This book by Sam Quinones is a sequel to Dreamland in the way that a history of Weimar Germany is a sequel to a history of The Great War. It was not intended, no plot threads were left intentionally dangling. But the perpetual nature of history ("Nothing ever ends," in the words of Dr. Manhattan) means the story continued anyway.
However, this time, Quinones clearly has two purposes: to inform as well as to encourage.
"We're 4 hours from home, and you want to adopt a cat?"
The second half of 2019 was a bit of a blur. In July we'd gone to Washington, D.C. for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing. When we got back, Kassie had taken a turn for the worse, and we lost her on August 7th. In October, we helped host the NC state USPSA championship at the range near our house. In early November, we drove to Nationals in Florida, with stops in Huntsville and Chattanooga on the scenic route back. And then we had to get ready to close on our new house. We'd put the money down on it in the spring, with a projected August completion date, but here we were at the end of November, with a closing date the Friday before
The only way to be wholly content and happy doing something is if you have considered your alternatives and decided that doing this thing, right now is the highest possible use of your time.
Skipping the consideration spoils it. Harboring resentment spoils it. Feeling forced to do it spoils it. Feeling guilty spoils it. Rushing to just get it over with spoils it.
It does not have to be something other people would praise you
It's not very much weight on the bar.
But, still. It's weight on the bar.
When ego tells you "Just quit. This is beneath you."
Don't listen.
It's natural that learning to do something yourself gives you a greater appreciation for those that have already done it. Building your own bookshelf makes you realize all the non-obvious challenges of carpentry and gives you respect for everyone else that has undertaken the same challenge before you.
In parallel, one of the surprising things I've learned becoming a father is realizing how very much it is a choice, at least in the modern era.
The reloading workbench is 24 inches deep, but I have just been using 12" milk crates to store things, and lost track of anything that got pushed behind them. The crates slide surprisingly poorly on the concrete, and don't hold that much stuff.
Use the full depth, width, and height of the space under this shelf, and build two "drawers" that are just platforms on non-swiveling casters.
The scrap wood pile had a good piece of 3/4" plywood to form the base of each drawer, and as much 1/2" MDF as I could possibly use. (Seriously, I ended up building each box twice, and still didn't even use half of what we had on hand leftover from other projects)
Originally I was thinking I was
Replace contempt with condolence.
If they knew better, they would do better.
When you experience discomfort, your natural response will be to ask "How can I stop this most quickly?"
Instead, challenge yourself. "What would it take for me to reach my limit of this? Am I already at it? Can I go five minutes without showing a sign of weakness? Five minutes after that?"
I spent the better part of an hour today in a Slack discussion with coworkers about how to implement a feature ticket. We went back and forth, and fundamentally saw the issue two different ways. I didn't really see any way we could reconcile the two views. Either one of us or the other would have to just accept the opposite perspective to move forward.
We kept drilling down into examples and use cases, and
I was talking to a friend recently, and discussing the fact that he's managed to stick with one hobby (learning Japanese) while having another hobby that used to consume much of his time go untouched for years (recording music).
What I realized as we talked, and what I said to him, was that we don't really do things because we want to, or because we have goals. We do things because we want