Note dump :: Dec 2024
I’ve passed the halfway mark of my parental leave. I see tech from the outside, by reading about it mostly on independent blogs. It’s awesome. All the AI chatter is once again showing the immaturity of the industry, the lack of real substance and vision, wave after wave. The sidelines are the best place to observe. I’m happy to be there today. I’ll come back to tech work after my leave as a whole new person. A dad of two, but also a readjusted brain. I just want to make nice websites, there is already lots to say about web design, a topic that may appear to all more and more boring as time passes. AI or not, the influx of messages has only increased and the optimism is contagious. I’m still pretty ignorant and spending a lot of energy defusing triggers. I’m feeling behind on the tech and the trends but sharper than ever in my process.
The extent of the instrumentalization of walking by the wanna-be mindful is telling of clouds obscuring our minds.
I read a lot of Derek Sivers's stuff. I don’t like his aggressively succinct writing style. I would love more granularity. He clearly has a lot going on in his mind, I’m left hanging. There is a wide gap between what he offers and large volume books he thinks would be too noisy. It’s so short and to the point leaving little for debate. That makes his content adequate for the modern, low-attention span audience, but I’m very skeptical it is perceived as the invitation to inquire Derek wants it to be. After a few days of exposure, it ends up feeling quite shallow and loose. However he is growing on me as a character in my mental crowd. He is clearly having a blast and I love his process. It’s rare (and important) to have nothing in common with someone and yet be drawn to their stuff. That’s what Derek is to me.
On December 6th, temperatures reached a high of 28 degrees Celsius, which in full sun felt much higher (although the UV index was only 3). We were in a shadeless park, something that should be forbidden in California. My Neanderthal software got upset expecting 10 degrees max for this time of year. I lost it after hearing the locals blabbering about how much of a lovely fall day it was. I hoped and searched for irony in their voice, but I found none. Before melting I was staring at the ladies going door to door with religious pamphlets. When I could barely hold my rage, put the kiddo on the bike and bolted out, fantasizing about Scandinavia on the way back home.
I looked at my server stats for the first time in 6 years. Mostly out of curiosity but also to know if I was getting many errors since I don’t test the various updates I make directly via FTP (yolo indie dev methodology)… it turns out I get 10k hits monthly, which is bogus. I don’t know what to do of this information, which is why I’m not using a tracker in the first place. Knowing that (what feels like) a legitimate number of people read my stuff is a bit scary, yet I’m going to proceed like I never saw these numbers.
I’m often reminded of an anecdote from Annaka Harris. She told of how she raised her daughters to avoid what thought led her to be prone to anxiety. She emphasized how as a parent it seemed like the right thing to do, to deploy all the tactics and efforts she could. When her kids became teenagers, she tells of how they faced the same challenges as her. Her efforts seemed to have made no difference. She goes on to explain how humbling and debilitating this is.
Whatever I’m observing in myself or my kids, it never matches my initial intentions. Rarely in a positive way yet, life is good. What’s most striking is how this renders the imbalance between effort and outcome. Trying hard is hardwired for all those who, like me and Annaka, have grown up in a Judeo-Christian society, religious or not it’s the same work ethic.
Like health or work, you may think about what cards you’re playing with. Then you make a move and you watch the game unfold.
Our Dyson is a gift that keeps on giving. Kiddo loves the laser which gives me the time to vacuum every night peacefully while he dances like we’re at a rave. I don’t get to finish much these days, this gives me the opportunity to satisfyingly clear a task. The laser allows for a satisfying before/after visual.
Mother-in-law is tell me about the stoicism videos she is been watching on YouTube. Then shows me a prayer poster on Walmart. A spinoff of Seneca’s stoic definition of wisdom, the typography is competing with the absurdity of the message, peak facepalm moment.
Next to my go-to grocery store, there is a hobby Lobby. Just the name is telling of this relic of American consumerism, far out of my taste and worldview. On Black Friday, among the minivan and beat up Hondas, there were a noticeable amount of Teslas and a few fancy EV trucks parked in front of it. A perfect image of all the oddities colliding around here. The mix of old/new, country/city, conservative/liberal, rich/poor is quite odd.
Kiddo rushes on me to get a hug after he fell in a mud puddle. I was on my phone 2sec before, contemplating getting a nice fleece vest. The message is clear: you can’t have nice things — not yet. Just to confirm, we spent the morning wiping our noses in my many-year-old free tech swag hoodie.
I spent too long to feel good about it researching products online. It’s always too cheap or too fancy. My ego never find a quality and price point that matches whatever malicious framework my subconscious plays with. Even if I found something, I’m virtually incapable of pushing the buy button for any not crucially necessary, especially if it’s for me and clothing.
On top of that, I simply cannot buy anything fancy if it’s not on sale. It is a common bias, that makes me feel poor. I cannot defeat it. It’s like an instinct by now. What if someone knew I paid full price!? How bogus is that?
I have no doubt Apple Intelligence is good. I’m already very annoyed by the good old autocorrect. There are now so many settings to opt out it’s a strong deterrent for grumpy geriatric users like me who just want to write whatever string of characters I want.
My Chinese in-laws are puzzled by quinoa soaking, every time. They give us that confused face as they stare at the saponin's foams like - “What is this shit? Is that edible? Why can’t we have rice every day?”
I ate the best pomegranate off the streets, well worth pulling my aligners out. The owner of the house had a box and instead of using a simple “free” or no message, they wrote: “Yes, seeds are edible ( google it if you don’t trust me)”.
There is very little I’m uniquely positioned to provide deep insight on. That hasn’t deterred me from writing. I’ve been tempted to write about being tall but that’s not unique enough. It tickles me because I’m not around people as tall as me, yet I’m not that tall. I’m not Shaquille tall, I’m Steph Curry tall - 6’3”. Even the combo of tall and 6% body fat – there are a few of us freaks out there. I’m hangry so often I’m convinced people with higher body fat have more functional hormonal systems and thus, better moods. Their grass must be greener. Having an outlet my this misly blog makes me want to spew my exceptionalism. I must have a uniquely hard condition worth sharing?
I’m not good with numbers but I can catch a ratio or order of magnitude when it’s very far off. The expression “parenting is a marathon, not a sprint” bothers me. The 241:1 ratio clearly doesn’t offer a decent comparison - even though I get the idea. To me, a day is a sprint. There are a lot more than 241 days in a kid's life.
I don’t see the evil my wife sees in potatoes eyes.
I spent my twenties convincing myself that staring at water is a worthy thing to do. My thirties are going to be spent considering the pebbles on the river bed. And when I see old people, it seems that at some point I’ll just be looking at nothing in particular. I can once again appreciate the circular nature of life, focus peaking mid-way to return to the initial blur. Although young kids and elders have different levels of energy, their diffuse attention gives a quality to their perception that the adults in their prime wish.
Looking at parents with babies loaded in carriers is endearing. Most probably only see the cute bundle and a happy parent. Few will see the ergonomic handicap it is. “Arg, they are so wiggly and heavy, harsh on the back” — That’s how my PT put it.
No amount of modern gadgetry is a step function improvement. A good amount of philosophy makes the same point about comfort. Even epicureans were cautious about their indulgences.
The US is held together by religion and consumerism. Politics is a mere extension of these two. I thought this model was another gross oversimplification… not that much.
I hold on the certain objects to remind me of the beliefs I held. Not necessarily positive ones. I still have a shirt that my ex mom gifted me. It fits me remarkably well. I’ve always been stunned by how easy it is for my brain to create a story around this shirt.
After 8+ months of climbing all sorts of random tractors, kiddo finally turned one on by pushing all the buttons. I thought there was at least a key or code lock…
Kids riding around their kick scooters are really teasing me.
Parenting these days feels like a perfectly tuned game where difficulty increases to match the player’s tolerance. Everything gets labeled as either a game or part of a greater game. Mood, corporate culture, family, spirituality, fitness… when the term enters my mind I know I coping with whatever I think is “a game”.
Some parents told me they ignored daylight savings time change which seemed clever on the moment. They had the flexibility to make it happen, good for them. But when they explained that they have to ignore their phones and manually compute everything -1h it sounded a lot less enticing. Like living in a different time zone in the same location. Weird but fun.
I’ve been having recurring obsessive bouts of interest in watches. This is the manifestation of my conscious self fighting the gearbug. I’m easily teased by well-designed gear and the outlets chanting the beauty of bikes, camping gear, etc… are like mythical sirens. I’m Ulysse except that I’m glued to my stupid wall of pixels instead of strapped to a mast. I resist, wave after wave. Tempted to spew the reason why all these mere objects are tickling my fancy.
At the lake, the kiddo is peacefully picking and throwing rocks. Kiddo loses it after 5min. He screams: “more big!” as he is surrounded by rocks, begging for me to hand them to him. Of course, this annoys me, but it is the obvious humanity of this behavior that makes it understandable. Aren’t we all like this pretty often? Suddenly entitled to something we worked for until we snap for whatever reason.
I hear that it’s best to let kids outgrow their bad behavior and ignore them to avoid pointless confrontation. On the adult side, the opposite is recommended, over communication. Stonewalling as it’s called, is the ignoring that supposedly fuels the fire. The implicit fact here is that the ability to rationally communicate correlates with the ability to change one’s behavior, which kids lack. This is the liberal view, flip it and you have the conservative view. This is hilariously zen to me and telling the wonky and fascinating nature of psychology as a science.
I noticed that my last neck trim was very asymmetrical, revealing my right-handedness. A fact a detective examining my corpse would note with a funny remark in those murder shows. As I write down this absolute gem of a thought, I realize that my note-taking has gone too far. I’m no different from everyone on social media. It’s only the small room I’m locked in that makes me different. It reminds me of one of my childhood neighbors who used to suntan almost naked on his balcony. I'm that guy... Time to call it, at least for this year.
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