I remember the days of smaller internet¹.

I remember getting kicked off of the computer because Mom wanted to call Grandma. I remember signing up for a Minnesota Vikings Yahoo! group, and getting emails for every post when people wanted to talk about the team (and I played fantasy football with a lot of them until ‘22). I remember when Facebook was for people with .edu emails only. I remember having pen pals via email. I remember using Dreamweaver to make websites, way back when it was owned by Macromedia.

Then Facebook happened. And Instagram. And Twitter. We wanted so badly to connect with everyone. And for a brief time, it was glorious. It was pure. I got a couple jobs, a ton of free burritos, some lifelong internet friends, and a life partner out of Twitter. It was good. It was fun.

And then, suddenly, it wasn’t.

It’s really interesting to sit back and look over the landscape of what once was, and what it is today. Things go in cycles², and I feel like that’s starting to happen once again with the internet.

I mentioned the other day how I was trying to make some changes to my Now page. The reason why is because I stumbled across a cool website called, appropriately, NowNowNow. It’s a site full of individuals who contribute links to their own blogs about what’s going on in their life, what they’re doing, what they’re thinking, etc. Exactly like what the old internet used to feel like, in a way.

The most recent episode of Clockwise actually got me thinking about this too; when talking about early online experiences and nostalgia, they were talking about usenets and webrings, ways of people and websites staying connected with one another. If you managed to jump in anywhere within the group, you could easily connect with any of the other people therein and learn more about them and what they were about.

The early days of Twitter were like that too. The afore-mentioned burritos happened because I discovered who was behind my favorite chain’s Twitter account, followed them, and did some side work for their org; in following him, I also discovered people in his circle that I followed as well, and so forth. We actually all met up and had snacks and drinks one day years ago, and it was cool to get a chance to interact with these people in person. Even today, there are 3 circles of friends that I miss from the Twitter days, and I pop back in every now and again to check on how they’re doing.

Thankfully, I’ve managed to fall in with a couple Discord communities that are of a similar vein. We’re scattered all across the world, but have connected with each other in ways that just seem… hard? impossible? as an adult with a child. And as I watch social media continue to descend into a place I just don’t want to be a part of anymore (paying to tweet? only searching Instagram with their AI tool now? blergh), I’m grateful for those people more than they know.

I, for one, am glad for this “shrinking”. I welcome Web 1.0; give me RSS feeds, newsletters, and more direct connection with smaller groups of people. The internet didn’t control our lives back in those days, and we were better for it.³.

I’ve been utilizing my Now page for a little over a year now¹. It was originally intended to be a place for me to keep track of stuff that was going on in my life, but it’s turned into a “what games am I playing or what books am I reading?” list, which I think defeats the purpose a little bit.

I’m going to experiment with a bit of a new format for a bit; while I don’t want this blog to just turn in to a list of things I’ve got going on in my life, I would like to write more, AND I’d like to turn my Now page into something a bit more verbose. So, you may see some extra blog posts popping up now and again with a few more life updates.

V is 2 now, and she’s great. An all-consuming, boundary-testing, nonstop ball of energy, but great nonetheless. Her grasp of language is exploding every day, she’s funny as hell, and the way she grasps patterns is nothing short of astounding to me². I’m blessed to be her dad.

I’m still working as a software developer, but I’ve taken a couple of internal interviews for some engineering management positions. Unknown what the future holds for me as of yet, but going through the process has been enjoyable thus far.

I was diagnosed with adult ADHD last month. The first medication we tried had a not fun side effect, so I get to talk with my doctor tomorrow to see what we can do about a dosage or prescription change. But honestly, just having the diagnosis has been very enlightening to me, helping me better understand myself and some of my quirks.

I’m 108 days sober.

Schedules have definitely been flexing over the past few months, but I’ve been attempting to spend as much time as possible in my father-in-law’s woodshop. So far, my accomplishments have been some shelves for our built-ins, a couple cutting boards, a keyboard wrist/palm rest, some cases for one of my keyboards, and a birdhouse for my wife. I’ve got aspirations of doing a lot more with this hobby, and hopefully I’ll be able to find some more time to carve out and spend over there.

I’ve found my video game time has dropped to practically nil as of late. I haven’t played a game that I’ve loved yet this year (Cyberpunk 2077 was the last I played), and as V’s bedtime gets later and later, the prospect of firing up a game for a shorter block of time just doesn’t appeal to me as much as it used to. More of an observation than a complaint; priorities change.

I’ve managed to let /r/fantasy’s Book Bingo Challenge draw me in to reading more. I’ve already completed 3 of the 25 squares in 3 weeks, and convinced a couple of friends to participate with me (hooray, accountabilibuddies). I’ve just started Steven Erikson’s Gardens of the Moon, and I’m excited to see what else I discover this year.

It’s prime sports watching season for me. Baseball is back in full swing³, the NBA playoffs start this weekend, F1 races are happening, the end of the Premier League season is approaching… and I wonder why I don’t make time for anything else. 😂

I have 2 tabs open that may or may not cause me to rework my blog’s tech stack. Possible related: I’ve been going through all of my RSS feeds as I migrate from NetNewsWire to Reeder. If you have any you think I should be following, please let me know.

We might (might) be maybe thinking about considering getting a kitten or two.

Let me know what you think about this format. I’m gonna try it out for a bit, and see if it helps me get into the groove of blogging a bit more.

Occasionally, I get an idea in my head that I just can’t shake. Today’s idea: what if I had a way to quickly generate Spongebob mocking text? (I mentioned that I’m developing in Ruby, and wanted to head off the inevitable “MAybE jUsT dON’T uSE rUBy ThEn”.)

I went online to see if an Alfred workflow existed for this. It did… kinda. It was an old version from 5 years ago, written with python instead of python3, and seemed wildly complicated with all the various function calls.

23 lines of code later, my own version of the Spongebob Mocking Text workflow now exists.

You can download the latest version of the workflow on GitHub, or view the latest release.

CW: this post talks about alcohol and sobriety. If you, or someone you know, is in need of help, please call the SAMHSA hotline at 1-800-662-4357.

You ever accidentally do something really cool?

I feel like every activity has a couple of little things that you end up doing accidentally for the first time. Guitar playing has pinch harmonics. Baseball has breaking pitches (or knuckleballs). These things that you do inadvertently and go “whoa… that’s cool!” and then spend countless hours attempting to recreate.

That was me on January 3rd. I went out to the garage to get a beer, and was like “hang on… I haven’t had a beer yet this year.”

I’ve been drinking since I was 18, with a few gaps here and there over the years. I started drinking beer in 2010, and really started to pick up on the craft beer scene around 2013. Since then, I’ve gone to numerous conventions, traded beer with people all across the country, and been a bartender at 4 different breweries.

When we found out my wife was pregnant, I drastically reduced my consumption of alcohol in solidarity. After she was born, we started getting non-alcoholic beers to have around so that my wife could have something other than water. Even now that we’re mostly back to normal habits, we still keep a solid supply of Brewdog’s gin & tonic-inspired NA for my wife. After months (years?) of reduced consumption, some days even one beer would make me feel a bit tipsy, so having NAs on hand was always nice.

So here I was, on a cold January day, standing in front of our fridge, realizing I hadn’t had a sip of alcohol yet. “Well, what’s another couple of days to make it a week sober?” became “Well, what’s another few weeks to make it a month?” became “Well, I could make it 50 days, yeah?”

Turns out, yes I can.

I’m not someone who often sticks with things. Learning a language. Exercising regularly. Drinking enough water. Self-study for… well, anything. You name it, I have fallen off the habit train numerous times. So to know that I was able to just say “hey, I can do this” and see it through has been pretty cool.

I don’t know how long this will continue. Having this little widget on my home screen has certainly helped. I’m not an alcoholic, nor someone who deals with substance abuse, so this hasn’t been something I’m doing out of necessity; I’ve actually held off posting something for weeks, simply because I didn’t want to seem insensitive or that I was glorifying my iron will of giving up booze or something.

I just did something cool on accident, and thought maybe I’d share.

As part of my 2024 theme, Year of Understanding, I’m doing a bunch of introspection about various things. This is one of a series of posts about me working towards understanding some aspect of my life.

Write it down.

I can still hear my dad telling me that phrase over and over and over again as I grew up. Write it down. Is it important? Do you need to remember it? Write it down.

I was always terrible at taking notes growing up, and still am to this day. In class? Eh… I’d get some of it. A planner? I’d use it for a week or two, and then it’d get lost in my backpack somewhere. A journal? Good luck. A pocketbook filled with joyous moments? Abandoned. A little musical ideas notebook? I feel weird about adding things to it, so it lays abandoned.

I’ve always been envious of people that take notes on paper, and/or have an interesting and varied enough life that warrants something like that. Same with people who draw and have oodles of sketchbooks, or nice pen collections with which to write things. The whole “scene” surrounding notebooks and writing has always been very appealing to me (I’ve got a massive stack of notebooks around here somewhere, including a really nice leather-bound one my wife got me as a gift years ago). And yet, try as I might, I cannot break into it at all. Especially now, in my Work From Home era, when I just wear sweatpants or shorts around the house and don’t have any of my EDC stuff on me.

Also, there’s that stupid pressure of “oh jeez, do I REALLY want to use THIS notebook for THIS topic?” or “well, now that I’ve used 1-3 pages of a project that’s abandoned, I can’t use this notebook anymore”… brains are weird.

For me, digital is so convenient. It’s faster for me to write. It’s portable, now that I carry a smartphone around every day. It’s legible, as my handwriting is objectively terrible. I’m also not a very sentimental person, so while I think it would be cool to have something worth keeping around, I’m not prone to forcing the issue (see: the joyous moments notebook project being abandoned).

The one place that it’s managed to actually stay present in my life? The weekly checklist.

My wife and I have 2 shared reminders lists; one is our grocery list, and the other a list of things to be done around the house. Both of these are more of a “don’t forget about X” thing, as opposed to what I’d deem to be things I want to take action on with any sort of urgency.

At some point last year, I started jotting down the list of things that I wanted to accomplish each week on a scratch pad at my desk. It was similar to what I’d been doing in my Theme Journals of the past, but rather than daily lists, I settled with weekly. It seems to be a perfect fit for me; enough of a reminder that makes me want to get things done, but passive enough that I don’t feel any guilt about not accomplishing things.

What Do I Understand Now?

I’m not someone who sticks with writing anything long-form down with pen & paper.

Am I OK With This Understanding?

Yes; ultimately, any instance of me trying to use a notebook for anything has been because other people do it, and I want to feel hip/cool.

What Will I Change With This Understanding

• Continue to use my weekly checklists
• Stop buying more notebooks for things; I have plenty
• Remove anything related to writing from any sort of long term wishlist (sorry, Cortex and Studio Neat - you’re not getting my money)
• Give more consideration to the “why” of doing something; is it for me, or is it because others do it?

One of my main goals for 2024 is to read a lot more, finish more games, and actually consume some great shows & movies¹. I keep meticulous track of these, and I thought it would be fun to share what I had done in 2023.

Books

It’s funny - I have my Kindle, but I barely read on it. Most of my reading comes via the Kindle app on my phone. Convenience plays a large part of that, I assume.

Books read in 2023: 25 (2022: 30, 2021: 50, 2020: 23)

• Ruination by Anthony Reynolds
• Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky (my top read of the year)
• Noor by Nnedi Okorafor
• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin
• The Poppy War series (The Poppy War, The Dragon Republic, & The Burning God) by R.F. Kuang
• Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
• Silo series (Wool, Shift, & Dust) by Hugh Howey
• The Divide series (The Last Watch, & The Exiled Fleet) by J.S. Dewes
• Redshirts by John Scalzi
• Newsflesh series (Feed, Deadline, & Blackout, + Feedback) by Mira Grant
• This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
• Rubicon by J.S. Dewes
• The Stormlight Archive 1-3 + 2 novellas (The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, Edgedancer, Oathbringer, & Dawnshard) by Brandon Sanderson

Games

My PC game playing dropped a ton this year for a few reasons. Moving helped me hit the reset button a bit, and with Pixel dying, I made it a focus to hang around my cats more often in the evening; they really like being downstairs at the new house, so that’s where I am too.

Games beaten in 2023: 4 (2022: 15, 2021: 5, 2020: 22)

• Horizon: Forbidden West (PS5)
• Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (Steam Deck)
• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Switch) (my favorite game of the year)
• Spider-Man 2 (PS5)
• I also played waaaaaaaaaay too much World of Warcraft (and will continue to do so, thank you very much)

Other Media

I went through a couple of different spurts this year, sitting downstairs watching shows every night for a week or two. Maybe I’ll have to find another film series to do that with.

(This list is totally from memory, so it’s likely I’m forgetting a bunch of stuff)

• The Bear, seasons 1 & 2 (this rules and if you haven’t watched it you should)
• Reacher, some of season 1
• Jack Ryan, the whole thing
• Primo
• The first 6 Mission: Impossible movies (rankings: Rogue Nation, 3, 4: Ghost Protocol, 6: Fallout, 1, 2)
• Most of the MCU (I think I stopped at Endgame because of the proliferation of the shows)
• The start of the DCEU (Man of Steel & BvS - I couldn’t finish Suicide Squad because it was so bad)
• A whole bunch of NBA, MLB, NFL, F1, & Premier League
• A whole bunch of Bluey, Sesame Street, Super Simple Songs, Daniel Tiger, Blippi, and more

As 2023 comes to a close, it’s time for me to figure out my yearly theme for 2024.

Recap

Rather than doing resolutions (which seem destined for failure), over the past couple of years I have been doing yearly themes¹; not as much tangible goals that I’m attempting to measure myself against throughout the year, and more guideposts that I aim to stay between (or adjust appropriately) as the year goes on.

In 2022, I did Year of the Garden. Its aim was to encourage the habits and hobbies that I wanted to flourish in my life, while simultaneously pruning back or razing the things that were making me unhappy or taking up too much of my time. This was mostly prep for my daughter being born, as I knew that I needed to learn how to prioritize my time well.

2023 was more of the same - I went with Year of Sustenance. While I was initially annoyed realizing the similarities between my 2022 and 2023 themes, it sank in that the core goals were what I truly needed to focus on, as I don’t feel like I really “completed” my initial theme².

Themes can definitely be similar to resolutions; a great thing to start your year, and something that you just fall off of hard within a few weeks or months. Unfortunately, this is what’s happened to me. When they say “no plan survives first contact with the enemy” they could’ve written that about a growing toddler.

My main goal with Sustenance was focus on blocking out and planning my time, while simultaneously giving myself the freedom and flexibility to make changes as necessary. But I’d go one week where I forget to make that plan because I was stressed out from parenting things, and suddenly I was in a tailspin that I couldn’t seem to climb out of.

Deliberations

So here I was, on break for the holiday, trying to figure out what it was that I wanted to do. Some more garden theme stuff (Year of Cultivation)? Another year of trying to iron out my free time so there are no wrinkles? That just didn’t sound… fun. Enjoyable. Purposeful. It made me feel like I was in a rut.

As I’m contemplating all of this, I happened to be listening to the most recent Cortex episode where Myke and Grey were talking over their themes from last year and sharing what they’re doing for this year. I don’t remember exactly what phrase Grey said, but it triggered an absolute lightbulb moment for me.

2024 - Year of Understanding

Understanding. “A mental grasp; the capacity to apprehend general relations of particulars; a mutual agreement not formally entered into but in some degree binding on each side.”

As 2023 wore on, I found myself doing a lot of analyzing of not just what I did or said or emoted, but how I did these things, and why I did them. Why do I gravitate to games that take up all my time? Why do I think that carrying a notebook with me will make me feel better? Why do I not want to touch my piano or make music anymore?

Many of the adjustments that I have been making in my life have been ones where I am just changing to change. Making adjustments without thinking through the “why” behind it. A literal manifestation of “fuck around and find out”. Sometimes the results are great, other times hilarious, but many times things just don’t stick and I find myself getting frustrated. That notebook I was so excited to carry with me and write in? It’s been sitting on my dresser for weeks.

I’m not exactly sure how this is going to look, especially as I dive into it more, but here’s what I’m thinking:

Continue Gardening

Lol.

And here I thought I was gonna escape my last two themes. NOPE! I do want to continue this work, carving out opportunities for joy in my life, and prioritizing the things that matter the most. Because right now, that’s what’s most important to me, is making sure my family is taken care of, and that my physical, mental, and spiritual health are all maintained.

As of right now, this will look a lot like last year - making lists of the things I want to accomplish, blocking out the time to do them, and finding some sort of way to keep track of stuff in a way that allows me to see the success.

(I will say, I’m really happy that this general theme worked so well for me that it’s taken over my life. That means I did something really well a couple years ago.)

Schedules, Planning, & Recaps

I’ve discovered over time that I work really well in small blocks of time. Developers might think of this as “agile methodology”, where I carve out the work I want to do in 1-2 week blocks, commit to doing it, getting it done, and then repeating those steps over and over until the project is complete. It’s different when the project is “life”… but not really.

In my head, this looks like 3 separate things:

• Schedule out time for me to do concrete, repeatable things (gym time, woodworking time, and dedicated game time with friends). Get these on the calendar, make them repeating events, and stick to them. I’ve already gotten a jump start on a lot of these, and so far it’s worked out well.
• Plan out other activities. Things like the books I want to try and read this year, or the woodworking projects I want to do. That way, when I go to do those activities, I don’t get into the wheel-spinning rut of “well what do I do?”, and I can just dive in.
• Recap frequently. Instead of revisiting just quarterly, do small weekly recaps, and medium sized monthly recaps as well. Break things down to a level that gives me the freedom to reset accordingly as I go, while also letting me build up to bigger and bigger things.

Analysis & Deep Dives

This is the crux of my year, and how I’m mixing things up from the last two years. Using what I learn from each weekly recap, I’m going to try and do more digging into the how and why of the things I choose to do, say, and think. Did I not follow through with something I really wanted to? Ok, fine… but why? What was the thing that made me go “yeah, I want to do that”, and why was I unable to continue that train of thought to success?

I’ve set way too many arbitrary goals with no plan on how to get from A to B. Instead, I think it’s time I look at some of these pathways, and figure out what it would take to keep me on course. Whether it’s some sort of motivation, or smaller goals, or milestones to make sure I hit… whatever it is, this is what I need to figure out.

(Some of you will look at this and go “hey that’s like therapy”, which will then make you think “hey maybe you should go to therapy, Nic”. And you’d be right on both counts.)

I’m super excited about this theme, and I think figuring out a way to make my analysis somewhat public or outward-facing could be a really fun exercise. We’ll see how this goes.

I’ve been carrying a notebook around in my pocket for a week now. Maybe it’s the “hipster” thing to do, but I’ve wanted to use a pen and paper for… something. It’s taken me ages to figure out what, but I think I’ve landed on something.

From the first page:

This notebook is going to be a journal of things that give me joy. I want a reason to carry around a pen & notebook, & I can think of no better reason to have one.

Having this kind of mission, of purpose, has led me to reach for it multiple times per day. Focusing on joy has helped me lean in to the happy moments I experience.

Maybe my daughter will find these tucked in a box one day and flip through them. I hope so.

👋🏻 Hello, everyone. We’re officially halfway through the month, and I thought I’d update on some fun things that’s been going on.

New blog theme

As you might be able to see, I have a new blog theme. Still utilizing Jekyll on the backend, but I finally revamped the look and feel of the site, switched over to Bootstrap 5, using some different fonts in places, & finally figured out what I wanted to do with footnote styling after… what, 10 years? ¹ Anyway, if you see anything hinky with the site, please let me know.

Raising money for St. Jude

I’ve done a handful of little activities here and there working to raise money for St. Jude via the Relay FM campaign. I personally have been able to raise (at this time) $890, which is super cool. Relay as a whole has cracked $321k, which smashed their monthly goal of $293k that they had set for themselves; this also means that over the 5 years they’ve been fundraising, they have managed to raise over $2.5 MILLION dollars, which is just incredible.

Leaning in to new hobbies

I’ve barely played any video games in September (I’m right at the start of Act 2 in Baldur’s Gate), as I’ve been focused on some other hobbies. Mostly, this has centered around my new desk that I’m sitting (actually standing) at as I write this. I’ve been utilizing my father in law’s workshop behind their house to do some woodworking, which included finishing this desk, and this whole week has centered around getting my office a bit more organized. I’ll probably do an office tour here in the coming days. I have a whole bunch of woodworking projects that I want to tackle, and I think I’m going to start looking into a 3D printer for the two of us to dabble with. This could be fun.

I’m also still in a Play By Text (via Discord) D&D campaign that’s been running over 2 years at this point; we’re level 6, our party has stopped the end of the world (for now), and my character (a cleric) has been suffering a crisis of faith for the vast majority of it. I still have some aspirations to write and run my own campaign, but I have the utmost respect for all of the DMs I’ve had in my life; the effort that is required to run a good campaign is astounding, and I’m constantly in awe of the world building the games I’ve been a part of have had in them. (Who knows, maybe I’ll just join another game and punch things…)

I also sat down and devoured a book on Tuesday ², which is something I haven’t done in years. I’ve checked out a couple of physical books from the library over the past few months, but they have all just sat unopened until I’ve needed to return them. This time was different; I felt called to just sit and read, and the next thing I knew, it was 11:30pm and I was done with the book. Felt really good, and now I gotta find the next book to read.

Losing weight (again)

A friend and I have been motivating each other and providing accountability to get healthy and lose some weight this summer/fall. My family has had a handful of health scares over the past couple of years, and with my daughter growing like a weed, I know that I’m gonna need to be in the best shape possible in order to keep up. So far, everything has focused on just eating the right foods as much as possible; it hasn’t been perfect, but I’m already seeing results, feeling a lot better, and I know that I have exercise and more strict food consumption in my back pocket when I hit my plateau.

Parenting

V is an amazing human being, full of joy and curiosity. Current favs: slowly rotating the recliner while one of the cats sits on it and saying “wheeeeee!” (everything is “wheeeee!” right now, but that one is extra cute), making mama and I “play drums” on a fan before bed, having every person that’s dropped by our home stop and shoot hoops with her, and chasing both cats all around the house. It took 18 months for me to really feel like we have everything under control, which inevitably means something drastic is about to change.

Sports

My wife and I have both been enjoying sports a lot more over the past few years, and we’re really leaning into it this fall. Iowa football is back, my wife has felt compelled to root for the Chicago Bears, baseball season is winding down and the Red Sox are gonna miss the postseason, the NBA season is just around the corner and the Celtics have high hopes, F1 has been a delight (as long as we don’t pay attention to who wins the races), and we’ve even started to pay attention to the Premier League, adopting Liverpool as our team of choice (subject to change). I’m not gonna force a love for any sport or team on my daughter, but I really hope she takes to it at least a little bit; it’d be a lot of fun to be able to share my love of sports with her as she grows up.

I’m always aiming to write more, and I do have a handful of things banked that I’ll probably jot down in the coming days. Otherwise, check out my Now page for updates on what I’m currently doing.

If you would like to skip the blog post, here’s a link to my fundraising campaign, and a link directly to the donation page.

My daughter turned 18 months old today. It feels like just yesterday, she was a tiny blob that I had to burp multiple times a day. Now, she’s devouring chicken, speaking in her own fun language (“no” means no, but an emphatic “NO!” means yes, which is gonna get me into trouble when we’re in public), and generally being the coolest kid ever.

She is perfect and wonderful and healthy. But what if she wasn’t? What if we took her in for a checkup and the doctor told us “hey, so, V has cancer”?

(VERY IMPORTANT POINT OF EMPHASIS - SHE IS FINE, PERFECTLY HEALTHY, DOES NOT HAVE CANCER, ETC. - THE PURE HAPPENSTANCE OF HER HALF-BIRTHDAY FALLING ON THE DAY OF THE CAMPAIGN LAUNCH IS JUST A COINCIDENCE)

That’s why I’m partnering with the Relay FM podcast community during September (which just so happens to be Childhood Cancer Awareness Month) to help raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Here is a link to my campaign where you can donate.

UPDATE: I had set a very modest goal of raising $250, and promised to match it. I figured I’d need to post 30 times to get anywhere close to that, but y’all crushed this goal within 5 hours. That rules.

If you aren’t aware, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is the world leader in understanding, treating, and defeating childhood cancer & other life-threatening diseases. The majority of their funding comes from generous donors, and it allows them to not only lead the way on life-saving research, but also provide treatment at little to no cost for the patient & families. As a parent, I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to find out that she had cancer, and not being able to get the help we needed.

Relay FM has been raising money for St. Jude every September since 2019. Together, their community has raised over $2.2m, and their goal this year is to eclipse the $2.5m threshold. They’re a wonderful group of humans using their platform to raise money for a good cause, and I’ve loved taking part in helping them do that.

One more time, for the people who have scrolled this far - here’s a link to my fundraising campaign, and a link directly to the donation page. Any amount is welcome. Any amount is amazing. Any amount will make a difference in the life of a child, both today and in the years to come.