Posts

Last October I asked my then-girlfriend, Erin, to marry me. As the cliche goes, I was lucky enough, and she was crazy enough, that she said “yes”. Soon thereafter the wedding planning began, and it’s been an on-and-off process as other events in our lives ebb and flow. We are aiming to have our wedding in fall of 2022, so we’re giving ourselves a lot of wiggle room. Even then, it was clear we needed to get organized. There are a lot of moving parts, which only increased when we decided to have the wedding at her parent’s farm. Suddenly there were no preferred vendors, and everything was on us. This part 1 is to briefly discuss some of the ways we’ve gotten our act together. I’m sure other posts, focusing on other elements, will follow. ...

I recently discovered that typing on a mechanical keyboard does an excellent job of maintaining my desire to write. Typically I use a Microsoft Sculpt ergonomic keyboard when I’m working at my desktop. I bought one only a few months after moving to San Diego to use at work. Once my hands got used to it, going back to a standard keyboard at home didn’t feel quite right. So, I now have two of these split ergonomic keyboards.1 ...

Over four years ago I wrote a post about my off-the-cuff writing style. It was a flash-bang approach with only minor edits along the way. However, since writing stories for NaNoWriMo last year I’ve been rethinking my broader aims for this blog, and what processes can help me achieve them. Writing a post each week is a fine goal, but if they aren’t each in service of something larger it’s hard for them be anything but a pleasant chore. Subconsciously, that far-away target was establishing a writing routine with the hope it would improve my abilities. I think it has, but it took a concerted effort in editing a short story (and a few other projects before) for me to recognize that growth. It’s time for a change in approach and a new target. ...

One month ago, a good friend of mine released a feature-length movie on YouTube. I had followed along as they released the various trailers, then discovered the half-truths in their lovely making-of documentary.1 I managed to watch it the morning after the film’s premiere, on December 19, and have not gotten it out of my head since. I’ve started and stopped multiple reviews, taken copious notes on a second watch, and am finally releasing what I consider the movie’s canonical review. If you frequent this part of the internet, you may be just the right person to watch Doctor Feelgood and the Asparagus Kid or: The Respect for the Omnipresence of Death. If the title intrigues you, give it a shot. Then come back here (regardless of whether you completed it) and enjoy a shameless, spoiler-filled plug and review for this movie co-written by my friend Timothy.2 ...

On an episode of the podcast No Dumb Questions, Destin and Matt discussed how they compiled a playlist for each year. This allowed them to track changing moods and tastes as the years went by, and also to link songs to specific times in their lives. The benefit of listening to these shows hosted by people with more life experience is that I can actually learn from them sooner than how they learned themselves. I loved the idea of having anchor points in songs on an annual playlist, so I made my own for 2019 and 2020. ...

On the most recent episode of OHAC, Mikhail, Jack, and I talked about our yearly themes. You can head over there to get links to other resources, and listen to our takes on each of our themes. This post is to summarize my own theme, and try to have something clearer in my mind after a lot of talking through it with Jack and Mikhail. My theme for this year is the Year of Transition. Its focus is twofold: acceptance of the changes happening in my life, and leveraging the progress I made in 2020 to capitalize on those changes. ...

Tomorrow I’ll be recording an episode of OHAC, where Mikhail, Jack, and I will be discussing yearly themes. That will serve as a nice recap of the year and a starting point for 2021. To wrap things up on this blog though, I figured I’d go back through my posts from 2020 and select one or two favorites from each quarter, and maybe write a little bit about how I view those posts now. I don’t often revisit my expository writing, so I think it’ll be a good exercise. ...

I’ll be spending this Christmas away from family for the first time ever. I’ve been left trying to make the best of the situation. I’m not alone: I’m spending Christmas with my fiancee, and we have been decorating her small San Francisco apartment with lights. Our parents have sent us cookies and gifts, and we have a small tree on the table. 1 I think the biggest difference is that this is the first year where I don’t have a distinct build-up towards Christmas externally pressed upon me. Until I graduated college, there was always winter break. The last two years, flying home for the holidays was a clear marker where I was now working remotely for a couple of weeks, surrounded by family and trying to see all my friends who were back as well. ...

A coworker told me about Advent of Code last week. It’s an independently run site that provides an advent calendar of programming puzzles. Similar to sites like Project Euler, they are of varying difficulty and not designed to be completed in any particular language. So far, the puzzles have been clever and fun. There is a central plot for the entire month of needing to get a currency of star coins to pay for your post-Christmas vacation. I take it not as tone-deafness to the pandemic, but more of wishful thinking for a better 2021. They’re cute premises. ...

Here’s the second story, a little late, but I think much better because of the time I took to actually revise it. Again the basic idea came from /r/WritingPrompts, but I fleshed it out more. This has been a fun experience, and I look forward to doing a bit more in-depth editing and revising of my own work on longer pieces in the future. ...