Three Weeks for Dreamwidth: Backward Goal

This year during Three Weeks for Dreamwidth, I'm writing about goal-setting frameworks for goals_on_dw. Read Part 1: Introduction to Goal-Setting Frameworks, Part 2: The 1-3-5 Rule, Part 3: The 12-week Year, Part 4: ABCS (Achievable, Believable, Committed, Specific), Part 5: Backward Goal.


Part 5: Backward Goal

Most goal-setting frameworks start where you are and move forward toward a goal. The Backward Goal does the exact opposite. You begin with the goal and then imagine how to reach it by working in reverse.



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Birdfeeding

Today is partly cloudy, muggy, and warm. It rained last night.

I fed the birds. I've seen several house finches. While I was looking at the barrel garden, a male ruby-throated hummingbird showed up to poke around the tulips and daffodils just a few feet from me. Clearly I need to buy more late-blooming red tulips and red-cupped daffodils. He had a hard time finding the nectary on the white daffodils. There are already a few red flowers in the barrel garden, and I've planted a red columbine in the forest garden. I heard a blue jay screaming but didn't see it.

I put the flats of pots outside and watered them.

Celandine poppy is blooming bright yellow in the forest garden. Which reminds me of my observations about mourning dove courtship:

All around the celandine
The male dove chases the female
The male dove thought it was all in fun --
PECK! goes the female!

EDIT 4/29/25 -- I saw a blue jay and a male goldfinch at the forest garden. :D 3q3q3q!!!

EDIT 4/29/25 -- We went out shopping. While I was picking out plants, it started to rain. Fortunately by the time we got home, it was down to a drizzle. I'm unlikely to get any yardening done today though.

I've seen a female cardinal at the fly-through feeder.

EDIT 4/29/25 -- It stopped raining, so I planted tarragon and cilantro in a trough pot on the old picnic table, which finished filling that. I also planted 4 Johnny-jump-ups in a pot alongside the other violas and pansies on the patio.

EDIT 4/29/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

I planted a purple Wave petunia in the barrel garden.  I sowed Bee Lawn Mix on some bare patches in the prairie garden.




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Shortages in Electronics

Most electronic products are made overseas. As shipping shuts down, they will run out. If you have been planning a purchase, grab it now while you still can.

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Cherokee First Person Pronouns in Translation for Horror

So in Tsalagi (Cherokee) you have extra tools to scare the skin off your readers: pronouns that include them in the story. 

It makes me wonder if Tsalagi fiction has a branch like second-person in English, only it's based on one of their inclusive pronouns.  Conversely they also have exclusive pronouns, which could be used to create a sense of alienation.

Poetry Fishbowl on Tuesday, May 6, 2025

This is an advance announcement for the Tuesday, May 6, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. This time the theme will be "Ethical Supervillains." I'll be soliciting ideas for supervillains, superheroes, supernaries, blue-plate specials, wild young things, tricksters, contraries, rebels, adventurers, damsels/gentlemen in distress, mentors, historians, explorers, partners, teachers, leaders, teammates, ethicists, psychologists, folklorists, activists, queerfolk, other responsible rebels, using superpowers, building gizmos or super-gizmos, doing magic, breaking rules, refusing to stop just because solving a problem is illegal, exploring new territory, upsetting predictions, inventing things, trusting your best enemy, twisting tropes, flipping stereotypes, expecting the unexpected, researching, revising theories, parenting, teaching, adventuring, asking for help and getting it, leaving your comfort zone, discovering things, conducting experiments, observation changing experiments, experiments changing paradigms, adapting, improvising, troubleshooting, cleaning up messes, cooperating, taking over in an emergency, saving the day, discovering yourself, studying others, testing boundaries, coming of age, coming out, running away from home, going off the rails, subverting fate, learning what you can (and can't) do, sharing, preparing for the worst, fixing what's broke, upsetting the status quo, changing the world, accomplishing the impossible, recovering from setbacks, returning home, other fantastic activities, supervillain lairs, Triton Teen centers, SPOON bases, the forest primeval, underwater, underground, liminal zones, schools, kitchens, campfires, libraries, laboratories, apothecary shops, makerspaces, farmer's markets, foreign dimensions, other phantasmagoric settings, radical activism, radical trust, The Care and Feeding of Supervillains, gizmos or super-gizmos, zoomwagons, zipcycles, dirgecraft, dendropolycarbonate, magical artifacts, quests, enchantments, potions, reversals, contradictions, conundrums, puzzling discoveries, sudden surprises, inventions that change everything, time travel, travel mishaps, the buck stops here, trial and error, polarity, weird food, secret ingredients, supplements that turn out to be metagenic, intercultural entanglements, enemies to friends/lovers, interdimensional travel, lab conditions are not field conditions, superpower manifestation, the end of where your framework actually applies, ethics, innovation, problems that can't be solved by hitting, teamwork, found family, complementary strengths and weaknesses, personal growth, and poetic forms in particular.

Among my more relevant series for the main theme:

The Adventures of Aldornia and Zenobia is about live happy lesbians in a quirky fantasy world.

Monster House is suburban fantasy with a diverse household, where the line between truth and fantasy isn't always clear.

The Moon Door explores a women's chronic pain group and lycanthropy.

Not Quite Kansas has a helpful demon.

One God's Story of Mid-Life Crisis follows Shaeth as he works on becoming the God of Drunks.

Polychrome Heroics has ordinary humans, supernaries, blue-plate specials, superheroes, supervillains, primal and animal soups all trying to get along and figure out how to make a functional society.  Antimatter & Stalwart Stan are a cross-cape couple, and Antimatter essentially does science-based magic.  Aquariana knows Steel, a supervillain whale; and the Kraken thread crosses this one with Thalassia.  Berettaflies shows Stylet trying to clean up his act some.  The Big One features several supervillains helping out during and after the earthquake.  Calliope stumbles into partnership with the supervillain Vagary.  Cuoio and Chiara are principled supervillains. Dr. Infanta is a supervillain or superhera depending who you ask.  Fortressa is a supervillain with an all-female team.  Officer Pink features centaurs and mystic shifters.  Pain's Gray belongs to a gang of supervillains in Motor City.  Shiv is surprisingly ethical despite his rough past. In Trichromatic Attachments, Tarnish is a supervillain.

Quixotic Ideas is contemporary fantasy where magic integrates with modern life in positive ways.

Or you can ask for something new.

Boost the signal to reveal a verse in any open linkback poem.

If you're interested, mark the date on your calendar, and please hold actual prompts until the "Poetry Fishbowl Open" post next week. (If you're not available that day, or you live in a time zone that makes it hard to reach me, you can leave advance prompts. I am now.) Meanwhile, if you want to help with promotion, please feel free to link back here or repost this on your blog.

( New to the fishbowl? Read all about it! )

Food

Global study links consumption of ultraprocessed foods to preventable premature deaths

A study analyzing data from nationally representative dietary surveys and mortality data from eight countries (Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, United Kingdom, and United States) shows that premature deaths attributable to consumption of ultraprocessed foods (UPFs) increase significantly according to their share in individuals' total energy intake. The new study reinforces the call for global action to reduce UPF consumption, supported by regulatory and fiscal policies that foster healthier environments.
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the percentage of all-cause premature preventable deaths due to the consumption of UPFs can vary from 4% in countries with lower UPF consumption to almost 14% in countries with the highest UPF consumption. For example, in 2018, 124,000 premature deaths were attributable to the consumption of UPFs in the United States."

High consumption of UPFs has been associated with 32 different diseases, including cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, some types of cancer, and depression.

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