| Journal
I've written a lot and generally each piece has a place, but not always. For those uncategorized musings and ramblings, this shall be the book.A place on the shelf, a page in the book, or a section of the page. Long-winded or brief, these are my words. Do what you will with them.- 09:57:34
November 15, 2024
Every new beginning carries with it new perspectives, new learnings, new people. There's a lot to be humbled by if you are willing to be humble. That said it's best to not be overwhelmed by it either. Take every day one step at a time, try to leave today just a bit better than yesterday whether by your growth or growth you instilled in others, and never forget to be a student. No one knows everything nor could they nor would anyone expect it of them and yet there are times we overlook this from many different perspectives. Learn, grow, and be humble; never forget your point of origin... where it all began.
November 8, 2024
New beginnings and reliving old memories. Often times I get stuck when developing things on my site and it takes a while to get unstuck only to realize the thing I was muddled down in was nothing more than a stupid oversight. Funny how it's always these tiny details that get me hung up for hours. Gladly I'm able to speed up the process of hobby development these days by just asking one of the many Generative AI chats for a bit of assistance when I get stuck on something. Call me old fashioned but I still enjoy writing it myself and struggling a bit; it helps me grow and perhaps the struggle helps me remember in the future so-as to avoid the pain going forward. Besides developing, I'm also re-reading a lot of the articles I wrote from long ago. Complex and deep while introspective and fully of emotion. Every article ties back to something I was feeling in that moment; that makes this site kind of part of me - a second brain. I can tell I've grown over the years; as I get older or as I get more experienced my confidence in my abilities grows. That said, I still want to be careful not to get carried away with such notions. Knowing everything is just a fantasy; a work of fiction. I refuse to be that guy who thinks he knows everything. I'd rather be that guy that knows a lot and offers value to conversation, but will gladly admit he doesn't know something when it comes to it. Remain humble in my old age; an odd thing to say and perhaps a strange goal to have, but a worthy one I think. I'm learning every day about one thing or another whether that's pertaining to my career, parenting, or husbanding. Hopefully that never changes; I love to learn and grow and be better from day to day. The sense of accomplishment I get from that feeling of having learned something new is a wonderful feeling...
November 4, 2024
Hard to imagine that nearly 4 years has passed since I decided to stop paying for this site and focus on other things. From audiobooks to game development to child rearing to starting a new job at a different company; life has been a whirlwind of emotions from joy and love to worry and stress. During this time I played with and got burnt somewhat by crypto, though I was a bit more cautious that other unfortunate souls. Staying cautious and skeptical saved me on a few different occasions; that old adage, "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is" has a lot of history and truth behind it. Despite this or perhaps in spite of this I was able to increase my investments in other areas and have done somewhat well for myself over these last 4 years; dollar cost averaging truly is a wonder. I have other thoughts on the market today, but I won't speculate here; I can claim to be educated in the space, but cannot claim expertise. Finances aside, raising a child has been the most difficult thing I've done in my life. So many moments stretching and growing me as I fight through the frustrating moments and bask in the warmth of endearing ones. It's hard being a good parent, creating a human that will treat others kindly, have patience, persistence, and be curious about life and the world around him. To this day, even with raising a little person, I think the best I can do is the best I can do. No one can expect me to do more than that. So, I'll keep trying my best, learning as I go, and giving him opportunities to grow, play, be curious, and live to the fullest while putting guardrails up to guide his journey as best I can... - Not knowing how to switch from this to the other topics I wanted to discuss here we'll have to settle for an abrupt transition - Other things that have absorbed bits and pieces of my life include LitRPG audiobooks and game development. I went from developing via Godot to Unity and back to Godot then over to something more custom in a programming language known as C# leveraging a gaming library called Raylib and finally landed on F# with that same library. Then after a long while I stopped with that project as well and for a while I didn't really have a hobby I was into so I played games and watched videos of varying genres. My career during this time was taking a new path which was equal parts rewarding and difficult as I took on new responsibilities, met some amazing new people, and soaked up information voraciously or perhaps frantically; all of this while raising a newborn and getting little to no sleep on some nights. As an aside, but perhaps and important one, if you ever plan to have children I highly recommend having family close by that can help; trust me, heed this advice, you'll thank me later. I think that catches us up to today; more or less. A few more trips to Korea and more great experiences shared with friends there during this time as well; mustn't forget this as it's become a core part of my life now. So much to share surrounding this. And last but not least this site being reborn; pulled from an old laptop where I had backed it up (literally sitting in the downloads folder) and re-installed on the cloud in a serverless environment. Developing websites and applications is so much easier than it used to be. A combination of my experience doing such things having grown my understanding of how to develop said applications and the technology just having gotten so much better over the years makes it almost a trivial matter. Not entirely I suppose because it always takes time, but not nearly as long as it used to. So, with all this said I leave you with: I'm back for a while and so is this site. Some things may still be broken (I'll get to them in time) so have patience and know that there's more to come. Thanks for reading.
December 21, 2020
A peaceful night listening to my favorite audiobooks and spacing out got me thinking just how interesting it is to reflect on one's life. The ups and downs, ebbs and flows; work is more unproductive and frustrating than usual, hunger is absent, energy is low, and willpower reserve has bottomed out. Then after relaxing a little and taking my mind off of things I tend to slowly swing back in the other direction. Start having ideas again; wanting to write, to start a business. It's in these moments I tend to make better decisions for my future. Whether that's studying (investing my time), buying stocks (investing my money), or just being generally more productive. Meditation has been my most recent fascination. That in conjunction with grit or to put it another way: the willingness to continue doing something that's good for me long after I stopped wanting to or lost interest. So, meditation then. It's not easy to sit still at first and everything is a distraction. Then, slowly, it gets easier. What I currently struggle with is the posture. Sitting upright in with a straight back, shoulders relaxed, and neck over my shoulders. Posture has been a problem of mine for a while now and I was hoping to correct that by forcing myself to sit in that position for 10 to 15 minutes a day, every single day. This, in the hopes my core strength improves slowly over time. It's a practice in focus, patience, and strength to an extent and my goal is as it has always been: to be better today than I was the day before.
December 19, 2020
Sitting by the fireplace enjoying the quiet of the morning and feeling inspired, I decided to start this little experiment which will undoubtedly go on for quite a while (knowing me...). For a bit now I've wanted to start writing again, but didn't really have a place to put just ramblings of my day to day. What is written here will be a little more raw and less polished, but will hopefully be enjoyable and valuable nonetheless. With that out of the way let's just get into what I wanted to talk about today.
The world around me feels like it's constantly shifting. So much has changed in just the last year, it's difficult to put into words. That said, we must start; so, let's start with the elephant in the room: the pandemic. This virus that has upended peoples lives in a way that's different for everyone, turned the world on its head, and altered the future on a scale that is unfathomable. From losses that scar to recoveries that mend and everything in between. Relationships between people have changed, social interactions have changed if not vanished entirely, and the world at large has undergone a shift; everyone fighting to survey in one way or another. It's frightening, saddening, maddening, and inspiring all at the same time. Worried about loved ones, feeling sadness and empathy for those lost or going through tough times, upset at myself for being complacent about topics that I now realize matter a great deal, and inspired by those that fight for the betterment of all of us, the growth I've undergone as a person, and the strength of those who've fought through the tough times and continue to. Humans are strong, but as we've all noticed we are also vulnerable. Not only to the virus, but malicious influence as well. There are those that want to see countries torn apart amidst the pandemic and are striving daily to that end. It's in those times, I feel, we must remember that if we are to be prosperous as a collective we must look out for one another. The strength of humanity is our ability to band together when things take a turn for the worst.