A realistic account of my first three months

A lot of the posts here (mine included, elsewhere) focus on lessons learned in hindsight. Wanted to post something closer to real-time honesty about what the early months actually felt like, since I think the polished hindsight versions can make the messy middle feel abnormal when it's actually pretty normal. Month one was mostly disorganized enthusiasm — gathering everything I could think of without much structure, which felt productive but wasn't especially efficient in retrospect. Month two was where the actual criteria-mapping happened, and where I first realized some of what I'd gathered in month one didn't cleanly support any specific criterion the way I'd assumed. Month three was the first real dip in momentum — the initial energy had worn off, filing still felt far away, and progress slowed noticeably. If you're in that month-three dip right now: it's a normal part of a long process, not a sign anything's wrong. What got me through it wasn't a burst of motivation, it was just returning to a modest, sustainable weekly pace instead of waiting to feel motivated again.