blog.mjb.im

Black Lives Matter

A few nights ago, my wife asked me: “What would you say are my values?” It's part of a self improvement program she joined last year. This is the final month, and she is tasked with considering her life and what makes her happy as if she were celebrating her 80th birthday.

I spent a long time thinking about this. Long enough that she began to retract her question. I can think of who she is, what she does, and what qualities she has. But turning her values from abstract concepts into words was incredibly difficult. Even harder was avoiding just listing off traits instead of actual values.

A few minutes later and I had managed to get a few values out there. She seemed happy with the assessment, but when I asked her to do the same for me, I saw her go through the exact same problem of trying to think about me in words instead of as an abstract concept – then avoid listing traits instead of values. It's an incredibly complex question, and at the end of the day, I think it's one that you really do need to answer for yourself by considering what you would look back on in your old age and feel proud of.

For me, I landed on: comfort for myself with a place I can call my own, giving to my community in a way that truly empowers those around me, stewardship of nature, and creating something that will live beyond myself.

I have my doubts that these will be the same forever, but if I could look back on my life and check off those boxes, I'd be pretty dang proud.

Whatever language you're writing software in is probably fine. Whatever framework you're using to build your application is probably fine, too – or if you're home rolling everything, that's great. Learn something from it.

You're going to see a lot of stuff around the internet – especially in some of the fringes – about how you shouldn't be using language XYZ or that software is only good if you do it such and such a way. Turns out, you can do software however you like. My opinions, their opinions and everyone's opinions are just that – opinions. And I've heard a lot of opinions. One thing that has remained true throughout all those opinions hammering away: none of them were right. Okay, some of them were right about some things, and some were very wrong about some things... and some were extraordinarily short sighted, but none were a silver bullet.

So sure, if you see a hot take about how Rust is amazing and is the savior language, maybe try Rust and see. Next week you're going to see a post about how Rust is ruining everything, and everyone should be exclusively writing in C on a specific linux distro because reasons.

Oh and someone, of course, is going to make a bad faith or uninformed argument about why JavaScript is the harbinger of death.

It's going to be fine. Build your application in whatever language, framework and system you want. Whatever works for you. Just don't write it in an interpreted language. Or a compiled one. Or a C-like. Or a functional language. Or an object oriented language. Or on a computer – because that's considered harmful.

Last night, my partner and I were at a climbing gym. We're still beginners, but we've been going for a few months. A couple near the area we were bouldering in were conversing loudly, enough that I'm sure they intended for others to hear, about how “too many people saw Free Solo” and people need to “go latch on to some other hobby” and about how using the gym is going to be awful come the new year (presumably, resolutions).

Earlier the same day, I met with a new coworker. During our conversation, they brought up that they heard I enjoy woodworking, which is true. I enjoy it, and it's a hobby of mine. I don't consider myself particularly good at it, but I'd still say I'm a hobbyist woodworker or do woodworking now and then. My coworker said to me that they are “not really a woodworker” as they had “only” built a CABIN on their own. That's super dope and you should be proud!

To paraphrase a prominent celebrity woodworker, “if you take two pieces of wood and fasten them together into one thing, congratulations, you're a woodworker.”

My point is don't gatekeep others, and don't gatekeep yourself. Imposter syndrome is a very real, very spooky thing and people like the couple in the gym perpetuate this weird sense that you don't deserve the title or you don't deserve to be a part of that group. Fuck that, do what you enjoy and don't dampen your own talents by qualifying how you describe your hobbies.

Signed, Michael Rock climber, woodworker, dog-petter

It snowed a lot yesterday. Maybe 6 or 8 inches of accumulation over the course of just a few hours. Then it was sleeting. Then it rained. This weekend we will see temperatures in the 60's (fahrenheit, luckily, we're not going to die).

Over the past year, my life has changed tremendously. My partner and I got married and moved into a house (in reverse order). My dream of having my own wood shop came true from the house purchase. I made huge decisions about the direction of my biggest game project ever, basically jettisoning the years of planned plot and world building in favor of something simpler and more focused. I've come to learn a lot about myself, my interests and what I really care about.

The snow is melting more quickly than I've ever seen. I can see the ground beneath the snow, not even 12 hours after the snow stopped accumulating. A backyard basement window well flooded with melted snow water.

I became an uncle this morning. My only brother and my sister-in-law had a son. I'm so incredibly happy for them, and I'm trying to navigate the idea of how I will be a part of this kid's life.

We're expecting a lot of rain this weekend. I'll have to keep an eye on that window well.

As I mentioned in a recent post about taking back what's mine, I have continued to disconnect myself from massive services, and lean less on possibly ephemeral product offerings. It has made me think far more critically about the services I use. For all I know, write.as, the platform I'm writing on now, will not exist in a couple of years. I certainly hope not. It's a nice service.

It's going to be windy overnight on Sunday into Monday. I'll have to clear out fallen branches.

I think I'm a happier person now. Although I can find it difficult to maintain interest in some hobbies, I've found that feeling to be driven by a strange sense of commitment. My game project, for example. I had made a huge commitment in my head. Something I could never complete. It became daunting. I made what seemed like a hard choice: rethinking the concept. In reality, I am the only one holding myself to any requirements. The mental block was entirely my own, and my own to break. As always, giving myself a break feels tremendous.

Spring time is on it's way, and I can't wait to have my windows open, and let a fresh breeze roll in.

Over the past couple of years, I've been focusing on getting myself decentralized on the internet. I've largely pulled out of any one ecosystem, and I've moved towards more privacy-respecting services like ProtonMail and write.as.

As a part of this movement, I'm also trying to go back to being responsible for my own data. The “”““cloud”“”” has become ubiquitous and I'm pretty over it. I appreciate the convenience for sure, but I don't appreciate when services I depend on are sunset or unavailable, which even in 2019 is still a problem.

I used to not understand people who still want 256 gigs of internal storage on their phones. Now, I get it.

I'm currently trying to reclaim my music library. It is a difficult task. Beyond retrieving the files from Google Music, I now need to seek out all the albums and tracks that I “added to my library” rather than uploaded or purchased. Google said they'd be transferring their music service over to YouTube Music, which is not something I want to use, nor does it seem like it will support the same features I care about in Google Music.

Beyond music, I've dropped my dependency on Google Drive significantly, opting for an independent, encrypted solution. The biggest holdouts I have are calendaring, because the only real options I can find seem to be Google, Microsoft or Apple-based, and photo management, because Google Photos is really good. Though, I'd like to find something I can move to that has similar functionality without doing the creepy facial scans.

All in all, I just want to feel like I actually own my data again. I don't want to be subjected to the will of the service provider. I'm hoping as we move on with a new era of people living in the digital age, we see more people seeking this kind of ownership again, leading to a federated / individual focused renaissance.

Without fail, the second I sit down every morning to work on something, I have a sneezing fit. I'm writing this between sneezes right now. Usually its around 8 to 15 sneezes, though I've had it go on into the 20's and even 30's sometimes.

7...

I have no idea why it happens, but it is always the moment I am inspired to do something and begin trying to do it. Today, it was sitting down to write. I was going to write something totally different, but started sneezing, and figured this would be fine to write about as well.

8...

It can be

9...

It can be when I sit down to code or write, or in the car when I go to do errands, or right as I plan to make a nice breakfast. Really, the second I decide “yes, I should do this thing” and take the first minor step towards doing it – boom.

10...

It's been like this for as long as I can remember. Before I even met my wife, all throughout college, and I can even remember it back into high school, when on the weekends I'd boot up my computer to hack on some game development. I'm still sneezing from game development. Hell, it happened yesterday.

No clue if there's a way to approach fixing this. I'll need to find a way to keep inspiration after waiting out the 10 or so minutes to get back to normal.

11...

12...

I don't think I'm alone in wishing I had more time to pursue passions. Just today, I caught myself talking to my partner about how I'd like to be spending more time contributing to open source projects. I then caught myself lying by saying that between work and a personal project, I just don't have the time.

I immediately called myself on this lie. I knew instantly that time isn't the problem. I will come home from work, make dinner and play games, maybe scroll on some websites for a while to fill time. I have the time. I need to rework what I do with it. With the proper drive, that time can be found.

The real problem is that drive is a far more difficult thing to come by. Time is all around us. We have time. In 2018, it has become so easy to fill that time with mindless actions. I try to keep on a meditation schedule to combat this, but even that doesn't fix a lack of drive, or “will,” or whatever you want to call it. Boy do I wish I had an answer to finding the drive to keep working towards goals. For me, its just something that is either there, or not. It comes and goes in waves. Maybe the next high tide will last a little longer.

Until then, at least I can be honest with myself and push along.