Letters: January W3

Hi Jason,
A late reply this week - I completely forgot about this until very late last night.

Your TV setup looks very similar to ours but we’re lucky enough to have two wall lights behind it so the wall looks much less bare but you’re right it’s hard to put anything to garish there otherwise it’s distracting.

With 10 weeks to go, I’ve been thinking a lot about technology and how that will affect my duaghter. This post in particular made me think about how much I’m going to share about her online once she’s here. I don’t think there’s any right answer but it has occupied my mind the past few days. Come to think of it, the impending birth is basically the only thing I can think about at the moment. I’m sure that we’ll be fine but I can’t help but worry that we won’t have enough clothes or nappies, or something I haven’t even thought of will go wrong.
As for non-baby things, I’ve been having fun messing around with the omg.lol API building a CLI to interact with the service and I’m working on add a /now page to my website (as well as the new omg.lol now pages). How has your week been this week?

Speak soon,
Robb

Hi Robb,

Easily excusing the “late” reply¹, with a later reply of my own. This week has been incredibly busy at work as the post-holiday break, post-three day weekend, we’re really back at it and in it, started to kick in. It’s been long but rewarding– one of those weeks where you’re exhausted, but I’m doing the kind of work I do well bringing the energy and attention I need to.

In particular, I’ve recently reorganized our team so that I have slightly smaller set of direct reports that are more “coherent” structurally– I am managing directly one person who leads each function below me. It’s too early to say if this is working better for the whole team, but this week made me feel confident that it works better for me, which is really important for avoiding burn out.

On the TV side, wall lights were another thing we considered– a sconce on each side just to give it something. It just feels strange to have so much blank space above the TV as well. I need someone to, I don’t know, share a Pinterest board or something with me so I can figure out what people actually do. The entire dilemma of what to do behind the TV reinforces a personal frustration of mine. It feels wrong that our “living room” is oriented toward a television. I would like for things to be different, but I don’t think my partner or her mother would be sufficiently on board to make that change. It’s more aspirational, really, to make sure that all television time is appointment time and not casual watching.

I cannot imagine the stack of worry that comes with being just weeks away from being a dad. It’s good to work with fun new tools right now while you can– a good distraction before side projects get put aside for a while. My gut is that it’s not worth worrying too much about online presence. I’m not a parent, and I’m not facing that decision, but my gut is that it’s easy to overthink the consequences (or lack thereof). Short of straight up exploitation, which is rare, these things seem to work out ok for parents and kids regardless of the choices they make. That’s not to say the choices don’t matter, but it seems like there aren’t wrong choices.

I’m a big fan of /now pages (I really need to update mine). I really value the narrative of a Now page. For me, it’s a time I get to think about what matters that gets lost in the series of smaller posts or dripped out updates. I have resisted adding any “automated” elements– it’d be easy to add the book I’m currently reading, for example, or maybe something like starred articles from my RSS reader. Something to think about.

We’re coming to the end of our time in Mexico. I’m thinking a lot about what makes home, well, home, and what I’ve learned about where I want to live and what I want my life to be like from 2+ months away. It’s a different kind of taking stock than becoming a parent, but I find myself taking stock nonetheless.

Looking forward to next week,

Jason