My live journal what I’m doing in 2025 is another experiment inspired by the ideas I originally explored in my essay The Virtual Book. One of the attributes of “virtual books” that most intrigues me is their dynamism, the fact that they can change over time. It excites me not only for its practicality, but for the artistic possibilities it enables. As I wrote originally in The Virtual Book and then reproduced in one of its separated pieces on this site:

In this journal I intend to do something like the hypothetical memoirist. Throughout the year, whenever I feel so inclined, I will write here about events that might happen, are happening, or have happened in 2025. I think it will be interesting to juxtapose my expectations, experiences, and reflections throughout the year. I hope it will neutralize the bias we typically grant hindsight, which is a privileged perspective but not a consummate one.

Missing Japan, losing weight, experimenting with daily routines, & more.

We just got back

. 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.

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.

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.

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.

Matthew B. Crawford’s

has provoked in me a lot of reflection about what things consume my attention and how

dictate that.

I recently read

by 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.

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 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.

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.

Enjoying stillness, listening to Harold Bloom interviews, watching movies, and experimenting with routines.

Despite the fact I’ve only partially read The Listening Book and The End of Absence, and despite my criticism of the latter, both books have helped me savor moments of quiet and stillness. One of my favorite things to do right now is to take a hot, silent shower and put on the vintage cotton bathrobe I recently bought in Japan. I move slowly around the apartment and touch things lightly as if trying not to wake someone up. The calm I feel is exquisite.

It’s strangely soothing to say nothing for a time. Z and I sometimes do this in the car without prior agreement. The longer we go without saying anything, the more peaceful we feel. I think it’s possible outside of regimented meditation to reap some of its benefits by foregoing habitual self-stimulation like chatting and listening to music to make space for felt moments of clarity. In modern life we routinely cover up the mysteriously powerful sensations our bodies are capable of generating when idle and we therefore miss out on the cathartic experience of allowing those sensations to come to the front of our awareness.

In retrospect this is something I’ve been learning to do over the last few years. In 2020 I started going on runs through my neighborhood in Capitol Hill, Seattle and instead of listening to music I listened to the sound of my body striding over the concrete. I revelled in the unusually quiet streets of the early Covid pandemic and the unexpectedly sunny spring of that strange year. Birds, breeze, chatter, and from balconies the clapping of hands and ringing of bells to thank the work medical professionals were doing across the globe.

I first encountered Harold Bloom through his words on the back cover of Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece:

His choice of the word esthetic piqued my interest because it was precisely that aspect of McCarthy’s writing that had grabbed my attention one evening almost three years ago when I opened The Road to its hundredth page and found I couldn’t put it down. I owe Ford Madox Ford for encouraging the whim:

For more than a year now I’ve been reading Blood Meridian in bursts and every time I pick it back up I find myself listening to more interviews of Harold Bloom. I feel inspired and challenged by his devotion to literature and insistence on copious reading and re-reading. I am wary of the reactionary conservatism of which he has been accused, but have so far found his perspectives intriguing and thoughtprovoking.

I recently watched The Brutalist. It was good, but disturbing. It had some themes in common with Nosferatu, which I also watched recently and really enjoyed. I thought the acting, the visuals, and the writing were all very good. It is the first Robert Eggers film I’ve seen and I’m sure it won’t be the last. I also recently watched Panic Room. I thought it was pretty good, but the more I think about how it handled themes of race and class the more uncomfortable I feel about it.

I continue trying to wake up early and start the day with a walk through the neighborhood. The quiet and freshness of morning is special. I hope to make it a habit. I think it would transform not only my daily life but it entire.

Another small change I am trying is to write my /now update more regularly. Usually I post one every few months. I wrote this one less than two weeks after the previous one. To achieve this, I’m trying to write the whole update in one sitting and this is the second time I’ve done it.

And, as cheesy as it might sound, to promote my goal to work, read, exercise, write, enjoy, grow, discuss, plan, and socialize everyday, I’ve put those nine words on my phone’s lock screen.

I’m playing soccer once a week but trying to play more.

Z and I are going snowboarding with friends soon.

I’ve been in a mood for producing but I intend to get back to reading in the next few days.

Despite all the movies I’ve watched recently, I still have appetite for more. Lynch’s recent passing is already making some of my friends more interested in watching his films and I intend to take advantage of it.

I’ve been losing weight, playing soccer, developing this site, reading books, and more.

Preparing green card papers for my wife, Z. We probably won’t get them until early 2025. Sigh.

Enjoying the fall. Except for the short days. Sun sets at 4:30pm nowadays. Blehj.

Playing soccer. I’ve noticed in the last several months that I’m scoring more goals from longer range, 20+ yards away from goal. I’m delighted that it’s turning out to be one of my strengths in the game. I’d gotten used to thinking that headers and penalties were my only goal-scoring strengths. (And, actually, I’ve gotten worse at penalties in the last several years.) I think I’m reaping the benefits of the hours I spent in my late teens (and perhaps early twenties) practicing long-range shooting.

Losing weight. I’ve lost ~11lbs in the last 5 months, an average of 2.2lbs per month. If I can keep up that rate, I’ll reach my goal weight of 189lbs in 13.6 months. Geez, that’s January 2025. Sounds like early 2025 will be cathartic time for me.

I’ve noticed my attitude towards money has shifted recently. For years, I’ve wanted to keep open the option of taking a major career risk, so I wanted to save as much as possible. But nowadays, I’m pretty happy and could see myself staying at Microsoft for a few more years, at least. I am fortunate that money is not a scarce resource for me and I can use it to save time and make my life better. I still try not to overspend, but I don’t let it dominate my decisions as much anymore.

Software engineering for Microsoft Loop. We just went to General Availability!

Went to Mexico with Z. I was born and raised there, and she’d never been. We went to Ixtapa, Mexico City, Queretaro, and San Miguel de Allende.

Mainly working on this site, okjuan.me/vbook. It’s been tricky because I don’t know any Ruby and don’t want to invest time into learning it right now. So far, I’ve gotten by on documentation and other people’s examples. Most recently, I added backlinks, with some help from Daniel Miller. I also made tags the main way to navigate the site by folding ‘categories’ into them. Not only is this cleaner and more uniform, but it also allows me to assign multiple categories (now tags) to the same post. For example, a post can now be ‘filed’ under both #essays and #journal. See Folders kill creativity.

I still really want to make and deploy a front-end for music-lib-bot. A web app would make sense, but I also like the idea of an SMS interface or something of the like. Maybe even something integrated into Google Assistant.

Focused on posting here, okjuan.me/vbook. Not working on anything for okjuan.medium.com or okjuan.substack.com, although I can cross-post like I did for

. Nothing currently in the works for 206 Zulu either. I worked on a second piece for them earlier this year, but that stalled. Ended up posting it

.

I just finished 2 books: The Courage to be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga and Into the Abyss: A Neuropsychiatrist’s Notes on Troubled Minds by Anthony David. The Courage was thought-provoking and written in a novel form. See Derek Sivers’ notes on it. Into the Abyss was full of fascinating cases and some good insight.

Recently read Anthony Lane’s hilarious New Yorker article, Can Happiness Be Taught? It’s a review of recent best-seller Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier, written by a Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School and sponsored by Oprah Winfrey. One of my favorite bits:

Last month, I read the first part of Jane Jacobs’ famous The Death and Life of Great American Cities. To my surprise, it’s great so far. I expected it to be much drier, as I’m sure many books about city and neighborhood planning are. I bought a copy and intend to read it over the next couple months.

While traveling in Mexico, I read a bit of Vital Little Plans: The Short Works of Jane Jacobs. It was really good, too. Not sure if I’ll continue reading it right now though.

Last month I started listening to Stephen King’s

and was surprised at how entertaining it was. I might keep listening. I like reading

and

.

Last month (whew!) I also read a bit of Gloria Steinem’s Revolution from Within, which I found on one of my dutiful visits to my local Goodwill. It’s pretty interesting. The story about the Royal Knights of East Harlem was really moving. Here is a telling of it, apparently from Readers Digest, June 1989. It reminds me of the story Charles Duhigg tells in The Power of Habit about the safety initiative CEO Paul O’Neill instituted at Alcoa to astounding and comprehensive effect on the company’s success.

I plan to listen to another chunk of Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity to get some health tips. See Derek Sivers’ notes on it.

Flirting with starting

. I don’t have a very good reason to do so, though. So we’ll see.

The Sopranos for the second time. Amazed at the writing, once again. They follow so many characters and develop so many dynamics at the same time. Many story lines don’t build to a climax and exist instead to develop characters and prepare future story lines. Some just exist because they’re true to life. Like when Carmela and Tony struggle to keep their rebellious daughter in check.

Couples Therapy, season 3. So insightful and fascinating. Orna is an amazing therapist.

Welcome to Wrexham, season 2. I don’t think any other show has made me cry as much as this one, and I think my love for soccer is only part of the reason. The show has so much heart.

Rewatched Roma and Coco with my wife Z, who hadn’t seen either, while we were in Mexico. I love doing activities that thematically or topically match other things I’m doing in life.

File my wife’s green card papers.

Keep reading, keep writing. Holidays are great for this. Or so I always think.

Keep improving the design of this website. Allow people to subscribe via RSS and email. Add ‘last updated’ timestamp per post. Tweak padding in title-subtitle-date-tags section of posts.

Keep losing weight. Not so great for this, holidays. Or so people say.

Holidays in Victoria. Time with family and friends.

Missing Japan, losing weight, experimenting with daily routines, & more.

We just got back

. 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.

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.

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.

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.

Matthew B. Crawford’s

has provoked in me a lot of reflection about what things consume my attention and how

dictate that.

I recently read

by 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.

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 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.

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.

Biking around East Vancouver, reading The Ginger Man, finding Z a new apartment, and trying to become a planner.

Biking is a great way to achieve my daily goal of exercising. Seattle is prohibitively hilly but Vancouver has a great network of bike routes allocated on streets with sparse car traffic. They have a detailed PDF file available online that maps their location and marks them with useful information like incline and degree of separation from car traffic. I came up with a great acronym to remember the street names of the main bike routes in the area: W.A.L.K.

I bought a copy last summer and finally started it last week. I can see why Cormac McCarthy liked it. It also reminds me a lot of Fear and Loathing in Last Vegas. After finishing the seventh chapter I sat down and wrote an initial review of it.

Z’s apartment in Vancouver is a spacious one bedroom with a generous balcony. It is recently renovated with tons of integrated storage but it lacks a crucial feature: a second bedroom. I spend a lot of time at Z’s place and when I do we often both work from home. We have comfortable workstations at opposite corners of the living room but the distance does little when one of us actively participates in a virtual meeting. Noisecancelling headphones help but they also encourage us to speak loudly. And even when we both work silently it’s too easy to call out across the room to ask a question, share a thought, or make a comment. Both of us have a habit of voicing things soon after they occur to us. It makes for interesting conversation and for a disruptive work environment.

We’ve been keeping an eye out and finally we found a good two bedroom apartment in a lively, artsy part of East Vancouver. It costs almost the same as Z’s current place and it offers great physical separation between the two bedrooms. We will be sad to leave Z’s current place and the neighborhood it’s in, but we’re excited for the new chapter.

I don’t mean a city planner. Although I do fantasize about getting involved with municipal politics someday.

I mean I am trying to get better at making and adhering to plans in general. I get a lot of stuff done in my life through what I call coherent impulses, which have proved effective but lack certain special powers particular to planning. I’ve been ruminating on it and noticing when people make reference to it in their way of working.

Kiefer mentioned in his Approachable Music podcast that he keeps a to-do list and everyday he attends to one item at a time. I assume many people follow this approach. But I don’t. I keep to-do lists but my adherance to them is erratic. I suppose part of the problem is that many items have no inherent deadline and even those that do don’t threaten much consequence. If I for example neglect to plan an itinerary for a trip, I can still show up and improvise as long as my flights and hotel are booked. And that’s what I did in 2019 when I went on my multimonth trip abroad to Mexico, New York, and Europe. I enjoyed the fruits of spontaneity and just-in-time internet searches, but without a doubt I missed out on experiences that research and forethought would’ve produced. I want to reduce these kinds of losses by procrastinating less and planning more often. I want to change my habit. So I’m trying to consciously draw my attention to the benefits of planning and override the anxious avoidance that thwarts my planning impulses.

Jared Henderson, a former professor who is now a literary YouTuber, mentioned that he keeps a list of books he will read. I don’t. I keep track of books that I might want to read by saving them on Goodreads, but I never reference that list when deciding which book to read next. My methods are spontaneous and informally organized. I try out audiobooks on Spotify and Libby and continue only if they stick. I buy books impulsively and add them to my growing library of unreads. When I am ready to start a new book I eye my collection shiftily and grab the candidates my whims command me to and then I bring them to a comfortable seat in my apartment where I select one uneasily and crack it open. Then I read stingily, hesitant to imply by reading more than a couple paragraphs that I’ve now committed to My Next Book, that this is it, I must read this book through now or else I will have left one unfinished.

I’m trying something new. I’m writing a list of books I intend to read this year. In a way, my dabbling with planning in this way is a sort of coherent impulse. The coherence comes from the deliberate intention to exploit the benefits of forethought and the impulse is the list of fifteen or so books I slashed out based on my current interest and appetite as well as the current contents of my shelves. The list is unordered so I may choose to read them in any order I like and read multiple at the same time if I so wish. I will still entertain my penchant for sampling books impulsively via Spotify and Libby, but my main reading project this year will be dictated by my list.

Keep biking. Continue striving to do every day each of the following: work, read, exercise, write, enjoy, grow, discuss, plan, and socialize

Finalize Z’s moving plans.

Go snowboarding with Z multiple times.

Read the rest of The Ginger Man to keep up a good reading pace for the year. After I finish it I will start Malone Dies unless it doesn’t suit my appetite, in which case I will pick up one of the other books on my list for 2025.

Thinking of sentences, reading Pachinko & The Dominant Animal, watching Severance & The White Lotus.

Two years after reading about it, I’m finally doing Verlyn Klinkenborg’s writing exercise of mentally formulating sentences without writing them down. I find myself doing it habitually, out of interest. In the shower while I think over the week’s events. Standing on the balcony in the quiet of morning and watching a neighbor walk their dog over snowy pavement. One word at a time I lay out a sentence in my head, pruning clutter, swapping out imprecisions, and toying with the order of clauses. I expect it will make me a better writer. A lovely surprise was noticing it making me more present.

After finishing The Ginger Man, I felt ready to dive into a novel by James Joyce. But none of his books are on my list of books to read for 2025 and I’m trying to get better at adhering to plans, so instead I started Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. I also just finished The Dominant Animal by Kathryn Scanlan, a remarkable little book of short stories that I’ve been reading very slowly for the last couple of years.

I watched the first few episodes of Severance months ago until I lost interest. But now season two is coming out and many of my friends are talking about it so I resolved to catch up. Rewatching it I feel again underwhelmed.

I much prefer the approach that the writers of The White Lotus have been taking. Instead of hinting cryptically at forthcoming drama and withholding it for several episodes, they start with a cast of characters with tensions already between and within them. The potential is there from the beginning. Throughout the season they build up the existing tensions and introduce new ones until eventually someone takes action or an incident triggers a chain of reactions. Drama and plot flow naturally from interpersonal dynamics instead of dictating them.

Severance feels designed and implemented from the top down. The White Lotus feels incubated.

Helping my self.

The last couple months have been, at times, brutally stressful for me. Issues of immigration and taxes have racked my mind and my body as well. My eczema flared to the worst it has been in years. Compulsive worrying postponed my sleep.

Playing soccer was a rare thing that relieved me of the heaviness of reality for good periods of time. It is truly one of the joys of my life. Contemplating it, my awe only grows as I notice all the things it gives me. An opportunity to exercise and to play. A healthy distraction from all my worries. A way to commune with friends and strangers, out in nature. All at the low low price of zero dollars. On an ordinary day, it’s a beloved hobby. In times of struggle, it’s like sustenance.

But soccer didn’t solve my problems. I still had to do that. And the most difficult part of that was stomaching the uncertainty and unpredictability of it all. Along the way, I vented to friends and loved ones about my doubts and fears, but paramount to my emotional regulation during this turbulent period was a middleaged British journalist named Oliver Burkeman via his audiobook Meditations for Mortals. In a stoic yet cheerfully amused tone, his disembodied voice eased me out of my ceaseless fretting. After I finished the book I began it again, eager for more of the reassurance his virtual presence gave me. But it wasn’t just the tempering effect of Burkeman’s tone or the snappiness of his writing that alleviated my stress. It was his shrewd insight on life’s problems and the exceedingly realistic stances he took on them. I don’t care what people may say about Self Help. It helps.

My live journal what I’m doing in 2025 is another experiment inspired by the ideas I originally explored in my essay The Virtual Book. One of the attributes of “virtual books” that most intrigues me is their dynamism, the fact that they can change over time. It excites me not only for its practicality, but for the artistic possibilities it enables. As I wrote originally in The Virtual Book and then reproduced in one of its separated pieces on this site:

In this journal I intend to do something like the hypothetical memoirist. Throughout the year, whenever I feel so inclined, I will write here about events that might happen, are happening, or have happened in 2025. I think it will be interesting to juxtapose my expectations, experiences, and reflections throughout the year. I hope it will neutralize the bias we typically grant hindsight, which is a privileged perspective but not a consummate one.

Plant tending and goaltending.

Plant care for me is more chore than hobby, I am tempted to say. But upon reflection in a better mood I notice that in the process of caring for my plants I experience many little moments of satisfaction and even awe. One of my favorite things is noticing how my plants respond to my fulfilling their needs. The day after I water them I see their perkiness restored and the firmness of their leaves replenished. One day they sag helplessly, the next their posture rights as if with pride. New offshoots appear and bud slowly until one day they are leaves fully unfurled. With the enthusiasm some take water, others respond to the sun. A wellwatered but withering plant moved to a brighter area suddenly sports a new sheen.

One year ago my interest in goalkeeping resurfaced. I looked around for opportunities to play and considered even joining a new team exclusively as keeper. But then in my first casual stint between the posts I broke my finger. I still can’t fit my wedding band onto it, but it has long since recovered enough to allow my return to goalkeeping. I feel like a kid again, diving left and right at shots my friends take from outside the box.

Part of the fun is trying to apply the techniques I see professional keepers use. Their footwork I find hardest to emulate. I suppose I am not fleetfooted in the outfield so it’s no surprise I am not a quick stepper as goaltender either. It’s a crucial skill though. It expands a goalie’s reach by bringing within diving distance the edges of the goal.

In games, however, making saves is not so much a matter of diving heroically to stop a well placed shot. It’s more so about forcing the opposition to place their shot well in order to score. The primary task is to position yourself between your goal and the oncoming attackers to minimize their viable angles for scoring. It’s an act of constant calibration that depends on how far away the attacker is and from what direction they are coming.

A common mistake I see made by goalkeepers in our rec league is that they stay near their goal line instead of approaching a shooter who is about to fire from a close distance. The closer a shooter gets to the goal, the easier it is for them to score. But when a shooter reaches a certain proximity to the goal, the goalie can make himself bigger by rushing towards the ball. It’s a neat trick of geometry. By shortening his distance to the ball, the goalie increases the number of shooting angles they cover. As the goalie approaches, the shooter’s target shrinks.

Reading books, planning travels, playing sports, watching movies & TV, enjoying life, and contemplating a new project. The usuals!

Last night on the bus from Seattle to Vancouver I read the last fifty five pages of Circe. It finished strong, a feat I think more great than starting well. The start is a place of possibility, an opening. There are yet so many worthy ways to go. But at the close, the author can deliver us to one place only. In ending Circe Miller excelled.

On the side I’m reading How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One by Stanley Fish. My friend J recommended it when I texted him (like I did several other friends) two sentences and asked him which he preferred. I did so to test the ideas I wrote about in how to revise a sentence #5, in which I took sentences from Circe and tried to improve them.

I’m also listening to Is A River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane after I heard him speak so eloquently about writing in this interview. He is the latest addition to the list of writers I admire.

Bus trips and ferry rides and even international flights have turned out to be times well suited for me to read and write. They are for me exceptional ecologies of attention. I look forward to them now because I know they will produce something fruitful.

I hope to spend a good deal of time reading and writing while traveling to Dublin, to Bristol, to London, and then back to Vancouver. We leave tomorrow, to explore the Irish countryside and the urban hubs of England. I’m thrilled to say we got tickets to Arsenal’s first home match of the new English Premier League season. If I had a bucket list, attending a competitive game at the Emirates would be on it. And by the end of this month, that item would be checked off.

I’ve unfortunately only paddleboarded once this summer but I’ve played plenty of soccer and golf, even a game of tennis. I somewhat regret that we will travel most of August, it’ll eat up so much of the warm and sunny weather we get in our corner of the world.

In December we will escape the dull grey PNW for lovely, sunny Yucatan. I’ve never been yet and I’m so excited to go.

Z likes to compare me to Larry. Like when he declined to roll up his long sleeve so that the dentist could give him a shot because he didn’t want to ruin the elasticity of the cuff. She’s right, I agree with Larry.

It had been years since I’d watched Portlandia. But I’ve been thinking about it recently. More than ten years ago the show stoked in me an interest in cities like Portland that has grown into my enthusiasm today for good urbanism.

The first movie Z names when she gets into a conversation about indie or arthouse films is Dogtooth by Yorgos Lanthimos. I finally watched it and it reminded me of the show Severance, which I think fails where Dogtooth succeeds. I’ve made the comparison to a few people and they’ve surprised me with their puzzlement. I suppose it’s not an intuitive matchup, or at least not an obvious one. But I think their premises are similar in meaningful ways.

Z suggested to me a few weeks ago that I write on Substack to engage with readers. She knows I love to share what I write and discuss it because I do it with her all the time. Often on our dates I give her my phone with the browser open to my latest piece and she reads it in silence in front of me. When she Hmms and nods I say What? I want to know what made her react and what the reaction is.

What I write on this site concerns many topics and takes various forms — blog, journal, essay, app, notes. It’s hard to imagine strangers subscribing. To attract and maintain the interest of an anonymous public however small I figure I’d have to offer a coherent and focused stream of content.

What if I write about Arsenal? Like other fans I spend a good deal of my time and energy thinking, talking, even analyzing the activity of this football club. There are of course already many Arsenal content creators making videos and podcasts. But how many people are writing? Maybe no one wants to read about it. But reading about their favorite football club may in fact serve as good runway for men who want to read more but haven’t gotten the habit going.

Thinking about many things.

I might start a Substack “blog” called Footie is Life where I might talk about all the sustenance a simple game can provide for people.

Z and I have come to a hilltop in the undulating journey of our lives and have now in sight a vast plateau, a fertile and stable ground where we will set down for a while to create and nurture a new family. To that place, from our position now, we measure the last length of our youth – if that indeed it can still be called – an evershrinking space to roam carelessly before care becomes our primary concern.

Our trip to Ireland has widened our eyes, shown us what we’ve been missing by aiming our travels at cities foremost and the time we’ve been wasting not spent exploring the landscapes of British Columbia. This last realization in particular I clutch jealously, aware of having forgotten like insights before.

I’ve heard people online talk about “the importance of inconvenience.” I’ve been thinking about something similar: the importance of restraint.

Z and I are vacationing in Ireland for a week from August 8th til the 15th.

The late afternoon flight gave me lots of time to get the apartment in order before leaving. I watered my plants and gathered them all into the office for Z’s mom to water while we’re away. Baxter is staying with my mom in Victoria. I expect he’ll bond with her and my younger sister in the three weeks he stays with them as he did with our friends who dogsat him while Z and I were in Indonesia in 2023. In particular he loves our friend A, who playfought with him. He loves to playfight.

The locals have been very friendly and helpful. The cabbie chatted with us cheerfully. Z anticipates being upstaged in the realm of enthusiastic socializing.

It surprised me how small the city feels. The weather is gray and mild and windy, good for walking outdoors. There is a good deal of car traffic. Many if not most buildings are made of brick and sit at two or three stories.

I like it here. There is an abundance of pubs, quality coffee shops, public transit, bike lanes, leftists, and young people. Z says it reminds her of Vancouver.

Dublin feels bigger today. It’s the weekend and this afternoon there was a friendly game between Leeds United and AC Milan so the streets are chock full of people, many in yellow and white Leeds jerseys and a few Rossoneri sprinkled about. The city center is swarming with pedestrians, pubs brimming with cheerful drinkers pooling on the sidewalks by the entrance. Out the windows the sound of live music streams laced with singalongers. Cars rumble and buses whine and bike bells chime on the street. Sunshine stretches out on the asphalt and above it lights up the translucent flags that hang angled from building fronts.

At the Jameson Distillery, our host was the most animated one we’ve had in Dublin. He waved his arms wildly and in husky bellows rattled off his lines, punctuating them with dual finger snaps and tossing of the Jameson bottle from one hand to the other, the glass clinking against his hand jewelry. He concluded his opening speech by ramming the bottle down onto a prop book, then as if waking from a trance he commented mildly and mostly to himself that this bottle hadn’t broken. I too was surprised.

This was a supremely scenic daytrip. Exactly the kind that makes our car rental worth it.

I have an anecdote about my doing laundry at the Airbnb. I’ll write it here later.

On our hike through Glanageenty forest we spoke with Chris about various things. At one point we got on the topic of gender and he expressed his resent for the anti-masculinity messaging he received while growing up. Lately he had been collecting opinions from people about what it is that makes a man. A positive definition instead of a negative one. I offered an answer. To be a good man, you need self-esteem.

Z and I are vacationing in England for ten days from August 15th til the 26th.

Before we settled on Bristol, Z and I considered visiting Liverpool. When I noticed that Wrexham was nearby, I fancied a day trip down to see them play their first ever(?) Championship match at the Racecourse, or at least to grab a pint at The Turf and meet Wayne, the charming bar owner and Wrexham A.F.C. devotee. I just realized he reminds me of Karl Pilkington. Agh, I’m almost regretting not pursuing this plan. Commute from Bristol to Wrexham would be long and I can’t imagine tickets would be cheap to get, if any were available at all. I suppose it might still be worth it if I can watch the game at The Turf. We’ll see. Z won’t be thrilled with the idea, but the 16th is my birthday and for it she’ll do whatever possible to make me happy. I’m a lucky guy.

Our time in the Irish countryside was fantastic. There we found the conventional tourist attractions well worth seeing. It is making me reflect on cities and what about them makes them worth visiting. Good food of diverse types. Art shows like galleries, live music, and stand up comedy. Historical landmarks and notable architecture.

A remarkable aspect of a good city is its density. I think I have to shift my mindset. Here it isn’t about covering ground but about drilling down in single spots. Spending hours at a museum. Eating a great dinner in a restaurant mere steps from another where you had breakfast. Even returning to the same restaurant to try different items on the menu. Doing these things feel less like exploring and adventuring.

I can’t help but chuckle to myself sitting here on my first train trip in England. The platform was occupied with travelers waiting for the train and when it arrived everyone flocked to the carriage entrances. Z and I were confused to see everyone standing so close to the doors before they opened. Wouldn’t there be people on the train already, some of whom would be disembarking here in Bristol? Indeed there were. The doors opened and people started trickling out, many with luggage and one with a stroller and yet the travelers waiting to board barely made way for them. Z and I looked at each other.

Once we got on the train, we waited for people in front of us to stow luggage and find seats. The seats were mostly occupied but we saw a few single open seats remaining so we stepped down the aisle towards them. Nearest us there appeared to be two single seats open at either side of the aisle but when I came to what would be mine I discovered a small dog panting where he lay before a bowl of water. I considered asking for the seat but then there were more open seats down the aisle. Still it felt funny to give deference to a dog. I turned to the other side of the aisle and asked the girl if she’d mind moving her luggage from the seat next to her. To my and Z’s surprise she replied that she did mind, that she had documents in her suitcase. I said Oh, you can’t put it there? pointing overhead. She said No, it doesn’t fit. Two dreadful excuses. Z and I looked at each other again, mutual incredulity growing. No matter, ahead were more open seats.

A woman with a baby strapped to her chest asked me for help putting her stroller in the overhead compartment. I did and as she turned to get in her seat the backpack on her back touched the face of a middleaged man sitting across the aisle and he moaned and clutched his nose as if he’d been struck. The mother turned to him and said I’m so sorry, are you ok? with all the polite concern in her tone of voice but none much on her face. The man didn’t look at her anyway — he was still holding his face — and he waved her away and said Just sit down. The mother exchanged silent looks with us and sat down.

As Z and I lurched down the aisle of the moving train towards the few remaining empty seats, nobody made to remove their bags from their adjacent seat to allow us it. Each of us had to walk up to a passenger, look them in the face, and ask that they make their spare seat available to us. An opportunity to interact more with the locals I suppose.

We’ve been getting around on dott scooters. Bristol is not huge. The best ways for us to get around have been walking, biking, and scootering. We haven’t taken the bus yet because it’s rarely a convenient option.

I started buying houseplants about four years ago. No research went into it, I just picked two that I liked from the grocery store and brought them home. This proved fatal for one of them. I think I overwatered it. Or maybe it got infested by malevolent insects. I don’t know. I didn’t try very hard to save it. I wanted my apartment to have that leafy, green look but I didn’t want to sink time and effort into making it happen. I wanted the reward, but not the work.

Apart from that early casualty, however, my approach of low involvement has worked pretty well. The other plant – a lemon-lime dracaena – has lived and thrived in the years since I brought it home. Multiple times I’ve repotted it and today it stands at two or three times its original height. I’m proud of it, somewhat. Several of its leaves are at their edges browned with decay due to some reason I’ve neglected to investigate. Nonetheless, it lives on.

Every now and then I get the motivation to watch YouTube videos to learn how to perform certain tasks of plant care. The people who make these videos tend to chat at the camera for a while, stroking and poking their plants as they slowly approach the subject at hand. I watch these videos impatiently, jumping forward with irritation until I find the bits of information I need. I want to get the task done as quickly as possible. Plant care for me is more chore than hobby.

It’s a funny thing to find yourself resenting chores you created for yourself. Nobody and no thing require that I have plants in my home and yet I have several. Five in the bedroom, one in the living room, three in the kitchen, one in the bathroom, and seven in the office. Many of these are second or third generation houseplants that I planted from snippings I trimmed and propagated in water.

I stopped buying plants a while ago and yet I keep accumulating more of them. The list above is almost twenty in number without including my biggest and oldest plants, which are back in my apartment in Seattle, 238km away. Over there I have my lemon-lime dracaena, a sizeable monstera, a growing ficus, a tentacled pothos, and several other smaller plants. The better job I do at caring for my plants, the longer they live, the bigger they get, and the greater my responsibilities become.

Watering plants is a surprisingly effortful task, especially when you water them all on the same day. For some, I stand on tiptoes and extend my arm rigidly overhead to let a stream of water arc into the pot. For others, I do a mini deadlift and lug their fragile figures to the tub. Any spills I mop up on my hands and knees. A long way from lounging on the couch and enjoying my living room. Sometimes, I feel that the work their upkeep demands has surpassed the pleasure they give me.

For a long time I accumulated plants and grew them with the aim of making my living room lush with green leaves. Eventually, I realized the vision. And I loved it. But, as is often the case, the happily ever after is a lot more tedious than its still image suggests.

I am living a weird life. It isn’t one I dreamed up for myself, but one that has developed bit by bit over the years from the conditions imposed on me by life. Enviously I’ve held onto everything in my grasp and years later I find myself sprawled across two countries, in two apartments, both full of houseplants. This abundance has enriched my life while encumbering it. Perhaps it’s time to lighten the burdens I’ve put upon myself.