Hi Jason,

At this point Claire and I have sworn a blood oath that we’ll never move again. I struggle to think of other events that so thoroughly expose you to the ways in which your society is seemingly held together with little more than string and wishes…

I think that’s why, as well as attempting to integrate physical note-taking into my life, I have spent a lot of energy thinking about it; I’m attempting to improve my existing invisible armour [sic] for surviving the actions of other people, whilst building whole new defensive mechanisms. My theory: To improve the infrastructure that is my thinking and feeling will inevitably negate at least some of the negative influences of “the crowd”.

Everything you say about the effect of physical working, as if it is tied closely to your ability to take action, is how I feel. When my environment is mostly ok, if not good, then sure enough the digital workspace is reliable; however, when enough “life happens” events occur the physical systems are both a safety net and reminder that I should rely on them in more than just emergency situations. The Analog system has definitely been influential in this way for me as well, though I have yet to begin using the Sidekick.

I like to use outline software — Jess Grosjean’s Bike, specifically — for planning or just dumping my thoughts quickly and have come to use it just for work. Beyond that I can only recall mind mapping being useful when working with other people and haven’t had the experience of trying to do that with software; it’s safe to say I’m doubtful that the experience would be anywhere near good enough to justify the effort involved.

When we moved last it was from the coast to a land-locked region and dealing with the change in air type has been difficult. Coastal air is ridiculously good wherever I’ve been across these isles and the current move will get us back there; it’s the only item on the short list of conditions for moving so soon that was likely to be met… and then of course the unlikely ones fell into place all at once. Life happens, as it were.

Sorry for the late response, again. It’s annoying how much I’ve enjoyed this, though, given the whole life thing happening. I’d happily do this again, once we’re better settled and stuff.

Simon

Hi Simon,

I’ve been thinking a lot about “air” myself lately. It somewhat came up in the last letter, but I find myself reflecting more and more on my physical environment and the weather I’m experiencing.

We spent last winter in Mexico City. It was a weird time in my life– work was still quite busy for both of us and I was recovering from surgery. I didn’t really feel physically up for much for some time, and I got severe food poisoning twice. It’s unclear to me how much of that was being in a new country with new foods or just my whole gut being a mess 8 weeks after an appendectomy and some pretty heavy anti-biotics.

We were spending our time somewhere built for indoor-outdoor living during its worst weather– occasionally in the 50s (low 10s C) at night!– and I was not fully myself. But we spent every day at least a little bit outside, walking around, and being in our environment. We explored more than we explore at home, because there was more to explore. Walkability where I am now is great for about a half mile in all directions. Walkability in Mexico City stretches as far as your legs can take you in every direction.

The air is different there– land locked and at altitude without it ever really freezing. Here at home in Baltimore, we are below freezing at night in the winter and have long stretches where the days are never below the 90s (32+C) and the humidity is set to maximum (outside of South Asia, perhaps).

I thought being in Mexico in winter meant avoiding the worst of the weather, but this summer has me wondering if perhaps the heat and humidity is more oppressive to me than the cold.

Unfortunately, in large parts, I think I’ve got the same pact you have with Claire with Elsa. Elsa is quite happy where we are, and any moves we’d make would have to be big. And I have to admit, given our current life needs, we are in the right house that would be terribly difficult to find somewhere else. A move would have to be driven by a need for a different lifestyle leading to a need for a different space, but that doesn’t feel all that likely. I don’t quite feel stuck, but I do feel that the expense, energy, time, and challenges of moving are making it hard and harder to quench my considerable wanderlust. You’d think traveling as much as I do for work and fun would help, but … it’s not quite the same.

When I travel, I really like to do what I call “urban hiking”. Choose a restaurant that’s a solid hour walk away for lunch and spend my morning ambling my way there, stopping wherever and whenever I want. Repeat for dinner. See as many of the neighborhoods as possible, moving through and spending your time like someone who lives in each space, but covering more ground. Sometimes I take a car or public transit 30 minutes away to give myself a new start point and work back toward “home base”. I’m not as engaged by a museum as I am knowing 10 coffee shops, 3 independent bookstores, 4 places the punks hang out, 6 pizza slice shops, and fancy dinner or two.

It doesn’t seem likely I’m going to get to live a different version of myself in these different places, but I want to achieve some poor approximation of that other version of myself while I’m there.

Maybe that’s part of the appeal of a blank page. Somehow, it’s more easily malleable for understanding a different version of myself. My digital tools feel more fixed.

Jason

Meta: This month I’m corresponding with Simon Woods

Hi Jason,

Sorry for the late start — my reward for scheduling something for August is an unplanned move. I think there’s a line about the quickest way to make god laugh.

I hope all is well for you? Given the wonderfully dystopian nature of our summers now and my inability to consistently keep up to date with, well, much of anything I’m unsure exactly how most people are keeping at the moment.

You hit the nail on the head recently regarding subject matter. Journaling, notebooks, and all associated ephemera have become a sudden, significant part of my life. Not only have I been journaling but I have more than one journal available, as well as two planners, and a host of notebooks of different types. I started building my collection at the very end of last year, beginning from maybe a handful of books.

It definitely caught me off guard and I realised that by separating certain aspects of my thinking from the computers in my life I had found the level of compartmentalisation that matched my long-term ambitions. It helped me to find a source of inspiration for what I mentioned in that original blog post: intention. In many ways, the physical books allow me to talk to myself within the constraints of writing in which I am comfortable and motivated, whilst the computer remains the best tool for talking to other people.

This was all news to me, having struggled to wrangle these thoughts for the past few years, and given that I am curious to know if physical notebooks play any such role for you?

Speak to you soon, Simon

Hi Simon,

I used to joke that the sure sign of when my life is getting chaotic is when I struggle to get a hair cut. I go through entire periods of time where planning something 4-5 weeks out, or even finding a slot that lines up with when I’m free can start to feel nearly impossible. Plans are comfortable fictions we cling to at our own risk. The dystopian nature of summer is making me rethink a lot of things about my life though— I am becoming less tolerant to the heat and humidity as I get older and yet have never lived somewhere with hotter and more humid summers than my home for the last 7 years in Baltimore. Escaping the heat (and cold, to a lesser extent) to be somewhere I actually want to be outside will need to become a permanent feature rather than a partial release.

Physical notebooks have a way of flashing in and out of my life. At times when I am really struggling emotionally, I’ve found that writing some quick and easy reflections at the end of the day can be helpful. Writing on the computer doesn’t always work for writing about how I’m feeling, especially the kind of writing that is never meant to be read. I don’t find that this kind of journaling is meant to be precious or returned to. This is the kind of writing I’m doing to help myself think and reflect.

Sitting at a keyboard and staring at a blank screen feels harder than a blank page. I know that there are people who feel like a beautiful notebook being sullied by first-ink is a meaningful barrier. But for me, staring at a blank screen feels constricting. It’s too easy to pause over a word or a sentence. It’s too easy, with the legibility of text on screens, to keep whole paragraphs in sight and think about the whole. Stream of consciousness on paper feels good. I can’t type fast enough to keep up with my thinking, but I can almost fool myself, which leads to bad writing. Writing by hand has no hope of catching up to my thoughts, so there’s a rhythm and speed to it that feels good when I’m trying to find words.

On the other hand, notebooks for work can play a different role. When I’m particularly scattered, I find a written down task list helpful. I need something physical and outside of my screen that catches my eye and attention throwing me back toward what I should be getting done. Doesn’t always work. So I like using something like the Ugmonk Analog system or Sidekick Notepad. I like using dot grid notebooks because what I write in these books are almost always bulleted lists, task lists, or drawings.

I still can’t get down with “mind mapping” or even diagramming software. When something is amorphous, writing or drawing is far more likely going to help me organize and resolve my thoughts. Sometimes I find myself writing about the same thing over and over again over weeks, each time tweaking it slightly. Going through this process often reveals some strokes that I keep drawing, and they become deeper and more solid. And eventually, I’m writing nearly the same thing and I know that I’ve figured something out.

There’s no ambition in my use of physical notebooks. They come and they go. But there are times in my life and types of thinking that just work better with a nice pen and paper.

Jason

All summer there’s been construction work along Falls Road. Early on in the project, I thought about how much they were ripping up the street and hoping that we’d finally get something better than a thousand bits of patchwork and properly repave the street. To my surprise, a few weeks back, they cut the telltale grooves into the street that indicated we were going to get fresh, curb to curb, asphalt.

Imagine my delight when we had new street after extensive construction.

This has only been met by sheer rage, as just a few weeks later, a new crew shows up and cuts a huge trench right down the center of the road. They have been laying down metal plates since, and I’m sure when they’re done they’ll fill it like a pot hole.

This entire road was torn all the way down for work, and no one could coordinate with the next guys? They just show up a few weeks later and fuck it up?

This kind of every day incompetence in planning and coordination by local governments drives me insane. It’s the kind of low quality services that are unacceptable at $22.48 per $1000 property tax rates.

We need people who care enough about government services to do them better.

And now for something not entirely completely different…

I’m writing a letter to someone else this month. So without any further ado, a double dosing of Letters for July.

Hi Jarrod,

It’s a bit strange to be starting one of these. For those that don’t know me who are reading along, and as a reminder to Jarrod, I started writing Letters on my own blog this year. I wanted to have a different kind of online social interaction, and I wanted to do it with people I may not really know. I thought it’d be a nice way to build up a dialog, be a part of building an Internet more like the one I wanted, strengthen some para-social relationships, and make sure the “long form” content on my blog kept flowing.

Jarrod reached out early, but not early enough for me to have booked up my year. But I’m glad that he decided to do his own project on his blog. I agreed to be a part of that project, so here I am, following my own rules, and writing the first letter for the month of January to Jarrod.

By way of further introduction, I’m the Chief Product Officer at an education-finance technology company, leading engineering, design, and product management. I love what I do, because I get to bridge problem solving and consultative work in my area of expertise (education policy), my skills as a data practitioner, my danger as a software developer, my taste (which exceeds my talent), and my never-strong-enough management skills to solve real problems for K12 schools. It’s wild to be a part of a startup for the last nine years from pre-product, pre-revenue, pre-Series A to now being a “real” company with over 50 employees.

I moved to Baltimore, MD about 7 years ago where I live with my fiancée (which I still have to look up how many “e”s each time), her mother, and our two aging dogs. Prior to that, we lived in Providence, RI for 10 years, and I grew up on Long Island, NY.

These days, besides work, I’m focused quite a bit on volleyball. I played (poorly) in high school, and I play now (slightly less poorly) in adult recreational leagues. This was one of my “I’m vaccinated, let’s go!” activities I reintroduced into my life after 17 years away from the sport. It’s been a ton of fun (and exhausting) and at this point it feels essential to my mental health. I also read quite a bit of fiction (or at least I think), typically hitting between 30-40 books a year. I love to travel, and travel quite a bit for work. Recently, I spent a week split between Portland, OR and Seattle, WA and had a great time getting out of my own routine for a bit and wandering. My style of travel is what I call “urban hiking”— I choose a spot for each of my meals in different parts of a city and wander between them all day long and see what I stumble into. I love getting a feel for somewhere different, and I love to walk.

I’ve been lightly following Hey Dingus, largely impressed with your consistency and keeping an eye on the “Projects” page especially, which is the type of thing I’d like to expand on my own site (see /books, /letters, etc). How do you feel like it’s going? Is it the outlet you hoped for? What’s success for you?

Looking forward to our month.

Jason

Hey Jason,

Oh boy, I’m going to have to step up my game this month. That letter had me in awe of your skill as a writer. It flowed, man.

Thank you for that fun introduction. Given the room to stretch out their descriptions, I’ve found that everyone I’ve corresponded with so far has highlighted such interesting parts of their lives. You are no exception.

For a brief introduction of my own, I’ll say that I like to exist at two ends of the spectrum of “extremely online” and “completely disconnected”. Often flip-flopping between them with little warning.

Perhaps a little more explanation is necessary. My day job is as a mountain guide and gear shop specialist, I’ve spent most of my summers as a camp counselor, and I spend much of my free time outside. I’ve spent months (years?) of my life in a tent, gleefully leaving the internet-connected world behind during those times. But I’ve also been a certifiable nerd and Apple enthusiast for as long as I can remember. In fact, in the time between being a full-time camp director and my current job, I spent a few months working as a Technical Specialist in an Apple Store. Technology engages the part of my lizard brain that loves shiny things in a big way. So anytime that I’m not working and I’m not playing in the woods, I’m probably devouring the latest tech news, spelunking the web, or – as of the last few years – sharing that passion through writing my blog.

Lately, I’ve been considering more about how I can build a better bridge between those two interests. Sure, I get into all the topographical navigation apps, track my rock climbing fitness and routes, try the latest camping gadgets, and am generally known as the “tech guy” in my outdoor circles. But I can feel that there’s more to share. I’d like to write more about my experience in the outdoors – to share how and why they make me feel so alive – but it’s proven difficult to break into that genre.

Honestly, that’s one of the reasons I was so eager to follow in your footsteps for this project. I saw it as a way to try out a different kind of writing.

But enough about me, you offered so many jumping-off points about yourself that I want to explore!

What does it mean to work at an “education-finance technology company”? Do you create finance software for K-12 schools? I was corresponding with Chris Verbree last month about how special it is to be part of something – a company, organization, community – from the very beginning. We agreed that having the opportunity to influence the movers and shakers (and sometimes being one yourself) is compelling. What have been your takeaways seeing that company, and your role within it, grow from its infancy?

Your “urban hiking” approach to traveling sounds like the perfect way to explore a new city. I get intimidated by big cities and tend to stick close to my hotel or AirBnB. Case in point, I recently visited your old neck-of-the-woods, Long Island, for the first time but didn’t get out to see hardly any of it. We used DoorDash for a couple of meals and wandered only once. But with a plan and destinations in mind, I could see enjoying the exploration much more.

Your excitement for volleyball is palpable, and I’m so happy you’ve found your way back to it. I strongly believe that having a hobby to stretch your body is as good for you as having one to stretch your mind. Like you, all kinds of foot-powered travel appeal to me. I went for a 10-mile run just this morning that I only intended to be a 5-miler. I just felt so good to be out and moving that I couldn’t stop. A mental health tonic, indeed!

Thank you for your readership of HeyDingus. “Consistency” is my theme for the year, so I’m quite tickled to hear that it has been noticed. After several years of stasis, my appetite for new side projects there has grown considerably. I’m not holding myself to them all going on forever, but they sure are fun to toy around with. My /lists page has been a creative outlet in particular.

Oh, and I’d love to hear more about your pets and what you love about them. I saw your post at the end of June that Gracie’s health hasn’t been the best. Allow me to offer my condolences. It’s so hard to see a family member in decline. My wife and I have a cat, a dog, and a turtle that we call (and treat like) our “fur babies”. They bring us such joy and it’s hard to imagine our family without them.

Finally, I’d like to offer my gratitude for kicking off this Letters project movement (can we call it that?). You nailed the allure of it when you said it was to build up an Internet like the one you want to see. Thanks for putting it out into the world.

Talk to you again soon,

Jarrod

Dear Jason,

Yesterday I attended an event for youth who are overcoming addiction. For eight weeks, they take lessons in classical guitar and djembe drums, make art, journal, and connect with adults who share their stories of overcoming addiction. Then they put on a concert and share what they’ve learned.

As part of the event, spoken word artist Tracy T-Spirit Stanton shared her story and two of her poems. Her entire performance was stellar, but one line is ringing in my head: “If you lead the body, the mind will follow.”

I put a lot of trust in my mind. I wasn’t the pretty one or the athletic one, but I was the smart one. And I held onto that identity as safety. Not too long ago my therapist said, “It’s really tough for you to be wrong about things, isn’t it?”

Um, yeah. I hate that.

One of the things that was hardest to accept about getting divorced was realizing that my own mind had been unreliable. I’d overlooked, dismissed, rationalized, and denied so many things. Clear signals. But I wasn’t ready to deal with what those signals meant, so my mind invented stories. As long as I didn’t ask too many questions, I could keep ignoring things.

But my body knew. Oh, did my body know. I had migraines regularly. I couldn’t sleep. And I developed an ovarian cyst that required major surgery. It was as if my body was taking all the emotions I wouldn’t let myself feel and truths I wouldn’t let myself face and putting them into this mass that became cancerous and could have killed me.

I had this very vivid dream a few days after surgery. I was still on pain meds, so I’m sure those were in play. In the dream, I was lost, running through the woods. It was like a maze, there was danger, and I was trying to find my way out to safety. This voice came from nowhere, right in my ear, saying: “Wake up. Wake up! WAKE UP!” I woke up startled, heart pounding, disoriented, but with this sense that something important had happened.

I still didn’t want to listen, though. So I went back to ’normal life’ and kept myself busy ignoring as much as I could. Then came quarantine. There was so much time and so little distraction. I couldn’t keep the storylines connected. One early early morning in September I was standing outside. Couldn’t sleep, as usual. Staring at the sky. Thinking, thinking, thinking. So much thinking, but so little sense. And I had this physical sensation like my brain was falling apart. I remember reaching my hands up as if I could slip them inside my skull and hold the pieces together.

That was it, finally. I’m still amazed that my body created a physical sensation to match what I was experiencing mentally and emotionally, and did so in such a powerful way that I couldn’t ignore it. I’m really grateful. And I pay a lot more attention to my body now. I also don’t get migraines anymore, so that’s cool.

I didn’t start this letter with the intention of going through my recent personal history, but it colors everything for me these days. My mind is still trying to sort things out all the time, analyze, categorize, find congruence. That’s part of who I am, and it’s not bad, but finding a balance is the work I’m doing now. Respecting and using my mind, yes. And equally respecting and trusting my body to tell me things more viscerally and immediately, and to listen when she does. The body says no, the body says yes, the body says wait, the body says be careful. Sometimes the body says run the fuck away! And sometimes the body says, “Hang out right here, because this is delightful.”

Annie

Hi Annie,

Are we going to the same therapist? I, too, find it tough to be wrong about things. I rationalize. My identity my whole life has been defined by my power to process fast and rationalize. I miss out on entire emotions, because I’ve already rationalized. I blow past signals and warning signs like the train in Back to the Future 3 heading for 88 mph or the gorge, which ever comes first.

This is why going back to playing volleyball has been so important for me. I need to spend literally hours each week playing a game that takes so much of my body and concentration that there is no “mind”. There is no thinking. There are no stories to tell, except maybe about how shitty it feels to be shanking a pass. I have to have time that I shut it down. That’s also why I have to read fiction. I need to fill my mind with a different mind.

Those are forms of rest. They quite the mind. But what I’m less good at is where you seem to have made it – listening to something else entirely. I haven’t figured out how to, in the quiet, let some other signals creep in and teach me things I need to understand about myself.

I have only started to slowly get better at this. Unfortunately, it was also due to excruciating gut pain– my appendix. After being sent home from what could only be described as completely negligent urgent care, I went into the ER a few hours later because I listened. Of course, my body was screaming, but even my doctor was a little surprised (in the best way) that I actually brought myself to the ER because things got worse. And I did so, in many ways, just in time.

The effect has been troubling. I’m far more nervous about aches and pains and changes to my body than I’ve ever been. My body has failed me in the past, but perhaps more importantly, I’ve learned not to trust my own sense of what is serious and what can be ignored. I have recalibrated, and I’m not quite sure yet if my new normal means “listening to my body” or “living with irrational anxieties in yet another area of my life”.

It sounds like you’re getting great feedback. Your body is telling you that the hard things you’ve had to do are the right ones.

We’re coming toward the end of our month, and I realized, partly my fault, we got heavy fast and never did some introductions and light stuff. So I thought I’d take this moment to pull us back a bit, reintroduce some folks to me, who may have already forgotten what I have going since the start of this project 5 months ago, and end us in a place that I hope feels like hanging onto because it’s delightful.

So here’s my run on paragraph about myself.

I’m in my mid 30s, no kids, living with my fiancée (who I’ve been with since 2010 and have been living with since 2011) and her mother. We have two dogs that are getting up there in age. I work for a tech company doing tech things for US K12 school districts after getting a master’s degree in urban education policy and working for school districts and state departments. We’ve been in Baltimore for 6.5 years now and lived in Providence for 10 years before that. I grew up on Long Island in New York. I read 30-40 science fiction/fantasy books a year (I prefer speculative fiction to SFF), play volleyball a few times a week and try to lift weights 3 times a week. I continue to struggle with being meaningfully overweight like I have been my whole life. We love to cook and eat. I am broadly interested in tax policy, urban development, and transit policy. I like to think about the world we’ve built around us how it changes our behavior and how we can build a better world, physically and politically. I’m a structures person, and I think a lot about them, whether when doing policy work or programming and data work. I tend to think of systems and structures as the geography and human behavior as water running over that terrain. I listen to a lot of podcasts. I watch a lot of cooking and educational YouTube videos. I like a great coffee and just about any Diet Coke (no, Pepsi is not ok, but I’ll suffer through it). We love to travel, having recently spent a few months in Mexico City. Elsa, my partner, was born in Mexico and is half-Mexican, half-Haitian, and trilingual. I travel a lot for work and I travel a lot for fun and I’m absolutely terrible about taking vacation.

The last few years, at least partially triggered or accelerated by the pandemic, have led to a lot of changes in my life and what I’m doing and who I feel like I am. But I have to admit, I feel like there’s a lot more coming, any moment now.

Thinking, and thinking, and thinking, and thinking,

Jason

It’s stunning outside in Baltimore today.

(Meta Note: yeah these went out of order, but I answered as they came in, and was glad to do so. So the title is correct for the month this applies to, and the publish date is correct to the date I responded)

Hi Jason!

It’s our last week of letters and I had actually written one earlier in the week after yet another untenable situation broke in the news. But it was filled with rage, laced with fear and madness and I didn’t want to end our time together like that.

So instead, at this late hour, I will tell you a brief story about a teacher I had in High School and the promise of perseverance.

This New Jersey English teacher that I had for both 10th and 12th grades was a polarizing figure amongst the student body when I was in school. You either loved her or hated her. I loved her. She expected only the best out of her students. Not HER best, but YOUR best. She didn’t care for the usual disruptive classroom shenanigans but she would easily be a co-conspirator of shenanigans when the time was right. She taught you everything about words, sentence structure, etymology and “hacks” on how to figure out what a word meant. She exposed us to literature and all the worlds contained within.

She even started a creative writing society at school and a literary publication/newspaper (both of which I participated in during my time there in the late 90s).

I knew then that she was a writer, getting short stories and poetry published but never a novel.

However, last night I attended a book launch party at a hotel just north of Baltimore. Available to the world as of yesterday, this party was for her first published novel. It’s the first in a series of, as she says, “at least five.” Published a “mere” 23 years after I graduated… likely 40+ years since she began writing…

It was a pleasure to see her again after all these years and my honor to ring in the dawn of a new era with her - the era of Ef Deal, published novelist. A lovely reminder that it’s never too late for new things to happen, never too late to break through, and never too late to do the things that you love to do, that fill you with joy and magic.

I am new to the steampunk genre and I thoroughly enjoyed her book. I can’t wait to hop into the next adventures with these characters. Set in 1840s France, it’s a quick read and a rousing good time laced with horror, mechanical imaginings, intrigue and a wee bit of romance. If it’s up your alley, I’d love to hear what you think of it when it makes your “read” pile.

Best,

~Julie

Hi Julie,

I’m glad to end on a more uplifting note. It’s made me think of one of my own English teachers, Ms. Biondo, who I had in 9th and 11th grade. It was her first and then third year of teaching. I don’t think she had quite gotten the hang of it all yet, and I know I didn’t make things easy at all. But I also remember getting just tiny glimpses into who she was, and I feel pretty strongly that as a teenager I missed a lot that I would understand today. It’s strange to think about, but it’s quite possible we would be friends as adults. One of my only regrets from giving up Facebook years ago was that it was a great way to connect with some of my old teachers.

My best teachers, the ones I gained the most from at least, were always controversial. I wonder if you have to be polarizing to be great, at least for some kids, because what each of us needs from a teacher is so different.

Steampunk is funny as a genre. Sometimes it feels like a genre, in that the mechanical is key to the mechanics. Sometimes it’s more of a setting. But I like horror and intrigue and romance and “rousing good times” so it’ll for sure go on my list, even if I am not the biggest fans of puns.

Given all the upheaval and changes and self-discovery that you’re currently in, I can’t help but to wonder what you’ll be doing in 20 years that will have been a 40 year project for you. I wonder what your book launch party will end up being and where things land.

I’ll be looking out for whatever it is.

I wonder the same for myself– being so engrossed in my current job, I sometimes fantasize about when this all ends what will I rediscover or suddenly realize has been sitting in the on deck circle all this time that I can’t wait to do? I can’t see it or feel it right now, but I hope it’s out there.

Jason

Hi Jason,

It’s April, and it’s time for me to write you a letter. I read about your experiment and immediately thought it was a great idea. But would I be able to keep up? I wasn’t sure. I signed up nevertheless and received your reply, “You got April.” At least I didn’t have to think about it for a few months. I followed your experiment with others, and it was going better than I envisioned it, and I’m glad I opted in. I was a bit apprehensive after seeing the quality of the conversations, though, as I mentioned on Micro.blog a few weeks ago.

I have always enjoyed writing. My earliest memories of journal writing were in 1988 when I was 11 years old. I remember that distinctly because I received this free journal as a gift for my annual subscription to Target, a kid’s magazine in India. It asked me to describe myself, my best strengths, weaknesses, etc.. I remember asking my mother about what she thought my best strength was because, for the life of me, I couldn’t think of any that was worth writing down in the About Me section of a journal. She suggested I write about how good I am at being focused when reading, so that’s what I did. Over the next year, I wrote a couple of lines in the lines provided for each day. Often I had more to say than the space provided, so I wrote mostly to capture the highlights of my day. It was nothing exciting and mostly about school or friends. I recall writing about some world events, too; something about a Palestine state formed, which was surprising now that I write about it since it still doesn’t exist as an independent state. So I looked it up as I wrote this and learned that it was indeed declared as a state on November 15, 1988, by the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

Anyway, back to my journal, and now that I think of it, thanks to my writing, some of my memories from my childhood are from that year. Maybe because I wrote them down, eventually, as I came to the end of the year, I ran out of space and stopped writing in a journal. I would write off and on again in a notebook, but never as consistently as I did that year. Eventually, school got busier, and if you know anything about the Indian education system, they make you write needless things until you begin to hate the act of writing itself. So I could imagine myself getting any more writing done at the end of the day. My school essays were slightly better than my peers, so they got noticed by my teachers, and I was encouraged to enter into inter- and intra-school essay competitions. Nothing can kill the joy of writing more than making it a competition. But that’s how things are in India. With a billion+ people, you must constantly compete in every facet of your life. Yes, it was as tiring as it sounds.

As usual, I have rambled on without telling you more about my current life. I live in Austin with my wife and almost-12-year-old son. I work at the University of Texas at Austin and have worked here for the last ten years and am involved in academic research, although from the perspective of research operations. I’m not an administrative bureaucrat or one of those umpteen Vice Presidents of , but I have to deal with them daily so that the professors I work with don’t have to. If you ask me, I’m getting the best of both worlds, and I can enjoy my weekends without the fear of perishing because I have not published.

I’ll stop now lest you think I’m writing a month’s worth of letters on the first day. I look forward to hearing from you.

Cheers,
Pratik

Hi Pratik,

Recently I remarked on how I’ve written a lot less in DayOne since coming home to Baltimore from about 2.5 months spent in Mexico this winter. Even though it’s only been a little bit since I’ve been home, I’ve been having a similar sense that by not writing as often lately, I am forming less distinct memories. Of course, I am comparing a time of relative normalcy to a time that was quite distinct (living in Mexico City), but I absolutely believe that writing about our experiences solidify them. Much like we organize our thoughts and what we’ve learned in our sleep, I think writing about our experiences helps us to re-experience them as well as add a layer of metacognition that serves to solidify them.

I’ve worked in education in some form most of my professional life. I transitioned right from my undergraduate studies to a degree in urban education policy, and then worked at a state department of education, a large urban school district, a university research center, and for the last 9 years at a technology company that exclusively works with K-12 schools. Given your current role at a university, your almost-12-year-old, and experiences in India, I’m guessing you have a lot to say about how these systems do or don’t work.

I’ve been having a bit of a crisis of confidence around education lately. The political environment has been… less than encouraging. I’ve generally fallen on the wonkish-side that might snidely remark that one of the challenges with education is everyone has an opinion based on their own experiences with it. I prefer data, and so I’ve spent very little time investing in understanding my own educational experiences with an adult eye. I think this is a lot easier when you’re child-free and not re-experiencing education through that lens. But lately, I think in part because of the chaos of the politics around schooling and my own concern about the health of our K-12 system in the US, I’ve found myself drawn to re-examination what was so crucial about school, at each level and time, for me.

It’s not like I feel like I had the ideal educational experience or trajectory– far from it– but I want to understand those experiences and moments that were formative for me. How do we find, capture, and encourage what matters. In some ways, that’s been an increasing part of this project– what matters to me and the person I’m talking to right now? How can these letters be a space to think about at least a little bit about what matters this week?

Writing in your journal mattered, but those essay competitions didn’t. Or maybe they did, but in a completely different way. Hopefully writing these letters will matter, at least for a little bit for you in April the way they have for me this year.

Jason

My grandmother lived about a five minute drive from one of the better multiplex theaters in Nassau County. Whenever I stayed there, we went to the movies. It was our routine. I loved going to the movies.

Later, a much smaller theater opened up walking distance from my house, just in time for me to be old enough to head out on my own in the evenings. It wasn’t a great spot, and I still saw most movies elsewhere, but it was incredible to be able to walk a mile and see a movie.

One of the few treats in college was walking down College Hill to the mall, then head all the way up 6 floors to get to a huge movie theater at Providence Place. I had friends who liked the same movies I did, and I formed more memories there. Like that time we went to see Shoot ‘Em Up, without me knowing a thing about it, constantly looking over to my friends with a huge smile. Or that time I went to see the new Star Trek film with Fiona and found out it was one of the only movies she’d ever seen, that movies were just not a thing in her life.

Elsa’s mom likes the movies, and so do we. So we went a lot, especially when we first moved to Baltimore. Her dad would buy us stacks of tickets to AMC through fundraisers at Elsa’s younger brother’s school. Movies were “free”, or at least less expensive, and a good time.

But I think we might be done with the movies.

We’ve long had a “nice” home theater. The first thing Elsa insisted we upgrade when she moved in was my old 32" LCD to a TV that would “fit” the space between the bookshelves (at the time, a 50" tv). Now, we are fortunate enough to have a 65" OLED TV. I’ve always cared about sound, slowly upgrading to a quality setup with great speakers (Paradigm Monitor 7s in the front, with a Bowers and Wilkinson center channel, because the Paradigm sounded terrible to my ears, and two Paradigm Titans in the back, all bought second hand over time, with a nice SVS sub). Our home theater has been great for years.

Of course we didn’t go to the movies for a few years because of COVID-19, and we’ve gone back a few times post-vaccination. But this weekend, we didn’t go to the movies. We didn’t last weekend either. John Wick 4 is out, a movie I definitely want to see. The new Dungeons and Dragon movie is out too, and that’s also something that, because of good reviews, I’d normally want to see in a movie theater. Lights out, world turned off, and popcorn by the bucket, full attention on silly fun with big picture and big sound.

I just didn’t think to go. I don’t super feel like going. What would have almost been a default behavior before just, isn’t. The “event” movies I need to see are fewer and fewer. Most theaters have worse projection and sound than I have at home. With the habit broken, the magic has been too. I’ll see the second part of Dune in theaters. Star Wars will one day get me back in my seat again too. But not much else pulls me toward the movies today. Maybe I’m just done.

A new theater is opening up soon, walking distance from my house. Maybe I’ll take a walk to the movies. It’s a little sad to think that maybe, not.

I play so much volleyball I’ve gotten on three separate lists about the same announcement to venue changes in Baltimore.

The level of NIMBYism in Baltimore is almost incredible, until you remember the history of these streetcar suburbs that ensured it was illegal for Baltimore City to annex them.

Meta note: I really didn’t think through this post naming schema to support these split weeks. Big thank you to Jeremy for being my second participant in this project.

Dear Jason,

Yes, it’s definitely hard to do anything outside during winter. To be fair, though, winter here in the southern half of the state isn’t all that bad. Two or three big snows per winter, most days around forty degrees. (I recall winter being more severe in my childhood but those kinds of memories aren’t always reliable.) The thing that really keeps me inside is the lack of light. My job has the traditional 8-5 working hours so by the time I’m done with work, I’m tired and it’s dark and I have a hard time doing anything except sitting on the couch.

As for the garden, this will actually be the first year we will attempt to grow any significant amount of food. The past few years have been focused on native plants and plants that attract pollinators. Orange butterfly weed is, of course, the star of the show; it’s a favorite among people here who grow native pollinator plants. My favorite, though, is hairy woodmint (blephilia hirsuta). It’s not the prettiest plant—when it blooms the flowers are tiny. The flowers, though, grow in a pagoda-shaped cluster, the leaves are beautifully minty, and the bees just love them.

It’s not often that I talk to someone who knows what GASB is! It’s like finding someone who understands your secret language. There is a lot of crossover between IT and accounting now, isn’t there? Especially when you get either to a certain scale (and can’t use QuickBooks) or in a specialized field. I work at a university foundation so our organization hasn’t been able to use much off-the-shelf software. For example, we’re (yet again) building our own endowment management software because none of the readily available software does what we need—and we don’t want to manage a large endowment on spreadsheets!

In fact, this new accounting standard implementation (which is a separate issue from building a new endowment management system) is going to require us to acquire some lease management software for the future. So many systems to maintain. It feels like it never ends.

I’m glad you’re enjoying volleyball so much! I imagine it would be good for a person in a variety of ways. Like most people, the only time I ever see volleyball is during the Olympics. I can see how its systems could be described as elegant like dancing. Even to someone who knows very little about the game, the coordination is clearly visible.

And it’s impressive how much variety your city’s rec league has. I live in a small town and we have nothing remotely like that. Your leagues are clearly an advantage of urban density.

Sincerely,
Jeremy

Jeremy,

I think we may have different definitions of “all that bad”– I don’t want to spend much time outside in forty degrees. We do agree on lack of light. My time in Mexico City this winter was not marked mostly by far milder temperatures, but instead was notable because of the far later sunset moving southward.

I love natural gardens. I really hope we can move away from rows and rows of Kentucky bluegrass. I think it’s kind of incredible how some mix of capitalism, conformity, and culture has taught us that the natural and native is ugly meant to be tamed at best and eradicated at worst. The project you’re undertaking reminds me of this excellent recent win in Maryland for native lawns.

I’m surprised there’s no market for purpose-built endowment software. The market, by definition, has resources, and it’s the kind of problem software can be great at. You’re giving me business ideas. Working with financial accounting is quite complicated for software engineering though. The standards and practices and (somewhat) common data structures from a distance can lull the engineering mind to believing that you can simply follow basic standards and principles and arrive at a universal solution. In reality, accounting data has fractal complexity, with each organization being able to adopt and adapt from one common shape into something completely unique. Every person I work with has found a different way to reflect their unique organizational structure, needs, and practices. It’s almost shocking how much customization and flexibility is required, and anyone who digs in can easily see why ERPs are huge, slowly changing, and incredibly costly to change involving heavy customization and training.

I am a true ambivert– I treasure and require solitude. I am very comfortable alone; I also love being alone in public. I like to sit at a bar reading a book. I like sitting in a coffeeshop to get my work done. And I do get a lot of energy from interacting with the right kind of crowd and love taking a stage to talk about something I’m passionate about. I say all this to emphasize what is so great about having a recreational league structure in Baltimore and why cities are so important to me. The best part about returning to playing a sport is that while I’m playing, I can truly shut my brain off to everything else. It’s impossible to stress about work or family or anything– there’s just what’s happening in the now. I am fully engaged in the moment, and in some ways, largely in my own head. And yet, what’s great about recreational sports and teams is I’m also with people building relationships. I get social interactions and familiarity and camaraderie from working together toward a goal free from obligation and true stress. I think it’s incredibly healthy for anybody, but especially for my particular blend of social wants and needs. It’s a form of community, which I feel is harder and harder to locate these days.

I’m looking forward to seeing spring garden pictures this year.

Jason

Dear Jason,

Your description of Tulum was very interesting. It’s the first I’ve heard of it. And, yes, I can see what you mean by it being a contradiction. I like the idea of lifting people out of poverty; at the same time, it sounds like the usual corporate greenwashing.

I can imagine this sort of thing being the future of what you might call “conscious travel.” Where Walt Disney built a theme park in a swamp and then later brought in people from around the world to set up a pale imitation of their cultures at Epcot, developers will appeal to modern sensibilities by trying to pay lip service to local cultures and environmental sustainability in order to draw in the “conscious travelers.” Yet, as you say, it’s the same unsustainable model.

I completely agree with you that the lifestyle we have come to expect will destroy the relationship we have with a place. And I also suspect that climate change is something like the planet’s immune response to our lifestyle. At the same time, I would say that the problem is the modern lifestyle, not humans themselves. After all, humans evolved alongside the rest of life on earth; this is our home every bit as much as it is for any other creature. The problem is the cluster of ideas and practices that have been developing in Europe and America for the last few hundred years. That is where you’ll find the true contradiction that is echoed in Tulum: economic prosperity that destroys the material basis of life.

And here I sit typing these words on an iPad. I also embody the contradiction! To quote the Apostle Paul, “O wretched man that I am; who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”

But I do not think we should resign ourselves to continuing in the same way while attempting to mitigate the destruction our lifestyles have caused. I do not think human flourishing requires the destruction. Depending, of course, on what you mean by flourishing. Most pre-modern human societies lived in far less destructive ways than we do. Of course, their lives were much harder—which is why I don’t advocate for living in exactly the same way as our predecessors did. There has to be some way of third way of renouncing the poisonous cluster of ideas and practices that have landed us here while also not rolling back the clock according to some simplistic primitivism. Something new. Some way of living in relationship with the non-human world.

One of the core ideas we must renounce is control over the world. That idea has led to our present situation of world-altering power lying in the hands of a relatively few people. There is simply too much power up for grabs (and when I say “up for grabs” I mean among the elite—we will never gain that power) and those incredibly high stakes has led to the total obsession over politics. Every election season we are told by politicians that it is the most important of our lifetimes—and there is a sense in which that is true! That much power should not be available because it appears that we are not suited to it. It’s not a matter of finally getting the right person in control. Like Gandalf when offered the ring, we must recognize that, however much we hope we would use such power for good, that level of power must be renounced.

This is why I have increasingly moved toward a more anarchist politics. I have lost faith in the ability of humans (particularly a handful of wealthy humans!) to solve global problems on a global scale. And I will certainly grant you that in the present circumstances I do not really trust local people to make good decisions either. There are too many warped incentives. These warped incentives, however, are the result of our poisonous system. Free people from that, give them local knowledge, and maybe love and care can flourish, thus breaking the tyranny of small decisions.

I will admit that my politics are utopian. I also believe that utopian politics can be actually useful when the system we were told represented the end of history is crumbling around us and all “realistic” options seem to be more of the same.

As for strengthening relationships with the nonhuman world, I think hiking is an excellent way to start! It’s where I started. My one piece of hiking advice is to refuse to see it as exercise. Shut off trackers and timers. And whether you are hiking or simply taking a daily walk, find places that appeal to you, where you can stop and rest and listen and observe. Learn to identify trees and flowers. Getting the identification right is actually secondary; the real goal is careful attention to the plants.

Attention is key. In order to integrate nonhuman beings into our world, we must stop seeing them as set decorations in the human drama. Simone Weil called attention “the rarest and purest form of generosity.” The beginning of any reciprocal relationship with the nonhuman world begins with generous attention.

Sincerely,

Jeremy

Hi Jeremy,

Well, I’m back at ~40,000 feet so it seemed like a great time to write this letter. Busy week again, this time hopping over to LA for a conference for a day and a half before heading back home to Baltimore.

There has to be some way of third way of renouncing the poisonous cluster of ideas and practices that have landed us here while also not rolling back the clock according to some simplistic primitivism. Something new. Some way of living in relationship with the non-human world.

I think where I am at in my own evolution is believing precisely in this third way. But in my mind, this third way is already here. It’s not primitive, but it is a return, certainly compared to how American cities were developed. I’d like to see us abandon the false pastoral sheen of the suburbs and sprawling human habitation and move into human-scaled urban cities. I think to return to nature we have to separate from it. Less land use that’s far more efficient. We need to create places for human flourishing and interaction. I think we’ve spent so much time separating from each other physically so that we can collide with nature all over. Instead, I think we need to collide with each other a lot more and nature a lot less.

Maybe this where my politics are utopian as well, but from a different direction.

I think what’s interesting about your descriptions of how to interact with nature and how it informs your “treehugger” identity is that each time I read it, I think about how it can and should apply to our human relationships as well. Take generous attention, a phase I love and will now forever cherish. How often do we practice generous attention with each other? These letters are, in some ways, about generous attention.

Let’s turn to a different topic. It’s still kind of the start of the year. And while I haven’t thought of a theme or anything yet, I have been thinking about what I’m looking forward to and what I’m hoping for.

At work, my team has been growing and we’re pursuing some work that I’ve been looking forward to for years that I think has the potential to make a step change in our business. It’s difficult and sometimes slow going, but it almost feels like a senior thesis in that it combines everything we’ve learned and worked towards for a decade.

At home, I’m looking forward to continuing to regularly play volleyball, which I started to do again about a year ago now after a 17 year hiatus. I’m also hoping to finish off some last home projects, including a deep clean out of my office and our pantry. And of course, I’m looking forward to this project, Letters, which has now filled up for the year.

Until next week (which is already almost upon us), Jason

CDMX

We spent a little over two months in Mexico City this winter. Here’s what I learned:

Unsurprisingly, environment matters. Being far further south, sundown is much later in the winter than it is in Baltimore. Pretty much skipping that part of the year where I’m working until full dark even when I’m not working late was great. Sunlight really does impact my mood and happiness.

The weather is real hard to complain about– the coldest it got at night was in the mid 40s, and most days we were in the mid 70s by afternoon. It’s great to live somewhere where the difference between outside and inside blurs. This is helped by the total lack of nasty insects.

My lack of Spanish made my world smaller and a little more isolated. Over time my comfort improved, but being totally unable to engage in small talk or effectively overhear conversations was a real challenge for an extended stay.

Living somewhere that is completely walkable with a high density of restaurants and cafes and parks is an absolute joy. Mexico City is far more car oriented than most of my favorite cities, but density and great weather combine for magic if you’re in the right neighborhoods. I adored never once thinking I need a car, though inexpensive Ubers were a help for some kinds of travel that didn’t quite align with public transit.

Letters

We’re into month 2 of Letters, and I’m already pleased with this project. I want to work on a dedicated page to this project– that’s something I’ll try and get done in February or March I hope. I’m booked through September, so there are still three slots left if you want to participate.

A Break from Movement

I focused on my rebuilding my relationship with my body for a solid year, focusing on eating well and moving often. My appendectomy put stop to that in October. We got to Mexico essentially as I was fully cleared for physical activity again. Despite that, I decided not to work out or watch my food in Mexico. I needed more time for healing. I had knee, wrist, and finger pain (really) from playing so much volleyball with little break. After my surgery, a lot of my body was recovering, and I decided that it was time to give my whole body a little bit of time. Ideally, I would have been back at it in January, but it’s hard to restart routine, especially when you’re rebuilding it in a new place.

So I cut myself some slack, and I’ll get back to it when we return to Baltimore in mid-February. I’m looking forward to building back the muscles I’ve allowed to atrophy with some fresh energy. Any other time I’ve “fallen off the wagon”, it’s been hard to get back going again. For the first time, I have no concerns about my ability to rebuild my habits. I finally have achieved a lifestyle change that feels permanent and a part of my identity. I have no question of my success, and no concerns about the progress that was lost. I’ll start again, enjoy it again, and pay attention to when it’s too much.

Reading

January has historically been the month I read the most. This month I finished no books. In another sign of growth and changes, I don’t seem to find this concerning at all. I will read again soon, when it feels like the thing I want to do, for as much as I want to do it.

Sharing More

I never did rewrite my resume like I planned last year. I want to do more to write about things I know this year instead of things I feel. Part of working on my own self-image includes getting over the part of my that places my professional knowledge under the category as uninteresting because it’s unimpressive and not novel. Of course, that’s true of literally everything I write in public, yet it doesn’t stop me when it’s not about work.

No Theme

I haven’t gotten there this year. Maybe something will come to me soon, but I’m not forcing it. I think being away from home and far off routine has kept me in a kind of stasis that makes it hard for me to decide what I want this year to be all about. It’d be worse to push it than to not have something in mind. Maybe it will take facing my first clear choice to reveal what I’m focusing on.

Both of these bills seem like good steps forward for housing in Baltimore. I have quibbles, of course, but nothing worth holding up moving forward.

Thinking about opening a pozoleria y carnitas restaurant in Baltimore, combining my mother-in-law’s best recipe with mine. Both can be made (mostly) in large prep batches…

Last year’s theme was fun. I didn’t write a ton about it. My “annoucement” post simply said,

I’ve decided to focus on Fun in 2022. I just haven’t had enough of that these last few years.

I didn’t quite know what I would seek out for fun, but it turns out, it took me just 8 days.

I signed up for a volleyball league, and by May I escalated from one night a week to 3-4 nigths a week. By September, I was joining more intermediate play. Returning to volleyball after 17 years was a tremendous amount of fun. And although due to surgery and travel I haven’t played since early October, it’s one of the things I’m most looking forward to when we return to Baltimore in February.

In the summer of 2021, we went to Mexico and the most fun I had was our day of biking, hiking, and swimming through the jungle and in caves. In fact, all of the highlights of the last few years for me were days with strenuous physical activity. It’s not the only thing that brings me joy, but these days are sharper and clearer in my memory than any other. They’re sharper than the other good times, and they’re sharper than the other bad times. I have to keep reminding myself of this, because my base motivation is still to remain stationary. It’s hard for me to motivate myself to get up early on the weekend and go for hike. I never regret when I do.

Volleyball was great because I had to schedule it and put it on my calendar. I built a small community of friends and people I wanted to see. I hoped they were happy on the days I could make it. And because signing up was a promise of a full court, or at least enough people to play, there was just enough guilt to mean that signing up meant going. Scheduling my physical activity with limited slots and friends who are relying on me seems ot lower the activation energy just enough to make it happen. I knew this about myself– I still go to a gym that is entirely based on small group training, and my consistency there is entirely due to the same factors that lead me to showing up for volleyball. It’s scheduled, choosing a session means locking someone else out, and there’s a community there I look forward to spending time with.

Volleyball wasn’t the only source of fun. I took a desperately needed trip to Puebla and Mexico City in early March. Personally and professionally, 2021 was a rough year. And although 2022 was a year of full of healing, growth, and fun, 2021 was not quite done with me those first two months. I’m glad we had that trip planned, but I’m also proud that I used that trip to restore myself. I set solid boundaries with work before, during, and upon my return. And I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that I came home a healthier person, more capable of moving forward than I had been in a long time.

That trip rolled into a fun weekend in Chicago in May. It was the perfect bite-sized vacation that just wasn’t possible during the peaks of COVID. It felt a lot like our trip to New Orleans in December 2019– fast, fun, restorative, and mostly, normal. It was around this time that we started to take more seriously an idea that we had while in Mexico– maybe we should spend a good chunk of winter in Mexico City.

Baltimore is dark and cold in the winter. Mexico City stays mild (50s at night, 70s during the day) pretty much year round. Because it’s further south, there’s significantly more sunlight during winter. Because both Elsa and I get time off from work for the holidays and work remotely, good wifi is pretty much all we need. Looking back, I never had work trips in December and January.

Although I had tons of anxieties about booking a long time away from home, I said yes in the interest of fun. Today, I’m writing from Mexico City, about halfway through our stay. I’m glad I said yes, and I’m glad to have had fun guide me.

All of my concerns and anxieties stemmed from an idea of what the best use of our time and money was. I am a person who has often let worry, planning, optimizing, and a host of other anxieties paralyze me into inaction. I want to do these things, but because I perceive these opportunities as rare and limited, I allow myself to be frozen, or I allow the expectations swamp any possible reality, zapping the fun from existence.

In order to have fun, I have to find ways of letting go of these anxieties and just do.

This extended to food. I have been generally eating healthier– my body is keeping score and it’s clear this year was a strong year for my healthy. At the same time, I had some of the best food of my life this year. I’m doing a better job of allowing myself to make food something I can celebrate. I make better choices for the every day mundane meals and find ways to make that still filled with joy. I know how to cook healthy food I love. I know how to get food quickly that’s still healthy when convenience is more important. But I’ve also sought out great food, sometimes expensive, often not, and let myself enjoy great meals. I’ve eaten healthier and better in every way.

But having fun wasn’t just about saying yes, it was also about boundaries and saying no. It was about doing a better job of turning off when I needed emergency surgery and not working and trusting my team. It was about going to Cuba without connectivity and being ok. It was about taking those trips and being present where I was. It was about separating the personal and professional relationships I had, even with the same person, so that each can be more healthy. It was about letting some things take longer at work so that other parts of me had time to thrive. It was about being more aggressive about putting books down I was not enjoying. Stopping things I thought would be fun but weren’t. Making easy commitments when they felt right and avoiding commitments that didn’t.

Was 2022 the most fun I’ve ever had? No. But it was a successful return to fun, or at least a year where I built better tools to find fun and to nurture the things that are fun.

Elsa and I have decided the food we miss most from Baltimore is the food we make ourselves. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Six years in Baltimore and I still feel weird getting on Amtrak in the Boston direction when heading to my parents for the holidays.

Also, still furious to see a MARC double-decker, diesel locomotive.

A not-at-all surprising exit post from a Baltimore City DOT employee. All of these woes are things I experienced working in government (in a different city and state) and are commonplace.

Eight years ago today, 6 months into my Allovue journey, I came down to Baltimore for a party in our small office above a bar. The party started at 6, and Ted and I still hovered over a laptop at 6:15pm. We excitedly called Jess over to show her– we just fully loaded our first set of general ledger accounts and transactions into Balance. It was, I hope, her favorite birthday present that year.

I’d be lying if I said that I knew that day was a key milestone in a life-defining adventure and partnership. It just seemed like a cool problem we solved.

Elsa and I saw “Ain’t No Mo’” at the Woolly Mammoth Theater in DC a few weeks back and thought it was fantastic. Now it’s come to Center Stage in Baltimore– definitely go check it out.

I need to put together a presentation and two pieces of documentation tomorrow. Unfortunately, I will not be on an airplane or train, which is where I normally do that kind of work. Where should I hang out in Baltimore to get shit done?

The last six months have been better than the six months before that.

I said this year was going to be about fun. I didn’t really know what that meant. I just knew that 2021, especially from about June on, was a real slog, and a times, quite dark.

If I had to guess what “fun” meant, I don’t think I would have said, “Your once a week volleyball league will turn into a 3-4 time a week thing.” If I’m in Baltimore, just about every Monday through Thursday, I’m playing volleyball. These days it’s mostly indoor pickup, where folks just show up and self-organize. I’ve learned I really don’t like playing in the sand. I get home tired. My body often hurts. But it’s the most fun I’ve had in years.

I’ve even made some friends, which is pretty great, because my best friend moved away this summer.

I’ve been listening a fair amount to three new albums by Cave In, Porcupine Tree, and Dashboard Confessional, which feels would make as much sense in 2002 as 2022.

Somehow, my household has continued to be COVID-free, and with at least seven trips between now and the end of the year, I am anxious for a fresh Omicron-specific booster.

The dogs are great.

I’m thinking about adding an About page of sorts to the blog. Possibly replacing “Uses” or making Uses a section on that page.

Baltimore’s taco game just went up a level.