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questions

At the end of most entries I wrote here I included a question or two. I think it's good to practice asking questions, of yourself and of the world.

What do I want from learning about web development?
What am I actually trying to achieve, in the moment? Why?
I've looked at the visuals of the project and drawn a loose plan - what about the writing?
Can I make things in my life smaller?
What would a complexity risk evaluation equation look like?
If you only had 2 more days of work left what would you do?
What more can I write about, to provide earnest and honest document of my time?
What do I want in learning a language
How will I get there?
Where can I make space for more silliness in my work
Could I make something that feels like an aquarium
What can you accept as is, and lift a burden from your mind in doing so.
Is the pace I'm trying to set for myself unrealistic straight off the back of work?
Was two books at once too many? (yes)
are you fully accountable for the work you put out into the world?
if not, who is? It always falls on someone
What is it that creates the feeling of being rushed?
What is being rushed?
How can I get rid of it
how can I give myself a treat every day?
When will I stop being sick in one way or another
When's the best time in the day to read
Where can I be more aware of my thinking systems to make my life easier?
When's a good time to update yesthisislouis.com/chain, I've got about 100 more links to add
What can I ask myself daily?
- What's the weather forcast?
- How long are my time commitments?
- Am I trying to do too much today?
What do I want to do in the next 5 years?
How am I living to my values, how can I change that?
Can I live off plain porridge and yoghurt for the rest of my life?
How would I like to be writing?
Is my tree outside dead yet?
Where can I embrace mystery in my own life?
How long does soup last in the fridge?
why am I so tired each morning?
Is the primacy of spoken language presuming more communication than it actually provides?
How could this be a cowboy comic?

Posted by Jillian Mayer on her instagram will type up the questions another time

Why is it so hard to put my clothes away?
Would it have been better to stay quiet? To not share my work? (probably not)
what am I framing negatively, that could be framed positively?
eg I don't have much time today, I have to do these things I've planned vs I am excited to do the things I've planned
Is it really slow and inefficient in a negative sense, or am I just impatient and indoctrinated into a culture of speed and convenience. (probably both)
From mewithoutYou's winter solstice, a question about needs and behaviours, a questioning what coping mechanisms no longer server their use:

does my misery feed a metaphysical need
That’s long since passed me by?

What am I putting off?
Why can't I keep my room tidy
What am I going to bring to the "Paths towards Form" meeting?
Am I present in the moment
Are you tense right now? Take a moment to relax throughout your body
Are these questions at the end of each entry doing what I want?
What do I want them to do?
What is the practice of love in my daily life?
What is a funny joke about a cowboy?
what do I learn from being away?
what do I learn from coming home?
Where am I thinking where I could be doing?
Where am I doing when I should be thinking?
Should I shave my beard (yes)
What could I be doing that's really hard?
What will I tell myself inside to get the hard thing done?
How do I set up a soundsystem?
How can I work with my body instead of against it to reach my goals?
Where can I make space for boredom in my life, to welcome concentration?
How can I put into place habits for when my normal routine falls apart?
How can I impove my quality of life by improving my perception?
How can I read more lovely writing more often?
how can I belong? Where do I belong?
Why am I studying?
To get a job?
Why get a job?
To earn enough to sustain oneself?
Why sustain oneself?
To connect?
What does it mean to connect?
What do you do if you can't?
How much of my internal suffering is self inflicted? (all of it)
What assumptions have I made about my time that could do with testing?
Am I clenching my jaw, or tensed up right now?
Do I need a drink of water?
Where should I be taking a break and relaxing?
What is the information you put out into the world truly worth? (when attached to your name, when not)
what haven't I listened to in a long time?
Are they an asshole or just falling apart? (probably both, good to keep in mind though)
What am I grateful for today? (gratitude journal practice)
When was the last time I had a potluck?
How can I get excited for something repetitive? or make it exciting?
Why might I put off reflecting on my habits and identity?
What can I do to aggressively combat procrastination?
How could I better document my work, as inspired by Agnes Cameron?
What do I want in a job?
What do I want in a side project?
What made yesterday so good?
How can I reproduce that?
Can I be at peace with fluctuating emotional states
How can I externalise my thoughs, to help process them?
When am I going to argentina?
What am I excited for today?
What can I shoehorn into my list of excitement? (eg. porridge has now entered my excitement list, following this morning's revelation)
What understanding can I reach about joy and suffering
Where can I let go of goals made around a flawed mental model
How can I make a habit of that
How can I apply myself, entirely and ambitiously, to the task at hand?
How can I weild ambition as a tool, and not let it be delusion and dissappointment?
What can I do when I wake up and I'm not feeling it? (it == everything)
Should I just let my sourdough starter die?
(a familiar one) How can I allow more time for concentrated sustained effort (free of distractions)
Why am I so shy at the wall?
How can I rebalance after a weekend of socialising? Will be important when I'm working again
What's the theme for today?
Where can I break decisions into smaller pieces, to make them daily?
What other milestones can I put into my routine, to anchor it around instead of strict times? (this journal is a milestone)
what decisions does this day hold?
what am I having for dinner?
If I had to take a job right now, what would it be?
What limits am I placing on my lifestyle that no longer actually apply?
How can I daily interrogate my wants and need, and make changes accordingly
How can I care for my lemon tree, which despite my efforts has survived the winter outside
How can I focus on the task at hand, and not let anxiety get me down?
why is everything so hard all the time?
What do I want to say, now that I'm saying less?
Can I draw one cartoon a day?
Should I?
What day will I use for my long writing day?
Am I present?
What are the political forces driving the music I listen to?
How can I see more music, but drink less?
How can I log my work as to get more insight into the real time and process?
Why do I keep eating things that make my guts blast?
How can I be honest in my taste, without offending artists?
How can I examine my feelings around zinefest?
which questions are unanswerable?
How can I tackle the feeling of business I so easily acquire?
How can I remember my body's limitations before being confronted with them?
Can I tell jokes in this journal?
How can artistic practice become a routine part of my life, and not an overworking extension.
What do I want to do differently next zine fest?
How can I get less sick
How can I not suffer too much while I'm sick
Is it time for another lifestyle audit?
- What's working for me?
- What's working against me?
I felt relaxed for the first time in a long time last night - why?
How can I get used to using VIM movements more often?
Does excess impede wisdom?
How might I seek balance in my week?
How can I get the juice of this journal, while spending less time on the squeeze?
How can I cool my room down a little, without using aircon?
How can I practice taking a step back when I fall into a programming hole?
Is this something that happens for other things too?
What am I proud of having worked on?
What projects could I finish this week?
How to keep going when the energy is gone
How to push through the doubt and keep looking for work
What else could employment look like?
What can I dissolve, that might be lingering?
How can I learn to wait, with patience?
How can I read poetry everyday, as a form of self improvement?
The same question as above, but as decadent hedonism
How can I budget the next few months?
How can I help job anxiety?
How do I push through the static?
How can I be at peace and present in the work I do today?
How can I remember to finish the little tasks I start on an active day?
Why does Don't Dance feel like a guilty pleasure, though I only heard it for the first time recently?
How can I feel more centered?
How can I enjoy cycling in the rain more?
How can I ground myself after a day or two of chaos? (journaling helps)
How can I retreat to stillness and quiet my ego? (didn't write this one myself)
What questions am I avoiding asking my self?
What answers do I already have?
Where is a sense of urgency helpful?
More importantly, where is it unhelpful?
How can I get sick less often?
What did I learn last time I got covid that I could use this time?
How many times do I have to go over the same issues before I see progress?
How can I remind myself that "success is not a straight line"
What am I grateful for?
How can I focus on the task at hand, and divide my day into manageable bites?
How can I regulate my nervous system in this moment?
Do I cancel my bday party for illness?
How can I move with clarity and calm today
How can I move through my negative emotions into integrity and peace
How can I be mindful to both forgive self and rebuke self, in necessary measure
How can I treat sleep as a practice, as an artform
How can I have the courage of my convictions everyday, in all I do?
What are my convictions and how can my decisions reflect them?
How can I maintain the excitement I felt this morning for the rest of the day?
Should I have another coffee?
Where can I let reading and contemplation back into my life?
Where does my sense of self come from?
How soon can I implement the poetry markdown syntax? Typing it out is annoying when I want to copy and paste
What's on the cards today? From James Clear, through my brother
When was a time in the past you successfully adapted and made a change?
What is a change you would benefit from making right now?
What objects can you see around you that bring you joy? A nice cup, a good spoon, a sculpture.
How can you remind yourself of all you have, and appreciate it, everyday?
What does it mean to meditate?
How can I find a little peace in each day?
What small piece of cleaning can I do today?
How can I make it easier to add photos to these posts? I'd like to
Should it be easier to add photos?
What else could I change my mental model about and see easier progress?
How can I practice humility and patience when I'm stressed?
Where can I stop and recalibrate
How can I rest and relax
How can I wrap up the next few weeks with a sense of calm
(I've done one like this before) what am I treating as burden that is actually a wonderful opportunity?
What am I going to cook for christmas?
What can I do today to put my mind at ease?
What can be reduced from a personal hyper-object into a real object through analysis?
What projects can be put through the small project wringer right now?
How can I return to some kind of baseline?
How do I continue to move forwards, feeling things expanding in needs and demands?
What can I cut out, to relax a little?
a repeat question, can I return to some kind of baseline?
do I have a baseline? Why do I feel off?
How can I practice acceptance and humility?
why do I feel weird?
Recognising the block conjugação had become was freeing - how can I practice recognising where I'm butting my head against things?
What role does stillness play in my life?
What year is it?
How can I bring the residency experience closer to my life?
Why am I writing this journal?
Of the things I've mentioned above, what can I run through the small project wringer?
How do I want to grieve the year gone and welcome the one to come?
How do I make falafels
What can I change about my journal writing so I like it more?
How can I get a grip?
What have I learned today?
What do I want?
How could I establish a bare minimum of organisation, and reach that?
what do I want
How can I find rest and reward in my own internal chaos? Like a bird in a nest of a thousand twigs?
What distraction comes from inside-out, and what comes from outside-in?
How can I reduce the time I leave my friends and family waiting for a response?
What decisions am I struggling to make at the moment that could be helped with some decision making tools?
How can I get my sleep back?
Will I get tired of baking bread?
How can I turn my excitement into action?
How can I keep my portuguese up without my weekly lesson?
What's one thing I'm grateful for?
What's a present I'm going to give myself today a la Agent Dale Cooper?
How can negativity and doubt be expressed in a safe and helpful way?
How can I practice finishing things, drawing them closed like wee fabric bag?
How can I shift hard decisions to the front instead of putting them off
What does it mean to be calm? to practice calm?
How can I recover from routine disrupting events?
How can I celebrate my successes?
So what?
What small organisational wins can I land each evening?
How can I rest in confidence that I can do all that I need to do?
How can I do it all?
How can I eat the frog first?
Can I spend some time dreaming today?
What does it mean to move from one stage of your life to another?
How can I manage the transition well?
How can I reframe things mentally so I enjoy them more?
What decisions do I really need to make?

Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if you will ever dig. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book VII v59.

How can I look within with this journal?
How can I ever dig?
how can I sleep on a plane?
having got this far, what next?
What will I do today that challenges me?
Is there anything simple I can do to slightly improve my language acquisition?
How can I overcome this jetlag?
What more can I get out of monocle before I throw it away?
Y que no hago nada con mi tiempo aca?
A donde quiero ir en el norte?
sobre que quiero pensar?
sobre que quiero escribir?
Como puedo estar un poco más presente?
Como puedo prestar más atención en el dia?
Que haré para mejorar mi español cada dia?
Como puedo identificar más los sentimientos que tengo, y procesarlos?
Como puedo escribir más rapido?
How can I know myself more, find more words? (aside from poetry)
How can I do this is in a boring way that helps me organise my life a little better?
How can I be more present?
What routines can I bring into my final week and a bit of travel?
why is my time filled up like a sponge?
How can I break down the admin ahead of me into manageable tasks? (As opposed to conceptual "get ready for x" questions)
How can I keep the self confidence I gained through travel, and maintain it in the face of what would have once been devastating weight gain? (6 kilos, not that much, but I have historically had very frail self esteem and body image)
How can I make some kind of plan for re-entering my life here?
I'm starting again, a chance to begin again: What do I want?
Are there any journal formats I could try to speed this up?
Does the way I see my week affect the way I live it?
What if Saturday was the first day of the week?
What's ahead?
What can I prepare for?
If I do nothing, what will happen?
If I do something, what will happen?
can you relieve pressure without cutting into yourself?
what can’t you see right now?
Does the Earth have memories of the Moon slowly moving away from it?
a dice or a doubt?
are there any fundamental beliefs I hold about my work that have gone untested?
how can I test them?
how can I document, track and visualise my work?
what does it mean to have time alone?
What can I do with all this desire?
How can I track what I'm doing each day?
Am I going to burnout?
Where if not here?
How can I chill out? I've been back less than a month, it's okay to move slow.
what am I worried about when I could just relax?
what no longer makes sense?
How can I come to grips with the way my tasks will never ever end?
What is the limit of enforcing order on my life?
Where does order come from?
Where does it end?
Is there anything you know but can't explain?
What exists beyond language?
What if you can just fill you time up with things?
What would you have done differently, last year? And how does that change what you do today? (little q for the next entry)
Have you tried going for a wee run?
How does my narrative about my own priviledge erase the real systemic and personal struggles I've had, alienating the oppressed as "others who suffer"?
What could I do now that bears doing sooner rather than later?
What small change could make a big difference in my life?
Where do I see myself in 5 years?
What's for dinner this week?
What does simplicity look like?
How can I practice honesty in the way I am?
What's one thing I could do in 10 minutes that will make my life easier?
What's for dinner tomorrow?
What habits do I want to develop?
What habits do I want to let go?
Who taught me to want this?
What's out there, just beyond my self obsession?
How can I calm down a little?
What's the long term goal?
How can I get into focus mode quicker?
What if I only focussed on sleep for an entire week?
What am I standing next to?
What are my assumptions about being?
What else might I be one word away from?
How can I get emotional, be mad with someone, without it ruining my day?
How can I cultivate moments of peace in each day, to bring myself back into the present?
What really matters?
What's stopping me booking more appointments with my psychologist?
How can I approach the idea and then go far beyond it?
what am I doing
where do I put this grief
What have I noticed?
What does it mean?
How can I get out of my head
What's one thing I can do today, to shift off my mental list of things to do
What if it's not that important?
What did I learn today?
If I can not make it faster, can I make it not happen?
Where can I find joy and simplicity in not doing something?
What's next?
What are my goals?
can you go deeper?
can you resurface with what you find?
What if I made pizza for lunch this week instead of salmon? or... salmon pizza?
What can I do right now to calm down and center myself?
What do I want to have changed when I come back from Auckland?
What can I do to start journaling more regularly again?
What do I want to have changed when I come back from Auckland?
What can I do to start journaling more regularly again?
What comes after acknowledging feelings?
What can I learn about dopamine that will help me manage tasks?
What am I doing to be in the moment?
How can I learn from the past without living in it?
what's missing?
what could go?
how can I remember to rest?
what if none of this matters?
what matters instead? I thought today about trying to link the questions to what I've been writing about in the entry.
How can I record and review the return visits to different things in my life?
How can I recognise (and thank) things I'm outgrowing?
How do I live?
What is urgent?
What do I really care about?
What am I doing now that I could stop doing
What wonder have I forgot about my life?
what if I'm sick for the rest of my life?
what if Melbourne is making me sick?
What am I afraid of?
what if the sun doesn't rise tomorrow. what then
how is this year different to last year
What's a little treat I can prepare for future me?
What would acceptance look like in my life?
- and would it be a good thing?
What would normal feel like?
Can naming things help me feel them more keenly?
What am I doing?
What would a foundation in my name pursue?
Why wait until I'm dead?
What is it that makes you shy away from that?
What if you stay in that discomfort?
What have I learnt before that I could use today?
what do I really want?
how can I practice asking for that?
where does reflection find time in my life?
how can I recognise resistance, quickly
why do I like large rooms with a few things in them
What's stopping you from enjoying yourself?
Can you change it?
what is my blue sky dream daily routine?
where is there blockage - emotional, mental, physical?
What to do now that I am full to the brim?
Why do I struggle so much to relax?
What cannot be said with words?
What would you do if you could focus?
What would it look like if I took climate emergency seriously?
Are spacial metaphors useful for thinking about my internal and external situation?
nvim are you having a laugh
How can I "live the question?"
Why am I getting to bed so late lately? Why do I want to stay awake?
am I aware of the limits of language to express anything?
am I testing them?
Does my misery feed a metaphysical need that's long since passed me by?
Am I suffering in creativity because the thing is hard to or because I am quick to allot myself the feeling of suffering?
What's going on right now?
What unit of measurement serves you best right now?
What is it about external structure that helps? How can I use that more?
Where am I saying "I should" instead of confronting my ignorance
How can I refine my thoughts?
How can I write down my thoughts well?
What could you change right now?
how do I get rid of heartburn
How can I keep hold of the importance of sleep and rest?
How can I get ready to leave?
What if I applied some creative problem solving to my mundane problems? As if I was solving for someone else?
What could you be taking responsibility for that you haven't been?
What's something peaceful about today?
Is God good or just powerful?
Who said you have to do any of this?
What is the impetus, and could it be less stressful?
how can I wake up and get up?

A thoughtful question from author Morgan Housel: "What was true a generation ago that no longer is, and who is clinging to that old truth?"

Think about a lifestyle you want. What are the trade-offs? What are the sacrifices?
what causes a feeling of emotional paralysis?
how can I meet people and problems with all the complexity they merit, without being overwhelmed?
what's the dream
how to finish an abandoned entry?
Records by umru and Chase Icon
What advice would I give myself?
The sun's rays burn when brought to focus - how can I bring focus to things I do?
What skills and knowledge do I have? (one of the WWOOF permaculture farm application questions)
What's the plan for workouts?
Where was I before the disorientation?
what are you stressing about that you could just write down and come back to?
how can you step out of the moment and reflect when you're caught up?
How can I feel grounded?
How can I feel sure of myself?
What does home feel like, inside myself? Outside myself?
what are you trying to do, and what is it that that is trying to do?
have you become fixed on a certain implementation, rather than an outcome?
Could you be enjoying this moment?
Looking back, what will you wish you had done now?
Are you stealing your joy by comparing yourself to an unrealistic idealised version of yourself?
Are you eating enough vegetables?
What do you wish you’d done less of?
What would you like to have next year that you lacked this year?

Cheers
Louis