I’d like to present to you a new project I’m working on called ClackTrack. ClackTrack is a new application coming out in Fall 2023 for iPhone and iPad, allowing users to catalog their mechanical keyboard collection.

In years past, I would sleep in on February 13. Today, I’m up at 5:15am, a full hour and a half before my wife and V, which is odd (the being up before anyone else part, not the 5:15 part).

In years past, I’d take the day off of work and play video games all day. Today, my game time will start when V goes down for the night. Could be 6:30. Could be 8. Maybe I’ll be too tired to start anything and I’ll just fall asleep instead.

In years past, I’d get a phone call from my dad at 10:54am, so he could sing me an annoying rendition of “Happy birthday” at the time I was born. Today, I’m crossing my fingers he remembers, given everything that he’s had happen to him over the past 3ish months.

In years past, I’d have no plans for my day. Today, I’m calling an orthopedic surgeon for a consult on my messed up shoulder, and my wife and I are going to try and go for a walk.

In years past, I’d have no responsibilities to attend to. Today, my daughter is everything and all-encompassing, and I’ve spent the whole morning with her and my wife playing in the living room.

In years past, I’d be blogging from my laptop. Today, the only way I can write 350 words is on my phone in short spurts.

In years past, I’d be annoyed that it’s always snowy and cold on my birthday. Today, I’m loving that I get to bundle up and stay inside.

None of this is to complain (ok I’m a little pissed about my arm, so that one might be). All of this is just change. Not good change or bad change. Just change. For years, I’ve been so resistant to change. I’m stubborn and selfish, and I was nervous about having a child because of it. But now? I wouldn’t have it any other way.

This is February 13, 2023. This is the 44th day of the year. This is Monday. This is a day ending in “y”. This is another day where my family is healthy, my daughter is happy, and the house is warm.

This is thirty-six.

Taking a cue from a few other people, like my good friend Patrick Rhone, I’ve gone ahead and implemented a new Now page.

I have my own personal lists of things that I try to stay on top of in regards to what my current priorities are, but exposing them to the world allows others to keep me accountable (“hey, how’s Project X going for you?”), or invites people to read/play the same things I do, or just shares info with the world about what my life is all about. I’d encourage you to share your Now pages with me - I’m always curious what types of things people are working on.

I found a post on Reddit a couple of weeks ago about a great playlist to listen to while programming or coding. So far, I can say that it’s been doing a great job - lots of ambient, chill, yet still energetic music that’s helped me be less distracted throughout the day. The original URL from the Reddit post is dead, but I’ve managed to rescue & recreate the playlists in both Apple Music and Spotify using a slick service called TuneMyMusic.

Additionally, I also discovered MusicForProgramming.net, a very cool looking site that has a bunch of shorter playlists of music for this same purpose. I haven’t dug into this one much, but I will, and thought y’all might be interested in this as well.

I think by now, most people have heard the phrase “quiet quitting” floating around, though some may not know what it means. The way I see it, “quiet quitting” is when you aren’t feeling invested in your job, so you do juuuuuust enough to get by. Got something that’ll take 5 minutes to do? Maybe I’ll get to it after a 15 minute walk to the coffee machine and a 10 minute bathroom break. Someone needs help? Eh, that’s not really my problem, is it? They’ll figure it out. People get their core responsibilities done, but nothing more. They don’t show up early, they don’t stay late, they don’t attend any meetings that aren’t mandatory, and they don’t do any work outside of what’s expected of them.

There’s been a lot of talk as to why this is a thing. Mostly, it stems from burnout at work, especially during the pandemic & return to “normal”. We’re becoming more aware of toxic behaviors, and less forgiving of them. When the job doesn’t care about us, why should we care back?

I think I inadvertently stumbled on to another possible reason as to why this burnout might be happening: the death of the third space.

Yesterday, I posted about how I consolidated some of my Mac helper apps. I was talking to members of the Relay.FM member’s Discord when going through this exercise, and I happened to mention an Alfred workflow that I had helped create for work. Enough people seemed interested in it that I went through the whole process of getting it set up for other people to download.

Introducing: the GitHub Repository Helper workflow for Alfred.app

Over at the Relay.FM member’s Discord, a lot of different conversations take place about a variety of topics. I spend a lot of time in our #apple channel, talking about everything Apple news related, along with discussions about hardware & software. One of the conversations that Rosemary Orchard started in prepping for a future episode of the Automators podcast actually gave me a great idea for 2 blog posts - this is the first one of those.

One of the best parts about using a Mac is the sheer abundence of apps and utilities to help you be productive. Clipboard managers, app launchers, ways to dump snippets of text on demand, controlling audio… that’s just scratching the surface.

As 2022 wraps up, it’s time for me to iron out my yearly theme for 2023. I did Year of the Garden, and it went… ok, I guess? Could’ve been better, could’ve been a lot worse.

But! I learned a lot. I learned more about what makes me tick, what I see as being valueable or worth my time & attention when I’m looking down from a 5,000 ft. view. I learned the kinds of things I need to do to keep my theme at the center of what I’m doing. And most importantly, I (think I) learned how to make this year a rousing success.

Once again, it’s time for a new yearly theme. Last year’s theme was Year of the Garden, and I honestly thought this was a terrific success.

Before I talk about my 2023 theme, let’s do a real quick recap on what my 2022 theme was, and how I think it went.

I’ve always been a huge fan of the “what’s in my bag” posts. Any time anyone I follow posts one of theirs, I pore over them, looking to see what kinds of cool bags are out there, what they’re stuffed with, and how I could improve my own bag setup.

Since I’ve been working remotely for nearly 3 years, my bags have gotten a bit neglected. However, I’ve been spending a lot of time on the road in recent weeks, so I’ve gotten the bag re-packed and set up just how I like. I figured it’d be fun to share them with you.