This is looking much better than yesterday. Trying Elixirs again.

This old photo came up and I suddenly thought, “If I crop this and make it black and white I bet it’ll look cool.” Sure enough, I think it does..

After my allergy shots this morning, I took a long walk home…ish. I decided to stop down in the Wyman Park Dell, which was one of Gracie’s favorite spots in the world. I kind of regret not taking her here on her last day.

This disgusting boy is going to get cleaned up tomorrow.

Ocean City, MD

I didn’t feel like pulling out my receiver to double check, but realized I could just scroll through the labeled inputs. Confirmed that’s one thing I don’t have to buy.

Well. Here’s something that unexpectedly hit hard this afternoon.

Gracie is gone. Our love for her was deeper than deep. But she couldn’t live on our love alone, or she would have lived until at least 120.

If all days looked like this.

The last time I took extended “relax” time for myself was almost a year ago in Portland, OR for a weekend. Where should I recharge next?

A special time between light and dark

Quick breakfast while waiting for my haircut.

A couple of days ago marked ten years since I met Jess at SXSWEdu.

She wrote this reflection on LinkedIn. My own reflections are below that.

10 years ago today I tapped Jason Becker on the shoulder at a conference between taco breaks and the rest, as they say, is history.

Casual observers think Jason and I agree on everything. This has become a running inside joke because the truth is that we have frequent, vehement disagreements in the same direction. We argue intensely with-and-not-against each other about problems and solutions. If we’re accused of sharing a brain, we must each have complementary halves because we often approach problems from polar opposite perspectives– but we know two heads (and at least one whole brain, on a good day) are better than one. And because we trust that the other has thought deeply about their perspective, we work hard to understand each other’s position. Together, we end up with a more complete understanding of a problem and get aligned on a path forward.

For two people who love numbers, we never keep score; we’re playing an infinite game.

If you love your work, I hope you’re lucky enough to find someone (not Jason, sorry, find your own co-conspirator) who puts up a good fight; this kind of creative tension is how good ideas become great and bad ideas end up in their rightful place in the discard pile.

Jason, thank you for being my best sparring partner and the one who showed me the value of a great editor and co-creator. You’re the five to my three. I’m glad I tricked you into working for Allovue all those years ago.

🥂 Cheers to making things together, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

(These are the only two occasions Jason has worn a tie in the past 10 years– April 2014 and December 2023. Yes, Jason’s first official day of work ended up in a cannabis grow facility. We might make a guest appearance in a documentary about it. It’s been a JOURNEY, ok?)

My thoughts:

Spending ten years pursuing the same vision at the same company takes passion, determination, and belief. I have only been able to have all three because something more precious came along with it– partnership and friendship that always challenges me and that refuses to accept the bar I set for myself.

The first time Jess Gartner and I met, we spoke for about five minutes. I remember telling Elsa I just met someone with a great idea. And this may be apocryphal, but I remember also telling Elsa it was a great example of why I was never an entrepreneur myself. For all my love of strategy and problem solving, I never seemed to think of an idea that was worth doing. I know for sure I thought, “She found something worth doing.”

The second time Jess and I met, she flew to Providence to have coffee with me. In a classic Jess Gartner move, she claimed she had to “be there anyway” (bullshit). She told me that day that she saw “C-level potential in me” before I knew what that meant.

So much of my own success of the last ten years comes from Jess seeing things in me I didn’t know were options. And then she makes them happen before I even catch on to her plans. I like to think I do a bit of the same when it comes to ensuring our company and product deliver on her, and now our, vision.

Thank you.

Not a bad view to wake up to.

Weekend getaway with the pups and Elsa.

Yeah that was a pretty good breakfast.

it’s really hard to find good, new stuff.

It really is and it’s frankly amazing that we’re still facing this issue. It’s not rare for me to mindlessly browse the web not knowing which sites I should actually visit.

I don’t do social media and outside of those platforms there really aren’t many places useful to discover new content. I think that’s one of the unfortunate consequences of people moving on social platforms: old-school forums died, for the most part.

And forums were neat! If you had an interest in something specific chances are there was a forum for you out there. And since forums weren’t stupidly huge over time you could become friends with a bunch of regulars and it was such a cool experience.

That’s something I personally miss and I don’t think social media can really recreate that. And it’s one of the best aspects of small communities. I love small online communities, especially weird and niche ones.

I wrote about the topic a few times before and I suspect I’ll touch that topic again in the future because the way is changing and I think people will slowly move back to more distributed spaces. We’re seeing a resurgence of personal blogs and maybe forums are gonna be the next type of sites to come back online.

A completely unrelated question but is there a place in your life for exploration? I’m not talking about intellectual exploration but rather physical one: going to new places, walking random paths. I’m asking you because I was doing my morning walk with the dog earlier today and decided to go up on a path I often see while driving, and after a short hike on a snowy path I stumbled on this tiny cavern, and on the other side of it there was this gorgeous view of the mountains and everything was lit by the morning sunrise.

Not sure if you do pictures on your blog but I’m going to attach one I took from that spot.

And it got me thinking about how many things we’re missing simply because we don’t explore more often. I lived here for almost a decade not knowing about that wonderful place and who knows how many others are out there.

This is something that also happens when I click links at random, now really knowing where I’m going to end up. That’s one of the reasons why the indie web is fun. You start clicking and you don’t really know where you’ll land.

Hi Manu,

Forums were neat. I can’t believe how much community they could build. I still speak nearly daily to someone I first “met” on forums when I was about 15. He lives half or more a world away right now. We’ve never met in person. In various ways, our careers and interests have continued to follow similar paths. In some ways, he’s my original “letters” pen pal. It’s strange to have known someone that well for nearly half my life and having never met. But I think that friendship is a testament to the fact that forums do create community and connections that are meaningful.

I agree that today’s social media doesn’t really recreate that magic. The closest thing was early Twitter. I first joined Twitter at a conference in 2010. It was using a hashtag at this multi-track conference and being able to follow the conversation in other rooms (and have a conversation with folks at the same talk) that felt electric. In a way, those hashtags for real world events were like pop-up forums. I don’t know that I regret being on Twitter for so long, but it’s pretty wild how it took using Twitter as an augmentation to a real world event to make me “get it” and what Twitter usage became by the end.

I’ve also written about community at least a few times. It’s really why I participate in the web at all.

I personally love exploring. What I like to do whenever I travel is just move through a city on foot. We do “urban hiking” where we purposely choose two points pretty far from each other on the map for lunch and dinner and spend our day in the spaces in between, learning what it feels like to inhabit a place. I honestly wish we did more exploring and more “nature” hiking, which is something we’ve picked up and down depending on the year and our overall energy level. I think it was Annie, who I wrote letters with earlier in the project, who used to post a photo of her hike every weekend referring to it as “church”. That’s how I feel when I get to go outside for long periods and really shut things off. Lately, this is has been really hard to find time for. I’ve been pretty busy preparing for some big changes in my work life which has subsumed all the energy I have.

A little more exploration would be a nice thing for 2024. I’m going to think about how I can make that happen.

Sorry for the late letter— as I mentioned earlier this week, on Monday we announced that Allovue— the start up I’ve worked at for almost a decade— was acquired by a large public K-12 software company, PowerSchool. In some ways, this is going to change a lot. In other ways, nothing at all will change. But this week, especially, was a hectic one with a lot of emotions to process and people to support as my team and I transition.

Hoping we can still slip one more of these in.

Jason

Used my sunglassess as a UV filter for this photo.

Politics at work mean choosing to rip off someone else’s Apple content idea to make a point instead of choosing to highlight people, events, or places of note that are worthy of additional attention.

Think about what Basecamp could have done. They could have included national holidays and religious holidays from around the world. They could have added birthdates of Nobel Prize winners. They could have added events in 37 Signals/Basecamp history. Instead, they ripped off Stephen Hackett.

It took quite a while for the sun to break through the clouds, but eventually we had a hell of a view in Philly.

Getting a little frisky.

Dinner at Cry Baby Pasta

Hello Jason,

I’m near the top of Mount Rigi as I reply. I’m now on my Christmas holidays and managed to carve out some time to go on a solo mountain holiday (thanks to my wife for allowing that). Unfortunately, the weather is not good. And I was the only person making it to the top (I’ve attached two images from the top - you may publish them with the letter). But I’m not on the mountain to sit outside anyway :-). I hoped to relax, reflect on the year, and write a bit – sometimes, it works better outside of home. But so far, I have not yet written much. Now I sit in the small restaurant beside the railway station on the mountain.

The US being a lot more in the south compared to Europe is also something I forget. But geography is not really a strong suit of mine :-D. I just wondered what the most northerly destination I visited so far. And it must have been Cologne (in Germany). I’ve only been to the US once (for a WWDC), so I’ve seen mostly the conference center and only a little of the country. I’ve enjoyed SF and want to get back at some point. However, there are so many places to go, and I’m unsure when I will manage it. We also have Japan on our list of destinations. We planned to go in the Spring before the pandemic. That did not happen for obvious reasons.

I have the feeling that many companies have downsized their offices now. There is just no need for offices anymore – at least in the computer sciences jobs. And I’m also with you that the company needs to live a remote-first culture for it to work. Luckily, we are small at the moment, and I hope that I can influence the culture in such a way as we grow.

How was moving 375 miles? If I tried that, I would land in a different country, so it would be a significant change (and depending on the direction I move, I would need to learn a new language as well ;-)).

I’m quite the opposite regarding habits; I tend to have compulsive behavior when I’m not careful. Luckily, I now know and understand some of the signs that trigger this so that I can work against it.

It is interesting with the swimming, and I was exhausted at the beginning with the 500m than I’m now with the 1000m. It is a question of the pacing, and I have now found the sweet spot where I can swim it at a usable tempo but also not go quite to my limit. And having done it now for most of the year also helps :-). I’ve lost track of how many books I have read this year. Only a few, I think (compared to other years). I planned on reading three books per month, but I was below that. It was more like two books per month. One of the reasons was that I switched to reading more nonfiction, which takes more time. And then taking notes and thinking about what you learn makes for a slower read. On the upside, it makes the reading more conscious and intentional. It feels less like fast food.

Another big goal was changing my workplace and starting the swimming habit. I don’t know what I want to do next year. One big topic is to be more open about others and be less in my bubble.

I wrote the text above yesterday. The weather is much better today, and I’m back at the top of the mountain. I am sitting in the same restaurant and enjoying my time.

cheers Chris

Hi Chris,

Things have been pretty hectic so it took me a few days to get back to you. While I’m not yet off from work for the holiday, I do already have a rotating cast of family staying with us. Unfortunately, I also had the return of some leaking in the house from severe wind and rain. I’m currently without an office, and soon our dining room will get torn apart as well. Things seem to be moving faster with both mitigation and repair than last time, but it’s a big unexpected expense and a big unexpected mess during a time where it’d be nice for things to slow down and go smoothly.

I want to say that the solo mountain holiday is exactly what this calls for, but seeing those pictures just makes me feel cold.

Moving was interesting. This is the third place I’ve spent a substantial amount of time living. My parents still live in the house they bought before I was born, but I went about 200 miles away for college and stuck around for some time afterwards before this move. It definitely broke a lot of my social groups and connections. I felt, for some time, less connected to where I lived than I ever had before. In some ways that was nice– you can burn out on places like you can with jobs, at least as far as I can tell. I loved where I was living, but I was “burned out” on it, in some ways. I think it’s taken the full seven or so years I’ve been here for it to start to feel like home. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I have a little bit of wanderlust again, but I doubt I’ll be going somewhere else soon.

I think there is something to think about in “finding your pace” in a sense. You found yourself at a pace that you can swim, and a pace that you can read. A lot of the times we set goals rather than set a pace.

I hope that these letters are a small start to getting out of your bubble! I also don’t quite know what’s the goal for next year, but I’m glad that this year I’m feeling introspective and thinking about it. Last year, I really struggled to think about what I wanted and I think that led to a year that was a bit less grounded and focused than I would have liked.

Being “evicted” from my damaged office is leaving me unmoored this week. But hopefully I’ll have something to grab onto in January.

Jason

Every episode of The Gilded Age. Literally the only show on any streaming service on the Apple TV.

Anyway, hi. I went to Paris for 4 nights because we got a great deal on tickets and I’ve never been. I will return.