It’s once again time to be thematic. I’m calling 2024 my Year of Opportunity. Characterized by a desire to explore and treat new experiences with more positivity and excitement, I hope to make the most of what could be our final year living in California while also increasing my appreciation for the life I’ve built.
Continue reading “2024: Year of Opportunity”The Appeal of Pageless Documents
Today I discovered that Google Docs has supported pageless documents for over a year and a half. I learned this at precisely the right time, and now I’m rethinking how I handle many of my digital documents.
Continue reading “The Appeal of Pageless Documents”Return of Winter Break
This year my company is officially taking a break starting the weekend before Christmas through New Year’s Day. I haven’t had a break from work this long1My honeymoon last year was pretty darn close, but there is a big difference when I know I have a huge amount of work piled up to go back to. since graduating college, and I am thrilled by the concept.
Several of my coworkers are nervous about this change—we have customer support teams and we need to ensure our sites don’t suddenly break while everyone is gone—but I plan to revel in it in the intended fashion. I get to enjoy time with family and friends without distraction, without needing to burn additional PTO, and come back refreshed with an eagerness to get work done.
I’m not going to treat this like a miniature sabbatical and plan an ambitious number of projects to fill the time. While I’ll certainly manage to occupy myself with writing, reading, and exploring some ideas I’ve built up over time, the goal is not to prescribe any work in detail. A break should be exactly that, and in the last year I’ve learned to take my time away from daily work more seriously by increasing the divide between the two. I barely check my work email on my phone, and try to keep Slack out of mind once I’m done for the day. Neither of those slight changes has affected my work negatively, but has certainly improved my personal time.
A winter break will increase the dosage of that effect for a week, and I’m ready for it.
- 1My honeymoon last year was pretty darn close, but there is a big difference when I know I have a huge amount of work piled up to go back to.
Theme Retreat
Erin and I spent a weekend north of San Francisco in a small house among the redwood trees. It overlooked a misty valley that offered the perfect balance of seclusion without isolation.1We were only fifteen minutes from the nearby town with a Safeway, but nobody could see us on the deck’s hot tub, and we couldn’t see anyone else. We set up this small retreat to disconnect, focus on ourselves, and also discuss our yearly themes.
Continue reading “Theme Retreat”- 1We were only fifteen minutes from the nearby town with a Safeway, but nobody could see us on the deck’s hot tub, and we couldn’t see anyone else.
Ohtani to Dodgers
Sarah Wexler, reporting for MLB.com:1I’ve never done a blogging “quote post” like this, but I’m toying with using this blog for a little more than just my Monday updates. We’ll see if it sticks, but I might as well use my own website’s capacity and see how it fits.
After a fervent sweepstakes, reigning American League Most Valuable Player Shohei Ohtani has agreed to terms with the Dodgers on a record-demolishing 10-year, $700 million deal, according to his agent, Nez Balelo.
This is incredible, ridiculous, and frustrating.
Incredible
No free agent in any sport has ever received a contract worth this much. It’s a huge play by the Dodgers, and a windfall for Ohtani who definitely has nothing to worry about financially. Time will tell whether the deal is good when considering Ohtani as a player long-term, but as a move they can leverage as marketing it’s likely going to pay for itself rapidly. Ohtani is a superstar across the world, particularly in Japan and the United States. Between the merchandise the Dodgers will sell and the butts in seats they’ll get even in the next two seasons, I have to imagine they know it’s worth the investment. If they can make some deep playoff runs, that’ll do even more.
Ridiculous
What the hell, Dodgers? Can you let any other team have a fighting chance? They really are become more like the Yankees than the Yankees in terms of throwing money at problems (while also annoyingly being quite good at developing their own players). The money in this deal is absurd and I can’t imagine being matched by any deal within the next decade.
Frustrating
With the Giants being my second team, it’ll be infuriating how much I’ll want to go to games when the Dodgers are in town so I can see Ohtani play, and it’ll also be infuriating as I sit here along with all the other Giants fans wondering how we can possible compete in the division now. It isn’t actually impossible—baseball is a strange sport, and the Dodgers still haven’t figured out their pitching situation—but boy is it tremendously disheartening at first glance. Why couldn’t he have gone to Toronto?
It’ll also be awful seeing the national networks and MLB fawn over him as a Dodger. It was charming and fun to see Ohtani do his thing in Anaheim because the focus was on the player. He was and is incredible, but it wasn’t part of a juggernaut team that doesn’t seem to have any particularly fun vibe. Now it’ll be in the context of the Dodgers, and MLB will be pushing the Dodgers hard every time they get a chance. I’m going to be sick of it very quickly, even though I’ll still watch every good Ohtani highlight that comes out in the next decade. He’s good, I just wish he could be good on some other team.
- 1I’ve never done a blogging “quote post” like this, but I’m toying with using this blog for a little more than just my Monday updates. We’ll see if it sticks, but I might as well use my own website’s capacity and see how it fits.
NaNoWriMo 2023 Recap
I just completed my NaNoWriMo project for 2023. I wrote three stories for The Last Question world in thirty days, totaling 30,984 words. You can find the drafts on the NaNoWriMo page of this blog, with the caveat that they are indeed drafts. Let’s get into how this all went.
Continue reading “NaNoWriMo 2023 Recap”Let Work Be the Work
I enjoy playing with technology, trying new apps, and adjusting my processes. I listen to podcasts that nominally focus on productivity and the tools to get work done. You can look at my track record of changing writing setups to understand what I mean. It’s easy to conflate optimizing how you work and the work you’re trying to do. It’s rarely the case that these are one and the same, so it’s good to remember that the only way to accomplish a task is by doing it.1Some of this post was discussed in OHAC 52.
Continue reading “Let Work Be the Work”- 1Some of this post was discussed in OHAC 52.
NaNoWriMo 2023 Check In
I’m behind my 30,000 word goal, which is why I’m writing this post as a fallback instead of something longer and unrelated to NaNoWriMo. It’s still possible for me to maintain a pace that gets me done on time, but I haven’t been making as much progress in my free time as I’d like.
My biggest issue this year is that I’m still not allowing myself to write freely. I’m thinking a little too much in the moment, trying to self-edit, and not just getting a story out there that can be refined at a later date.
Yet I’m happy with the work I’ve done so far. I think I have the bones of compelling stories, and I look forward to coming back to them after this month is over when I’m ready to do some editing in earnest.