July 2, 2023

Hit and Miss #304: Midyear goals

Hello!

We’re just wrapping up a really lovely visit from my family, which included a brunch today with our closest Ottawa family, S+V. Very glad for the chance to visit these past few days.

On that note—it’s halfway through the year, somehow! The weather has not done much for my desire to be outside (rainy or hot or smoky, pick two!), but we’re plugging along nonetheless. Since goalmaking is generally arbitrary, but public accountability can be helpful, sharing here some things I’d like to do with the six months ahead of us:

• Do more woodworking: make some frames, make something usable for around the house (a handy box or shelf thingamajig? a lil furniture? who knows!).
• Ship a [redacted] project about the federal government’s HR system.
• Sew one piece of (basic! functional!) clothing.
• Do a joint project of some sort with T—maybe combining woodworking and sewing, or something like that!?
• Go on some fun trips with T (these are already booked / in the process of being booked, so pretty sure these’ll happen!).
• Do one consciously “active” activity a week, and one “stretching” activity a week (stretching is definitely active, but I’m thinking “elevated heart rate” for the first).

We’ll see where we’re at a few months down the line.

Two links today!

• I’ve been learning much from Erin Kissane’s ongoing re-read and commentary on Christopher Alexander’s Timeless Way of Building (and A Pattern Library)—her most recent piece contrasts Alexander’s notions of a healthy system with the forces at play in most social media platforms (“social tools”).
• Mark Headd shared a talk about JavaScript, arguing well why policymakers—especially the non-technical among them—should watch it, to understand the many tradeoffs in making software, and thus the importance of having expertise that’s on your side when building or buying it.

All the best for the week ahead!

Lucas