“Do we all love Uplift desks?”¹

This innocuous toot reminded me that I’ve been using my custom standing desk for over 6 months, and have yet to blog about it like I intended to. (In fairness to myself, I’d not written it on my to-do list, so boo past me.)

“But Nic, I’m not that handy.” “Oh man, I couldn’t do that, what if it didn’t work?” “I’ll just buy this one, it’s cheaper.” No. Stop. Just… just read this. Give it a chance.

I looked at all of the standing desks out there. Uplift. Herman Miller. Branch. IKEA. Amazon. I’d eventually settled on Uplift, and bracing for convincing my wife that spending $1k on a new desk was a worthwhile investment.

Then, when talking to some of the Relay FM Discord members, one person suggested just building my own. I’m pretty sure I had the same reaction I told you not to; “I’m not that handy.” “What if I fuck it up?” “I’ll just buy one.” Thankfully, they convinced me otherwise, and I managed to get away with spending considerably less on a desk than I would’ve otherwise.

There are only 3 steps that you MUST follow in order to build your own desk. Here’s what I did:

Buy The Stuff

Kinda a “duh” step, but yeah. You will need two things: a butcher block countertop, and a standing desk frame. I went with a birch 5ft x 30in block from Home Depot, and the VIVO dual motor frame. You do not need these exact items, but I can vouch for them. The frame can support a desk just under 7ft wide, so you have some flexibility there.

This is literally all that you MUST buy. Total cost: $380. Which, by my math, is WAY less than the ~$1,000 a lot of Uplift configurations come in.

Protect It, and (Optional) Make It Prettier

The countertop looks great right out of the box, and if I’d just sealed it right then, I would’ve been perfectly happy. However, I had access to some tools and had some ideas, so I decided to make a few modifications.

• (Optional) I decided that I wanted a couple of holes in the corners of my desk to route some speaker and power cables through. I used a hole saw and a power drill to accomplish this. I got some cheap grommet hole covers to route cables through; you could optionally get some that have power outlets built in to them (something I wish I’d done, and might go back and add eventually).
• You’ll need to sand the countertop down first; 80, 150, and 220 grit sandpaper passes did the trick just fine.
• (Optional) I went with some honey colored Varathane wood stain for that nice, rich brown look. 2 coats made it pop.
• I sealed my desk with [Varathane’s satin polyurethane]. 2 coats, plus some buffing with 0000 steel wool, took care of this.

At this point, I have a desk top that is fully protected, has the color I want, and a couple of grommet holes. Cool.

Avengers, Assemble

This part was also quite simple. The VIVO frame went together easily. I mounted it so the frame was flush with the back corners of the desk; most of the weight from the monitors, speakers, and computer will end up being over the back edge of your desk, whereas most of the weight on the front will come from you leaning on it, so having the balance point further back worked perfectly. (If you get a top that is deeper than 30 inches, do a bit of research to see recommendations on mounting points.)

The other major consideration will be, do you want the controller on the left or the right? I decided to have mine on the left, which is contrary to every other desk I’ve seen, because it’s tucked away in the corner a bit more and I don’t have to be worried about my daughter getting at it.

Honestly, I was amazed at how easily this went together. I kept thinking “ok, what am I forgetting” over and over until I got it upright… lo and behold, I hadn’t forgotten a thing.

Add Any (Optional) Accessories

I added 3 (well, 4) accessories to my desk to make it more in line with what I wanted.

• An under-desk headphone mount + power outlet. Works perfectly to hold my gaming headset, and provide me with a couple USB ports & a power outlet for anything I need to plug in easily. (This was in lieu of me using a powered grommet hole like I mentioned earlier; I wanted to route cables and not have stuff on top of my desk.)
• Cable management trays. Get all my cables up off the floor.
• A good power strip with surge protection. I have one that I’ve used for years that looks something like this; lots of outlets, and a long cord leading off of it. Anything that lives on my desk (including the motors) plugs in to this, and I have a single power cable running off with enough slack to handle sitting or standing heights. I mounted this upside down under the desk with some screws.
• A computer tower holder. I had aspirations of having my tower go up and down with my desk, especially since I’m seated on plush carpet. However, I forgot to check the specs, and found out after I’d attached it to my desk that my tower was too wide. There wasn’t a solution I really liked, so I just got a stand for my tower and leave enough cable slack for when I stand up.

There’s tons of accessory options that you can add to your own desk; drawers, power, monitor stands, and more. You’ve saved a ton of money on the desk, so feel free to snag anything you need. (Pro tip - if you’re on carpet, and want to get your desk into a corner, get some furniture sliders under the legs, assemble and get everything powered in the middle of the room, and then slide it back in to place.)

That’s it! It might seem like a lot of work, but it’s honestly something that anyone could tackle in a weekend (waiting for the stain and/or sealant to dry & cure takes the longest amount of time). For less than half the money you could’ve spent on a commercially available option, you could have your very own desk that you build with your hands, something you could be proud of every time you used your desk.

If you give it a go, reach out and let me know! I’d love to see what you do.

I’ve talked before about how I desperately want to be someone who uses a pocket notebook. I’ve also realized that this just is not who I am as a person.

But there’s just something cathartic, something that scratches a primal urge, about writing out a to-do list, and marking things off as I go.

Every Sunday, after V goes down for the night, I settle in at my desk, grab my pad of paper and my trusty pens, rip off last week’s list, and start anew. I’ve got 2 sections:

• The standard to do list, with the important things that I want to get done this week.
• The essential repeating blocks tracking my 5 important things I want to carve out time for; Read, Watch, Play, Create, and Move.

My friend Patrick, who spends a lot of time thinking about the best ways to get things done, once wrote:

Your to-do list should be a sacred place. It should be filled only with the things you really plan on doing, are consistently evaluating and are taking active steps move items forward and to get those things done.

I think the general spirit of this is good, and anything that makes my list for this week is actually something I want to get done. Fold laundry. Make an update to my site. Call to get gutters cleaned. But I also move things that weren’t completed last week over; if I find myself moving the thing over more than once, it gets a ”?” tossed after it, and if it’s not done that week, I’ve shown myself that it’s not really important, and it’s ok to not put on the list.¹

I started doing this sometime in 2023, and it’s honestly been the best thing for me to get things done. Gone are the days of daily to-do lists. Gone is the guilt of not crossing everything off my list, and thus immediately feeling doom & gloom about starting on today’s items.

My biggest gripe in the past has been, how do I remind myself about things that I want to get done if I’m not at my desk? Occasionally, I’ll sprint upstairs, add the item, and return. But if I’m out and about, or busy with family, I’ll just have Siri remind me of the thing at 8pm (which is usually at/after V goes to bed for the night). Elegant? Not really. Functional? Absolutely.²

The older I get, the more I realize that I basically have to trick my brain, or turn things into a game, in order to get the most out of it. Put a carrot on a stick (“hey, if you do this, you can get your red pen and fill in the square”), and I’m golden. Gone are the days I wish I could just “be normal like everyone else”. I am myself, I’m glad I’m me; this works for how I operate, and that’s the only thing that matters.

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.