Daily
Every day, I strive to follow my daily routine. My mornings are spent primarily for contemplation, thinking, writing, and reading. My goal is to use mornings to connect and listen to myself through writing and to produce good work. The amount of focus and concentration that I achieve in a morning session determines whether I succeeded in that session.
These morning sessions (particularly my note-writing practice) would yield new notes in my talahardin or update old ones. All of these changes are pushed to my website, and people who follow changes in my website (using RSS) will be notified of these changes.
Afternoons are where I put tasks that require a more scattered attention. These include admin work. I don’t put too much structure in my afternoons and I allow myself to take a rest when needed.
To complement heavily intellectual mornings and afternoons, I take a walk in the evenings. Most of the time, these walks are meant to rest my mind. But I allow them to take their own shape based on what I need on that particular walk. Walking accomplishes multiple goals. Sometimes, these evening walks generate seeds that I could then work on the following day.
Weekly
Every Monday afternoon, as part of my weekly review routine, I prepare a menu of tasks and priorities that give me some focus on the work I ought to do within the week while retaining optionality and expansiveness.
Monthly
Every fourth day of the month, I publish an issue of Uman, which is a summary of the highlights of my month and links to the most important work done in the talahardin, usually evergreens.
I strive to make this newsletter short, like hundred rabbits’ Summary of Changes.
Yearly
As part of my annual review routine, I set new creative goals for the coming year. I also publish an annual review article containing the most important creative accomplishments of the year.
As Needed
Fieldworks
I go on regular fieldworks. These are multi-day walks where I take photographs and write essays. During such fieldworks, I would produce a daily pop-up newsletter.
Publications
Sometimes, I would work on an essay or a literary piece. When that piece is ready, I share it to people via newsletter and social media. I let this happen organically and don’t force myself to produce these works on a regular basis.
Sometimes, I would work on pieces to be published elsewhere, knowing that my priority lies in publishing in my own platform and building that platform.
The penultimate goal is to bring all my creative artifacts together into books or zines, where they could adopt some semblance of finality.
Contests and Workshops
Below the hierarchy of activities in my workflow are contests and workshops. Here, I follow Jesa Suganob’s approach: create the piece first, being mindful of my poetics and advocacies, then sending it to contests and workshops later. In a way, I use contests and workshops to force me to do the work and to find a bigger platform for my advocacies.