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To satiate my recovered and expanding interest in guitar, I decided to use some money from my bonus this year to purchase a nice electric guitar. While I love playing acoustic—they sound beautiful, are easy to pick up, and always feel comfortable to me—electric guitar opens up a new world of effects, sounds, and styles. Plus, with a pair of headphones, you can have the full experience without much noise for everyone around you. Not wanting to waste my money, I dove into research ...

I started learning piano in 2nd grade with an unweighted 61-key digital piano, and an assortment of self-guided piano books. Putting time into piano allowed me to join the percussion section once I started 6th grade.1 Armed with a reasonable knowledge of music, the free time that childhood offers, and experience learning new skills on my own, I began playing guitar in 7th grade. ...

The NFL playoffs are long over, but I still wanted to quickly document my experience using an antenna to watch a fair chunk of it in my San Francisco apartment. I bought an $11 “HD” antenna from Amazon after consulting with my dad. It’s good to see that it’s affordable, and made it an easy purchase. I scanned for channels a few times to find the ideal location for the antenna in my apartment1 and started experiencing my childhood again. ...

I’ve watched and listened to hours of disc golf content across YouTube and podcasts over the past few years. Since I started playing about 9 months ago, an increased portion of that has been focused on instructional content: specific videos about form, techniques, tips and tricks, anything to help me feel more comfortable and consistent on the course. Just like with regular golf, putting is the most frustrating aspect of the game. Particularly in disc golf, where you are approaching this relatively large basket and all you need to do is throw the disc in from 20 or 30 feet (ideally), it looks childishly easy. Yet I have a lot of trouble with consistency. Sure, I can make a few, but overall I’m missing in pretty much every possible direction during my round. In fact, both on the course and during my warmup I am practicing how to miss. ...

Erin and I are working on tighter budgeting, eating out less, all that good stuff. We’ve been pretty good since coming home after Christmas. Going out to eat has become something we plan and budget for; it should be an event, not an excuse to not cook on a lazy night. To that end, for Valentine’s weekend, we booked ourselves two dining experiences. ...

This weekend, I played my first competitive round of disc golf. On a whim, I signed up for a league round where everyone pays 5 dollars. What I hadn’t realized when I signed up is that it was a course I’d never played before, so I didn’t have the benefit of being comfortable with either of the factors involved. However, I had been craving a way to force some assessment of my current skills, and also generally some athletic competition that I haven’t had for quite a while. This round gave me plenty of both, and really hooked me. ...

I’ve kept myself busy over the last several months. College was the last time I had such a large number of projects and concerns, but most of them were essentially the same. While I would have four or five classes each semester, these all fell under the banner of school, similar to how several work projects are basically the same to me. However, I’ve since begun tutoring and writing curriculum on the side, while trying to maintain some of my other routinized projects. Add wedding and honeymoon planning, and admittedly, some days it feels like I hardly have any time for myself. Working out how to balance all of this is a difficult task. ...

My older sister gave me a lovely leather-bound journal one month into sixth grade, when all students in my grade went on a week-long trip to a nature center called Eagle Bluff. She encouraged me to use it to keep track of the experience, and I wrote in that journal for most of the next year or two. Looking back, many entries were a bit dramatic, but I think they were accurate to how I felt at the time. It was my first time using a journal, and in particular my first time doing serious introspection. I enjoyed the process, but eventually lost the habit and didn’t try to pick it back up regularly until college. ...

With a new year comes a new theme. I’ve had this year’s theme prepared since last year, and it rings as true now as it did then. My 2022 will be the Year of One. ...

Applying mathematical topics and skills to the real world is an often-discussed tactic to engage students who are otherwise dismissive of, or frustrated with, mathematics as a whole. By connecting the math a student does with real life situations—particularly skills they will “need” in the future, but also more abstracted situations that pertain to real life—some people expect students to gain an appreciation for what mathematics can do, and feel inclined to study it so they can actively participate in these various applications. ...