I used to be against making New Year’s resolutions (2009). I’ve eased up on that in the last decade and have tried some other methods, such as listing out 20 specific things I want to do for a yearly task list or setting a yearly theme. Both of those worked pretty well.

This year I want to keep it simple. My two 2024 resolutions are:

1. Stretch every day
   • I’m tight, not getting any younger, and starting to get a little bit of lower back pain and a bad posture. I want to correct this and be able to keep up with Charlie as he gets faster. I don’t want to feel stiff when I get up out of a chair.
2. Sketch every day
   • I’ve wanted to learn to draw for years. I attempted it in 2017 with Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, but it ended up being too involved/detailed for what I really want to do. I want to make quick Jason Polan-style sketches and simple line drawings. I want to doodle. I want to post stuff like that here to this blog, draw with Charlie at the coffee table, and make fun sketches on my chalkboard. I hope it helps me see the world in a different way, too.

Why daily?

Small daily actions add up over time. These probably won’t take more than 10-15 minutes each and I think both will have a positive impact on my life.

Progress is radical over time yet incremental in time.

Ronald Heifetz in The Practice of Adaptive Leadership

Also, it is easy to know whether I’m on track or not. It is a binary “did I do this today or not?” question rather than a nebulous one. I have the Reporter app set up to ask me about this after Charlie’s bedtime each night, which gives me enough time to do it if I haven’t yet.

So, to start it off, one of the first things I did this morning was stretch my legs in the living room with a stretching strap, then my back with a Child’s Pose and Thread the Needle pose. Charlie joined in and stretched with a resistance band. He is much more flexible than I am.

And here is my daily sketch:

This is from our walk in the woods today. I have a lot to learn.

I started answering the 40 Questions this year, then realized about a quarter of the way through that I didn’t really want to answer them. Not my preferred format.

Instead, I’m trying something else: Making a list of Top 3 things in various categories for the year.

• Books
  • Shores of Bohemia: A Cape Cod Story, 1910-1960 by John Taylor Williams
  • Daemon by Daniel Suarez
  • The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler
• Shows
  • Billions
  • The Gilded Age
  • Trash Truck – Charlie’s favorite and one that we actually like
• Articles
  • A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox by Henrik Karlsson.
  • Mapping digital worlds by Nadia Asparouhova
  • More People Should Write by James Somers
• New blog follows – All indie blogs this year
  • Jim Nielsen
  • Anh
  • Manuel Moreale, in particular the People and Blogs series.
• Meals
  • Woodfired pizza with vodka sauce and pepperoni at Baci
  • Khao Soi at Nicky’s Thai in Sewickley, PA
  • Shepherd’s pie (homemade, it sticks out in my mind because I had low expectations and it ended up being really good!)
• Places
  • Monterey, CA
  • Cape Cod, MA
  • Beacon, NY. Very close to us, but we have a great time whenever we visit.
• New-to-me Music
  • The Hold Steady
  • Sudan Archives
  • Frou Frou
• Tiki drinks
  • Nui Nui
  • Lost Lake
  • Commando Grog
• Purchases
  • Opal pebble ice maker
  • Swivel desk for Ikea Poang chair
  • Chacos Chelsea Boots
• Software
  • Arc
  • Obsidian
  • Carrot Weather
• Memories
  • Walking in downtown Beacon with Amanda and Charlie
  • Taking Charlie out in the Guideboat on Lake Sebago for the first time
  • “Charlie Walks” – Walks where Charlie chooses where we go, the pace, and what we look at.

1. Having some of my art printed on postcards and distributed to hundreds of people at WordCamp Europe.
2. Moderating photo submissions to the WordPress Photo Directory
3. Testing out a hard seltzer recipe for an upcoming homebrew book by Emma Christiansen
4. Making Falernum and various syrups for tiki
5. Driving Big Sur and 17 Mile Drive for the first time
6. Recipe testing for a new book and learning how to make hard seltzer
7. Charlie discovering hot chocolate
8. Tomatoes from our garden
9. Posting Likes and microblog notes here first instead of another social platform first.
10. Having one of my photos hung in a gallery at WordCamp US.
11. Pushing Charlie on the swingset
12. Charlie pointing out trucks, animals, stars, etc. He is so observant!
13. Getting comfortable furniture for the back deck.
14. Rowing on the Croton River and the Hudson in all different seasons.
15. Making some rabbit stew with black pepper dumplings with my parents
16. Getting perspective on how well maintained our 95 year old house is
17. Taking Charlie down to the riverfront walk to ride his bike.
18. Playing in the sand with Charlie on the beach
19. End of summer vacation in Cape Cod
20. Charlie throwing rocks in the river.
21. Working with my Dad to restore an old workbench top for his shop
22. Walks in the woods with Charlie and Amanda
23. Christmas lights walk at Harvest Moon Orchard
24. Getting the desk for my Ikea Poang chair. I use it every weekday. I’m writing this at it now.
25. Reading physical books.
26. Attending Gwen and Jacob’s wedding in Monterey. Reading Cannery Row while there.
27. Trick or treating with Charlie and friends in Lake Peekskill
28. Charlie riding his bike along the riverwalk and cruising down the hill.
29. Making pizza and tiki drinks at our house with friends on NYE
30. Morning breakfast sandwiches with Charlie
31. Growing more of a local community here in Peekskill
32. Wandering around Depew Park and exploring with Charlie for almost two hours on Saturday. Making sure Charlie has space to make his own decisions and explore.
33. Going to San Juan, PR, for a work team meetup
34. Taking Jay on his first Hudson paddle
35. Charlie having an excellent time whenever he got ahold of the garden hose.
36. Burgers and french fry sauce at Meyers Old Dutch, Beacon
37. Family walk with the sled in the snowy woods on a winter day in February
38. Getting a pellet ice machine. We use it in cocktails, iced coffee, iced tea, etc.
39. Putting up the climbing wall on Charlie’s swingset and watching him figure it out and master it over the next 8 months. Amazing.
40. Cape Cod vacation. Charlie playing on the beach and exploring. Whale watching.
41. The cardinal pairs in our backyard
42. Snuggle time with Charlie
43. Giving a talk on debugging with Logstash and Grafana.
44. Wrapping up the attic insulation project
45. Going to some art shows at the Center for Machine Arts
46. Going to Malaga, Spain, for a work division meetup. Jumping in the cold sea at night.
47. Listening to the windchimes
48. Making hot sauce with my red jalapeños
49. Alex Kirk’s Friends plugin with the Send to Kindle tool. Getting more into the indieweb in general
50. Taking Charlie out in the guideboat on Lake Sebago
51. Learning how to recharge the AC on my car.
52. Night out with Amanda celebrating Meg’s birthday. It was in a location we go to at least once a week, but transformed into a party space, at a completely different time of day, and filled with people we are friends with, it felt completely different in a magical way.
53. Taking Charlie out in the guideboat for the first time
54. Making Shortcuts workflows to make posting here easier
55. Having a little helper for all of our house projects
56. Blogging more
57. Wood fired Wednesdays at Pizzeria Baci. It was here that Charlie decided he liked pepperoni
58. Birthday in Kingston and Woodstock. Bookstore to get copies of Sandman signed. Trying Moonburger and Dixon’s Roadside.
59. Integrating AI tools into my daily workflow.
60. Eating Khao Soi at Nicky’s Thai in Sewickley
61. Charlie’s kind, sweet, and curious disposition
62. Looking for pinecones in the woods with Charlie
63. Charlie has grown so much this year! Photos from 1 year ago are recognizable, but feel so long ago and like a different kid.
64. Charlie’s love of breakfast sandwiches
65. Many, many hours at playgrounds with Charlie, running around with him, pushing him on swings, giving him high fives when he reached the bottom of a slide.
66. Doing things I’ve been putting off, such as getting the heater maintenance done before the cold set in.
67. Making Christmas cookies as a family.
68. Visiting the Claytons in Walnut Creek, CA
69. Running the Harvard Blog Archive preservation project.
70. Observing the hockeystick growth of Charlie’s vocabulary
71. Having a local artist design Christmas cards for us for the second year in a row
72. Celebrating holidays and birthdays with local friends
73. Trick or treating with our friends and their kids
74. Getting birria tacos from food trucks
75. Tending to the garden with Charlie
76. Reading When an Elephant Goes Shopping with Charlie, my favorite book when I was a toddler.
77. Building things out of blocks with Charlie. Vacuum trucks, bulldozers, semi trucks, hammers, etc.
78. Putting in the glass rinser in the sink. We use it all the time!
79. Taking Charlie to the playground, running, and having fun with him
80. Making art with Charlie and Amanda at the coffee table
81. Finishing 29 books
82. Picking out pumpkins in the rain with Charlie and Amanda. He was happy to stomp in the mud, sit on a tractor, and ride in the pumpkin wagons.
83. Talking to the Praxis students about using AI tools
84. Getting out on the river and paddling/rowing
85. Helping Jon build a woodshed
86. Coming out of the fog and feeling more like ourselves
87. Having lots of people over in the backyard for Charlie’s second birthday. Things like that are why we wanted a house to begin with!
88. Friendsgiving at Jeremy and Megan’s house
89. Putting book shelving in my office and changing the ambiance in there
90. Visiting the Desmonds in Salinas
91. Starting the generous coaching program that Automattic offers all employees
92. Working with Dave Winer on FeedLand
93. Charlie showing in interest in music and instruments. He wants to play a trumpet.
94. Visiting Erin and Tyler in Pittsburgh
95. Sandwich Fridays at Benny’s Brown Bag. We meet another couple for lunch each Friday at noon.
96. Getting back out in the woodshop and making dreidels and christmas ornaments on the lathe
97. Observing Charlie figure out the alphabet and his basic numbers this year.
98. Mornings at Peekskill Central getting breakfast with Amanda and Charlie before one of us gets on the train
99. Charlie playing with his cousins at Christmas
100. Getting a new grill and cooking on it more

Other years: 2022, 2017

I wrote one of these in 2017 and enjoyed the process (and outcome!), so when I saw Austin Kleon’s this year, I decided to write one again. Maybe I’ll make it a yearly thing.

1. Sean and Jacqueline’s wedding in Chicago in early January. We spent a week there before the wedding, which was our first time staying somewhere that wasn’t with family after we had Charlie, who was 5 months at the time. Catching up with lots of friends in person for the first time post-pandemic was cathartic.
2. Participating in Genuary 2022. I learned some of the basic techniques of creating generative art.
3. Charlie’s growth. From 5 months to 17 months is a magical time for babies. They go from not being able to crawl or eat solid foods to being able to run, feed themselves almost anything, and start saying words. It has been incredible watching him grow and helping him learn.
4. Parental leave. Spending four months being the primary caretaker during the day for Charlie was a great learning experience and I really bonded with Charlie. He is my little buddy!
5. Walks with Charlie. We took lots of walks in the woods, parks, and along the river. Trying to foster a love of being outside for him.
6. Solo parenting. Amanda travels for work, so I’ve done many multi-night solo stretches with Charlie starting as early as six months. They are tiring, but it is great knowing that I can do it.
7. Woodworking. Before I started looking through my photos to write this, I thought I hadn’t made anything in the shop this year, but it turns out that isn’t true. I made a dry vase, two ring holders, and some peg people for Charlie.
8. Culinary experimentation. Tasso ham, pastrami, gumbo, red beans and rice, enfrijoladas, King Cake, cinnamon bread, chipotles, char siu, english muffins, biscuits, blueberry pie, sous vide egg bites, tomatillo salsa, chicken in the pizza oven, Salsa de Chile Morita, galettes, Maid Rites
9. All the baby naps. He took naps on my daily during my parental leave, and now on weekends, days off, and when he is sick now that I’m back to work.
10. Bedtime baby snuggles. We opted not to sleep train Charlie, which has been a good decision for us. Instead we rock him to sleep every night.
11. Experiments with booze: Making orange bitters, orgeat, allspice dram, pineapple rum, coquito, the Clyde Common eggnog, batching cocktails like the Sneaky Peat and Black Christmas.
12. Setting up a Digital Garden with WordPress and beginning to tend it.
13. Witnessing Amanda as a mother. She is tender, loving, caring, and considered. She is a great mother to Charlie.
14. Watching Amanda start a new job and grow into new roles and create her own opportunities.
15. Attending a Jewish funeral and helping my friend fill in his father’s grave with shovels, in our suits.
16. Swim lessons with Charlie. He loves splashing and learning to kick kick kick!
17. DIA:Beacon with Charlie, especially hearing his young voice echo in the large Serra sculptures.
18. Going to the NY State Bridge Authority to get a Historic Bridges of the Hudson Valley poster and some cool stickers.
19. Backyard picnics. Amanda, Charlie, and I spent a lot of time outside on picnic blankets with snacks while Charlie was learning to crawl and walk.
20. Making pizza on the porch. We got an Ooni, which was a great purchase. Making pizza at home is a fun activity, and a great thing to do when guests come over, too.
21. Publishing a generative art project on fx(hash) – Pattern Plus Plus.
22. Catching up with Chef Eric, an old friend from Irvington, who now lives in Croton, and works in the crypto space.
23. Going to Amish Country and seeing the Amish ride electric bicycles. Then emailing Kevin Kelly about it and having him respond! KK has written about Amish Hackers, so I thought he would be interested.
24. Helping Grandma make the Easter Cheese (mostly eggs and milk) this year, and eating some.
25. Bill Strohm and Judy Alexander meeting Charlie. In many ways they were great mentors to me in high school and I kept in touch through college and afterward.
26. Taking Amanda out in the guideboat. I finished it in 2021 about two weeks before Charlie was born, and Amanda was way too pregnant by then to go out.
27. Finding morels in our backyard!
28. Finding a great daycare for Charlie. He loves going and interacting with his friends, and he is learning new things there every week. We feel good with him being there while we work.
29. Helping Jon with his timber framing project. It was a great learning experience.
30. Our garden! Tomatoes, tomatillos, peas, kale, radishes, jalapenos, hungarian black peppers, okra, potatoes, dill, thyme, chives, sage, oregano, mint, nasturtium, calendula, borage, chamomile.
31. Planting the seeds for the garden with Charlie, watering and checking on the plants with him, Charlie grabbing tomatoes right off the vine and eating them, Charlie helping us sort tomatoes at the end of the season.
32. Experimenting with a new way to water the tomatoes: Wick irrigation.
33. Going to see the Sol LeWitt prints gallery at Williams College
34. Eating at the West Taghkanic Diner.
35. The Baci Baby! To this day, Charlie is known as the Baci Baby at Pizzeria Baci, and some of the only non-pizza photos on their feed are of Charlie.
36. Getting into making tiki drinks at home.
37. Streets blocked off in downtown Peekskill on Fridays and Saturday evenings in the summer for restaurants and music.
38. Charlie’s first birthday. It was small, but we were were with the people who helped us navigate the first year of Charlie’s life. It was special.
39. Building Charlie a swingset, publishing the plans, then later building one for Miles (our friends’ son, close in age to Charlie)
40. Pushing Charlie on that swingset multiple times a week as long as the weather was nice.
41. Building more of a community – Meg and Jeremy, Erica and Trevor, Helen and Kolson, play dates with daycare parents
42. Starting my weekly blogging habit and sticking with it.
43. Crashing another team’s meetup in NYC to hang out with them.
44. Prince Street Pizza. Spicy Pepperoni slice. A delicacy.
45. Reading. I finished 26 books this year (less than previous years), and I started many more. Some standouts: Eager, The Amish, English Creek, Trust.
46. Attending a team meetup in San Francisco for work.
47. Visiting with old friends William and Jenna in Walnut Creek, CA. Meeting their youngest, Harrison, for the first time.
48. Tiki drinks at Smuggler’s Cove, Pagan Idol, and Tonga Room.
49. Visiting Alcatraz. The flies were awful.
50. Visiting Muir Woods.
51. Taking a new role as a lead of an engineering team at Automattic.
52. Engaging more with the indie web by sending webmentions and using microformats.
53. Attending a division meetup with 200 other Automatticians in Denver. Meeting most of Team51 for the first time.
54. Seeing first-hand how a large company like Automattic responds to major security incidents.
55. Ice cream at the Blue Pig.
56. Dinner and walks in Cold Spring.
57. Anniversary dinner with Amanda at The Bird & Bottle in Garrison.
58. BLTs with garden tomatoes.
59. Charlie learning to walk.
60. Reading books to Charlie.
61. Jon and Kristin’s wedding reception.
62. Ice cream, swings, merry-go-round, and farm brewery day in Goshen.
63. Restaurants with Charlie
64. Volunteering to be the photographer for Charlie’s daycare Fall Festival
65. Charlie learning animal noises. Cows, horses, chickens, turkeys, lions, dogs.
66. Rossi & Sons in Poughkeepsie. Incredible sandwiches.
67. Going to the Adirondacks for the first time and staying in the Whiteface Lodge in Lake Placid with my parents. Going in the hottub and heated pool in 30F weather was fun, as was seeing an old Adirondack guideboat. High Falls Gorge, milkweed and moody winter skies. Adirondack Mountain Club, maple stand, birch bark.
68. Charlie’s bathtimes. He loves playing in the bath and is so happy!
69. Charlie wanting to help us and be involved with whatever we are working on. He is so sweet and even though it takes longer, he is a good helper. It is about fostering that spirit, not maximizing efficiency.
70. Saturday Morning Donuts, a semi-irregular toddler playdate.
71. Charlie’s Mario halloween costume. Miles as Luigi, Belle as Princess Peach.
72. Decorating and having friends over for Amanda’s birthday.
73. Picking out a Christmas tree and Charlie helping us decorate it.
74. Taking Charlie to the zoo. Bronx Zoo first, then Cleveland Metroparks Zoo.
75. Charlie’s Cheers! Now an essential part of having any beverage.
76. Seeing my art behind Matt at the State of the Word this year.
77. Tumblr Important Internet checkmarks.
78. Twexit. More people moving back to blogging and Mastodon.
79. Bucking tradition and doing Thanksgiving ham.
80. Charlie’s first Ikea trip.
81. Learning things quickly with ChatGPT. Asking questions is a great way to learn!
82. Finding the Sippin Santa tiki drink recipes.
83. Playing in the snow with Charlie.
84. Charlie playing with his cousin Nora (3 weeks older than him) at Christmas.
85. Learning to play Pitch.
86. Programming more and getting good feedback: Building CLI commands, custom blocks, and plugins that fetch content and turn them into posts.
87. Going to the farmers market on Saturday mornings
88. Verplanck Italian fest sausage. Great sausage and peppers sandwiches on what is almost always the hottest week of the year. But a fun local thing nonetheless.
89. Breakfast and lunch dates with Amanda, something we’ve prioritized for some “us” time since having Charlie.
90. The Hudson Valley’s sunsets.
91. Charlie’s giggles, especially when we can see his 6 teeth.
92. Charlie coming to my door to say Hi while I’m on calls. I usually only close my door when I’m on calls, but since it has panes of glass, he comes up and smiles at me and I melt every time.
93. Indie games like Wordle, Worldle, and more. Fun diversions.
94. At work I spearheaded a project where I figured out how to transition to a new method of connecting to our sites via SSH and implemented it. I learned a ton in the process!
95. Visiting Erin and Tyler in Sewickley, PA, and meeting their son. Charlie had a great time meeting their dog, cats, and chickens, as well as running around their yard and putting mud in his hair.
96. Sharing struggles more openly with friends and having them reciprocate and open up as well.
97. Connecting with long-time friends on a different level now that we have children.
98. Some shows we enjoyed: The new season of Westworld, House of Dragons, new season of Ozark, Billions, Wheel of Time. And of course Goncharov, Scorsese’s 1973 mafia film.
99. Listening to some new music: Michael Kiwanuka, Slim Gaillard, Caspar Babypants.
100. Nice, friendly, helpful neighbors. We are grateful to live in our neighborhood.

These questions come from Stephan Ango’s 40 questions to ask yourself every year. Answering them was a good exercise, though I think I might modify the list for next year and make it my own.

1. What did you do this year that you’d never done before?
   • Went on parental leave for four months and was Charlie’s primary caretaker during the day. I’ve never been off work for that long, and I’d never been the primary caretaker for a baby!
2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions?
   • This is the first year in a while that I didn’t make resolutions. But a couple weeks later I started blogging weekly, which I kept up the rest of the year.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
   • Some did! Sara and Josh, Eric and Whitney, Mark and Jill, Erin and Tyler, Lindsay and Casey.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
   • Yes, my friend’s father passed away in January and I helped fill in the grave at the funeral. That is an experience I’ll probably never forget.
5. What cities/states/countries did you visit?
   • San Francisco, CA
   • Amherst, OH
   • Chicago, IL
   • Lake Placid, NY
   • Denver, CO
6. What would you like to have next year that you lacked this year?
   • More family walks, more time in the workshop, and more time rowing on the Hudson
7. What date(s) from this year will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
   • Charlie’s Birthday party – It was a small group of people who we are close with and who helped us through the first year of his life. It was special.
   • Going to DIA:Beacon with Charlie and hearing the echos of his voice inside the giant Serra Torqued Ellipses.
   • Not specific dates, but recurring memories of pushing Charlie on the swings we built in our backyard.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
   • Connecting with Charlie during my parental leave. Spending all day every day as the primary caretaker for Charlie for four months was incredible and I cherished that time.
   • Building more of a community in Peekskill. We have more friends there this year than we have since we moved there!
   • Starting a weekly blogging habit.
9. What was your biggest failure?
   • It isn’t a failure in the sense that I did something and failed at it, but rather my biggest shortcoming that I need to improve upon. I am aware almost every day that I need to get better at navigating my emotions and frustrations and how I express them. I also need to be more grateful for each day.
10. What other hardships did you face?
    • Nothing awful. Mostly difficulties in the transition to becoming a father. It is a huge change and some days/weeks are much harder than others.
11. Did you suffer illness or injury?
    • Mostly run-of-the-mill colds or upper respiratory infections. Once Charlie started daycare, he picked up various illnesses, which Amanda and I inevitably got.
12. What was the best thing you bought?
    • Probably the Ooni Pizza Oven. We made a lot of tasty pizza and had fun hanging out on the back porch with friends making pizza.
13. Whose behavior merited celebration?
    • Jason Kottke stopped posting on his very popular blog and took a sabbatical. It is worth celebrating people stepping away from something like that and taking a financial risk to take the time they need to recharge and reset.
14. Whose behavior made you appalled?
    • Elon Musk’s shitty treatment of employees after taking over Twitter.
    • Sam Bankman-Fried – Paraded under the Effective Altruism banner, which seems to have been disingenuous at best and closer to a complete front, gave insane amounts of money to partisan political campaigns for personal gain, and knowingly defrauded investors and crypto users, setting the entire industry back at least 5 years.
15. Where did most of your money go?
    • Top two expenses are our mortgage and Charlie’s daycare. That said, this year we put as much into our savings as we put into our mortgage, which we are proud of.
16. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
    • Finding my first morel, in my backyard of all places!
17. What song will always remind you of this year?
    • Either Wheels on the Bus or Barnyard Dance, two songs Charlie wanted to hear over and over this year.
18. Compared to this time last year, are you: happier or sadder? Thinner or fatter? Richer or poorer?
    • Happier (more rested, out of the tough infant stage, less work stress)
    • Fatter (Gained a few pounds)
    • Richer (Savings and investments are higher and loan debts are lower than this time last year, and I feel richer because of a more robust family life now that Charlie is getting his own personality and interacting with us more.)
19. What do you wish you’d done more of?
    • Took Charlie on more walks.
    • Made more things in the workshop.
20. What do you wish you’d done less of?
    • Scrolling social media.
21. How are you spending the holidays?
    • With my parents in Ohio, then hopefully visiting some friends in Pittsburgh on the way back home.
22. Did you fall in love this year?
    • I’m happily married, and working together with Amanda to raise a child shined a light on some facets of love that aren’t talked about as often: Safety, acceptance, openness, shared purpose. Not that I didn’t feel those things before, but I felt them more acutely this year.
23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
    • I don’t know about hate, but there are a couple people I dislike a lot more strongly than I did last year, and a couple people I like a lot more than I did last year. Not great to name names on a blog, though.
24. What was your favorite show?
    • No stand-out favorite from this year, but Billions, The Wheel of Time, and House of the Dragon were all pretty good.
25. What was the best book you read?
    • Non-fiction: Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb
    • Fiction: English Creek by Ivan Doig
26. What was your greatest musical discovery of the year?
    • New: Michael Kiwanuka
    • Old: Slim Gaillard
27. What was your favorite film?
    • Goncharov, Scorsese’s 1973 mafia film
28. What was your favorite meal?
    • With family: There was one specific meal Amanda, Charlie, and I had in the backyard on a picnic blanket that sticks out in my mind. We had chicken shawarma over rice and we ate it on a picnic blanket under the wild cherry tree. The weather was perfect and we had a great time laughing and being present with Charlie. It was wonderful.
    • With friends: I really enjoyed having a giant meal at China Live with my coworkers in San Francisco. After a couple years of pandemic uneasiness, no work travel, and limited access to really good Chinese food, it was awesome. Christy Nyiri and I basically ordered for the whole table of 8, and it was glorious.
29. What did you want and get?
    • Work-wise, I wanted to get back into more technical work, and we made that happen by moving me to be the lead of an engineering team. It has been a positive change.
30. What did you want and not get?
    • I wanted to get out on the river more this year, but didn’t make it happen. I think next year I should consider timeshifting more to make it happen one morning a week.
31. What did you do on your birthday?
    • It was low-key this year. Amanda made me a cheesecake and we probably ordered some takeout, but that was the extent of it. Charlie was still pretty young, so we weren’t yet comfortable getting a sitter. I expect that next year we’ll probably go to dinner since Charlie is more used to that now.
    • I started a yearly tradition of writing birthday posts. Here is this years: https://cagrimmett.com/thoughts/2022/02/27/thirty-two/
32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
    • Probably more consistent sleep. That front is improving, but it made much of the early part of the year tough.
33. How would you describe your personal fashion this year?
    • Two years of Pandemic has turned my personal fashion into more comfortable/functional. Fewer button-downs, more tshirts and sweatshirts.
34. What kept you sane?
    • Having a toddler to care for kept me focused on the present more than ever before. It also helped me keep my work days constrained to standard business hours rather than leaking into the evening.
    • On the flip side of that, the quiet hours after Charlie went to bed helped me recover from the tough days where he was super fussy.
    • It has been a year since I started talking with a therapist, Steve, to help me counter my anxiety and stress and process my emotions in a better way. It has helped a lot.
35. Which celebrity/public figure did you admire the most?
    • Probably Kevin Kelly.
36. What political issue stirred you the most?
    • I found the extreme sides of the COVID debates (“everyone should still be in lockdown” on one side and “anti-vaxxers” on the other) to both be very frustrating. There is a pretty reasonable middle ground that makes a lot of sense.
    • I also found much of the Roe v Wade overturn debate to be frustrating. So little empathy on both sides of the issue. While I can’t prove he wrote it, I’m pretty sure I personally know the clerk who wrote a lot of the leaked majority opinion from the Supreme Court case, and he is a person who I hold in low regard, so the idea of that individual writing a legal precedent of that scale really bothered me.
37. Who did you miss?
    • I mostly missed my family this year. Living 8 hours away is difficult.
38. Who was the best new person you met?
    • We made a lot of progress on finding a new group of friends locally this year after struggling with that for the past couple of years.
39. What valuable life lesson did you learn this year?
    • Before having a baby, I thought I was even-keeled and had a good handle on my emotions. 3am inconsolable baby crying, lack of sleep, never getting out the door on time due to last-minute vomiting/diaper changes/messes, and baby throwing food taught me I have a long way to go.
40. What is a quote that sums up your year?

Frustration has to do with expectations. Replace expectations with preferences.

Sometimes I get off track. This is what I need to do to get back on track:

1. Turn off social media. Remove apps from phone, turn on the 1Blocker (iPad and iPhone) and WasteNoTime (Mac) rules.
2. Wash your face.
3. Drink a full glass of water and eat a healthy snack if you need one.
4. Get your keys and headphones, put on a podcast, go for a walk around the building. Breathe deeply the whole time. Check the mail when you come back in.
5. Clean off your desk, clean off the dining table, and empty/load the dish washer.
6. Turn off the podcast and turn on music (Jazz Vibes, Hundred Days Off, or Tycho). Sit down at the dining table with your notebook and make a list of the most important things that need to get one. Evaluate each item and block out a time on the calendar to knock it out over the next few days.
7. Pick one thing to start work on immediately. Start working.