what I did in 2024
There are many different ways to sum up a year. Here are some.
my 2024 in music
In 2024, for the seventh year in a row, I kept a journal playlist, to which I added throughout the year songs that I listened to repeatedly. It’s fun to let time pass and then listen back to these lists. Music is like aroma, an instantly nostalgic medium.
my 2024 in books
The first song in my 2024 playlist is by Mark Lanegan, whose memoir
Sing Backwards and WeepSing Backwards and Weep (2020)
by Mark Lanegan
This book’s average Goodreads rating is 4.33, which is high. But 40 ratings (which amount to less than 1% of the total) gave it only one star out of five. Many of these folks complain that Lanegan portrays himself as an ultimate macho man, beating betas on his way to seducing any woman he pleases. To me this seems like a crude interpretation of Lanegan’s tone. I suppose these readers didn’t stick around until the end of chapter seven, where Lanegan gets explicit about his patheticness:
My only way to deal with what I deemed an attack (and I might deem anything an attack in those days) was to attack more aggressively in return. The level of hostility in my offensive depended on my level of fear. Fear of being caught, fear of having to tell the truth, fear of being exposed as the lying, cheating fraud I was. But it was the fear of showing my true heart, at times either so full it might burst or so empty I could cry, that hounded me most viciously.
There had been a perpetual war between myself and the costume of persona I’d donned as a youngster and then worn my entire life. Petrified that someone might discover who I really was: merely a child inside the body of an adult. A boy playacting as a man. My lifelong hard-ass exterior and, underneath that, ironclad interior were all an intricately constructed, carefully cultivated, and fiercely guarded sham. I was, in reality, driven by what I’d heard referred to in rehab all those years ago as “a thousand forms of fear.” Sadly, somewhere deep in my soul, I knew that was probably me.
There are many such cases throughout the rest of the book. But I think it is obvious from the beginning that the tone is not boastful.
The book closes with a chapter called Psychic Storms, Epiphany, and Rebirth. After years and years of using and peddling drugs, Lanegan escapes Seattle for rehab in L.A. with help from Courtney Love, Kurt Cobain’s widow. He sleeps and vomits through multi-day withdrawal and emerges from the sick haze in clean clothes and cut hair into a brilliant California day. There, sitting on a lawnchair, he begins to laugh.
I marvelled at my incredible good fortune. I smiled and began to laugh. Then laugh maniacally. I had escaped, I had survived. They had failed to destroy me and I had woken up here in paradise. “I’m still here, motherfuckers, you can’t kill me!” I howled hysterically at the sky. Before my sick crowing had even receded, an unwelcome truth lodged itself in my head: Anything that happens next can only be worse than before. That degree of suffering was beyond my imagination.
My manic laughter turned instantly into uncontrollable sobbing. I hadn’t cried in a long time. It felt as though the tears were being ripped from inside whatever I had that passed for a soul. Clawed out from that lifelong aching place. I moaned and gasped, unable to catch my breath. Suddenly, spontaneously, out of a moment of abject despair, I said out loud: “God change me.”
I had never believed in the traditional Christian god or in any supreme being. I had hated sitting through midnight mass, Catholic weddings, Catholic funerals, especially those torturous Wednesday morning masses at the mission I was forced to endure before getting in line for soup and sandwiches. I didn’t know who I was calling out to, but the second I cried out for mercy, I was nailed by some invisible but overwhelming force, as powerful and sudden as a shotgun blast. A surreal, instantaneous sixteen-hits-of-acid epiphany, as though I’d pissed on an incredibly powerful electric fence.
I was knocked from my chair and my life flashed before my eyes. My wasted childhood, my arrogant youth, my anger and obsessions, crime, delusions, self-loathing, paranoia, hopelessness, fury, and the sad junkie downward spiral. I’d heard that cliche a million times, “My life flashed before my eyes,” but I finally understood what that meant. In that single instant, it had been powerfully, intensely true. The most authentic experience of my entire life in one second, on the lawn of a Los Angeles psychiatric hospital.
Lying there, sobbing in the grass for the for first time ever I stared directly and honestly into the mirror of my life. In an instant, I saw that my entire life’s way of thinking and behaving was the corrupted opposite of what it should be. My morbid thought process was the wrong side of right.
I had grown up believing you took whatever you could from whoever you could, and always looked out for number one, screwing anyone and everyone in the process. From my earliest childhood memories, I had been a thief and flagrant, transparent, non-stop liar and cheat. Music, which I’d loved, which I’d lived for, which I credited with giving me a life, had long ago become just a means to an end: sex, money, drugs, a place to crash, a bargaining chip, a free ride, whatever I could milk from it. I’d been a rank nihilist who lived every day with an obsessive, burning need to pay back twice as hard anybody who fucked me. I spent hours in my mind digging the graves of my enemies, real and imagined.
My extreme, retrograde sickness had cut me open and left me eviscerated. I had asked to be changed and now, in a second, I was changed. Maybe not by anybody else’s god, but by some very real force that intervened in the life of one sad piece of human roadkill the moment it was asked to. In order to survive, in order to move forward, I would have to change every single fucking sorry thing about myself. I would have to start over again, clean.
I am compelled to think that what Lanegan experienced in a flash, in a sudden deluge, is not divine, but deeply human: empathy. Empathy for himself from within and without, and by extension empathy for others.
was the first book I finished in 2024. Books offer an incredible way to access worlds that we will never see in the flesh. As other great memoirs like
EducatedEducated (2018)
by Tara Westover
Tara Westover’s writing is clear, poignant, and deeply thoughtful. Each chapter reads like a short story with a purpose in the overarching narrative. This is a fantastic book.
have done for me, Lanegan’s installed in my psyche a bank of artificial memories and secondhand experiences that enrich my understanding of the world and even inform my own life decisions. The written word is a
tremendously efficient mediumhow to justify writing
Writing The Virtual Book forced me to ask: when is writing the best medium?
Something wonderful about writing is its economy. The only equipment you need is brain, paper, and pen. To document a journey through the Alaskan wilderness, for example, you don’t need to bring cameras, microphones, or personnel. The trip continues without the slowing of setup and teardown. You move as you would if there wasn’t a writer tagging along.
What’s more, there is no extra gear or logistics to obstruct encounters with the landscape and your fellow humans. The writer and all others are freed into the experience.
The experience is different for the audience, too. Writing sacrifices the sensorial experience for one deeper into the realm of imagination. The action is staged entirely in the mind. The reduction of reality into abstract symbols is both a restriction and a release. A loosed connection to time and space means the reading experience is less grounded in reality, but also less confined to it.
for conjuring these pseudoexperiences. And to think I can absorb it as audio while I perform menial tasks like driving on the highway or cooking lunch!
Books are of course also an incredible way to encounter new ideas. In
The End of AbsenceThe End Of Absence (2014)
by Michael Harris
In his book The End Of Absence, Michael Harris laments the everpresence of digital technology. He writes stylishly and gracefully, but he struggles to get a grip on the argument he wants to make. I feel his yearning for mindfulness and relate to his distrust for apps and devices that leech on our attention for profit, but I balk at his dismay at seeing a toddler attempt to zoom in on the cover of a magazine as if it were an iPad screen.
He’ll grow up thinking about the Internet with the same nonchalance that I hold towards my toaster and teakettle.
This observation’s lack of consequence hints at the lack of clarity in the author’s critique of digital technology. Most frustrating is his lack of self-awareness when recounting past technology alarmists. He tells us of Hieronimo Squarciafico, who in the 1400s decried the printing press for making too many books available, and of Socrates before that, who warned that writing was bad for one’s memory.
Kids these days, for Socrates, were rotting their brains by abandoning the oral tradition.
Harris seems to recognize these two as cynical luddites, but then refuses to acknowledge them as his forerunners. Instead, he sidesteps into a discussion about how tools reshape the psychologies of their wielders. It’s a real shame, because a serious take on the role of digital technology in our lives cannot ignore either its usefulness or its permanence.
It is clear that this technological revolution like all others cannot be evaded without exit from society and that it will continue to transform us. The question is: how do we incorporate these new technologies into our lives? How do we retain their usefulness while minimizing the harm they might do to us?
There are signs, earlier in the book, that the author won’t really be trying to sort out this knot and will content himself merely with perusing and picking at it. He mourns the “end of absence”, but never makes it clear where his concept of “absence” even begins. His vignettes hint at some possible meanings – time without digital technology, time alone out in nature, time to think. Is that all? These goals seem perfectly achievable with a little time management. Has he tried the Pomodoro Technique? Why ring the alarm bell when a simple kitchen timer will do?
I encountered Michael Harris’s thoughtprovoking but ultimately underwhelming ideas regarding the intersecting topics of technology and attention. Later in the year I picked up Matthew B. Crawford’s
The World Beyond Your HeadThe World Beyond Your Head (2014)
by Matthew B. Crawford
I heartily agree with Crawford’s emphasis on the importance of embodied experiences and his warning that virtual worlds can promote passivity, technology as magic, and false agency. However. I am also very enthusiastic about technological tools as real tools and virtual worlds as deeply enriching. Consider books for example. They are a virtual, symbolic world of their own and were object of
moral panicin their own time. But I think most of us would consider them indispensable now. Books are fictions divorced from physicality, but is that inherently bad? I don’t think so.
I am several chapters in but already think Crawford’s argument needs work. His critique of “representations” and “abstractions” needs a lot more development in my opinion. I’d invoke him to reflect on his own life to rebalance his argument: he loves to ride motorcycles and fix them up, but he also loves to read books and write them. Surely he needs to make space for symbolic experiences alongside physical ones? I say this despite agreeing with his insight on the surprising hollowness of Choice as Freedom and the way resource-extractive corporations exploit this to harvest wealth from consumers.
All in all I think he makes some fantastic, nuanced points but builds a shaky overarching argument from it. I would love to him to take a second crack at it.
I originally wrote the above on Reddit after reading the first half the book.
As I’ve said
else where, I really appreciated that this book resisted taking the reactionary stance against technology as inherently insidious and unavoidably corruptive of our psychological wellbeing. In the epilogue, Crawford summarizes his alternative critique of technology’s role in leeching on our attention:
The problem…of distraction…is usually discussed as a problem of technology. I [suggest] we view the problem as more fundamentally one of political economy. In a culture saturated with technologies for appropriating our attention, our interior mental lives are laid bare as a resource to be harvested by others. Viewing it this way shifts our gaze from the technology itself to the intention that guides its design and its dissemination into every area of life.
This perspective excites me not just because it rings truer but also because it prevents indiscriminate rejection of technology and instead makes possible a judicious trust that allows us to make good use of it.
after seeing Tom MacWright’s glowing review of it and with this book I was not disappointed. As I said in my most recent
/nowwhat I'm doing now #7
Missing Japan, losing weight, experimenting with daily routines, & more.
missing japan
We just got back
from Japan. I would love to live there for a while someday, although I think it unlikely, even though they offer a six month Digital Nomad visa. Z’s work is not remote and she wants to develop her career, so teaching English or something of the sort is not particularly useful to her. Regardless, I am sure we will visit again.
losing weight
I am twenty pounds lighter than I was a year and a half ago. I still want to lose another twenty. I am trying to eat very consciously and exercise everyday. I feel optimistic.
experimenting with daily routines
For the last few days I have woken up early and immediately gone out on a walk with my coffee. It’s a lovely way to warm up for the day and start by accomplishing my daily task of exercising. Walking is useful for me given that I am a homebody with a remote computer job and a reliance on soccer for exercise. After returning from my morning walks I’ve spent some time reading before getting on with my day. An aspiration I’ve set for myself is to do each of these everyday: exercise, read, write, work, enjoy, socialize, discuss, grow, & plan. I realize they might sound cheesy, but they are distillations of more specific intentions I have for 2025.
working
In December I received my expected promotion to Senior Software Engineer. It’s a milestone in my career. The pay bump was nice if modest for industry standards, but the biggest perk is the deference I am already getting as part of the increase in my responsibilities. I have strong opinions on how certain things should be done and I feel already a boost in persuasive power generated from my new title. To summarize, I feel like I have more agency, and I welcome it.
reading, writing, and avoiding distractions
Matthew B. Crawford’s
The World Beyond Your Headhas provoked in me a lot of reflection about what things consume my attention and how
environ mentsdictate that.
I recently read
Molloyby Samuel Beckett and I intend to continue with the second book in the trilogy.
I also resumed reading and marveling at the prose in Blood Meridian. I think it appropriate to take my time with what Harold Bloom called “the major esthetic achievement of any living American writer.” Of course, McCarthy has since died and his legacy has begun morphing due to recent news of a very inappropriate relationship he had with a teenage girl named Augusta Britt.
watching movies
Last year as soon as the weather started cooling and days darkening early I started watching movies. In the last few months I’ve watched The Substance, Woman of the Hour, We Live In Time, The Godfather and The Godfather Part 2, The Power of the Dog, Killers of the Flower Moon, Anora, A Real Pain, Perfect Days, Gladiator II, and Punch-Drunk Love. Reviews and ratings for these are or will be on my letterboxd account. Tomorrow I’m going to watch The Brutalist.
following Arsenal
Following the English Premier League is so interesting because the competition is so fierce and sophisticated. It is so difficult for teams to win. It is so difficult for fans or pundits to predict what will happen. New players arrive, old ones fall away, young ones rise into prominence. It’s a lucrative business but it is also genuine, gripping drama.
what’s next?
The year 2025 is a blank canvas. We don’t have any specific plans. Of course, it is predictable in some ways. But perhaps more so, it is open ended.
I begin the year with several intentions. Do big things at work. Get fitter. Lose twenty pounds. Have more discussions with friends. Read copiously. Keep writing for and developing this site. Nurture friendships. Heal and grow. Enjoy our DINK status. Ruminate on longterm plans.
I round the corner of another year with the intention to change my life. Change it not majorly, but minorly. I intend to live in the same place, work the same job, drink the same coffee. But I want to sharpen my focus. I intend to withhold my attention a bit more and marshall it with more discipline towards things that matter. That doesn’t mean I will scold myself if I waste time, or spend it on unimportant things. But I want to try everyday to dedicate more attention to things that matter, to things that will accumulate rather than disappear into the void like jewelry into the drain.
I will continue resisting idealistic aspirations towards abstract virtue, but will try to submit myself to disciplines that I trust will render concrete results. Spending more time reading. Waking earlier. Avoiding cheap distractions that undermine opportunities to spend time meaningfully. I’m not so interested in deeming time spent scrolling on instagram or passively consuming recommended YouTube videos as immoral. It is not bad to produce nothing or learn nothing for a few minutes on a random day, but it is costly to let it become a habit. Costly in time and in opportunity. I don’t believe I’m particularly special but I do think there is a version of me at eightysomething years old that looks back with some sastifaction at his life’s work. I want to do something meaningful and I know the steady progress of minutes hours and days can lead to things that irregular bouts of inspiration can imagine but never produce.
update, Crawford’s book provoked in me a lot of reflection about what things consume my attention and how
environwhat is attention?
From where I am sitting on my balcony I can see the TV out of the corner of my eye and it’s very difficult to ignore it. I keep turning my head away to think of what to write next, but then when I turn back to resume typing on my computer, the flashes of color and light from the TV make it very difficult for me to focus. I just went inside and turned it off, but still my mind keeps diverting attention to the now black rectangle in my peripheral vision. Let me draw the curtains.
Sometimes when I want to be alone I come out and sit here. It’s a lovely little space detached from the living room. However, if Z is sitting at her desk on the other side of the glass where I can see her and if my need to be alone in that moment is particularly potent, I draw the curtains. Her presence remains exactly as it was and I remain aware of it, but it doesn’t intrude on my attention in the same way.
In his book
The World Beyond Your Head, Matthew B. Crawford points out that this involuntary aspect of attention makes a lot of sense from an evolutionary standpoint. New information demands attendance. Is it a predator? Prey? Or just a gust of wind? Regardless we must pay attention to it so we can make sense of it and integrate it into our mental model of the current environment.
Crawford appropriates the term ecology – the branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings – to describe this fundamental relationship between our attention, our life, and our environment. He describes, for example, the “ecology of attention” in airport lounges where the news stream endlessly on TVs oriented in various directions. Even if the talking heads are muted, the infinite sideways scroll of symbols at the bottom of the screen will hijack the attention of travelers who would rather rest idly.
(Crawford astutely points out that the advertisements shown on these TVs exist to continue the transfer of wealth from these common travelers to the ones in the VIP lounges, who rest comfortably without having their attention exploited by their surroundings without their consent. I find these socioeconomic analyses of technology much more relevant and important than the technophobic ones. The same goes for Artificial Intelligence. I don’t worry that AI will take over the world, I worry that those who already rule the world will use AI to accelerate and automate processes of wealth extraction.)
I think the evolutionary perspective can also help explain why time in nature feels so right. This is the primordial ecology of our attention, the environment in which our brains adapted for us to live and thrive. And yet I don’t think we need to draw purist or atavistic conclusions against technology from this observation. Feelings of connection and coherence arise in us not only from time in nature, but also from time using artificial tools and inhabiting constructed environments.
The humble coffee shop for example is a place where many of us go to read, write, think, converse, and do other things that require our focus. The intricate weave of activity and mixture of sounds create a conducive ambience for our attention. How is it that such a busy, public space is so popular for quiet, private activity? This is only counterintuitive if we think distraction is the only unneutral effect our environment has on our ability to focus. From experience we know that it can be easier to focus in spite of extraneous sensory information rather than in absence of it. Perhaps because our cognitive capacities evolved in settings where total absence of sensory input was rare, our minds focus more easily against a backdrop of mundane information. Certain kinds of technologies are essential here and even computer screens are welcome, but not TVs because they would be too disruptive. A good ecology of attention not only prevents distractions, but encourages focus.
I’ve moved into my apartment now, into the warmth. Out in the balcony my fingers were getting too cold. Above my head the clock ticks and farther away traffic brushes by in irregular strokes. The faint wail of an ambulance emerges suddenly and then fades quickly. Occasionally in the hallway outside our apartment a door opens and then shuts a moment later. Our little dog scurries about the living room looking for amusement. My wife Z works intently at her desk a few feet away in silence apart from intermittent bursts of typing and muted clicks of her mouse. Attention to my writing flows easily despite all these things, except when my gaze drifts over to what is happening on her computer screen. So I adjust my sitting position to make it vanish.
what is attention?
From where I am sitting on my balcony I can see the TV out of the corner of my eye and it’s very difficult to ignore it. I keep turning my head away to think of what to write next, but then when I turn back to resume typing on my computer, the flashes of color and light from the TV make it very difficult for me to focus. I just went inside and turned it off, but still my mind keeps diverting attention to the now black rectangle in my peripheral vision. Let me draw the curtains.
Sometimes when I want to be alone I come out and sit here. It’s a lovely little space detached from the living room. However, if Z is sitting at her desk on the other side of the glass where I can see her and if my need to be alone in that moment is particularly potent, I draw the curtains. Her presence remains exactly as it was and I remain aware of it, but it doesn’t intrude on my attention in the same way.
In his book
The World Beyond Your Head, Matthew B. Crawford points out that this involuntary aspect of attention makes a lot of sense from an evolutionary standpoint. New information demands attendance. Is it a predator? Prey? Or just a gust of wind? Regardless we must pay attention to it so we can make sense of it and integrate it into our mental model of the current environment.
Crawford appropriates the term ecology – the branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings – to describe this fundamental relationship between our attention, our life, and our environment. He describes, for example, the “ecology of attention” in airport lounges where the news stream endlessly on TVs oriented in various directions. Even if the talking heads are muted, the infinite sideways scroll of symbols at the bottom of the screen will hijack the attention of travelers who would rather rest idly.
(Crawford astutely points out that the advertisements shown on these TVs exist to continue the transfer of wealth from these common travelers to the ones in the VIP lounges, who rest comfortably without having their attention exploited by their surroundings without their consent. I find these socioeconomic analyses of technology much more relevant and important than the technophobic ones. The same goes for Artificial Intelligence. I don’t worry that AI will take over the world, I worry that those who already rule the world will use AI to accelerate and automate processes of wealth extraction.)
I think the evolutionary perspective can also help explain why time in nature feels so right. This is the primordial ecology of our attention, the environment in which our brains adapted for us to live and thrive. And yet I don’t think we need to draw purist or atavistic conclusions against technology from this observation. Feelings of connection and coherence arise in us not only from time in nature, but also from time using artificial tools and inhabiting constructed environments.
The humble coffee shop for example is a place where many of us go to read, write, think, converse, and do other things that require our focus. The intricate weave of activity and mixture of sounds create a conducive ambience for our attention. How is it that such a busy, public space is so popular for quiet, private activity? This is only counterintuitive if we think distraction is the only unneutral effect our environment has on our ability to focus. From experience we know that it can be easier to focus in spite of extraneous sensory information rather than in absence of it. Perhaps because our cognitive capacities evolved in settings where total absence of sensory input was rare, our minds focus more easily against a backdrop of mundane information. Certain kinds of technologies are essential here and even computer screens are welcome, but not TVs because they would be too disruptive. A good ecology of attention not only prevents distractions, but encourages focus.
I’ve moved into my apartment now, into the warmth. Out in the balcony my fingers were getting too cold. Above my head the clock ticks and farther away traffic brushes by in irregular strokes. The faint wail of an ambulance emerges suddenly and then fades quickly. Occasionally in the hallway outside our apartment a door opens and then shuts a moment later. Our little dog scurries about the living room looking for amusement. My wife Z works intently at her desk a few feet away in silence apart from intermittent bursts of typing and muted clicks of her mouse. Attention to my writing flows easily despite all these things, except when my gaze drifts over to what is happening on her computer screen. So I adjust my sitting position to make it vanish.
dictate that.
my 2024 as journaled on this site
I posted four entries in 2024:
-
what I’m doing now #3
what I'm doing now #3
#journal — Mentioned in what I'm doing now #4, what I did in 2024I’ve been playing soccer, watching hockey, reading Cormac McCarthy and David Lynch, watching The Wire and True Detective, developing Muze Radio, and more.
Life
My weight loss progress has slowed. I’m going to be patient and keep working on small, daily habits that have worked so far. Playing soccer, going for walks, eating vegetables, eating more slowly and mindfully, and not finishing my serving just because it’s served.
After a month of not playing soccer, I was excited to get back on the pitch. At my first game back, there was a middle-aged man
recording the gamefrom the sidelines with a camera mounted on a tall tripod. Only a few weeks ago I was wishing I had videos of my matches from years past. Since watching this recent one, I’ve been working on moving off the ball better. Adjust my position in anticipation of where the ball will be next.
I still haven’t gone snowboarding this season, but I went with Z, Z’s mom, and Z’s stepdad to
Harrison Hot Springs. The Vancouver area is stunning after a good snow. The hills speckled with evergreen and white, and the snow-capped mountains beyond. We stopped at Bridal Veil Falls on the way back. They were frozen solid, it was a sight.
Z won tickets for Canucks vs Blackhawks from a raffle at work, so we went to our first ever
Canucks game. It was novel for me. The only sport I watch regularly is soccer. I’ve been watching all of Arsenal’s games. It’s been really interesting to observe Mikel Arteta build and develop his team. His tactics and strategies are pretty complex and they evolve constantly. There’s a hilarious moment in an interview from a few months ago in which a reporter asks him about the new formation he is using and he replies that his team used “36 different structures” in the game and he had no idea which formation the reporter meant. So far, his system has been working and adapting well.
Work
Took a few weeks to get back into the groove. My mind started running wild. What if I went to grad school? I got my calm back when I got more interesting tasks to do. I’ve been almost two years working on Loop and I can see myself continuing for another year at least. It’s the best job I’ve ever had.
Coding
I revamped the design of my app Muze Radio. Still waiting to hear back from Spotify regarding my request for an extended quota, which would allow any Spotify Premium user to use my app. I submitted it back on January 9th and the expected turnaround time of six weeks has now elapsed. Hopefully they’ll get back to me this week.
I started working on hoverbox previews for this site. I want them to look like the previews on Wikipedia or Andy Matuschak’s notes. I’m excited.
Reading
I’ve been reading a lot lately. I have about a dozen books on the go.
I sped through
Stella Marisin a few days and now I’m reading
The Passenger. Cormac McCarthy’s last two novels. A lot of what Alicia says in Stella Maris Cormac himself says in this interview, e.g. the subsconscious is “a machine for operating an animal.”
I’m two thirds into The Death and Life of Great American Cities. I’m taking my time, letting the ideas sink in, and observing their relevance to Seattle and Vancouver.
In the background, I’m reading a couple books that lend themselves to slow incremental consumption.
The Relationship Handbookand Italo Calvino’s Mr. Palomar. I was ready to ditch the latter but on a whim I gave it another shot and loved chapter five, The blackbird’s whistle. I intend to post about it on this site at some point.
Meanwhile, I’ve been listening to David Lynch’s biography-memoir Room to Dream and Mary Norris’s memoir about working at the New Yorker.
Flirting with starting Circe, one of Z’s favorite books. I’ve put Infinite Jest on probation. I feel neither compelled to commit nor ready to ditch.
Also reading New Yorker articles here and there. What the Doomsayers Get Wrong About Deepfakes makes a good point: new technology rarely aligns with our panicked predictions of catastrophe but often inflicts harm more insidiously and narrowly. This article about tipping – originally “To Insure Promptitude” – was really interesting. And this one about polyamory’s popularity. Finally, this one about the “philosophical-counselling movement.”
A guy from my high school posted an insightful mini-essay about how social media robs us of precious “idle time.” Reminds me of the concept of “ambient thought” and the ideas in
this mini-essaythat I posted on this site.
I’ve also spent more time reading articles published on smaller profile websites. Some really good pieces about software: An App Can Be A Home-Cooked Meal, about programming as a practical skill for use in personal life. The Rise of “Worse is Better”, about a counterintuitive yet effective approach to buidling software. Reminds me of Skateboard, Bike, Car, which I’ve mentioned before. Finally, Situated Software, about another counterintuitive software development philosophy: built to not scale.
Writing
Bookand
moviereviews,
vign ettes,
notes, and a couple of
mini-essays, including
how to use restraint, which I plan to revise because I lost sight of my point towards the end.
TV
The Wire, seasons one and two, some of the third. A reminder of several depressing facts of American life: police brutality, perverted hierarchical bureacracies (“Chain of command!”), the ravage of drugs in poor communities. One of the great things about this show is its multitude of characters and lack of a permanent protagonist. Another is the show’s vividness. The shipyard and its workers in the second season feel so real.
Season one of True Detective. Really interesting character foil. I think Lynch would adore the concept of The Taxman, the detective that carries around a surprisingly large notebook and bears his duties like a holy burden. Does not believe in Christ but hangs a crucifix in his apartment to contemplate “that moment in the garden.” The Taxman is at the center of an aesthetically breathtaking action scene in Episode four. Not surprised to see a lot of talk about it online, e.g. Breaking Down the Best Scene in True Detective.
Rewatching Arrested Development, again. Still catching some jokes for the first time. Also watching the new season of The Eric Andre Show.
Movies
Anatomy of a Fall was fantastic. Two and a half hours long but engaging all the way through. A lot of dialogue. Beautiful to look at.
Talk to Me was also very good. It’s now one of my favorite horror movies. Reminds me of Insidious for obvious reasons and Hereditary for more subtle ones.
What’s next?
Work.
Keep playing soccer, going on walks, resume bike riding. Go snowboarding!
Keep reading, keep writing.
Continue working on Muze Radio. Implement hoverbox previews on this site.
Plan this year’s trips with Z.
Going to an improv class for the first time. Z signed us up after doing one with friends recently. She thinks I’m going to love it.
Continue nurturing my social life in Vancouver. Play chess and watch Lynch movies with friends.
Keep watching Arsenal games. It will be thrilling to see how the rest of the season plays out. It’s so tight at the top. Hopefully Arsenal will still be up there next time I write a personal update.
Super excited to see Ethiopian keyboardist Hailu Mergia in Seattle with my friend, who is also Ethiopian. I might go to a couple other live shows, too.
I’m looking forward to it all. Things are good and spring is coming.
, posted on February 19th
-
what I’m doing now #4
what I'm doing now #4
#journal — Mentioned in what is this site? #4, what I did in 2024I’ve been snowboarding, walking, listening Vieux Farka Touré, developing hoverboxes for this site, and more.
Life
My weight loss progress has stalled. I’m 15lbs lighter than I was in June of last year but the red needle on my bathroom scale has been trembling at the same position for weeks. I’m playing soccer twice a week now, but going on fewer walks. I am mindful about what I eat, but I don’t track it. I said in my
last updatethat I would try not finishing my serving just because it’s served, but even with the goal in mind I find it very difficult to do. Years ago I saw an ad for a habit-focused weight loss app called Noom that said that finishing your plate is often an impulse ingrained in childhood. I think that’s true for me. In any case, I suspect my biggest hurdle to further weight loss is snacking before bedtime. I’d still like to lose another 25lbs, but I think I’m going to put it on the backburner for now. Cruise until I catch a second wind.
Like I mentioned, I’m playing soccer twice a week. 7v7 games, mostly. My cardio is not amazing, but definitely much better than it was at the start of the year.
I’ve gone snowboarding twice. Finally! Once at Cypress Mountain on a weekday evening and once at Mt Seymour on a weekend afternoon. Both are within a thirty minute drive from Vancouver, which is incredible. From Cypress there are stunning views of the city, the inlet, and the nearby islands. The season is coming to an end but I’m hoping to go to Grouse Mountain soon, which is less than twenty minutes away from Vancouver. Access to ski resorts in Vancouver is astounding.
Z and I have been
exploring the neighborhoodsaround us and loving it. Occasionally I go for a long nighttime walk on my own, as I have done for years, and a recent one resulted in Z and I getting tickets to see
Vieux Farka Touré. It turned out to be one of the live music performances I’ve most enjoyed attending.
Z and I did a five week improv course in Vancouver. We met some nice people and had a novel and interesting experience. We think we might take standup comedy classes next. Z is initiating these activities, but I’m happy to follow along.
Travel
Z and I are going to Tofino for my mom’s birthday in May and then to NYC a week later.
We recently stayed at an Airbnb on Lake Cavanaugh with friends. We jumped in the water and it was freezing. I’m very happy I did it though.
Work
A couple weeks ago I silently celebrated my two year anniversary working on Microsoft Loop. It’s the longest I’ve worked on a single product or team and by far the one I’ve enjoyed the most. The problems are interesting, the work is in line with my career interests, the product is exciting, the people are great, the work life balance is stellar.
Although I had a dip in motivation several weeks ago, I’ve been quite motivated recently. Managing one’s motivation is a nonobvious and little discussed but essential skill. Over the years I’ve recognized it as such and tried to improve at it.
Tomorrow I’m giving a talk about rewriting history in Git. I’m looking forward to it!
Coding
I implemented hoverboxes on this site! If you’re on a computer, hover over
this linkand you’ll see a preview of my previous ‘now’ update. It was nontrivial but educational to implement. I’ve always liked the idea of doing DIY. Does this count?
I haven’t worked on my app Muze Radio for a couple months. Spotify denied my request for an extended quota, which would allow anyone with Spotify Premium to use it. I addressed their silly reason and resubmitted the request. That was well over six weeks ago, which is their expected turnaround time. On the Spotify Dashboard, I see a message banner stating that The review is taking longer than expected. Yeah, I know. I suppose I can’t be too annoyed though. It’s free. Once they accept my request, I’ll probably have motivation to resume work on it.
Reading
Listened to a good deal of Mary Norris’s Between Me and You: Confessions of a Comma Queen. I enjoyed the first bit, including the part about Ben Webster and the dictionary, which I found really interesting. But my interest in the book began falling sharply with Norris’s rants about the gender of pronouns and such. I just didn’t care. According to her, ‘they’ doesn’t work as a gender neutral pronoun because it’s plural. Silliness.
Room to Dream, David Lynch’s autiobiography-memoir. A great read, especially as companion material to
his
movies. I found it inspirational. Not only is David Lynch an important artist, but also a good person.
The Passenger, which I read out of interest after reading
Stella Marisand because I love
how Cormac writes.
Some New Yorker articles, including one on Female Violence.
I sampled Temple Grandin’s book about Visual Thinking, but I didn’t have appetite for it.
I continue reading The Death and Life of Great American Cities, without haste. I am trying to digest and
applyits ideas.
Writing
I’ve been writing with some regularity. Mostly, but not exclusively, reviews and journal entries. I wrote
part #2of
my career, a project I’m excited to continue.
TV
I keep watching Arsenal games and they keep winning. Arteta is undeniably effective. His decisions are questionable sometimes, but so far he has managed to produce answers for them. Arsenal still has a chance at winning the English Premier League, but it isn’t entirely up to them. Everyone is thrilled to have three title contenders with only a handful of games left and nobody can predict who will win it.
I’ve also been working on the decor of our apartment. I put up small floating shelves in our bedroom, which was intimidating because I had never before drilled holes for wall anchors. Bought a rubber plant and a wall mirror for the plant corner in our living room. Continually propagating my pothos snippings and planting them in nursery pots. In addition to Never Too Small, which I’ve been watching for years now, I’ve started watching videos by Noah Daniel, a small new YouTuber who is an interior designer with a passion for modern architecture and design. It’s been interesting.
True Detective season 4, which had my attention at first, but then lost it.
The Curse. Have only watched a couple episodes but I think it’s so good. Can’t wait to keep watching.
Veep. So funny. Reminds me a lot of Arrested Development and Peep Show, other shows about pathetic characters written with scathing comedy wit. The Other Two is similar. I’ve been catching episodes of it here and there while Z watches it.
The Office continues to be a go-to comfort show for me. I have that strange but apparently common capacity to rewatch it endlessly. I do the same with the Ricky Gervais Show, even though I think Ricky is a prat and his standup comedy unimaginative crap.
Movies
Wild at Heart, which was a worthy Lynch work.
The Zone of Interest, which was stellar.
Dune Part 2which was pretty much as good as a megablockbuster gets.
What’s next?
I have some interesting tasks at work right now. Looking forward to seeing how those progress.
I’m looking forward to visiting Tofino and NYC. Also looking forward to doing more outdoor activities with friends, like paddleboarding and playing volleyball.
I have tickets to see Nate Smith, Carrtoons, and Kiefer in Seattle in May. Excited for it. I’ll update
my concert logafterward, like I did for
Hailu Mergia.
Excited but nervous about the last several EPL games. It’s going to be a huge disappointment if Arsenal don’t win the title after such a fantastic season.
Z and I are developing new friendships in Vancouver. Looking forward to forming a dynamic with a group of people like we have in Seattle.
As I write, I don’t have substantial reading or writing goals. At this point, I have developed both habits, so I expect them to carry me on for the next several weeks, at least.
, posted on April 23rd
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what I’m doing now #5
what I'm doing now #5
#journal — Mentioned in what I'm doing now #6, what I did in 2024I’ve been traveling, furnishing, reading, writing, and more.
interior design
An odd perk of splitting my time between Seattle and Vancouver has been furnishing and decorating a second apartment, a task for which I have enough gusto to do twice over. More than twice, actually. I’ve starting telling friends that I would gladly help them lay out their spaces. I told one friend in particular, who finds furnishing and decorating stultifying, that when he buys his house, I will invite myself over and personally hang the artwork and mirror that have been leaning against his apartment walls for years. I routinely watch Never Too Small and Noah Daniel and have been toying with the idea of making TikToks or Instagram reels about my amateur interest in interior design. I already have the topic for the initial video: how to get cheap artwork that you love.
lounging on the balcony
Among the finest decisions I’ve made recently is buying patio furniture for our balcony. I bought it secondhand for $420 USD ($575 CAD), delivery included, and within a week have spent many more minutes (in either currency) lounging, reading, writing, and working on it. I expect to recoup a good deal of the principal when we resell in a year or two.
By furnishing the balcony we’ve added to our apartment a whole new space to be in. It’s like a tree house, perched up among a variety of leafy growth. Beyond the branches, in the evenings, lays the orange pink sunset silhouetting cranes on the port and past them the city skyline. It reminds me of this bit from Gail Sheehy’s memoir:
I had found a rent-stabilized apartment on Fifth Avenue, near the Metropolitan Museum of Art… It had a terrace overlooking Central Park. A small glass cubicle sat on one end of the terrace, where I wrote as if suspended in the sky. I could watch the leaves turn from scarlet to lemony pale and sit snug in a winter storm like being enclosed in a snow globe. It was as close to a writer’s heaven as one could get.
Unheated, the cubicle was also ideally suited to keeping the neurons jumping. In winter I typed in a hoodie, my feet encased in Alaskan mukluks. In spring, the terrace became my first garden. I filled the window boxes with swaying tulips. Tubs held bonsai mimosa trees and dwarf crabapple trees that bore fruit in the fall. It was a magical place to invite friends for drinks and outdoor supper.
My alcove is more modest, but magical still. A private little post embedded in the city. A perfect place to read and write.
reading
I have a knack for picking up new books even while I have already a few on the go. Eschewing reading etiquette in this way amuses me as if it were actual mischief. It also does a lot to maintain and continually rekindle my reading appetite. My main book is The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which I’ve been reading since last fall. I’m about 75% done, but taking my time, letting the ideas marinate and noticing
how they applynowadays.
With Libby and Spotify, it’s easy to try out audiobooks, which are great for listening while doing activities with low mental demand like driving, cooking, and cleaning. Recently I sampled Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less, because it is about a topic I’m
very interestedin and was recommended in a blog post by Oliver Burkeman, who I admire for his book
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. Rest was underwhelming and speculative, but thought-provoking. I
ditchedit, but it touched on the concept of the Default Mode Network, which has been, rather aptly, turning over in the back of my mind. It was gratifying and intriguing to find a neuoscientific name for a phenomenon that I and many others have intuited. In fact, I can tell that I am about to fall asleep when I am lying in bed and notice that my imagination has taken a life of its own, and that my conscious mind has left the director’s chair for a seat in the audience.
On the other side of the spectrum of ditchability are David Graeber’s books about debt and bureaucracy, which I’ve been listening to on Spotify and am thrilled to have discovered. I only learned of Graeber last year and my expectations were low when I began listening to his book about Bullshit Jobs, but recently I’ve started thinking he may have been one of the most interesting intellectuals of recent times. I want to get physical copies of his books and re-read them studiously, delving into topics he covers to test his judgment and theories, which I find insightful and very intriguing, if at times radical.
Otherwise, I’ve been picking up books on topics that relate with things going on in my life and in my head. Having recently returned from a
trip to nyc, I finally cracked open my copy of Destinations to read Jan Morris’s lovely piece about Manhattan. Also, I resumed Gloria Steinem’s Revolution From Within, since I’ve been thinking a lot about self-esteem and ego. Steinem’s reference to Alice Miller’s The Drama of the Gifted Child sent me on a reading tangent about Miller’s initial advocacy for Konrad Stettbacher’s version of primal therapy and her eventual denouncement. Out of curiosity, I searched for New Yorker articles mentioning Alice Miller and ended up reading this New Yorker article about Bechdel, whom I only knew in relation to the Bechdel test.
I also started reading remembered rapture, bell hooks’s essays on writing, which is a topic I think about constantly. This in turn led me to Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, which bell hooks cites as one of the literary treasures recovered from obscurity by second wave feminism. In fact, according to Wikipedia, new interest in Hurston’s work was sparked in 1975 by an article published in Ms., Gloria Steinem’s magazine!
thinking about ego and masculinity
Alfred Adler claimed that all problems were interpersonal relationship problems. Freudian psychoanalysts credit childhood trauma and unconscious drives as fundamental. Lately I’ve been thinking about ego and self-image as a gravitational center that grounds our thoughts and behavior. (Ego is an overloaded term and I’ve written about
my senseof it.)
I think that the ongoing male crisis can be articulated in terms of ego and self-esteem. I suspect the rage many men feel is
self-loathing reflected outwardin a desperate attempt at self-preservation. These people are struggling for viable ways to exist.
When I first learned of Andrew Tate’s popularity with boys and young men, I was not only dismayed but surprised. Don’t we know better already? But misogyny is not simply a problem of ignorance. It and other expressions of violence are tools for acting out feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness. To get rid of these kinds of abhorrent behavior, we have to address the source of the problem.
Instead of offering gender-agnostic advice for self-actualization, Christine Emba, like psychotherapist Stephen A. Shapiro in the past, is trying to champion positive, overtly masculine roles:
In my ideal, the mainstream could embrace a model that acknowledges male particularity and difference but doesn’t denigrate women to do so. It’s a vision of gender that’s not androgynous but still equal, and relies on character, not just biology. And it acknowledges that certain themes — protector, provider, even procreator — still resonate with many men and should be worked with, not against.
I wonder whether this is an ideal towards which we should strive or whether it is merely a stepping stone aiming to stabilize male self-esteem as it approaches an ultimate destination. No matter where we are on this journey, it needs to be somewhere where the male ego doesn’t feel in danger. Because, if it does, men will return again and again to the familiar coping strategy of domination, which assuages their fear of the deepest inferiority: worthlessness.
writing
Most of what I’ve
written
recentlyhas to do with New York, but I also finally wrote a review of
The Passenger, the first of Cormac McCarthy’s last
twonovels. I also wrote a
fourth entryin my series of how to coordinate metaphors.
traveling
Z and I went to Tofino with my family for a week to celebrate my mom’s birthday. We spent time together, ate great meals, surfed on beautiful beaches, hung out at a wonderful airbnb near the heart of town, spent a day in an outdoor spa in a private cove lounging in hot tubs filled with seaweed, and even saw the Northern Lights. Z and I want to go back.
A week later, Z and I went to
NYCto affirm our suspicion that we would like to live there before we have kids. I have a bad habit of winging trips, but in the month leading up to this one I dedicated good hours to research and planning. The time spent was well worth it, rendering some of the most memorable experiences of the trip: Comedy Cellar, Village Vanguard,
Blue Note, Whitney Museum (for free), Tiny Cupboard Comedy Club, Roberta’s, and SEY coffee. Some of these I booked in advance, and the others I was aware of and pounced on when the opportunity arose.
We recently also spent a weekend with friends at an airbnb in Lake Cowichan. The weather was a bit disappointing, but we had a great time hanging out in and around the hot tub.
working
I’ve delivered some good results at work recently. My tasks continue to be interesting and plenty. However, it looks like my next promotion, which I was expecting in September, won’t happen until December. I’m disappointed, but when I reflect on it carefully, I notice it’s not that important. By no means do I need to be promoted. It’s alluring because it’s a quantifiable and salient achievement. But it’s not important one.
coding
Spotify again rejected my request for an extended quota. I emailed them back asking to speak to a real person. No response. It looks like it’s going to be difficult to make my app available to all Spotify premium users, unfortunately. That project will sit on the backburner for a while.
As for my other recent programming project – this site – I have some interesting new ideas. To encourage myself to
revise and rework posted pieces, I want to re-order posts by their most recently edited date rather than their original publish date. That way, I could breathe new life into old ideas that I failed to do justice on initial attempt and baptize them again as new pieces. This aligns with the dynamic aspect of my
virtual bookidea. A related idea I have for this site is to let (hypothetical) readers see past versions of each post, in the spirit of what I wrote in my essay
The Virtual Booklast year:
What if a memoirist publishes a piece overlaid with their revisions to show the process of expression and expose the artifice of memoir? … What if a novelist publishes a first-person novel in real time to make it feel like the character really exists and is experiencing events alongside the reader? What if the author then goes back and rewrites previous parts of the novel to show the decay of memory and its corruption in the construction of personal narratives?
One of my core interests, and one of the core passions behind this site, is the process of writing. Interfaces that illuminate and accentuate that process intrigue me.
watching TV
Peep Show. Second watch. So funny.
Curb Your Enthusiasm. Hilarious. Like Peep Show, soothing with its insanity.
Baby Reindeer, which was haunting, disturbing, and fantastic.
Welcome to Wrexham. S3 is less ambitious, but still good.
Fantasmas. Unsettling in a very effective way, like a hyper-pop Black Mirror. Wonderfully weird and delightfully non-linear. By now I know I am a sucker for tangential and episodic storytelling.
watching movies
Dream Scenario. Unsettling. I kept oscillating between sympathy and disgust for the main character, an intended effect, I think. However, ultimately, it didn’t seem to have a cogent point to make. Or maybe I missed it.
Challengers. Very entertaining. I loved the toxic triangle between the three main characters: one chooses to be dominated, one needs to dominate, and one dominates himself to preclude others doing it. The codependence and power dynamics rang true until they fell a bit flat towards the end.
Radical Wolfe, documentary about writer Tom Wolfe (and former colleague of Gloria Steinem at New York magazine). Somewhat entertaining but suspiciously uncritical, as biopics and posthumous documentary tributes tend to be.
what’s next?
Enjoying the rare and splendid sunny days of PNW summer. Biking, paddleboarding, playing soccer, volleyball with friends.
I’m curious about playing goalkeeper for a new team. I’ve been an outfield player exclusively for years, but I used to play goalie part-time and fill in when needed. I miss it a bit. And goalies are always in demand, so it should be an easy way to get more playing time. Hopefully I’m not overestimating my skills in net. I think I’ll find out soon.
Cap Hill Block Party. Excited about seeing Chappell Roan, who is apparently great to see live.
Visit PEI, before Z’s mom and stepdad sell the house they have on the beach there.
, posted on July 7th
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what I’m doing now #6
what I'm doing now #6
#journal — Mentioned in what is this site? #3, what I did in 2024I’ve been getting injured, visiting the Canadian East, defining my pattern language, enjoying summer’s end, reading, writing, coding, and more.
getting injured
I’ve been getting a bit unlucky. My first attempt at returning to soccer goalkeeping resulted in a badly sprained finger. The xray showed “a couple tiny fragments of bone,” which the hand doctor that I was later referred to described as “technically a break.” To him I relayed the playful question my friend had asked: what happens to the bits of bone? Yes, he confirmed, they get “resorbed.” (A subsequent internet search confirmed it was indeed a real word.)
A few weeks later, back in the outfield, my domain, I took a meanly struck soccer ball to the back of the head. In my couple decades of playing soccer, I’ve headed many, many balls deliberately and even taken several to the face. But I can’t recall ever getting hit so firmly on the back of the head, or it ever hurting so much. The real headache, though, was navigating the quagmire of bureacratic medical advice. Was I really in mortal danger? Or could I just go home and rest? After a lot deliberating, consulting, and a tentative visit to the Emergency Room, my wife and I decide to go home for the night and consult a doctor the next day.
visiting the Canadian East
Z and I spent a week in the Toronto area and then a week in Prince Edward Island. It’s embarrassing how much friendlier folks are over there compared to Vancouverites. One of our theories on the subject is that it is easier to make friends in cities with more transplants, since they are circumstantially motivated to make connections. People who have lived in a place for a long time already have an established social network and are therefore not incentivized to form new friendships. Especially when the local culture is one of polite detachment. In Vancouver, strangers walking past each other on the sidewalk rarely look at each other, even in residential neighborhoods. It’s very offputting for me and Z. We are warm and friendly people.
Before I moved to Seattle in 2019, I was warned of the Seattle freeze, the aloof attitude of locals and their aversion towards making new friends. But this stereotype never matched my experience of Seattle. Everyday I have friendly interactions with folks – at the coffee shop, by the mailboxes, at the lake, on the street. The generous spirit extends to include dogs, which can be found everywhere in the city – in grocery stores, in shops, in pubs, and even in restaurants. I suspect that the tech boom and consequent influx of transplants from all over the US, Canada, and abroad has made the city a good place to make friends. Notably, my friends here are almost exclusively not from Seattle. Several from Winnipeg and Victoria, one from Brooklyn, one from Arkansas, one from Connecticut, one from Montreal, one from Oregon, a few from the Midwest, and so on.
forming a commune
One of my best friends just bought a house in West Seattle and a bunch of us are seriously considering moving in with him. I would live upstairs with him and three of our friends would live in the groundlevel suite downstairs. It’s an exciting prospect, even though it would mean giving up our lovely apartment in Capitol Hill. I would really miss the proximity to urban life, but would love to live in a little complex with a bunch of people I really like. According to an architecture book I’m currently reading, A Pattern Language, that’s how people should live. It asserts that even couples should not live alone:
ideally, every couple is a part of a larger group household…If this can not be so, try to build the house for the couple in such a way as to tie it together with some other households, to form the beginnings of a group household, or, if this fails, at least to form the beginnings of a House Cluster.
The catalyst for this potential move is that Z and I want to reduce the total we spend on rent across our two homes, mine in Seattle and hers in Vancouver. But the change has the potential to be much more than a practical compromise. With our friends living downstairs, we would realize the House Cluster. The backyard, which includes a garden, would serve as a sort of “public land” connecting our households. The book makes strong claims about these aspects:
People will not feel comfortable in their houses unless a group of houses forms a cluster, with the public land between them jointly owned by all the householders.
Even if I don’t end up moving, I am very excited to help my friend plan, furnish, and decorate his new space. And the book is serving as perfect inspiration.
reading & writing
There’s something strangely satisfying about starting a new book while traveling. While in Toronto and PEI, I returned to A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction, a book I’d perused a few years ago. I was reminded of the book while writing my personal list of essential homemaking ingredients and came up with the title
my pattern language. I’ve been thinking about writing a piece like that for a while and, when I finally started, it gripped me like a fever. Writing it while sitting at a bench on the deck looking out over the couple kilometers of green pastures connecting me to the Atlantic ocean was one of my favorite moments of my PEI visit.
The last couple months have been a fertile time for my writing. I
wrote a vignetteabout a handyman that fixed my kitchen cabinet a couple years ago, and I even
wrote about writing it. I wrote about the book
The End Of Absenceand about related thoughts I had
on boredom. I wrote a
second entryon the topic of rules and a
thirdon the topic of storytelling.
The latter compared the writing between House of the Dragon and The Sopranos. At Z’s encouragement, I shared it on r/HouseOfTheDragon and I received some encouraging responses. It was the first time I shared my writing with complete strangers and I intend to do it again. I think it’s a great way to motivate diligence in my thinking and writing and to test my reasoning. (It so happens that I recently came across a blog by a fellow programmer and writer and noticed that he posted his writing on r/TrueLit.)
Other books I’ve partially consumed recently include “Short Introductions” to Hegel and Hume, and The Listening Book.
enjoying the last stretch of summer
Recently a couple friends and I went on our last paddleboarding session of the summer. It was a worthy finale. We paddled up Lake Union to a new brewery perched at the water’s edge to attract aquatic patronage. There we had drinks and appetizers before paddling back through the darkening dusk, drifting along the halflit houseboats towards Seattle’s twinkling cityscape. Back at the dock we emptied the boards of air and dove back into the lake a few times to the sound of my oldest playlist on my bluetooth speaker. Everything sounds better in the dark.
Sound supplants sight as the main sensory input channel.The sudden splash of water strikes the air like a crackling snare drum and even the howl and hiss of a deflating paddleboard seems to hold color.
watching TV & movies
While in PEI, I started watching Lost, which is the alltime favorite of one of my friends, and Z started watching Brooklyn 99. I’m not sure why, but, as I said about reading A Pattern Language, there is something pleasing about starting something new while on a trip away from home. Change of routine feels right alongside a change of environment.
I started rewatching Mad Men. This time I much more easily recognize Don Draper’s extreme immaturity. It hides so well behind his restrained eloquence and impressive jawline. I also notice that Peter Campbell is offered as a character foil. He’s unsuave and unhandsome, but similarly insecure and helpless. He’s deeply envious, unaware that all the potency and respect that Don enjoys does nothing to salve the wounds that disfigure his hopeless self-image.
coding
I did a
bunch of workon this site! Specifically, I built the two features that I mentioned in
my previous update.) Thanks to these, it’s now possible to see which posts were most recently modified and even to see each revision of select posts like
what makes a good shower?,
how to think invisibly, and
how to tell a story #3.
what’s next?
We’re going to Japan for two weeks over Xmas! I’ve never been and I’m very excited to go. I intend to spend time researching, planning, and learning about Japan over the next few months.
I expect to be promoted to Senior Software Engineer in December. I should know by November. We’ll see. I’ve been at Microsoft five years now, so I’m neither late nor early.
I’ll be playing a lot of soccer over the next few months. I hope that’ll naturally help me resume weight loss. I lost fifteen pounds in the latter half of last year and I’ve maintained since then. I would still like to lose another twentyfive pounds.
I’ll be watching every Arsenal game that I can. They are widely recognized as contenders to win the league, even more so than they were a year ago. It’s exciting and unnerving. The season is so long.
I’m overhauling Z’s Vancouver apartment. I changed the pendant light above the dinner table and I’m in the process of swapping the couch. There are many more things I plan to do. Replace the coffee table, install bedside wall lamps, hang up the TV, and make space for the practice drumkit Z intends to buy. I’m motivated by my excitement. If anything, it’s hard to stop thinking about it.
Sadly, summer is over. But I also love the fall. I’m looking forward to the coziness that comes with it. For me, September is a very nostalgic month. The sudden turn in weather reminds me of the beginning of the school year, a time I found quietly thrilling, like the opening montage of a new season of a TV show.
, posted on September 30th
I tried to post more often but it was difficult to do so considering the level of detail I put in each one.