Category: Personal

I don’t have much time to write anything substantial this week; I had visitors all weekend, and have other visitors coming soon to prepare for. So, this is a sorry excuse for a post just for the sake of keeping my weekly streak alive.

To that end, on the side menu of the site I’ve finally added a feedback email address. I’ve had the email available for use for quite a while now, but only just figured out how to easily set-up my email clients to allow it to actually be usable by me. So, if you happen to read this blog and have ever wanted to voice strong opinions to me, emailing feedback@markrichard.org is the way to go. I believe there’s also a comment system (that has been used about once in total), but that seems much less likely to be utilized.

A few weeks ago I decided to get a membership to the San Diego Zoo. I’d only been once before, back when I was an intern, and had an amazing time. After talking with a few people, I discovered the a membership for the entire year is about the cost of two tickets. So, I decided to give it a whirl. I’ve already gone twice, so everything from now is a bonus.

Continue reading “The Zoo!”

I’m pretty aware of the idea of transition costs, and I’ve experienced them first-hand quite a lot throughout college. Moving into a new apartment comes with many potential transition costs. So does getting a new computer, or changing operating systems. These are all costs that I have some practice handling, and they don’t tend to bother me. In fact, the prospect of handling them can be exciting. But recently, I’ve been dealing with mental transition costs.

Continue reading “Mental Transition Costs”

I never actually thought this would happen to me. Despite years not regularly going to coffee shops, and never drinking coffee, I finally came to terms with the fact that I have a drink of choice at Starbucks. It comes with the realization that I go to Starbucks enough to justify having a go-to order.

Continue reading “My Drink of Choice”

I decided to rearrange my room this past weekend. part of it was for convenience, and part of it was just to switch things up. It also gave me the opportunity to go through my things and reorganize.

Continue reading “Rearranging”

Due to travel and being home in Minnesota all last week, this post is coming late today.

This past weekend, my girlfriend graduated from college. It was an exciting time, and she officially finished up this chapter of her life and began to look forward to the PhD program she begins in the fall. Going to commencement was exciting, having this official moment to mark the occasion. This is what I appreciate about commencement, is its role as the milestone.

I don’t think I fully appreciated my commencement in the moment. Being in a major where I didn’t know many people, it was even a little isolating to not share the entire time with my friends. Yet it is still an event I can look back at to finalize the accomplishments I had in college. It’s also the last time something like that occurs. It felt to be one of the biggest jumps into adulthood, as there were no more obvious goals set out for me, beyond survival as an adult.

I think it’s good to have times where we can celebrate ourselves, to take the moment necessary to truly reflect on what we’ve done and where we are going after the fact. I hope to be cognizant of that feeling moving forward. Although there will be no institutions to celebrate my personal accomplishments, I want to take the time to reflect regularly, acknowledge what I’ve done, then focus on moving forward.

I’ve been sitting around, trying to determine what I wanted to write for this week. I’ve had a few underwhelming posts over the past month, due to some time constraints and missed deadlines, so I’m really aiming for ideas with a bit more substance.

I try to make note of some ideas I have, whether that is quotes from books I read, ideas from podcasts, little pictures, or just something that pops into my head that I want to save for later. I was going through those notes and determined this is the right time to get to something I heard a high school girl say at a Starbucks a few months ago.

Continue reading “Looking Stupid”