Blog
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Finishing
The end of muggy afternoon soccer practices always seemed to hint of danger. Not a ton, but enough to get my stomach quivering. If the team was looking slopping the dread would only increase until I could practically see the pain on the horizon. Feel my lungs gasping, muscles burning from the conditioning that was sure to follow. My coach calling on us to line up at the endline would almost be a relief. At least the expectant worry would be gone.
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Starting
Beginning often seems impossible. Even enjoyably activities like working out seem horrid from a warm comfortable couch. So running an annoying errand? Forget about it.
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Lights
At this time of year everyone wants to fight back against the dwindling sun. Every window radiates out, the lights within proof of such abundant joy and merriment that it spills out onto the street. At least thats how I choose to view it.
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Progress
I ran a marathon almost exactly a year ago. Rather than spending Thanksgiving feasting on turkey and pie, I was stuffing my face with every carb in sight. It felt like the end of a long journey, like I had truly accomplished something. Even though I hadn’t even started the race, the training and journey always felt like the far greater difficulties.
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Thanks
Normally the holiday season is joyously awaited. The aromas of a shared celebration. Hugs from barely recognized family members. Feasting to the point of bursting. All tonics for the soul but now transformed into activities fraught with danger.
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Documentation
I’ve learned a ton in my new job. I knew next to nothing about venture capital when I joined, and had last done full-stack work almost 4 years ago, which is all hopelessly out of date now. As a result I’ve spent hours every week poring over articles and documentation, trying to clean every last scrap of knowledge that I can.
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Editing
Spending yesterday editing was a nice change. I’d suspected it might be- at this point in the month any respite from coming up with a new topic is welcome. But it also felt like a different sort of challenge. I am most effective editing when I can bifurcate my brain. To simultaneously remember the original points and tone I was trying to capture while also retaining an untinged perspective on what the writing actually says.
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Revisions
Rather than writing a new post today I’m going to edit my past posts. I’m going to try and go back a week to start with, but we’ll see how it goes.
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Trails
I’ve done a lot of hiking in my life. As a kid I’d be lured by the promise of treats on the mountaintop. Then I’d go grudgingly during my teenage years as a way to mollify my parents. And now as an adult I’m always eagerly looking for any possible way to get outside.
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Friends
Making friends in college was startlingly easy. Every freshman seemed to come in with a desperate fear of loneliness, clinging to whoever they remotely got along with in their orientation group. Then getting to know peers in your hall and classes. And finally joining clubs and teams with likeminded students. With each wave people seemed to become more true to themselves and form closer connections.
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Routes
Growing up in a tiny New Hampshire village meant being far from everything. My town had a general store with milk and chips, a post office, and a small library offshoot. If you wanted anything else you had to drive into the next town over for it.
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Focus
I love completely losing myself in a book. My ears might as well fall off from how little around me I process, and my eyes blur out anything beyond the rectangle in the forefront of my vision. Finally putting the book down often feels like waking up from a dream, reality slowly eroding the world I constructed.
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Workouts
I’ve worked out almost every single day of 2020. Often multiple times a day. In fact, I’m reasonable confident that I will have worked out more times this year than ever before.
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Elections
The election was called for Biden over a week ago now. Yet Trump still has not conceded, nor has much of the Senior Republican leadership. During this week, I’ve spent several hours digging into Trumps twitter feed. I’m not sure what I expect to find- at this point I don’t really expect an admission of the loss until he’s forced.
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Alarms
A chirping alarm has heralded the day’s onset for much of my life. My arms reach out of their own will, stabbing at the silence button with the precision and speed of a master fencer dipping inside his enemies guard. It typically requires so little thought that my mind can almost fit the odd noise into my dreams and continue on unperturbed. At least until the second or even third alarm strikes.
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Paths
Sometimes I think about the path not taken. The seemingly minor decisions that cascade down into my life today. Dropping baseball for soccer back in middle school. Randomly deciding to look at schools in Minnesota. Going to the party where I met my best friends.
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Milestones
The halfway mark of this challenge is rapidly approach. It’s startling how quickly it has gone so far. Though maybe it shouldn’t by given how time seems to speed up every year. Especially with time blurring as it has during this pandemic— the whole year seems to have a sort of fog over it, one week flowing into the next.
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Airbnbs
I have been staying in AirBnbs for almost 4 full months across 7 different rentals. The stays have ranged from a handful of days to over a month, spread between familiar stopping grounds in Seattle and random cottages outside Joshua Tree.
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6 Packs
Liquor stores are adult candy shops as far as in concerned. Rows of brightly labeled products that look oh so tantalizing. Unlike candy shops there’s no parent restraining you from the objects of your affection. Which is how I sometimes end up walking out with my own body weight in beer.
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Commutes
I found myself missing my commute the other day. Having a separation between work and life to shift mindsets in. A period to rid myself of any worries from work.
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Inspiration
Choosing how to approach NaNoWriMo was a challenge in it’s own right. I seriously considered writing a novel or creating a series of prompt inspired short stories. Even writing a sort of diary.
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Streets
Streets inform so much of a cities character. They dictate who is supposed to experience it and how they do so. Pedestrian only streets filled with restaurants and markets, narrow one-way alleys through looming buildings, and sweeping roads filled with traffic all invite different experiences. The plans of some city planner long ago shaping how millions move and live.
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Ice Cream
I have the same ice cream every birthday when I’m home. My mom dotingly makes a mint-chocolate chip that actually tastes like a fresh, herbal mint leaf. It’s one of my favorite things to eat, and makes me question what exactly the toothpaste industry has convinced us is mint flavor.
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Driving
Normally I don’t enjoy like to drive. It feels like only negative things can happen, and I get stressed from constantly worrying about what the cars around me are doing, where I’m going, and what could happen.
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Scheduling
The hardest part of writing every day has been finding time for it every single day. Planning out my days to know when I have windows of free time. And when those windows do come, I know that I actually have to be productive, because there might not be an opportunity later.
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Shuffle
Unlike many of my peers I store my music in an iTunes library. 2,000 songs across all different genres representing most periods of my life. I’ve tried a couple of times to switch to Spotify or another cloud service, but never found them compelling enough to switch. So instead I have physical mp3 files sitting around on my hard-drive.
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Narratives
Like many Americans, I spent last night huddled around the TV watching election results come in. I clung desperately to every new piece of information parcelled out even as it became clear that there would be no definitive answer tonight. I extrapolated sweeping theories off random vote counts only to throw them out and begin afresh with the next new morsel of data.
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Audience
I freely admit that I had no idea what to expect from this exercise. But even so, I’ve already been suprised by the impact of not knowing my audience. I don’t know the innate biases and backgrounds of the faceless people reading this, and so not can’t intuit the most relatable way to frame my ideas.
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Tracking
I devour books. Have ever since childhood, as evinced by ivid memories of struggling to lift burgeoning bags to and fro the library. These days I tend most often towards science fiction and fantasy, but with a smattering of economics and sociology books thrown in. Typically I go through a book or two a week, and that has only increased with the forced isolation of this year.
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Goals
My first year out of college was disorienting. I was used to time and growth progressing through well defined semesters and grading rubrics. But suddenly there were not natural markers and I was left adrift.