What’s a man to do with the last few hours of 2024?
2024 is at and end and I thought I would sit and write, stream of consciousness-style, about things that I remember. Some of this is going to be pretty raw emotion and if you’re not up for that, please tap out now.
Overall it’s been a pretty good year. I’ve been at peace on a great many things and struggling with others. Technology-wise I am still rolling with four main devices: An M1 Max MacBook Pro with 32gb of RAM (Devika), an iPhone 16 Pro 1TB (downsized from a 15 Pro Max and don’t miss the size one bit), an Apple Watch S10 (gave my Ultra 1 to my middle daughter who frustratingly doesn’t use it… I should have just traded it in), and an M4 iPad Pro that I absolutely adore and am forcing myself to use more often. I’m trying to understand the decisions and trade offs that were made with iPadOS and lean into them rather than letting my old age muscle memory take over. I find myself asking questions like… “do I really NEED a professional file manager or should I just let the apps take over their space and manage files on the apps themselves?” That seems like the way Apple wanted it. I’m trying to adapt. I very much love the focus afforded by the device and opportunities for creativity.
Warning: rambling and useless post.
I don’t know why. I cannot sleep well Monday night and into Tuesday morning. I almost always wake up too early. I can’t go back to sleep. I’ve tried various methods to shut my brain up when this happens. None of them work.
Instead, I just succumb to the screaming mental state and get out of bed. This morning I woke up at 4am after a mere 5 hours of sleep. I laid in bed for at least an hour, trying to get my mind to shut up again.
A long time ago I decided to stop making New Year’s resolutions. I instead made goals. I felt like this was more attainable and a better fit for the human condition. I didn’t punish myself for missing a goal, I just readjusted until I tried to attain them.
2023 ended and I found that I wasn’t even thinking about goals for next year. I do have a physical goal of losing weight and getting more fit, but I’m not going to put metrics around it. I just want to generally feel better. Aside from that, I didn’t even think about what other goals I should have in 2024.
Welcome to the first entry in a new series… er… category… maybe tag… hell I dunno… where I sit back and spill the beans on some of the true tales of my life being an IT guy. I hesitate to call this a “series” because who knows if I will actually keep this up. But I figure that somewhere, somehow, these short anecdotes deserve a small corner of the Internet to be forever preserved. I’m pretty sure I’ve told these tales to my kids, but just in case I didn’t - maybe they’ll read this someday and they can hear me tell it in my voice.
It’s the day after Christmas 2023 and I’m trying to wind down for the year. I’ve been reflecting on 2023 and all of its glory and horror. My morning reading started with this fine article:
https://thebaffler.com/latest/its-all-bullshit-tan
While I don’t work at Google (and never aspire to), I identified with many things in this article. It seems that over the past 20 years we’ve really lost something… a lot of things, actually. I’m not able to pinpoint what all of them are, but I guess I could sum it up as innocence.
Hello again. Nice to see you. It’s almost been a year.
I was supposed to do better on maintaining this site during 2023, but I didn’t really meet that goal. Some of the reasons were that I was tired and didn’t have much to say, but some of the reasons were largely technical.
As you can see, I’ve moved on from hosting this site at Medium. To keep a long opinion short, Medium has graduated into a clickbaity toxic mess of garbage. I’ve gotten to the point where I cringe anytime I’m directed to Medium by a search engine. I was subscribing to Medium for $5 a month and intended to build an audience there and write for pennies. That didn’t happen because using Medium has been challenging. Writing on it was painful, responding to some of the ridiculous comments was even more painful, and I just decided I wasn’t enjoying it any longer.
Love someone in the way they need, not in the way you think they need.
Love is not selfish.
If your love needs match theirs, that’s when magic happens.
If you believe your mate’s needs are stupid, unreasonable, or anything other than something you’re willing to do…
…then you don’t deserve that person.
