This piece is an experiment in

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January 11 2025 – What I’m doing

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January 18 2025 – Winter in the PNW has been unusually dry and sunny. It’s beautiful, and joyful if you don’t stop to think about the disastrous climactic changes it might portend.

January 22 2025 – What I’m doing

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April 1 2025 – Over the last few days I’ve been rereading all my /now updates starting from the

in November ‘23. I’ve been journaling in various forms for years now and still I am surprised by its usefulness. It’s so easy to forget our moods and modes, our thoughts and experiences. I maintain that journaling is a way to live longer. Through it and through intangible other forms of reflection I am determined to defeat the notions that time flies, that life is short.

Looking back at what I appended to

on January 14th, a mere two and a half months ago, I am taken aback by what I wrote:

I’d forgotten this. This is one of the joys of writing. Most things I write I leave for a couple weeks while I occupy myself with new ideas only to come back to the old ones and find myself yet again intrigued and surprised by what this person who I supposedly am had to say.

January 18 2025 – In early February we have a couple plans for gatherings with friends. We also intend to visit Victoria. I look forward to it. I’m realizing I have a positive association with February. Perhaps because it’s the month when we usually get snow in the PNW and for a couple days our surroundings are awash in white, soft and bright.

February 1 2025 – What I’m doing

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February 4 2025 – As foretold the annual snowdump came down in February, this time on the very first evening of the month. For people like me that rely on outdoor sports like soccer and biking for exercise it’s rather inconvenient but that inconvenience is more than repaid in stunning views of snowcovered mountains looming above the clouds, lit in the early sunset. Not to mention the ease with which one could drive up one of those mountains for a weekday evening of skiing in Vancouver. I go on slowtrudging walks and soak up the scenes.

Diligently the neighborhood character that in the spring and summer tends to the garden in the nearby rotunda today scrapes off the snow from a sidewalk path and peppers blue salt into the gash of concrete as if to cauterize it. I greet him and he responds with a grin. Living the dream! he says. On the roads his mechanized counterpart heaves aside large mounds of snow effortlessly and from its back showers a trail of salt. I walk ten minutes to one of the sushi restaurants in the area to pick up my lunch. Too hungry to wait until I get home I pause and stand beneath the awning outside the restaurant and drink my miso soup and watch the neighborhood go on without me on its natural rhythm.

June 24 2025 – The decision Z and I made in February to upgrade apartments in Vancouver was a brilliant one. For a while, we’d pined for a second bedroom. Both of us work mostly from home, so even a large one bedroom apartment is an uncomfortable fit. Every few months, I scanned Facebook Marketplace for rentals and we even visited a few places, but we never found anything good. Then, one night, after watching a YouTube video about the slight rent decline in Canadian cities, I searched again. This time, I found one option that actually looked good. Within a week, we’d signed the lease. It all happened very quickly. With the passing of time it has only gotten clearer that our decision was a good one.

February 4 2025 – I have loose plans to watch Mickey 17 with friends when it comes out in theaters. It was written and directed by Bong Joon-Ho, who directed and cowrote the magnificent Parasite.

March 8 2025 – What I’m doing

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April 25 2025 – This spring has been a turbulent time for me. For several weeks issues of immigration and taxes have plagued my thoughts mercilessly. They are the kind of issues I wish I could banish from my life forever. They are meaningless problems that threaten retaliation not by a person but by an amorphous, impersonal entity of brute force and unreckonable reach. The task is not so much facing reality but placating a selfappointed arbiter of it. To avoid these problems is to risk persecution from the world itself.

Unlike interpersonal problems, these allow little opportunity for persuasion or compromise or compassion, unless a not-fully-dehumanized bureaucrat sneaks some in between the paperwork. The main recourse is just that – paperwork. For people in my situation that means hiring my own (expensive) functionaries to prepare papers that will please the faraway and faceless adversarial functionaries so that they in turn dissuade their armed counterparts from deploying violence on me. But fear not! For our underdog has been schooled in the art of reading instructions carefully and filling out answers dutifully even for questions absurd or irrelevant. He knows how to deal in this horrible cypher of ink and paper to earn whatever prized document he needs to secure passage between manufactured realities and to live a life unhounded inside them. Let’s not dwell on those not so well prepared or those of lesser means.

February 4 2025 – May is the month the European soccer season climaxes. Crowned are the winners of leagues and cups alike. Arsenal, the team I support, are still in the running for two major honors: the English Premier League (EPL) and the UEFA Champions League. Two days ago they defeated the reigning EPL champions by a whopping and unforeseeable 5-1 scoreline. And yet our biggest competitor this season is not them, but Liverpool, who are six points ahead of us with a game in hand. In early May, Arsenal will go to northern England and duel them at Anfield, Liverpool’s fortress. That will probably be Arsenal’s biggest match of the season. I start to feel a bit queasy thinking about it now, three months ahead. It’s shocking how thrilling it is even from a thousand miles away to support a sports team embroiled in genuine competition.

June 1 2025 – What I’m doing

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June 24 2025 – I had a moment last week when I realized I was finally out of the woods. There are no longer any tax and immigration issues for me to address. The tallest wave has come and gone and I’ve not drowned. It sounds melodramatic but I was in physical pain for much of the spring. The patch of excema that flared on my left hand appears on the way to recovery. I can breathe a ragged sigh of relief. I feel free to let my mind loose again.

Now, my most pressing concerns are meaningful ones. Z and I have a London trip to plan. And before that, perhaps also a small anniversary weekend away together. And when July arrives, my day-to-day job will be to enjoy the two whole months of uninterrupted sunny weather we get in the PNW.

There’s also the question of where we will live next year. It could be Seattle or New York if Z gets her long awaited green card, or it could be somewhere in Europe – the UK, the Netherlands, Portugal, Germany. We’ll see.

(While writing the above, it occured to me that this experiment of “

” could expand its scope beyond the current year. The piece might be called what I’m doing in my life and it could be dense with references to other pieces, including this one.)

April 1 2025 – Spring is springing and I’m already looking forward to paddleboard season. Many of our friends in Seattle own paddleboards and we all go out on the lake regularly in July and August. I expect this summer we will spend many more hours out on the water. I’m also looking forward to Sports Days – afternoons we spend in the park playing volleyball and soccer, listening to music, snacking, and drinking cold beverages. And a new tradition I anticipate will involve lots of leisurely communal outdoor time in the backyard of the house that my friend owns and a bunch of us live in. It’s going to be great.

July 2 2025 – What I’m doing

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July 20 2025 – Last week, Z and I went paddleboarding for the first and I’m afraid perhaps the only time this year. We bought paddleboards in August of 2022 and have been enjoying them every summer in Seattle since then. For two and a half years, I had an apartment in Capitol Hill, a six minute drive up the incline from Lake Union. At some point, we discovered Terry Petus Park, a lovely little lakeside spot tucked beside the houseboat neighborhood in Eastlake. In the summers, we’d go down there with friends and launch into Lake Union from the treeshaded dock and spend a few hours out on the water chatting, listening to music, and having drinks.

In late 2024, I moved into my friend’s house in West Seattle, and nowadays Z and I spend more time in Vancouver. We haven’t tried paddleboarding in Vancouver yet, but we expect it to be less convenient. There is far less access to lakes than in Seattle, where it is abundant. The biggest problem, however, is that Z and I are going to the UK for most of August. Come September the warmth will evaporate rather quickly. You can’t have it all.

April 1 2025 – Some friends and I are thinking of taking a trip to the San Juan Islands or to some other natural destination in the region. If indeed we do so in August it may coincide with some of our birthdays.

July 20 2025 – Z and I have booked a trip to England and Ireland. We’re going to Dublin, County Clare, County Kerry, Bristol, & London. We also intend to visit Bath and Cornwall. It’s going to be great. In London, we are going to attend Arsenal vs Leeds. I’ve never attended an Arsenal match. Watching them play a Premier League game at the Emirates Stadium will be a dream come true.

August 6, 2025 – What I’m doing

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August 28, 2025 – What I’m doing

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August 31, 2025 – Finally, in the last few days before leaving on my trip with Z to

and

, I repotted

. Ideally I would have done it in the spring so that they’d flourish during their natural season of growth but I put it off, feeling too encumbered mentally and emotionally by immigration and tax paperwork I had to do. I despaired for weeks and found myself yearning for a simpler life established in a single place where my presence is never in question and where my household chores feel under control. But I have since come out of that period of distress and done so without making any sacrifices or compromises, though it would be wise to make some now while life feels manageable. I dread that another similar period of adversity will come, and then I realize no doubt it will. To be sure some sources of worry and anguish I will eliminate or neutralize but then new ones will spring up in due time. One cannot live without risk, cannot have anything without the threat of loss and the burden of maintaining it. And the greater the blessing bestowed, the greater the fear to lose it imposed. There is no hope to banish suffering and to live. But there is courage to face it, composure to remain steady, judiciousness to know which gifts are worth accepting, and restraint to denounce the ones that encumber more than they enrich.

April 1 2025 – Paul Thomas Anderson’s new movie comes out in September. He is one of my favorite directors and film writers. I really enjoyed Licorice Pizza in theatres and There Will Be Blood is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. I have multiple friends who would also be excited to see his newest work in theatres.

September 8 2025 – September has begun dusty, gray, and ugly in our part of the world. The smoke of notso distant forest fires dulls the sky into a hazy lifeless blue and the sunlight into an unnatural orange. For me September usually induces nostalgia. The month of bittersweet transition from untethered joy of summer to the cool and quiet comforts of fall. A return to routine and predictability.

September 10 2025 – What I’m doing

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September 16 2025 – I have several friends who work at Microsoft as I do and a few months ago one of them said he’s seen “too many surveys” broadcasted internally about our company’s flexible work policy and that he suspected that the company was preparing to retract permission allowing employees to work from home. I had no such inkling. Five years had already passed since Covid had established the norm of working remotely and while other tech giants like Amazon and Google had enforced a partial return to office in 2023, Microsoft had maintained its flexible work policy. It seemed silly to think Microsoft might change their policy now, two years later. I figured my friend was being paranoid or defensively pessimistic, but a few weeks later I asked my manager’s manager about it and he confirmed that our EVP had recently indicated that an update to the company’s flexible work was incoming. Gulp. So after five and a half years of working remotely, I face the prospect of resuming regular commute to a suburban corporate campus and losing the comforts and conveniences of working from my own home. The company is willing to make exceptions for certain reasons but not due to my personal work preferences, even if though my performance has consistently exceeded expectations. I am assured that survey data indicates I will Thrive More and Deliver Greater Business Impact by collaborating with my peers in person.

September 23 2025 – What I’m doing

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September 25 2025 – Here in the coastal cities of the PNW, before October arrives and the sunsets begin encroaching on our afternoons and the familiar gray blanket unrolls over the daytime sky, we have September. A brief period of balance, of cool air and sunshine, of leafy trees and soft crunchy sidewalks. An easing from the hectic activity of summertime and a brief refuge from holidays that demand shopping, planning, traveling, socializing, all in very particular modes. It might be my favorite month of the year. And yet it depends on the others for contrast because twelve Septembers would be too many.

July 20 2025 – I saw somebody wearing a motorcycle helmet adorned with big furry rabbit ears and it reminded me of Donny Darko. I watched it for the first time in the summer of 2023 and I want to watch it again. It occurred to me that I should host a series of spooky movie viewings in October. We could watch one per week and let friends know ahead of time so they have it in their plans for October. I’d probably show a David Lynch film, too.

July 20 2025 – Thanksgiving is a big holiday in the US. I get the Thursday and Friday off. Last year I thought about going to Mexico City to visit my grandparents, but didn’t end up doing it.

February 4 2025 – In the spirit of living with forethought and premeditation, I suggested to my mom that we begin planning a post-Christmas trip to Mexico or Honduras, somewhere warm. In years past I’ve intended to buy flights for the holiday season months in advance but never managed it. Hopefully this year.

April 1 2025 – Z began learning to snowboard this season and has been slowing buying her own gear. The current season is winding down now but I look forward to the next one.

July 20 2025 – On condition that we go to Indonesia in the spring of 2026 to see her maternal family, Z has agreed to visit Mexico for Christmas of this year. I’m excited to explore the Yucatan peninsula, a part of Mexico I’ve never seen.

This is my second review of this book. I have to say – it won me over, big time. This time I read a physical copy, and it was worth it. The spacing and formatting of the print gives the book a mysterious aura. You feel you’re conferring secretly with the author about a strange magic that hides in prose. He reveals what he’s learned about teasing this elusive substance into the right configurations. In the same words he explains to you and shows you. Some books about writing are sterile and tedious, but this book is on the other end of the spectrum.

Some of its advice has lodged into my writing brain:

Keep the space between sentences as empty as possible… Most sentences

- nor postlude.

Avoid writing your sentence. Play with it in your head. The range of possible sentence structures narrows after every word you put down.

Don’t be afraid that you’ll forget a good sentence or a good idea. Trust yourself. If it is important, you’ll remember it.

Lots of worthwhile ideas, many of which aim to loosen rigid rules and challenge habits taught in school. Are transition words and sentences really necessary? Do you trust your reader so little? You can get anywhere from anywhere. It also challenges conventional wisdom regarding “inspiration”, “natural” writing, and “flowing” writing. It gives interesting writing exercises like putting sentences each on their own line to compare structure, length, and rhythm.

I realized on second read that the author asserts in the introduction that this book is not dogma, but a collection of starting points. Also, my prayers were answered: the book contains a healthy share of sample prose.

Very glad I came across this book.

Despite all my admiration and enchantment while reading Hemingway’s memoir A Moveable Feast I couldn’t help but frowning at his writing mantra: “make instead of describing”. Surely he’s been describing all along? He says he learned from a fellow writer to “distrust adjectives”. I don’t know exactly what it is he learned about adjectives because he did not abandon them.

Jack Kerouac also writes in this way in On The Road, impressing directly and vaguely the sentiments in his mind. “Stream of consciousness” sounds right not only because of Kerouac’s unedited, spontaneous style, but also because he offers access to the unrefined state of his thoughts, the feelings that are evoked in him. Unlike Keroauc, Hemingway edited and manicured his writing until it was pristine, but he presents the minds of his characters in the crudeness of their existence. He portrays thoughts in the way they rise and fall in a mind, appearing as a notion that remains vague if not developed before it exits soundlessly.

At the end there I wanted to use the word “intuitive”. Perhaps this is where Hemingway’s rule of thumb comes into play. Instead of describing the writing and the thoughts as “intuitive”, I can make them intuitive by describing as they exist, rather than describing the category (“intuitive”) to which they belong. Perhaps his rule is about describing things as they are, not as we later understand them. If so, then make instead of naming, or show instead of telling are better phrases.

Perhaps that’s why he uses the word “good”. A good cafe, a good wine, a very good novel. And somehow it works, despite the admonitions of high school English teachers for such vague wording. It describes an easy satisfaction, a vague but certain joy.