday break. So, I totally achieved this goal, and couldn’t be happier. For 2026 I hope to be in the 183-185 range. I think this is a huge challenge, my body seems to like the 174-176 range and I’ll have to work more on a consistent diet rather than just focusing on weights and training.
Meditation: This is something I need to improve. While statistically I did well with frequency of meditations, about 85-90% of these were done when walking on my treadmill. Although I listened to a guided meditation, I was almost always distracted and allowed my monkey brain to wander instead of truly meditating.
I’m actually not going to try to change this at all in the next 6 months, but once I retire I’ll attempt to meditate for longer, and be more dedicated to meditation. This will include a more formal setup and a setting other than on the treadmill. For now I’ll stick with the status quo.
Daily-Ink: I’ll continue to write every single day for 2026. This started in July 2019, and I have no plans to change this in the short term.
Creativity: This was a failed goal but I’m still happy to track it. I wanted this to increase, but it decreased. Essentially, the only thing I tracked this year was meetings with my uncle where we discuss our Book of Codes project and just as importantly, life, the universe, and everything. Again, I’ll have new goals after retirement, but for now I’m in maintenance mode and just want to keep going as-is.
So, my main goals this year are calorie tracking and building muscle mass. I only want to get to 185lbs, this isn’t a plan to keep gaining weight after that. I actually like the weight I’m at right now, but at 58 with a not-so-great back, I realize that I’m one injury away from having to take a few months off and potentially dropping 8-10 pounds. Hopefully such an incident is a couple decades away, but even if it’s only 5 years away I’m keenly aware that I will have a much harder time regaining weight in my older years. So if I can sit at 185lbs as my normal weight, I know that I likely won’t drop below 175… which again is a weight I’m quite happy to be at.
185lbs by the end of 2026 is my goal, and to get there I will focus on hypertrophy in the gym and a higher protein and calorie intake than I have normally consumed.
Fitness, meditation, and writing are things I no longer need to track to ensure that I’m on track. For this reason, I think I might be retiring my large calendar and stickers. I recently got a Garmin watch with Lifestyle Tracking and I’ll still record these daily, but it’s time to put an end to the calendar. It has served me well but having joined a gym, I no longer go to my basement every day and tracking this month has been less diligent since I could go a full week without adding stickers. That said, if you are starting a new goal, I can’t recommend this strategy enough.
2026 is going to be a great year of continued progress… Gradual at first, but picking up speed after my mid-year retirement.
I’m frustrated with myself because last night I woke up twice with half developed ideas for Daily-Ink posts, then I woke up this morning not remembering them. A very long time ago I used to keep a pen and paper next to my bed to jot down ideas but I haven’t done that in years. I think it’s time to start again. Sure, I could use my phone, but I don’t want to shine a light in my face or my wife’s, and I don’t want to wake up more than is necessary.
These ideas, like dreams, tend to be very elusive in the morning. I can clearly remember having them, but they drift away. Fleeting thoughts that seemed once solid, but now sit translucent and unrecognizable. I remember waking up. I remember thinking that the idea was good enough to share, and in one of the two instances last night I even remember giving the post a title. And now that’s all I remember, the moment, not the concept… the thinking, not the thought.
I wonder how often this happens in a night? We formulate ideas, resolve issues, and solve problems only to have these insights slip away from our sleepy brains. How many times have we let cognitive brilliance drift away as we drift back to sleep? Or maybe our minds let these ideas go because they are not as insightful as we remember them in the morning. Maybe they escape us because they are not nearly as developed as we think we remember them to be in the morning?
I hope to learn soon just how valuable these ideas might be. I’ll set a pen and small notepad by my bedside and try to remember to jot these ideas down, while hopefully being able to get quickly back to sleep.
Today I wanted to quit. I’ve procrastinated for over an hour and a half, and my morning routine will be incomplete. Doubt kept circulating in my head. I feel like I have absolutely nothing to say. It’s been six plus years of writing every day… maybe today it ends. Done.
Well, the fact that these words are written here says that I beat today’s demons. That said, it feels painfully cliche to write about how hard it is sometimes to write. Trite.
It’s a day to remember that if every day was easy it wouldn’t be worth doing. A day to remember that it’s not every day that we can do our best work, and in fact 50% of those days will be our worst 50%. You can’t do better than that on average, the math doesn’t math.
My fingers are moving, words are appearing before me, constructed from thoughts in my head, and another Daily-Ink will be published. I didn’t quit. I also didn’t add any real qualitative value, but I didn’t quit.
Tomorrow will be easier. I say that rather unconvincingly, but with honest hope. Sometimes the blank screen is daunting, and painful to look at. It’s a prison wall more than a screen. Today was one of those days. I’ve scaled the wall, not step by step but word by word, flowing better now because the page is no longer blank. The prison break was successful.
But am I really free? Is my choice to write daily an opportunity for artistic expression, or is it a life sentence? Today it feels like the latter. When that feeling comes more than 50% of the time, I will need to consider freeing myself, but for now I’ll keep writing.
Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
As principal, I frequently get asked to write letters of reference or requests to fill out reference questionnaires. Something that I’ve always done is asked for a ‘brag sheet’ so that I don’t end up forgetting something about the person I’m writing the reference for. An example is that I might forget that a student was a major organizer of an event we ran, or I might have forgotten about their service they do for the community outside of school.
Recently I have been using AI to assist me, specifically Google’s Notebook LM. What I did was I took 8 old reference letters that I wrote and changed the names so that there was no reference to the actual student I wrote them for, and I inputted these into the notebook as style references. For one of them I also included a brag sheet.
Now when a student gives me a brag sheet, I write a prompt that says to write a reference letter for the scholarship I specify, giving criteria for the scholarship, sharing the brag sheet, and asking for it to be written in the exact style of the 8 examples I shared, using the information from the brag sheet.
At this point the reference letter is over 90% complete. A few changes by me and the whole process is done in about 10 minutes (this includes a name change because I don’t put the new student’s name in either). Normally, this would take me over a 1/2 hour and sometimes longer to ensure that I’m hitting all the chords relating to both the brag sheet and the scholarship requirements.
Most of my minor changes are either up or downplaying something from the brag sheet or editing to ensure the reference is in my voice, although this is often already evident based on the examples I provided. My last part of this is copying the text as plain text onto letterhead.
In all honesty, I think these new letters of reference are better than my originals. I often focused on fewer items that I knew about and didn’t give the full scope of the brag sheet. Now I just add a sentence or two about the parts I really know about the student to highlight my connection and understanding of them, and what they do at the school. I feel like my voice comes through and the AI provides more detail than I normally do. So not only is this a great time saver, I’m actually doing a better job to support my students.
