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Exhaustion, Stressed, Happy, and having fun all at the same time? Who knew that would be possible. Taking care of a baby has deprived me from my sleep, yet I enjoy this project. Taking care of this baby has let me enjoy the moments of fun, working on Liberality, I was having fun. The stress from the rest of my life is creeping up on me and I am beginning to feel the tension. So far I am satisfied with living in the moment and enjoying moments like these where I go out with my friends who also have babies this weekend. Moderation has worked well for me, I have been able to balance unhealthy foods, and eat them in moderation. Cleanliness has been hard, you know how it is for us new moms. I have kept up with skin routine, but when it comes cleaning my room, my child cries… Therefore my room is a mess, and there a need for a deep clean coming soon. Going on to my next virtue, tranquility. With the little sleep I have gotten, I thought I would not stay tranquil, I survived and I went on with my day with tranquility. I woke up this morning and went to volunteer at the food pantry, and had great conversations with people, which boosted my mood for the rest of the day. I would say overall I did quite well with my patience, and staying calm. Overall, I had a day full of excitement, and lots of babies crying. I managed oversee the bad with all the good that has occurred these past few days. Below are pictures of my baby waking me up early in the morning. Enjoy and Goodnight!

Today I focused on creative productivity and industry. Industry was definitely rough (it usually is over the weekends). I had a meeting at 12 today and got out of bed like ten minutes before I had to leave, showing up late. I have a major problem with staying in bed all day and staying awake all night on weekends. The staying awake all night thing isn’t really a problem, but I should probably work on getting out of bed before 12. I put off most of my homework for tomorrow, and since I’m working tomorrow night, I have definitely put myself in a bad position. On a positive note, I almost put off writing this until really late tonight after I finished my movies, but I told myself what a bad idea that was and sat down to write. So I’m proud of that and overall for today, I’d give myself a 2/5 in industry.

I was fairly creatively productive today and spent a portion of my day in the French Market in Prairie Village, working on my Frequent Friday. I’ve worked out the overall plot (although I need to delete a couple of characters and secondary locations for clarity and brevity) and can now start on the actual script. Obviously, total success would have been working on my script as well, but I think a little success is better than none. Plus I had to resist the serious temptation to go home, veg out on the couch, and read, which is usually what I do on weekends. I would give myself a 4/5 in creative productivity. 

Hello again!

Today was a really great day and was a good opportunity to practice my virtues. Tranquility was something I had to especially work on since I played two tennis matches. It is really important to stay calm and focused while you are playing in order to stay in every point. I did a great job of that today as I ended up winning both of my matches to be playing in the semifinals tomorrow! 

Patience is also something that was applicable to today while I was waiting for courts to open up so I could go on. I ended up having to wait for two hours after my scheduled match time to play and so I really had to stay patient in order to keep calm and relax before the match. 

The thing I am joyful about today is pretty simple as it makes me very happy when I win matches and make it this far in a difficult tournament. I am grateful that I get to play in the first place and it gives me extra happiness when it goes well.

Moderation was a virtue that I couldn’t really work on today as I was pretty much playing tennis and getting ready all day. Order was the same as I am still in Chicago but I have been doing a good job of keeping all of my things organized in the hotel room and keeping my suitcase clean. 

Overall, it was a good day for me and I hope it was the same for all of y’all!

Order 4/5 – I didn’t do much with Order when it comes to school, but I did clean up a big mess of papers that had been gathering in my basement for the past month. Overall, I think I did a pretty good job with Order today.

Resolution 4/5 – As of writing this, I haven’t done too much painting, but I plan on doing more in a bit. I had to do something that I’ve never done before with a figure, which is to do a base coat of black paint for the whole figure. The reason being that metallic paints don’t show up well on the normally grey surface of the figure, so painting metal portions black beforehand really helps them pop. Unfortunately, the entirety of this figure is going to be metal, so I did the whole base coat before starting anything else.

Confidence 1/5 – I didn’t work on this virtue at all today, unfortunately. I don’t know how much I can do to work on it over the weekend, as most of my issues with this one come from school. I guess I’ll just have to make up the deficit over the next school week.

Health 5/5 – I ate more today than I did yesterday, and I also tried to pick a more balanced variety of foods. I also did some simple exercises, though it was unfortunately too cold for a walk tonight.

Responsibility 1/5 – I also neglected this virtue today. I didn’t get any homework done, so tomorrow night will probably be pretty busy. I’m not too worried about it, though, as I don’t have much work to do this weekend anyway.

I started off my day by shooting the powderpuff game, which was a goal of mine and a way for me to practice passion. The game was super fun and just funny to see the cheerleaders and dancers play football instead of the football players, who were cheering. I got some really good photos which made me happy. After the game, I continued to be productive, and had a meeting at a coffee shop and got a lot of work done and got to see my friends. As for my other virtues, I find succeeding in tranquility is much easier on the weekends than during the week, because I have far less to do and worry about. However, I did not do well with moderation today, because I was on my phone for about 3 hours. It’s definitely more challenging to stay off my phone on the weekend because I have more free time. I didn’t focus much on patience or academic acceptance which is alright, I will do that tomorrow! All in all, I had a great Saturday and succeeded in practicing the virtues I most wanted to hone in on. I hope everyone had a great Saturday 🙂

I had a great Friday overall! I started my day at 5:30am and had a slow morning and then a relatively slow day. I barely have any homework for the weekend, which is always so nice. Regarding my virtues, I really only practiced tranquility, just by listening to the alarms I have set on my phone and starting my day extra early to have time to myself. I rate passion 0/5, academic acceptance 3/5, tranquility 5/5, moderation 2/5, and patience 2/5. I was really hoping to do something with my camera today, but I was super busy after school so I never got around to it which was frustrating. But, I decided to not let today discourage me from incorporating photography in my weekend, so I have decided to shoot the Powder Puff game tomorrow morning, which will be super fun! This is most definitely one way I will be practicing passion while also being able to see my friends. Along with practicing passion tomorrow, I am wanting to still improve on patience with myself and others :))

Industry: 4/5
Order: 3/5
Flexibility: 3/5
Resolution: 4/5
Tranquility: 1/5

Today was a day of surprising improvement for me. I’m a bit under the weather, so I behaved differently. This was beneficial for industry because I learned well in my normal classes and completed some tedious chemistry work. That might also count as a victory in order because I managed to complete my goal of finishing that homework. On the other hand, tranquility went awfully since my head hurt. I was not thinking very peacefully. It’ll improve in a day or so though. I assigned myself a good score in resolution because there was a chance I never would have completed that chemistry homework. Overall, I’m glad with how it went and look forward to the weekend where I may pursue more industry and time with my family.

Order 4/5 – I was able to get a better idea of what I need to do over the weekend, homework-wise. I don’t have too much to do, which is a nice change of pace from last weekend.

Resolution 5/5 – This was my main focus today. I now have a full color palette chosen for the figure I’m painting (picture below, though it’s a bit hard to see). I’m getting more and more excited to finally start painting it! I think this one’s going to turn out well, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

Confidence 3/5 – I haven’t done much in the way of big achievements with Confidence, but I have been doing small things during my day to practice it. In particular, I’ve been trying to be more outgoing in school, as I am normally quite reserved.

Health 1/5 – I had a pretty terrible day with regards to Health. I didn’t get any kind of exercise done, which tends to make me feel generally physically bad. On top of that, I wasn’t really hungry for lunch, so I barely ate until I got home, and even then I didn’t eat enough.

Responsibility 2/5 – I didn’t get any work done tonight, but I like to just relax on Fridays. I think it’s very important to have a few days where you let yourself forget about work and just enjoy yourself.

Overall today was not my best day, which made it hard to boost my mood, considering it is Friday I thought it would be better. I have a lot to do in chemistry, which has stressed me out quite a bit. I am working on Liberality today, because I need to focus on taking care of the baby I took home for child development. I am trying to balance between my school stress, and having fun with this assignment. I have been struggling throughout the day to shake off my worries. My math test was grade today as well. I did not do very good, and I was not able to stay tranquil. Following my annoyance, it was hard for me to accept the grade I had gotten on my test. I chose to play positive music, hoping to boost my mood. It did. After a roller coaster of emotions, I took my baby to target and went on a little adventure, working on loosening up and having fun. When it comes to cleanliness, not much fell into that category other than eating. For lunch I ate a squash salad mix, and for dinner I had Canes, though I ate it in moderation. I am satisfied with the way I handled my control over eating. At the end of the night I am not satisfied with my day, but I was able to tie all of my virtues into one day. I have acknowledged what I need to work on, and there is nothing more I can do. I have accepted my thoughts and feelings. I am now moving on. I will work on meditation tonight, and a positive manifestation for tomorrow! Goodnight!

Hello from Chicago!

The plane ride was so peaceful that I was able to practice my tranquility and give myself the chance to relax and take a moment for myself with a nap. When I woke up, I looked out the window of the plane and saw the beautiful water of Lake Michigan. The small waves (if that’s what you call it since it’s a lake) in the middle of the water looked like little sparkles that danced on the surface, shimmering and glittering. I think that water is so peaceful and that one moment actually gave me a lot of tranquility. 

Moderation wasn’t really one of my priorities today since I went to school and then went to the airport to then play tennis in Chicago. In all, I couldn’t really work on this virtue today but I am also okay with that since it is not always possible to do that every day. 

I wasn’t able to work on Order that much today either in respect to cleaning my room, but I was able to keep everything straight when packing and getting all of my stuff through the airport and to the hotel. I won’t be able to clean this weekend since I am not at home, but I am aiming to keep all of my stuff organized while I am out of town. 

Patience was something that I had to maintain today as going through the airport is always a tedious struggle. Also the Chicago traffic is a nightmare in the late afternoon so it was difficult for me to wait without getting somewhere fast. I thought I did a good job with this virtue though.

Joy was good for me today as well. I found that just being in Chicago and traveling made me happy and grateful that I got to be here. The city is breathtaking and, even though it was freezing, it was still incredible to see. I am also happy that I get to play in a tennis tournament tomorrow and that gives me something to look forward to. 

I hope everyone had a great Friday!

Day 2

Tranquility: 3: I wanted to focus more on my journaling for contentment and tranquility today. I was able to pick my journal back up, but I still struggled to find things that I am okay making peace with.

Silence: 1: As I was more focused on tranquility and contentment today, I honestly forgot about taking some time of silence for myself. I was busy today, and I almost felt like I kind of had a one-track mind. I hope I can find some time to take this weekend!

Moderation: 2: My moderation wasn’t great today. I had a stressful day at school, and then I came home and did more homework. This weekend, hopefully, I can take time to enjoy my own hobbies.

Patience: 2: I did not really focus on patience today. I did feel like I was a little quieter than usual, but I didn’t feel any improvement.

Contentment: 4: I continued my contentment journal today and was surprised to find that my list keeps growing! I hope I can continue this trend, as it really shows me just how many things in my life are going well!

I hope everyone has a good weekend! 🙂

Today I worked on silence again. I had multiple positives and maybe a few negatives. Today at lunch I realized my brother switched our lunches. Instead of lashing out at him or making it a big deal I chose silence and decided it was not something to freak out about. I was actually very proud of myself because usually I would have made a big deal about that. The negative I had today was at dodgeball. I was arguing with a teammate and instead of choosing silence I. continued to bicker like a second grader. I want to work on limiting arguments and chose silence more often.

My motivation for this blog is to remind myself of my five virtues I have picked out to hopefully better myself. Being able to write about them each day will keep me thinking about them for the next two weeks, and help me stick to them. Even though me and Benjamin Franklin lived in very different times, the things people need to work on for themselves are still the same. He presented a list of virtues that I also believe are important for everyone to practice. 

There are many virtues that I feel like I could do better, but the ones I personally felt were most important are cleanliness, order, productivity, patience and acceptance. The biggest one to me is cleanliness, most of the time this includes the clothes all over my room. I am going to form a better habit of picking up my clothes because I always feel happier and more relaxed when I have a clean room. I feel like practicing order could also be a huge part of keeping clean. I am going to start writing out what I need to do, and planning to help stay in order. When trying to stay productive, I am going to go home, get all my schoolwork done, and then have the rest of the night to do whatever I want. I always put my work off until after 10 at night and then I feel very overwhelmed and tired. I really need to work on my patience. I always feel very rushed and if I take a few minutes out of my day to relax, it will help. Another big one is acceptance. I need to accept that not everything is going to be perfect and go exactly the way I want it to, and that is okay. 

My hope for blogging about my daily experiences with my virtues is to feel more relaxed, relieve stress and feel like a better person overall. I believe if I work on them for the next couple of weeks and motivate myself to continue reflecting on them even after we are done with this blog, I will feel happier and a lot better about myself. I think it will be harder to continue them when I don’t have to but that will also show that I am practicing and sticking to them.

Grades

moderation- C

frugality- A

accountability- D

self-discipline- B

cleanliness- B

Day three wasn’t as successful as the first two. I really procrastinated on my homework and didn’t finish my homework until around 11. It was also the first day when I cracked and ate some of my little brother’s Halloween candy. Although I still made it to the gym, the actual workout wasn’t as good as previous days. I didn’t have a chance to spend money today so at least I was good there. I had an off day today but I hope to learn and improve from this day. 

I think that today was one of my better days. It was late start Thursday which is already one of my favorite days of the week! I also had a very nice school day where I did not have a ton of overloading work, which let me focus more on my virtues. I chose to work on temperance today, because I was in the perfect environment for it. I was very relaxed, while also getting my work done. For the first time in a long time I got to go straight home from school and take a long nap in my bed, I never get to do that! I went to the dodgeball event later and it was so fun to see everyone play. I then came home and watched a show with my family, it was so nice to relax and not worry about anything for tomorrow. Overall I would rate today a 8/10.

I would say today was a little bit of a struggle. I had to get to school early to help out a teacher and was very rushed, causing my morning order and cleanliness to be successful. With it being Friday my patience was also a little bit off, but for a good and exciting reason obviously. My balance today gets a 10/10 with getting to spend a lot of time with friends and also already did the majority of my homework after school. Lastly, kindness was a success. I was in a good mood all day and even though I can’t pin a specific moment, I feel like I put out positive and kind energy all day. I’m curious to see how my virtues go over the weekend with more free time.

Today my main focus was to improve on my virtue of Sincerity. This week I have been very busy with sports and other events in my life and haven’t been able to spend time with my family. Today I made sure that I could spend quality time with all of my family members. For my mom we went grocery shopping together and ran some other small errands. It was good to talk to my mom about a lot of different things. For my brother I played a few hours of video games with him. This was a lot of fun and good for him because he really enjoys to spend time with me. For my dad I helped him with some yard work . We raked up leaves for a while and he was very grateful for the help. I would give my Sincerity a 10/10 because of the quality time I spent with my family members. I would like to continue to do this more often because it connects me to my family more. For the rest of my virtues, Order is 10/10, Humility 10/10, Tranquility 8/10, and Frugality is a 10/1o.

Day two for me was one with a bit more challenge. I had rehearsal for my musical that night, and rehearsal for another musical before that. I did not get time to clean my room, but I did still take the time to write my homework down in my planner. These rehearsals kept me busy all day, and gave me very little time to appreciate some time for myself. I did, however, approach my last rehearsal with a bit of a different attitude. I decided to, instead of treating it like a stressful experience, enjoy it and make it fun. It worked! I really enjoyed my rehearsal and got excited for opening night in two days.

Today was a really good day for tranquility. I had a test in math class and made sure to study so that I wouldn’t be freaked out during the test. Even though I didn’t really need to study for this test I decided to do it anyways and it helped me a lot more than I thought it would. It just refreshed my mind and allowed me to answer every answer with confidence. I would rate my tranquility a 10/10, and plan to keep doing this strategy. My order is still a 10/10, I’ve been doing a great job of keeping track of homework. My Humility is around a 7/10 because I was talking some trash during a dodgeball game. My Sincerity is a 4/10 because I wasn’t able to see my family very much. Lastly my frugality is still very strong so I would rate it a 9/10.

My motivation for my blog is to hold myself accountable for focusing on my self-selected virtues. By blogging about my virtues, I hope to better myself and strive for moral excellence. My relationship with Benjamin Franklin has been solely academic, as we learn about the basics of his life in school. While Franklin and I are from different centuries, he chose to focus on his virtues for his entire life in a similar way that I will be focusing on my virtues for the next two weeks. The blog will be a way for me to reflect on my progress and assess my pursuit of moral perfection in my five virtues.

The virtues I have chosen to blog about are cleanliness and tranquility, from Franklin’s virtues, and productivity, acceptance, and kindness, from my own list of virtues. I chose cleanliness because I tend to let my room get cluttered throughout the week, and then organize everything just for it to be messy again. A strategy I will use to achieve cleanliness is to take ten minutes everyday to tidy up my room, whether that’s making my bed in the morning, or putting away my clothes at night. Next, I want to work on tranquility, as I am not a particularly flexible person. I am stressed out a lot of the time and I want to find a way to feel more at ease in the next two weeks. To achieve tranquility, I will be meditating a few times a week and see how it affects my state of mind. I also want to work on productivity, but more specifically productivity of down time. When I give myself well-deserved breaks after completing a homework assignment or working for an hour or two, I usually spend that time mindlessly scrolling through my phone and not getting much benefit from it. With this experiment, I want to use that downtime to go on a walk, read, take a nap, or anything else that is a productive and relaxing way to spend my free time. Another virtue I want to attempt to perfect is acceptance. I am a perfectionist when it comes to academics, and I want to work on understanding that I am not perfect and that is okay. Whether I miss a few questions on a math test, or completely forget a homework assignment, I want to work on accepting that it is okay to be less than perfect. I will be focusing on acceptance mostly in regard to academics and tennis, and my strategy will be to keep a positive mindset. Lastly, I want to work on the virtue of kindness. I believe this is something important that everyone can focus on and I hope to work on spreading kindness myself. Each week I will complete three acts of kindness and blog about the positivity they spread and their effect on others and myself.

By participating in the virtue blogging experiment, I hope to discover strategies I can continue using to better myself in the future. While I predict it may not be easy to begin these new habits and work on five different virtues at the same time, I do think it will be worthwhile. In addition, by working on tranquility and acceptance, I hope to find more peace in my life and be less stressed out. While attempting to achieve moral perfection in these five aspects I aspire to spread positivity in other people’s lives and have a more positive outlook on my own.

Today was a debatable day for me. I participated in a fair amount of industry, but it was over some of the easier things I had allocated. So it was successful in industry, but not in order. My harder tasks that aren’t immediately due such as taking notes are still due. I have big plans for the weekend to work on both because that’s the best time to do so and I don’t have anything else allocated other than seeing nature and exercising. I’m also planning to work on resolution a bit during the weekend. There’s a computer project I’d like to continue working on while I have some extra time. Back to today, I did well at flexibility. I played a game I had never been exposed to before because someone else asked me to. Hopefully, the game clubs continue to bring me new experiences.

Today has been less productive than yesterday, and I am realizing that the virtues I chose will make for an interesting tightrope to walk. The balance between industry and tranquility is a tough one to get right. Too much work and I get burnt out, too much relaxation and I fall behind. And though today leaned close to an excess of relaxation, I did pretty well with my virtue of disconnection. After school I powered off my phone for 3 hours, but instead of doing work I lethargically sat around. When I got around to my homework it was later than I would have wanted, but since even days are my easy days, it didn’t seem all that pressing. All in all not a terrible day for the virtues, but it left lots of room for improvement.

so i kinda forgot about sticking to my things today and i regretted it.

Main focus of the day was order and i feel like i did really well in that. My day was pretty full of things to do and I didn’t have much time to think. I scheduled my day so i got in 3 full meals, and was in bed done with all of the things I needed to get done by 10 so in my opinion I feel like I really hit the mark.

Cleanliness: I did well today, i kept trash out of my car and made my bed in the morning, which seems small but it made me feel better about life.

Resolution: i was on time to everything i had today and i even made a phone call that i normally would have put off until last minute. I did everything i said i was going to do

Tranquility: i felt ok about this one, i didn’t let the fact that i had a lot to do get into my head and stayed up beat and on track as the day came and went, i will say nothing out of the ordinary happened so this one wasn’t quite the challenge it may be other days

Human: I casually set a boundary at work with times that i can work and times that i can’t, i didn’t even realize that i had done it until after i did it and thats kind of my goal. This was a really big step for me.

Joy was my main virtue of the day. I found a lot of joy in tennis today. I played with my coach for an hour and then went to a clinic with all of my friends. It was a great time and I felt like I really loved the game and the energy of the clinic and it made me really happy to play. Today was a really good day for me emotionally as I felt completely satisfied with everything that I had accomplished and I truly felt content. 

I had pretty good Moderation today as I made time for school, tennis, friends, and family. I went to school during the day and then to tennis, where I was with some of my friends and was able to talk to them and get social time. I came home and sat down and ate dinner with my family and then worked on homework. 

Order was okay for me today. I picked up some of my room and it looks slightly better than it did, but there still is more to be done. I hope that I get more time to do that once I come back from my tennis tournament over the weekend. 

I think that because I felt joyful today in almost all aspects of the day, I found myself being both tranquil and patient. People say that time flies when you are having fun, but I have actually found it to be the opposite. I think that when you take the time to enjoy the little things and take your mind off of all your stress, life starts to go by slower as you are savoring every moment and not letting a minute pass by. 

While this is not one of my virtues, I am also focusing on positivity as a part of this whole journey to moral perfection. I love to look at positive quotes every day to remind myself to stay focused on all the good things. From now on, I am going to include one of these quotes as an image to keep us all going on goals! 

I hope everyone had a great day!

After seeing some other posts, I’ve decided to start a ranking system (1-5) to get a better idea of how each virtue is going on any given day.

Order 1/5 – I didn’t do the best job of being organized today. I waited until I started going homework to figure out what I needed to do, which I try to avoid. I hope to organize what I need to do over the weekend tomorrow.

Resolution 4/5 – I finally decided on a figure to paint! I still have to pick out a bunch of paints before actually starting the painting process, but I’ll hopefully get a lot of painting done over the weekend. I’m really excited to commit to this process, and I think it will turn out well.

Confidence 2/5 – I didn’t really do much that was outside of my comfort zone today. I think this virtue may not be too easy to practice every day, but I’ll try to find a way in the future.

Health 3/5 – I would have liked to go on a walk again today, but the weather kept me from that. I did do some core exercises, but I definitely could have done more for health today.

Responsibility 5/5 – I’m pretty proud of how early I got my work done today. I normally laze around for a couple hours after getting home, but today I decided to just get everything out of the way so I could relax tonight. I finished homework at 5:40, which is probably the earliest I’ve ever done it. Its super relaxing to have a nice, calm evening for a change, especially because the last couple of days have been really stressful.

Grades

moderation- A

frugality- C

accountability- B

self-discipline- A

cleanliness- A

Day two of this challenge went about as well as day one. I focused on the same virtues as I did day one and again I was successful. Just as day one I completed all of my school work and homework in class so I had plenty of time to spend with my family. I still found time to clean my room and go to the gym after school. Before this challenge started I didn’t realize just how much time I had when I don’t procrastinate with homework. I feel less stressed than usual so I think today was a success.

Day 3

• Tranquility: 1: I did not keep up with my journal today. I am hoping to get back on track when I have more time this weekend.

• Silence: 5: Today we had late start. Since I had a little bit of extra time today, I was able to take some time to myself this morning. It was nice to wake up and not be in a rush. It also allowed me to have a better mindset for the rest of the day.

• Moderation: 3: I did a relatively okay job with moderation today. I went to school, and to workout after school, but later I was able to find time to watch a show with my mom. I think it helped me to be more productive with my homework later.

• Patience: 2: I don’t think I did a great job with patience today. I was wanting to get all of my work done quickly, and I think I applied my productiveness to people. If they were taking to long to answer, then I would sometimes answer for them, or talk over them. I’m hoping to really improve this virtue.

• Contentment: 1: I did not journal today. I am hoping to catch back up on my journaling this weekend.

Today was so nice being able to sleep in and take advantage of late start. I always feel like having late start makes my Thursday’s so much better just because I’m moving at a slower pace. Overall, I did pretty well with practicing all my virtues, I didn’t have trouble with any of them today. The one I was mainly focusing on was moderation. I was practicing moderation by putting myself on a strict schedule with technology, specifically with my phone. I feel like I’m constantly on my phone, scrolling through social media, while I could be knocking out some homework. I start to feel guilty after watching Tik Tok’s for hours on end, and it’s not like I get anything out of being on social media. So, I have started setting alarms with about three minute intervals to force myself to get off my phone. These alarms are set at night because this is when I want to get my homework done so I’m not working all night. I intentionally didn’t set my alarms right after school, because I make time for myself to rest for about an hour or so, and unfortunately, being on my phone can be somewhat relaxing. On the good side, the alarms successfully worked, and I got all of my homework done before 9pm :)))

Today was not as successful as I had hoped for. When it comes to cleanliness, I started of well eating healthy, then I ate a taquito and a kit kat. I was not satisfied with the way I had handled my cravings and I hope I will do better tomorrow. I worked on acceptance, and told myself today was a minor slip up. I will continue to work on healthy habits, and I will continue to tell myself it IS OKAY to have a slip up every now and then. It takes time to break old habits, and start new ones. Overall Cleanliness gets a C-, and acceptance gets an A-. This week as I have been trying to work on my stress, I treated myself to a nail appointment. I worked on Liberality. I decided to loosen up and have a relaxed night, by hanging out with friends and worrying about homework after dinner. I feel that if I set a goal for when I should get my homework done, I am avoiding my procrastination habit, but allowing myself to have fun right after school. I hope my day is better overall tomorrow. After all it is Friday! Goodnight, I hope you all have an exceptional day tomorrow!

This is kind of a scary project for me, improving myself is something i seem to always thinking about to the point of slight obsession. I’ve talked to therapists, friends, and family members about how I can improve my being and analyzed and re-analyzed and picked apart almost every choice I have made. I panic over imperfections, i’ve asked every single person you can think of what i can do better and how i can be better and in doing so i have sacrificed many parts of myself and annoyed the living daylights out of every one of my friends. Homework is pushed to the side so I can spend hours every single night talking to myself through every choice I’ve made and every thought I’ve thought and how I can fix what often isn’t broken. A goal that I have with this project and something that I admire about Benjamin Franklin’s project and I think is a part of the success that Benjamin franklin was able to achieve was that there is an end. There is a point where you stop analyzing and you make yourself live in your new moral world and I think that having a plan and not changing it is an important aspect of this project for me. The aspects of morality that I plan on working on are cleanliness, organization, resolution, tranquility, and being comfortable being human.

I tend to try to be a clean person, depending on your definition of clean, but there have been times where stale cups of coffee will pile up on my desk for a few days, I leave trash in my car, or forget to wash my face and brush my teeth before bed. I will put cleaning at the top of my priority list, to keep myself clean in my being, and my space in a picked up clean condition. I want to work on organization in my day, going to bed at a set time, having set space and time for meals which is something i have struggled with in the past, and having set time and space to respond to people. I want to work on resolution, doing the things that i say i am going to do. I have a tendency to be flaky and iffy with time, being late and not showing things when I say I will, or not responding when I get the chance. I know it’s rude and that’s why it’s being worked on. I have issues keeping a level head when issues come my way, I obsess over things, making sure I don’t let my own thoughts get in the way of my peace no matter what is going on is going to be an important part of me reaching moral ok-ness. And the last one is a bit less straightforward and I want to spend the next week defining what I mean by allowing myself to be a person without trying to think too much of how others are perceiving while I do that. I want to keep myself from doing things because I think it’s what others expect of me. And with that i don’t have to be perfect in this project, i will make mistakes and my goal isn’t moral perfection it’s something better than what i’m doing right now.

Overall, day three was pretty successful. I woke up earlier on my own this morning and took it as a lot of productive downtime which was one of my main goals at the beginning of this process. I got to make my bed, put away laundry, and make an actual good breakfast for the first time in the awhile which was super relaxing and just started my day off good. That for sure played into order and cleanliness. Balance today is a little bit of struggle with my schedule, but I am trying to find time for that and do homework right after school. Overall I think I had a good day for virtues and already feel like I am improving.

Today was a great day! I really focused on sincerity, and making sure I did everything with a purpose. Today I sold ads in marketing and I made a lot of deep connections with people throughout the community. I went to a yoga class, and the instructor made a point of taking time out of your 24 hour day and spending just the 45 minutes of class time focusing on yourself. I really liked this because it made me think about all of the people I encounter throughout the day, all of the things I do, all of the smallest connections I made but that even within the midst of it all, I can still take time for myself.

Introduction: I am making this blog for a number of reasons. These daily entries will hold me accountable. I want to have something to write about every day that I am proud of and getting in the habit of focusing on these virtues will naturally help me to improve myself. Reading the comments of encouragement and reflecting on what I have done will motivate me to continue these strategies past the due date for this assignment. I know about Benjamin Franklin’s work as a founding father and inventor but very little about his virtues and who he really was as a person.

My virtues include humility, sincerity, moderation, friendliness, and ambition. For humility I need to remember to take a step back and not get too high on myself. . Sincerity is an important one for me. I am a bit of a “people pleaser” and tend to make promises I can’t always fulfill to make people happy. I need to be honest with myself and with other people. Moderation is one that I struggle with a bit. I need to get away from the extremes and take things a little slower in general. Friendliness is a virtue that everyone can work on. Being friendly to people makes everyone’s life better, and it’s not really that hard to ask. Perhaps my most important one is the ability to be ambitious. I need to hold myself to a higher standard and not just be content with being mediocre or doing the bare minimum because I know I can be more than that. Strategically, I put reminders in my phone at 7:40 and 4:00 everyday so I am thinking about these virtues throughout the day.

My hopes for this project is that these continue to be things I work on and improve on. Not just a school blog, but something that I can truly make the most of. I predict sincerity and ambition to be the most difficult. They’re both easier said than done and come with different mental obstacles. Humility, moderation, and friendliness are not easy virtues to follow by any means but I feel that these are more manageable as far as being in situations where I can think about these virtues and accomplish them. Expecting perfection from yourself is absurd but just thinking about values that are important to you and making an effort to better yourself will be beneficial for everyone. I can’t wait to see the improvements that my peers and I will make.

Entry 1: Today was the first day of my journey to moral perfection. I decided to focus on friendliness. It was also a school day so I had plenty of opportunities to make the day a success. I am not a rude person by any means but I could definitely make more of an effort to be nice to some people and just let them know I appreciate them and enjoy being with them. I am especially quiet in the mornings. I usually don’t talk to anyone until things have gotten started a bit and I have fully woken up. Today I showed up and greeted my table mates in science for the first hour and tried my best to be friendly in all my interactions with people throughout the days in the halls and classrooms. I also had to make sure it didn’t feel fake because that would be completely counterproductive.  This didn’t require a great deal of effort but it brightened my day a little bit and hopefully improved the people I interacted with days as well. This was a good virtue to start off with as a success and get the ball rolling for the blog.

Entry 2: I wasn’t sure how I was going to execute the sincerity virtue but it came naturally. I’d like to say I was just doing this for the blog but that just wouldn’t be true. In my 6th hour math class, I was completely lost and I think Mr. Burrows could tell because I didn’t have much of the homework done. He came over and asked if I had any questions. Generally, I just act like I know what’s going on and pretend to snap out of it and get to work. I expressed my struggle and he walked through one of the problems with me to figure out where I am getting stuck. Being honest with him got some things cleared up mathematically and also instilled some confidence in me to just be honest with people when I don’t understand something. It doesn’t help anyone to lie and just be stuck confused.

Entry 3: Moderation is a key to good mental health but tends to get overlooked. Living life in extremes is very stressful. I had a lot of things I needed to get done and was anxious throughout the school day. When I got home I got right into my homework and was very productive for about a couple hours. My work rate hit a brick wall shortly after and I was a little fatigued, getting nothing done. I had to accept that I needed a break from schoolwork and my macbook. I decided to take my dog on a walk to moderate my workload, which he appreciated very much. When we returned from our walk my mind had cleared up and I was ready to finish what I started. 

Entry 4: Today wasn’t my best day. I planned to focus on ambition but I know I could’ve been better. I was on task in class for the most part and went through moments where I was motivated to work hard but I also didn’t finish an assignment in US History that I had time to do in class because I was talking and on my phone. It’s not the end of the world but I want to break these lazy habits and settling for being good “for the most part” doesn’t show any form of ambition. While writing this entry I realized that this is a moment of humility for me. I wasn’t going to just go ride the highs of the last few days and after a week become this morally faultless person. Sometimes you need to be humbled to use as motivation and learn from.

Entry 5: Still not happy about how yesterday went I was hungry to get back on track. It’s Saturday and I was in an ambitious mood. I had homework to do and some errands to run for my mom. Knowing I wouldn’t want to do anything tomorrow with NFL football on and definitely not later when the Chiefs are playing I got all my homework done and took care of the errands my mom wanted me to do around 2. It felt great to enjoy the rest of the weekend with no responsibilities and to get back my journey to moral perfection back on track.

Entry 6: Friendliness best defines my Sunday. I completely forgot we were having a family gathering today at my grandma’s house and was not in the best mood. Obviously nothing personal against anyone there but it was not my ideal way to spend my Sunday. I tried my best to go in there with a good attitude and be friendly to everyone. It started off as an act trying to accomplish friendliness for the day but I found myself fully engaged and genuinely interested in the conversations. My extra friendliness took away all the awkwardness from conversations and made the event much more enjoyable.

In my Blog, I really want to improve aspects of my life. I think it’s time to start focusing on more of myself and really take these virtues seriously. The relationship between Ben Franklin and me is similar and different at the same time. We both work extremely hard at the thing they are passionate about. The difference between us is that he is a genius and I’m just your average student. 

My virtues I have decided to pick are tranquility, silence, order, dedication, engagement. I have chosen these virtues because they are what I lack in life and I think could really improve my life for the better. I’m going to write a reminder on my phone so every time I pick it up, I see what my virtues are. My most important virtue I want to improve is dedication. If I dedicate myself to these virtues and other aspects of my life, I will be a better overall person.

My hope for this project is that I improve. I don’t need to be perfect at all, I just want to be better than I am right now. My prediction for this is that I’m super focused and that I dedicate myself to these virtues. If I ever find myself being lazy about these virtues I will just look at the work dedication and remember that is what i’m working. I think i’m going to really improve my life for the better. 

Entry 1: Today I decided to focus on tranquility. I am normally a very hyper person and If I am more calm then I wont be as tired at end of day. Whenever I get home from school Im just dead tired because Im always moving and talking. Today instead of being hyper during lunch I decided to be quiet and just have light conversations with people. When I got home I still had a ton of energy and overall felt better about myself. I had soccer practice and i felt like a different player. I was doing the extra work and my coach noticed it and said good job

Today I worked on Patience and staying in the moment. I was invited to an awards event for tennis where I received two awards. The first one I got with Greta, which was for exceptional sportsmanship in our age group. I also got a service award for my work with an organization called Second Serve which helps collect and distribute gently used tennis equipment to underprivileged kids. Instead of thinking about the next thing, I allowed myself to be patient and enjoy my successes before I rushed off to something else. I only had to say the phrase “Now is the time to be aware of the present moment. I let go of the past and the future” once. I thought I did very well on this virtue today. 

I was mostly tranquil throughout the day except for a few moments where I stressed, mainly on my math test when I didn’t exactly know how to solve a problem. However, I stayed mostly calm and it ended up paying off as I did well. While I did not have the time for a calm meditation, I did reflect on my day when I was going to bed and made peace with it. 

Moderation was somewhat of a struggle today as I was at school for most of the day, then went straight to tennis, from there went to the awards event, and then got home late only to do homework. However, I was able to spend a lot of time with Greta when we were getting our awards along with my family who was also there. While this was time already planned, I still got to experience a well-balanced day as a whole. 

Order was not very good today. As I mentioned earlier, my whole day was busy and planned down to the minute so I did not have any time to clean my room. I will have more time tonight and hope to be able to get everything organized so that when I leave for Chicago for a tennis tournament this weekend, I will be able to come back home to a clean room. 

I found a lot of joy in the day, especially at the awards banquet. I got to spend time with Greta and talk to some of my other friends who play tennis who were also recipients of awards. I had a great time and loved having that time to relax and celebrate. Joy was probably one of the virtues that I had the most success with today, only second to Patience.

Today I worked on silence. What I consider silence, is the ability to keep my mouth shut when you can’t provide something positive from your words. The first example I have from today was early this morning when my dogs decided to wake up at 530. I was suddenly awoken to them eating on the floor below me. Instead of complaining about it when I went downstairs I said nothing. A failure of silence was this evening. I got out of practice and I had just learned that my friend could not partake in the dodgeball event tomorrow night. Instead of working on silence I unfortunately started a pointless argument with this friend. Overall I did take many positives from today.

The first day of working on my virtues wasn’t my best. I can’t think of an exact example of me using or working on one of my virtues. I know it may sound bad but I think that it’s okay to struggle on the first couple days. With that being said I did pray this morning and will in about 45 minutes so I did practice faith today. It may not have been the most solidified practice of faith, but for the first day I will count it. Going forward I think I decide one virtue to focus on before I go out for the day.

My motivation for writing this blog and keeping up with my virtues via the blogs is to better improve myself, and ultimately perfect myself by the time we are complete. I’m not sure how I compare to Benjamin Franklin, but in a way I think everyone wants to improve themselves. Reading about Franklin’s journey to perfection is a great example of how the higher ups in society continue motivation to become better. 

My first virtue, which I believe will be the easiest for me, is Hope. What I mean by hope is keeping a positive attitude and not looking back on things I can’t change. The virtue comes from the bible and I believe a way I can work on it is by showing a grateful attitude and being hopeful for what is to come. The second virtue I chose is Faith. Faith is another bible virtue, but I think this one will be different for me and maybe a bit harder. A way to work on faith is to pray and spread the word. I’ve never been a huge church goer, but I do still pray and want to keep my faith in God. My third virtue and first of Ben Franklins, is silence. I want to learn how to keep my mouth shut at times and just move on. A way I can work on this is when I disagree with someone either shut up and walk away, or say something positive. Like Franklin said, speak to the benefit of yourself and others. The next one is sincerity. I do believe I am a sincere and nice person, but I think I am still able to improve how nice I am in certain situations. I have problems with being insincere to people I do not care for, and I always feel guilty later. I think I can work on sincerity by asking myself, “will you feel bad about this later?” The last virtue and what I think will be the hardest for me is, order. What I mean by order is in a way patience. I want to focus on just letting things play out. I feel like sometimes I try too hard to have an effect on something when I don’t need to. At times I want myself to focus on just taking a step back and relaxing. Let things play out and see what happens.

I truly want to focus on my work with the virtues and keep myself accountable. I think this is an awesome project to work on, and hopefully I can work on these things outside of just this project. I am confident I can knock and be satisfied with my work for three out of the five virtues. At the same time though, I want to work on all five and at some point in my life, look back thankful I did this. 

Today, I got up early to study for my math test after staying up very late to study the night before. This showed strong resolution, because I was able to stay focused on my task of studying. Although I was resolute, This was almost to a fault, because I focused too much on this one math test and did not give enough order to my day in making sure that every aspect of my life was given time. This was especially seen in my lack of sleep, as I did not make any time for this. As far as my industry goes, at the beginning of the day it was good, but after my math test was over I lacked motivation and I was also very tired, so I did not do much afterwords. The day concluded well after school when I worked on giving my friend the justice he deserved in assuming he would work on an assignment that he said he would work on with me. He had not been very reliable for working with me on it, and he had put it off for multiple days, but today with this fair chance that I gave him he proved my previous assumptions wrong and worked on it with me.

Today was a mixed day for me in terms of Franklin’s virtues and by all other measurements. I suffered from some of my previous choices in order and a miscalculation of how long it would take me to complete test reviews, so I stayed up very late. It was still a good use of industry, however. That virtue was also involved in the entire school day, which required a lot of it. I excelled at a difficult test, completed cybersecurity challenges, and constructed robotic field pieces. I hope to continue that trend of industry over the next weeks. I also did well with flexibility because I had to cooperate with others during a game club. Order was still the most impactful virtue to me today and I still need to improve on it.

Tranquility was my main virtue that I focused on today. As I had a test coming up the next day, I was beginning to feel anxious and overly nervous about how I would perform. Calculus has not been my strongest subject this year and while I only have a high B at this point in the year, I am still exerting an unreasonable amount of pressure on myself to get it up to an A by the end of the semester. As soon as a felt myself slip into panic mode, I sat down and placed a hand on my heart and took long, deep breaths for ten minutes. This served as a meditation to remind myself that I am human and that I am not perfect and make mistakes sometimes.

I did not really succeed at moderation today because I pretty much spent all day studying for math. I did not have time to spend with my family or talk to my friends and I continued working even after my parents went to sleep.

I did not make any progress on order because I simply have had no time to clean my room. I want to be able to clean it tomorrow because I predict that I will have less homework, and therefore have more time to get things put back in place.

My patience was tested while I was trying to figure out my review worksheets on math. I was struggling with some problems and I just needed to be patient in order to calmly figure out how to work through them. I did decently well with this although I felt myself getting anxious at some points during the study session.

I started my joy journal and one thing that I found joy in today was the feeling of satisfaction after a long day and being able to get in bed and go to sleep. Even though it was an overall busy and stressful day, knowing that I got through it all and that I was going to be okay made me feel like I accomplished something.

Hello! I am creating a blog in the attempt of moral perfection, simulating the experiment performed by Benjamin Franklin throughout his life. As he famously quoted, “I wished to live without committing any fault at any time; I would conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into.” I am striving to do the same thing here. While Franklin’s experiment with virtues was an ongoing task, I am putting the trial on a smaller scale of two weeks, using five virtues (three of Franklin’s and two of my own) instead of the thirteen like Franklin. As an American student, I am familiar with Benjamin Franklin as a founding father. Through American history classes, Franklin has been a main topic during the American Revolution and further. I am motivated by the idea that I can better myself and set goals to further enhance the quality of my life and happiness. While I believe that no one can possibly be perfect, the concept of moral perfection and the attempt to get there can be really helpful when it comes to self-improvement. I hope to do this by focusing on my five virtues.

The first virtue I want to work on is Tranquility, or the idea of staying calm through difficult situations and finding your way to the eye of the hurricane. I often become anxious and emotional over things that truly don’t make much of a difference in my life. I want to focus on my successes rather than the things I deem to be failures. My goal is to find peace with where I am at in my life whether that is in school, relationships, or tennis while still being able to make progress in these areas. To do this, I am going to meditate each morning for ten minutes and reflect on what I have accomplished in order to start my day off content with where I am and where I am going. The next virtue I wish to develop is Moderation. While my organization is something that I am proud of, I would like to be able to find time, no matter how busy my schedule is, to spend time with friends, family, and most importantly, myself. To do this, I am going to plan out my week in advance so that I make sure I have time to enjoy myself and spend time with the people that I love. Order is another one of Benjamin Franklin’s virtues that I hope to improve. Because I am already working on moderation with my schedule and being organized in that aspect, through this virtue I am going to focus on my tidiness when it comes to my room and physical things. I will start with a deep clean of my room and then continue to do the little things to keep it neat, such as putting laundry away and throwing away papers and assignments that I no longer need. Patience is also another virtue I would like to concentrate on when it comes to thinking about the future. I want to minimize that feeling that I always have to be moving forward and looking ahead because I feel like I tend to miss things in my present life because I am thinking about the place I want to be at later in my life. Whenever I feel myself getting overly anxious about something in the future– college, tests, etc.– I will repeat this phrase silently to yourself three times: “Now is the time to be aware of the present moment. I let go of the past and the future.” I will record how many times I say that every day and try to reduce the number of times I say it to show that I am finding it easier to stay in the moment. The last virtue deeply connects with Patience: Joy. I want to recognize the things that bring me the most joy and try to do those things as much as I can. In order to figure this out, I will journal one thing per day that I find brings me the most happiness. At the end of two weeks, I will have a list of things that bring me joy and I will strive to use that to find much more enjoyment in the future. These five strategies will be the things I use for the next two weeks to really enhance the concept of moral perfection.

I am hoping to gain a better understanding of myself and where I am at mentally and emotionally in my life at the end of these two weeks. I want to be able to develop strategies that will help me improve myself. I predict that this is going to be very hard for me because I am pretty tough on myself and feeling content is something I struggle with every day. I am excited to attempt moral perfection and I really want these goals to succeed because it would make my life so much better. While I am not expecting this to go completely smoothly, I hope that I will at least take something out of it and learn something from this experience.

I started the day off, happy, and excited! I have finally understood chemistry. I wanted to spread my happiness to my chemistry teacher, so I brought him a donut. Today I focused on tranquility. I went to sleep telling myself “tomorrow is going to be a good day”, I woke up and I told myself again “today is going to be a good day”. After seeing the happiness I brought to my chemistry teacher, after doing the smallest act of kindness, it inspired me to encourage it throughout the whole day. Falling into the category of tranquility, staying calm and peaceful, I have learned today, in order to stay calm, I need to find my inner happiness and spread it throughout my day. Today helped kick start my voyage of virtues. Today I give myself an A+ in the tranquility category. Onto the next virtue, I focused on acceptance. Today I looked at my grades and I was not quite satisfied with my B in chemistry and B in human anatomy. I continued to stare, until I realized the stress building up. I immediately closed out of my grades, I told myself I was doing my best. The A on my chemistry exam was the journey to receiving an A at the end of the semester in chemistry. For the category of acceptance I would give myself an A-, a minus due to the reasoning of allowing myself to stare at my grades too long. Overall these were the main virtues I worked on today. I believe this was a superb day, I hope my voyage continues with days like these!

Today was a really good day for me! It was mainly good because I got to leave school early for an appointment that was taking place during 7th hour, so that was nice. For today, I mainly focused on tranquility just because I knew it was going to be an easy day in general, so why not take advantage of it and have a relaxing day. I was brainstorming last night ways for me to have a peaceful day, so I set an alarm on my phone with emoji’s and smiley faces and told myself to have a good day. Since that alarm was set before I left for school, it reminded me to not let school stress me out, and to just enjoy my short day. I for sure give myself an A for tranquility, but on the other hand, I give myself a C for practicing patience. I not only want to practice being patient with myself, but with others around me. Today I was driving a lot, so I found myself getting impatient at red lights or when there was a lot of traffic. I forgot to tell myself that I didn’t need to be anywhere super important, and to just relax. For tomorrow, if I find myself becoming impatient, I’m going to tell myself to be optimistic and maybe just listen to music to soothe me 🙂 To end my day, I am letting my brain relax, watching One Tree Hill and listening to the beautiful rainstorms!

Grades

moderation- A

frugality- D

accountability- A

self-discipline- A

cleanliness- B

Today is day 1 and I am excited to start on this two week journey. Today I really focused on Self-discipline. I made my own healthier meal tonight and made it to the gym. Another thing that I did better today than usual was working on my school work. I completed all of my homework in class today and that left me with more time to spend with my family. Because I didn’t have to do homework I was also able to practice football so my moderation with spending time with friends, family, and football also was a lot better today. Overall I would say my first day was a success. I hope to build on today and continue to improve throughout these two weeks.