Woah, has it ever been a minute since I wrote a proper newsletter. It’s time to break that streak. Sorry, y’all!

I’m sitting here in a concession/lobby sort of place while my youngest participates in soccer tryouts/evaluations. It’s kind of wild how time has made me so much less interested in this whole process than I was ten years ago. It’s not a matter of not wanting the best for my youngest, but rather knowing that me getting stressed out about it has no benefit to anyone.

She has great natural athleticism and could succeed in many sports if she wishes. I’m happy to help her push her skills to another level if she wants to. I can let her know that I’m there to help her push whatever she wants to wherever she wants, but it’s entirely if she wants to.

Generally we’re a family that finds ourselves more comfortable around the music-related groups than sports-related teams. This was true for my wife and I. It’s been true for our two oldest kids. It might be true for our youngest as well. And I’m happy to help her push her skills in those areas as well…if she wants to.

She visited Florida in spite of their politics. While she did not relish traveling to that state, she loved to spend time at Disney World. For her it was an oasis of happiness in a swamp of disagreement.

She was cautious of COVID, following the rules the whole time. She showed concern for her immunocompromised work colleagues who acted invincible. Their deaf ears led to her eventually stepping back, allowing them to make their own choices. Yet she continued to take care, not wishing to put them at risk by any of her choices.

No one will ever know if she caught COVID in Florida or before her arrival. I guess it’s better said that COVID caught her in Florida. Cold symptoms, sweating, weakness, ER, low blood pressure, positive COVID test, sepsis, plan for ICU, heart stopped, CPR, and it was finished. So, so quickly it was finished. Did COVID give her sepsis or did it weaken her immune system so something else could? Was there something else underlying? Does it matter?

Our dear friend of twenty-two years, a second mother to our kids, a wonderful, kind, thoughtful, just, passionate, funny, and fun woman is gone much, much too soon.

I'm going to go light on you this month. This is an excuse for me to go light on myself.

We're back from the east of Asia. Last month I said:

[T]here will still be moments over the next three weeks when we will feel out of place and, well, foreign. We are going to be an uncommon, though not unknown, presence in the place that we are going. This is all part of the experience I want for myself and my family. To understand what it feels like to be a bit out of place. To experience many different ways of doing things. To learn that our discomfort can eventually become comfort. And to learn that while all these differences exist and are real, our commonalities greatly outnumber our differences.

To that I continue to say 💯! I'll admit I felt less out of place than I expected, but when I paid close attention I'd notice the quick glances. Yet people were just so polite, my goodness! Truth be told, by the end of the trip we also would glance at any of the caucasian people we passed. Humans – hundreds of thousands of years of evolution dictates we must notice what is different!

Our family is flying halfway around the world on a trip of a lifetime. We'll be landing in Tokyo on July 6th for a two-week visit to Japan. The city, Kyoto, Japanese Alps, and Mount Fuji are in store. Bullet trains, konbini, jet lag, and heat await. Since we're so close, and since our daughters are so enamored with everything K-Pop(ular culture), we will be stopping for a couple full days in Seoul as well. You will probably never see pictures of our participation in a planned K-Pop dance class. :)

Visiting Japan and Korea have been on our radar ever since Jesse and I arrived at adulthood. Most of my friends who are reading this will know that I was able to travel to Japan, South Korea, and China (Beijing) in college. This was an incredible trip as part of a college symphonic band. While it was very fun, it was, as my friend Derrick said, like traveling in a fish bowl. We were placed into new and unique situations on occasion, but we were also together with friends throughout the experience and we could be mildly uncomfortable together. There was culture shock for sure as our group was largely rural country mice from the Midwest centered on Eastern South Dakota. It was a comfortable culture shock, though, if that makes any sense.

The biggest pain of that trip was that Jesse was unable to take the trip. While she was part of the symphonic band, she had a required class to take over the time we were away. If she skipped it she would be a year behind on her nursing degree, and that just was not an option. This was very hard for her, of course, but also a challenge for me to be away from her for nearly a month and to be frustrated on her behalf that she wasn't having the experience we were having.

Now twenty four years later we are incredibly grateful to be able to visit and re-visit the area along with our daughters. The world, and knowledge of the world, has changed a fair bit since that 1999 trip. There will be fewer surprises traveling in 2023 as the internet has allowed us to read and watch all kinds of information about our destination. The cultural differences will be felt in a different way as we are a group of five instead of eighty.

A few weeks ago we all went to the Chicago area for a long weekend. Truthfully we never got into the Chicago city limits, but it was still a lovely trip.

My daughters spent one night at a concert for their favorite NBA Ambassador, which allowed Jesse and I to roll around the area chasing entertainment and food. We went to a movie (the D&D one – it was entertaining enough), got our first restaurant-made pierogis (way more oily than I imagined), found a weird brewery in an industrial park, and drove out of that brewery parking lot to a lovely restaurant/brewery area in Rosemont (I think).

Earlier that day we walked around Oak Park to look at the tens of Frank Lloyd Wright homes in the area. It was a cloudy day where the rain just kept holding off for the most part. We saw houses that were quite obviously from the Prairie School and houses that were from his "bootleg" years, more Victorian in style.

We were reminded that Wright was employed and fired by Louis Sullivan. Sullivan designed a bank in our little town. He is generally considered an inspiration to the Prairie School architects.

What’s going on now?

Work

It has been three months since my last update, and since then quite a bit has happened. Primarily a few more people have joined us at Good Enough! Arun, Patrick, and James, specifically. Yes, this means that during my time at Harvest I worked in some capacity with almost our entire Good Enough team. James is the new, very even-keeled wildcard in that mix. Our recent newsletter talks a bit more about the team.

We also soft launched a little beta of our latest software, Ponder. Ponder is our take on software for private groups or small forums. If you have any groups with whom you’d like an organized, asynchronous way to talk, kick it around and see what you think. And let me know if you have any questions!

For the past few weeks Jesse and I have been adjusting our behaviors around exercise and eating. We are making use of the Lean Body 90 program by Dan Go. I signed up for it at launch, which means I paid around half what it goes for now. It's early days, but I'm pretty sure I'd recommend it at the current price as well.

As part of this high protein eating program, we've been trying Huel Black as an alternative to our carnivorous primary way of adding proteins, which is meat, meat, meat. Our eating still feels awfully meaty, but it's nice to have at least one meal per day where (a) we aren't eating meat and (b) we aren't having to think about what to eat. I doubt Huel is saving anyone money, but it does take some decision stress off of the mind.

At first sip Huel was a pretty "this isn't bad" experience, followed with a "I kind of have to force this down" feeling. After a week or two, though, I didn't mind at all a chilled version of the shakes. In fact when we visited Houston last week we did not travel with Huel and both of us said "I miss my shake" mid visit. I mean I still find it best with a glass of water or coffee on the side, but not bad! Is it actually healthy? I'm not sure, but it's probably better than the alternative.

While for the first time in my life I have finally noticed how different I feel on the days when I have good eating habits vs days when I have poor eating habits, I haven't gotten there with weight training yet. I have to believe the habit will form at some point. This program is not incredibly intense, nor very time consuming. Hopefully it nets results! It is sticking a bit, though, as I noticed that my next hotel stay has an exercise facility and for some reason that fact feels good.

Over a decade ago, Jesse and I came up with a light philosophy on vacation and travel. It isn't very precise nor is it written down, and we have to remind ourselves of it from time to time. Basically we want to avoid delaying experiences and travel is one of the top priories in our budget.

We realized that it is folly to wait to travel until that convenient time called retirement. It's easy to convince yourself that retirement travel will be more advantageous. You imagine a time with much fewer commitments, a more plump investment account, and freedom from those work responsibilities. If things go right, you are absolutely correct on all of those counts.

Yet there are many downsides to delaying travel. First of all, if any of your travels require a higher level of fitness, good luck fully experiencing them at retirement age. Second, if you have children, how many of these trips could be taken with the kids right now? (We think in the modern world it is important to raise kids with an innate understanding that there are thousands of cultural differences out there, and near-infinite ways of living. Travel is a great tool toward that education.) Third, if you have parents or other family with whom you get along, traveling with them can offer bonding experiences most don't get after they escape childhood. Finally, while it's morbid to consider, you just might expire before you ever get a chance at those delayed retirement experiences.

If you are someone who prioritizes the experiences that go along with travel, I highly recommend not waiting until the perfect later date to start checking off destinations within your reach. Most financial situations require that you be creative with your modes of transportation and your itineraries. We feel that the sacrifices made in other areas are so worth it in order to make sure your budget can accommodate travel. The time spent fitting your plans to your budget is well spent.

For my whole childhood my dad's parents lived very near to us. This was such a fortunate thing for me. During the first few years of my life, we literally lived on the same property. My parents had a double-wide trailer that was a good home for our family of five. About seventy yards away my grandparents had the farm house where my father and his siblings were raised.

After high school, my dad, the youngest of six, had plied his living as a farmer. My parents lived on a few farmsteads along the way, all within a mile or two of this home base. My parents would farm the land around those homesteads, and as my grandpa got older he would help more and more back where he started.

At some point my parents and grandparents entered into a partnership. Not only were they working land all around the area, but they also had a large herd of cattle. They even built a couple very expensive Harvestore® silos, which could be seen for miles across the flat land of southwest Minnesota.

In the spirit of Derek Sivers, I like to keep a /now page. The /now page is a good moment to check in with myself about what I'm doing. It's nice to reflect on what's been happening in my life, while also keeping tabs on if I'm still doing with my time what I intended to be doing.

I've been really bad at updating this page, though! As I am writing, it hasn't been up updated since November. Time to change that, and to help me I'm going to put out a newsletter update at the same time. An every-two-months schedule seems like a good one to try out of the gate.

Work

Last winter Shawn and I surprised ourselves when we started to work on software again. This winter we are baffling ourselves again by stepping up our commitment to being Good Enough. We are moving the studio from a place to have fun with tiny projects to a place that builds a few products with the goal to become a self-sustaining business.

The other day I was looking for the support request page at GitHub. I wanted to talk to a real person about an abandoned account that we could potentially use for Good Enough's code repositories.

And so I brought up the support page and found that it appeared to only offer me support articles. I was pretty sure that "Ask GitHub to remove an abandoned account so a new company could use said account" wasn't going to be in these support articles. Sigh.

Next I went to look at the GitHub pricing page. I figured maybe email support was only available to paying customers, and currently I'm not one of those. My scanning of the pricing page confirmed that support appeared to be for paying customers only.

New Year’s Resolutions are terribly cliché. So are newsletters saying that New Year’s Resolutions are terribly cliché. There is also the cliché of the form, “I’ve always felt that my year has a different rhythm, which is why I think about my hopes for upcoming accomplishments in the fall.” It’s all cliché. Everything’s been done before. There are only seven stories in the world. Clichés all the way down.

When I think about what I want the next year to bring, it is generally full of lightly-considered hopes. I hope I exercise more. I hope I eat better. I hope I sleep well. I hope all these improvements lead to more quality time, healthy happiness, creative creations, and so on. It’s possible I even want these things, though I find it hard to believe I want things that I don’t actively pursue.

One particular idea has been on my mind these past few days. While I really do enjoy consuming things, a collecting habit seems to go hand-in-hand with consumption. I like collecting. The tangible objects of my affections are things I enjoy and things that I like to share with others. I feel kind of sad for the generations coming after mine who have largely been detached from the act of gathering and storing these physical things.

This past year, though, I find that I don’t love how my collections have been outpacing the time I set aside for consumption. I might have more purchased albums that I haven’t spun than those that I have listened to. Movies are approaching that threshold as well. And to be clear, a majority of my consumption is still delivered by streaming means just like anyone else. (While I would be willing and happy to take breaks from the stream, I have a family’s consumptive needs to support and shutting off these faucets are a battle I’m not currently going to fight.)

Over the past month I have gotten madly into making cocktails. It has been a pretty fascinating experience filled with many surprising flavors.

Earlier this year my friend, Mike, started sending me interesting cocktail links, blog posts, and newsletters. It wasn’t frequent, but just every few weeks. Each time I responded with some form of, “That looks really interesting, looks like you have a new hobby!” To which he’d reply something on the order of “No time now, but you on the other hand…” Leading to my final, “Uh, no, I have enough hobbies not going to happen.”

Then came October. I’m not even sure what triggered it. Probably an algorithm serving me a couple cocktail videos and articles. And they were interesting! Now I’m not talking about complicated recipes with custom made syrups or fat-washed alcohols. It was the classics that intrigued me. The Old Fashioned. The Negroni. The Last Word.

At the same time I realized that I was kind of sick of beer. We have arrived at a paradox of choice in the beer world. Everyone is making beer and all of it tastes about the same. I said to Jesse, “Right now I feel like I could either stop drinking alcohol entirely or I should get into making cocktails.”

I have never had good eating habits. It goes back a long way. I am learning that it also goes forward a long way, which has me concerned.

Growing up I lived on a working farm. For the first ten years of my life the farm was busied with both field planting and a sizable herd of dairy cattle. During the remainder of my childhood years the farm was strictly field work, and even that was reduced over time as my dad transitioned from farming to other careers.

In my experience the stereotypical farmer is a voracious eater of heavy food. My extended family of farmers had terrible habits around eating. It makes some sense. In the crucible of harvest season you are working near constantly for weeks, getting little sleep. You are burning tons of calories. You are under stress hoping the yields of your crop are adequate for profit, managing the breakdowns of your equipment, and feeling the winter weather creeping into harvest season, threatening it all.

Typically someone would be back at the house, preparing large meals for the work crew, and these meals were always centered on meat and potatoes. The eating style was that of people knowing all the food would be gone soon and you better get yours before it disappeared. Even though the amount of food prepared looked like mountains to us flat-land Minnesotans, the food was indeed eaten down to crumbs within minutes. For my extended family, all this habit has not only led to obesity, but also the ailments associated with obesity, such as heart issues, diabetes, and kidney failure.

My kids have gone to lots of first days of school over the past fifteen years. In those years none of these days were too emotional for me. I was happy to have my children out of the house for part of the day. They were learning a couple things, and getting some much needed social time with people their age. They were figuring out how to navigate relationships. It seemed like the right progression.

Thankfully I had little enough foresight to get caught up in the eventualities of this process. Year-by-year I’d send my children out into the community schools. They’d come back every day. That was that. No need to think about the future slowly creeping up on me.

Some might call this lack of foresight a lack of empathy. Though in this case it would be a lack of self-empathy, and I think by definition self-empathy cannot actually be a thing. In any case, I spent little time imagining myself in the shoes of my future self, and boy did this save me a lot of pain.

Last week I dropped my eldest daughter off at college. This is a whole different category of first days of school. It was incredibly emotional leading up to her departure. She had feelings of excitement and nervousness. She could anticipate the homesickness as well. Her parents and her siblings had feelings mostly of the more selfish variety: we were going to miss her terribly.

I’m writing the day before we board a plane to fly to Las Vegas, and then drive up to southern Utah. We are all pretty excited to have a vacation even though the temperatures are going to be brutal. It’s time for me to learn what a dry heat truly feels like!

Those of you reading along have probably experienced both my desire to write with some frequency and my inability to keep up that habit. Recently Arun shared with me this blog post and I think things have finally clicked. I have since written in my journal sixteen of the past seventeen days.

It’s an odd feeling because my writing in this journal has not been substantial. My total words written in these past few weeks have been less than many other stretches throughout the past years. The big discovery here is that I’m not worrying about it. I’m just forming a habit, and worrying about doing it “correctly” is sure to end things before the habit forms.

In order to start journaling I only wrote 2-3 sentences a day. These would be the thoughts at the top of mind, or the experiences that seemed the most relevant. I start by describing the events of my day.

While driving back from a soccer game this morning I realized I had not written a newsletter this month. It’s now Saturday and tomorrow at three in the morning I depart for a trip to Orlando with my daughters’ marching band. The newsletter will thus be short and possibly sweet.

Looking back at my school years, almost all my distant trips were based around band. In high school I traveled to California to march in the prestigious Rose Parade (A picture can be found in issue #2 – did I not write my Jennifer Lopez story yet?). We also marched in parades near Washington D.C. and NYC. In college band took me to Arizona, Chicago, Minneapolis, Tokyo, Beijing, Seoul, Bismarck, and more. Oh, and our biggest family trip before I was in these bands was to follow my older siblings’ marching band to Portland, Oregon. So listen here, kids. If you want to travel, join band!

This time we are chaperones on the trip and I can’t help but remember the trouble I witnessed on those band trips. After hours swimming, overfull hot tubs, bus rides, late nights, and plain ol’ mouthy teenagers. I was fairly well-behaved, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t help eliminate all the water in an Arizona hotel hot tub.

I’m hoping the kids on our trip are at least safely behaved. I’m hoping I don’t have to report anything or deal with anything I can’t handle. I’m hoping they are so warn out by the heat and the amusement parks that they collapse into bed so they can do it all over again the next day. I’m hoping.

I don’t think I’m the first to feel like the United States is in a cold civil war. It feels like we are so at odds with each other that the relationships are irreparable. This conflict is being encouraged through the behavior of our “leaders” in order to hold on to their positions and enrich themselves. Meanwhile the behind-the-scenes power structure is controlled by corporations and ultra-rich donors.

Growing up I was taught a deep respect for this country and its institutions. Continuing to maintain that respect for the institutions of today very much feels like disrespecting those same institutions of yesterday. Though I understand that perhaps none of these epiphanies are new; perhaps these conflicts and power dynamics have existed in some way, shape, or form for most of American history.

Still, the dynamics of today, and my understanding of them, sure makes the Gettysburg Address hit different from when I last read it a year ago. (Emphasis below is mine.)

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

My father played fastpitch softball until his forties. His final season was in the early nineties. As he says it today it was less that he wanted to be done to go golfing, but more that the manager was not his favorite. In any case, the game was no longer fun and it was time for him to transition to his next competitive endeavor. He’d go on to win numerous club championships golfing near-scratch. Now he is seventy-two, still golfing almost as well as he was twenty years ago.

I was only fourteen or fifteen at the time he stopped playing. I have lots of memories of attending softball games, but they are mostly of the wavy sort, as if they’re in amongst the fog of a summer morning. From time to time I’ll repeat these memories to my parents to see if they match reality, and surprisingly most of them check out.

Fastpitch softball in southwest Minnesota was a community event pulling involvement in from throughout the countryside. The county where we lived had around 11,000 residents, and by my count there were nine fastpitch teams. Over half of the population for the county was in my home town, which had two teams. The second-largest town of 1,100 residents also had two teams. From there every little town of 200 people had a team. In all cases these teams were also drawing from the surrounding rural area farmers.

Back then golf had not come to the fore Slowpitch softball was a thing these seasoned ballplayers joked about, if they even were aware of its existence at all. Townball has ruled Minnesota for decades. While townball was big in this region in the sixties and it returned in the aughts, fastpitch softball ruled the southwest corner of the state at the time. If you wanted to keep active and have some beers with friends during your summer, fastpitch softball was the way to go.

I tried to read Ducks, Newburyport. I really did!

This is a book that has been lauded with praise in the literary community. It is a book that a couple of acquaintances, both of whom seem to have good taste, completely fawned over. It was the best book they read that year and maybe the best book they’d read in years. It was a book they felt was a top all-time work. An amazing book.

So I checked it out from my library and took it on vacation. My first concern landed immediately. The book clocked in at over 1,000 pages. I’m getting older and when I see a book, or series of books, that wants this much of my time I get suspicious. I don’t have as much time left as I used to! But I figured this book is said to be amazing and what else better do I have to do with my reading time? I’ll finish it eventually.

So I set about reading. The style, for me, was immediately off-putting. This book is written as a single run-on sentence. It is the protagonist’s stream of consciousness. There are connecting and filler words galore, just as you might expect there to be if you dictated your mental spaghetti to someone. The biggest connector is the phrase “the fact that.”

In early June, 1989, I went to my friend Alex’s family cabin. I was eleven years old. Many things about the weekend are hard to remember. I think they had a dirt bike, but I was too nervous to ride it. I believe we went golfing one day, though I don’t remember how I played. We must have spent time on the lake? I don’t recall.

I will never forget what happened the last day of our visit. Alex and I were out in a nearby grassy area. Maybe it was a pasture. We had his BB gun. It wasn’t far from the surrounding cabins, but there were 180 degrees of no people in one direction. We set up cans as targets. Since we were careless eleven-year-olds, we probably tried to shoot at flying birds.

Eventually we got bored with that, turned around, and trained our eyes on the pavement leading down to the water access. This is where vehicles would play the back-up game, maneuvering their boats down into the water before gently releasing them into the waves. There was a truck by the lake, it’s cargo floating. There were people near the shore, helping to manage the driver. Talking idly amongst themselves as managers do.

We were in our own world, though, when we decided to shoot our ammunition at the pavement twenty feet in front of us. It was warm, but not hot. As tar gets soft in the heat, we may have been curious if the BBs would lodge themselves in the pavement. We may have just wondered if the BBs would deflect and how high they would travel. I doubt we had very detailed thoughts about what we were doing.

Hello!

I hope 2022 has been treating you well so far. I’ve found it to be a decent year so long as my head is sufficiently in the sand most of the time. At the very least it has been a surprising year for me.

My long lost itch to blog has returned. This wasn’t a new year’s resolution, but it entered my brain around that time. I spent a fair bit of time trying to decide on a platform. Did I want to stay on my antiquated Ruby/Sinatra blog running on Heroku? Did I want to dive into static site generators (😈)? Or did I want to use some sort of service?

In the end I chose Micro.blog. It took me a while to wrap my brain around it, but once I did it gave me in a nice, big hug. I don’t think it’s for everyone. If I wanted something turnkey that I didn’t plan to style, I’d probably pick Write.as. Blot and Wunderbucket are also very intriguing.

As I get older I have realized that a lot of my ways of working, my ways of motivating myself, are tied to the culture around me. Specifically these motivations are tied to the culture of my geography; the culture of America. In this case, when I speak of culture I am talking about the work ethic that “made America great” and the moral value tied to that work ethic.

A read a book that opened my eyes to how many of us have been manipulated by this intentional culture creation. Things like the protestant work ethic were latched on to by capitalists in order to tie morality to work. In the first half of the 20th century literal war-time propagandists were enlisted by the business world to conflate workers’ senses of self worth with their ability to achieve results in the workplace.

(I’m 90% sure the book was Do Nothing. I don’t know if I recommend it. Parts were “Woah?!” and parts were “Wha?”)

It has been a minute. Summer came upon me and time spent with the family became a priority. I also worked on a few woodworking projects. And we took a glorious, two-week road trip. Writing took a backseat.

Don't expect any consistency from this little letter going forward. Sometimes I might write one, though. It could be a week between letters or it could be months.

Organizing

The GOP strategy of motivating voters by sending out operatives to disrupt shit at the local level has arrived in my city. “Public challenges School Board on rights during open meeting.” It’s all around Critical Race Theory (there was a high school class with that same name last school year, but no such class is on the schedule this school year).

It’s my good friend’s birthday today, and so he is the inspiration for me to write. (I don’t mean that he inspired the specific words. This isn’t an homage. Mostly I mean that I wasn’t going to write, but it being his birthday makes me feel like, well, I really should write. It’s like a gift to him!)

Regular activities are starting to pick up around the household. Soccer, gymnastics, and marching band practices are happening near daily. The oldest is at the beginning of working through her college decision. Standardized tests are frequent. Spring sniffles are also bringing about Covid tests. All negative so far!

It has been a bit of a challenge to adjust to the arrival of prior reality. While we haven’t enjoyed the isolation, we have enjoyed the calm. The obvious response is DON’T OVERCOMMIT YOUR CHILDREN OMG!!!1!! We keep a close eye on their commitments. This seems like a reasonable level. It’s just that our boundaries are pushed even at a reasonable level.

We live in a five-star world. I am definitely not saying everything in the world is amazing. (Though who wants to go back in live in 1904? Nobody, that’s who.) What I am saying is that many of us engage this world as if the things we purchase and partake in always need to be five-star experiences.

Years ago when one had a need for a tool, article of clothing, or whatever, one visited a store, looked at the selection of things available, and picked a thing. Over time one would learn about trusted brands and tend to buy them more frequently. Or one would learn about a good product by the social experience of talking to friends or family. In theory this process is costly in terms of time. Travel to the store, dig around the shelves, travel to another store to compare products, purchase, and travel home. It is much more streamlined to open a web browser, purchase an item, and receive it in a few days.

In practice I can’t help but believe I spend significantly more time in the overall purchase process in today’s world than I would have in the world of thirty years ago. I always want the item that provides the best ratio of performance to price. I research what the best things are in the category. Then I pull back and get reasonable because the best things are often expensive. Maybe there is a very good thing that costs considerably less? While I’m a proponent of buy once cry once, I also don’t want to waste my money. What is the cry to buy ratio on this item?

The drive to Arkansas was a long one, but not excruciatingly so. We picked the location due to a self-imposed we-won’t-drive-more-than-ten-hours radius from our home base in southern Minnesota. As we drove through the states we noticed more green buds in the trees, though the difference between here and there was not as great as we had expected. As we hopped from gas station to gas station we noticed fewer masks.

As we went through Kansas City we noticed fewer signs than we’d like to have seen. Then we were on a road we were not supposed to be on. Siri kept asking us to please cross four lanes of traffic to exit in one-quarter mile. Eventually our helpful vehicle, via advice from its GPS system, intoned, “Welcome to Kansas.” Those in the know realize that Kansas City is in Missouri. Well, except for little-sibling Kansas City that is actually in Kansas. In the end we visited both Kansas Cities (Kansas Citys? Kansases City?) on our drive.

This is not an April Fool’s letter, though it happens to be written by a fool on the first of April.

Since my sixteen-year-old and I were on a call list at our local pharmacy, we were able to get the vaccine on Tuesday evening. These lists are for when a pharmacy has vaccine that is going to expire and get thrown away. This is especially applicable to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which can only be out of refrigeration for six hours. These lists are long because people from around the state have called numerous pharmacies to get on many lists. The pharmacist called many people before us, but they all either didn’t answer or were not able to get there quickly. Fortunately since we live so close we could actually get there in time to get the shot.

So if you haven’t gotten the shot, I would recommend calling a couple of your nearby pharmacies and getting on a similar list if they have one. This will help make sure that no vaccine goes to waste.

I am thankful for the nurses and pharmacists who are distributing this shot. I am thankful for the systems, government and otherwise, that are getting it out into our communities at a faster and faster rate every day.

I am writing today’s letter from a Toyota dealership. What started as a routine oil change has turned into a three-and-a-half hour oil change, alignment, and tire change. I’d say today’s letter is sponsored by Toyota, but the money is flowing the wrong way for that. Does this mean it’s a reverse sponsorship?

Yes, it pains me to be changing tires at a dealership. Everything in my being distrusts car dealerships and maintenance shops in the same building as car dealerships. However, we bought an all-wheel drive minivan, it needs run-flat tires, it had two holes in one tire, and the price looked more than reasonable. The reasonable price was a big surprise, and while I still distrust their tire-wear measurements it seemed prudent to just get it done before going on a road trip to Arkansas next week.

Swagger Wagon

Oh, baby, is it getting springy here. I even made some guacamole! We sat around a bonfire with our neighbors. It was 30 degrees. Springy!

With spring, comes the introduction of a March of Time theatrical reading. It comes from my friend Mike who hears the title of this letter in a certain way.

Also, baseball is starting. Though fewer than expected are going to watch it what with the streaming packages not able to carry the regional sports networks. The regional sports networks are careening toward their own, overpriced streaming options. It looks like we’re moving toward $40/month to watch your baseball team, whether that’s a direct streaming package or paying for overpriced cable TV. Faaaaaantastic.

It was good to get outdoors this week and do a bit of walking in the woods. We have a nice park nearby with several trails amongst the trees. It does require a drive to get there, and that always feels wrong to me. Wrong enough that I don’t visit as frequently as I should. I think I’ll go again today.

The Consumption

Over the past week I’ve been reading Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. To be honest, I find it a bit dry and I kind of get the gist at a glance. I’ve considered putting it away in favor of someone else’s notes, but then that someone else (in this case Nate Eliason - someone I do not know) said:

I’m back!

The past week has seen absurdly cold temperatures where I live. For six days prior we were not even above zero degrees. Some days the high did not get above negative ten degrees and at one point the air temperature was approaching negative twenty-nine degrees. I know where I live and that I should not expect different, but that’s still a bit colder than necessary methinks.

Sun Dog captured by Jesse

Who else is excited that this past Wednesday did not include nation-altering events? Is the curse of the Wednesday over? Or did I just miss the thing?

We’ve been passing our time here with movies, online cribbage, online video chats, and shoveling snow. The first polar vortex of the year arrives tomorrow and it is going to be quite a thing. Several days of not getting over 0° Fahrenheit will be unwelcome, but we were already passing our time here with movies, online games, and so on. So, really, what’s the difference?

The Magpie by Claude Monet

The week has flown by since I last sat down to write this thing. I’m not feeling incredibly inspired, so this will probably be a short week. Certainly shorter than last week!

How are you doing out there? Feeling content? Living life? I hope so.

The Consumption

Happy 12121 (Jan 21, 2021)!

I know I’m not the only one who feels a little lighter today. It just feels nice to unplug a bit from the daily dread. A dread that sticks in the back of one’s mind even when one isn’t paying attention. For the moment anyway it has fallen out of the brain like a loose chunk of orange ear wax.

Let’s relish in it for now. Let’s see if we can hold on to that feeling. Let’s see if we can encourage that feeling in others.

As I sit here awaiting an impending blizzard and listening to a piano quintet by Ernst von Dohnányi, I’m feeling pretty content. The world is a bit crap right now, but the space I occupy and control is rather nice. I’m quite grateful for that.

With everything on fire in the distant world, I hope those reading are not experiencing localized blazes. If you are, please let me know what I can do to help. If not, let me be the one to give you permission to put down the phone, shut off the computer, and pick up something you enjoy. Whether it’s a book, an album, a game, or a movie. Whether it’s a pen, a brush, a chisel, or a crochet hook. Just go do it. And maybe call a loved one.

After all, what else is there but to live life?

Happy New Year! Has everything changed? Will it be changing soon? Do you have resolutions? Have you broken them, or are you waiting until the end of them month?

That was a thing I wrote early yesterday afternoon. And then things happened.

I’ve finished my week off the grid. This time my experience was not that transformative in the moment. The knock-on effects have been lovely, however. Not only have I continued to ignore the news, but I have also kept social networks like Instagram and Snapchat at bay. I have even resisted Reddit!

I hope you didn't think I'd leave you empty handed during my week off the grid. Here is my wafer-thin letter. It's more to check the box of "I didn't miss a week" than anything else.

Leading into the holidays I converted some credit card points to Apple gift cards. There was a promotion making the points more valuable. What else was I going to do with them? Book a flight?

When I received the confirmation email I was understandably concerned that I may have just flushed the points down the cyber toilet:

It's that time again. That’s right, it’s time to take a week off the grid. If you’ve never done it, I highly recommend it. And by recommending it to you, I’m also recommending it to me because for a while now I’ve been terrible at taking my own advice. Friday-to-Friday it’s going to be books and games and movies and my family. It’s going to be nice.

If you need me, though, I’m still a text away. I mean I’m not mad enough to completely shut off my phone!

For those who celebrate, it’s also time to eat too many sweets, share gifts with those you love, and try to keep the focus on what matters most. Hopefully you have found a way to make this year’s holiday special in its own way. For those of us being careful in the winter climes, we don’t even have the option to see those we love outdoors. We will see them soon, though. We will!

Winter is landing in Minnesota. Frigid mornings and brisk afternoons make it "indoor time." The snow has stayed away thus far. More and more it looks like we'll be having a brown Christmas. It's not romantic, and my children would probably prefer the play material, but it keeps me from having to clear snow!

This past week Jesse and I picked up a new kettlebell exercise routine, which we are working on with our friend Arun. Our prior group effort was to complete 10,000 kettlebell swings in five weeks. Jesse was the only one still swinging all the way to the end. Amazing! I was able to get to 9,000 swings before my back told me to stop.

One of the key features that I like about the latest program is that it self moderates. We do sets of cleans & presses and front squats. Then we break for a moment. If that last set was tiring, we break for a longer moment. If that last set was easy, we break for a shorter moment. It's a great practice of staying aware in real time and choosing next steps based on experiences.

This is not a movie recommendation

It has come to my attention that, because letter #1 arrive unannounced and uninvited, some of you may have archived the letter as it was from unknown origin. You not surprisingly thought it might be spam.

I guess it was spam by the definition of spam. The fact that you are getting letter #2 means you did not mark my previous letter as spam. If you think an email is spam, I suggest unsubscribing from it or marking it as spam rather than ignoring or archiving it. Keep your email inbox clean and relevant!

With that being said, I'm glad you're still subscribed to this newsletter.

The watermark is unprofessional

Hi! After encouragement from many of you over these past months, I've finally decided to do some writing again. The old-school newsletter surprised me as a worthy contender for platform. It reminds me of blogging in the early 2000's. A few friends would blog. We'd all comment on each other's posts. Occasionally we'd see that friend-of-a-friend doing something interesting, and start RSS-following them as well. It seemed a healthy and valuable form of Internet communication.

If you are receiving this first letter, you were subscribed manually by me. Based on our past interactions I must think you can handle my meanderings. I probably also think you might have an interest in replying to me from time to time. Thank you to those who have pushed me here. It's good to get writing to you! And if there is anyone out there who is considering joining this activity, do reach out we can chat about the nuts and bolts.

As always, feel no qualms if you wish to unsubscribe.