Manifestation Quest: Raku


#1

This post is for tracking my personal manifestation quest this coming PMO War VIII as described here:
https://www.conqueredself.com/wars/no-pmo-war-viii/topics/invitation-rediscover-the-world-of-quests

My manifestation goal will be to manifest a career as a professional fiction writer. I currently work as a programmer for my day job, but I have been writing semi-seriously for about 7 or 8 years. It’s time that I turned up the seriousness and made a career out of this.

Below is a mind map I built with the free MacOS program XMind. At the center is my goal and all the links are aspects (as concrete as possible) that I’ve identified about my goal. This is Step 1 of the three steps outlined in my previous post entitled Manifestation: Rediscovering the World of Quests.

I’ve described my goal as concretely as possible so that I can see clearly what I’m aiming for. This is, honestly, a huge goal that will require a lot of hard work and sacrifice over the next few years. Next action will be to prioritize development of these concrete attributes (all the smaller bubbles connecting directly to my goal) and break them down into concrete “quests” to build that change in myself. The idea with manifestation is that once I make all these changes (such as building a consistent writing habit), I will find myself settling into a writing career naturally like gravity pulls a dropped pebble to the ground.

As always, taking action to complete my quests will be where the change comes from. Wish me luck! I have a lot of sweating to do.

P.S. Any advice or feedback is welcome. Happy Questing!


#2

The format of this is really nice, hope your action looks as good as the photo! : )


#3

I cannot wait to get started, so I’m just pasting some of my first quests below.

Quest #0: Decide on a pseudonym (pen name)

It must be

  • Japanese
  • meaningful to me
  • pronounceable for Westerners
  • interesting/unique/memorable

After a lot of thought well before today, I’ve decided on the Japanese name “Migaku” (習) as my pen name. Migaku is the name of someone very close to me who is important in my personal life. It’s also relatively easy to pronounce and is very rare (most Japanese themselves wouldn’t know this reading for the character 習). The character itself means ‘learn’, which I think is one of the most sacred acts a person may undertake in life.

Quest #1: Form a Daily Writing Habit

In order to form a daily writing habit, I need to answer the following questions:

  • What kind of writing? => Stories (fiction)
  • How much writing should I do? => At least 5 minutes

This quest will be to write at least 5 minutes every day. I will write short drafts for my anthology of fantasy short stories that I am working on.

Quest #2: Make a website for my writing

I will construct a website with the following:

  • Author Bio
  • Place to share my short stories
  • Blog about my interests (Japan, worldbuilding, etc)
  • Contact Form

In all honesty, I started working on this quest about a week ago, but I will share it here anyway since it is still very much a work in progress. I’ve already posted some past stories written by yours truly.

Website Link => Migaku’s World

Quest #3: Read every day in a novel

In order to write well, an author must study the writing of other, successful writers. To this end, I will read at least 10 mins each day. The first book I will read is “The Name of the Wind” by Patrick Rothfuss.

So my daily activities for writing will be:

  • Write 5+ mins
  • Read 10+ mins
  • Sometimes post new material on my website

Further quests will come, such as building up a social media presence and blogging about my world-building activities, but I want to focus on establishing these daily writing and reading habits.


#4

I’m very much impressed by what you achieved already. That’s true dedication my friend! Keep going!
If you ever need an outside opinion on your website, DM me! I will gladly look at it and send you my thought on it!


#5

Thank you, @MustacheMan! Likewise, if there is anything I can do to support you this war, please let me know. Happy hunting (to slay your PMO demons)!


#6

Very structured! Let’s hope you can stick to it!


#7

Status Update:

  • So far, so good. I’ve tweaked my website a bit and have read and written the past two days.
  • Definitely feel like I’m making slow yet steady progress.

#8

I’m using Loop Habit Tracker to track my habits. Basically I check each day I’ve done my habit activity.

Habit strengths by activity:

  • No PMO: 28% (5/5 days so far)
  • Writing: 19% (3/5 days so far)
  • Reading: 18% (4/5 days so far)

The reason Writing is higher than Reading is because I started the Write one a while back and logged some days, so the program still remembers them. Here’s to taking these three activities all the way to 100%! (As for the days I missed writing, I still did writing for CS forum posts and such. I just didn’t do the creative writing for my anthology novel project.)


#9

You remind me so much of a friend I knew in GED preparatory class. He too wanted to go to learn Japanese, go to Japan, and publish his own manga. He even had all the manga illustrations and the whole story written out to share with me and the rest of the class! It was because of him that jumpstarted my passion for learning Japanese and giving me the dream of moving to Japan one day.
I am happy that I found some tech heads here, but I am even more happy that I found someone who’s learning Japanese as well. I don’t know how far you’re into learning the language, but may I suggest taking a look at this link: https://nihongoshark.com/best-way-to-learn-japanese/
Whether you’re advanced or beginner, I’m sure there’s some useful info and links here to help you out.
If you ever want someone to practice with, offer some tips or what not, don’t hesitate to ask me. I’d be more than happy to help! Keep going! You already have a foundation built up. I wish you you the best of luck and success for your goals.


#10

I’ve been learning Japanese since 2001 off and on. I speak and read Japanese decently (mostly business communication kind of stuff because I worked 3 years in Yokohama for a Japanese company). I definitely have so much I still don’t know and reading literature is still difficult for me. Japanese is such a rich language that learning it is a lifelong pursuit. I’ll PM you and we can chat directly. I’m also super pumped to meet other people who are passionate about Japan and it’s language and culture!


#11

Time for another update!

Unfortunately, I’ve gone KIA. I don’t want to make this a relapse report, as I know what I need to do and I just need to set about doing it, but here’s a quick summary. An argument with my wife and some recent lapses in discipline combined to form a perfect storm that I made the choice not to endure. I’m sorry, guys. Not much else I can say. Better to show my regret by moving forward. There were three total relapses over three days, and the first was MO without even fantasizing, and the second two escalated to P substitutes, but not P. The silver lining is that I haven’t falling into a binge cycle and I’m now three days clean and feeling like I can’t wait for the urges to come so I can stomp them into oblivion under my boot.

Now for my manifestation quest. I’ve not been as good at my habits strictly speaking. Here is where my habit percentages stand (note: I back-filled my PMO habit back all the way to March 30th, when I started tracking my relapses.)

No PMO: 76%
Meditation: 50%
Exercise: 2%
Writing: 27%
Reading: 13%

As you can see, I have a long way to go, but since I’m tracking this, at least I know where I stand.