Category: sign on

The turn of a new year always brings a tinge of hope with it. Historically I have found a kind of new motivation whenever this hope manifests itself. This was by no means my quietest New Year’s Eve: I had a short celebration with some extended family, put the baby to bed, had some tea while I read a book, and kissed my wife when the ball dropped. It was perfect.

But I didn’t feel the need to try and reinvent any certain aspect of my life. To be completely honest, this is comforting to me. I’ve never had a new year where I didn’t have a resolution and I’m taking this as a sign of personal growth. Being content with who you are and where you are in life is something many of us put an enormous amount of time, effort and money into realizing. I am not immune. Now I’ve come to this point and I am happy to be here; although a part of me knows this feeling is fleeting.

In 2025 I read seventeen books. While I’m not setting a “number-of-books-read” goal this year, I am setting a goal of intentionality. The trend perpetuated by apps like Goodreads or Fable of “reading goals” has, at times, driven me to simply get pages behind me as opposed to getting ideas burned into my memory. To that end, I’ve begun annotating books more; a practice I started late last year during my read-through of Karamazov. I’m finding that marking passages, ideas, and lines that stand out to me as I’m reading with tabs and writing in the marginalia of pages my initial thoughts force me to come back to them when I’m sitting with a book once completed.

However, the real magic happens when I sit with a book after I’ve completed it. I’m trying to purposely not read other reviews or user thoughts online so that I can try and pull my own themes out of each book, wrestle with them on paper, and come out the other side with a coherent grasp of each piece. This has been the most impactful change to my reading I’ve made since November, and is something I intend to continue. Some of that might end up here, some won’t; you’re welcome to follow along.

Currently reading: My Struggle (Book 1) – Karl Ove Knausgaard

Currently listening:

Happy New Year!

It’s been a cold, rainy week which means it’s been a perfect week for disappearing into sweaters and novels. Last night, my wife and I took the baby to a drive-through Christmas lights show. We sipped hot chocolate and tried to capture the reflection of the lights in our daughter’s eyes, though she was much more interested in playing with the car’s dashboard controls!

After finishing another section of The Brothers Karamazov, I needed a palette cleanser. So I opted for a book I bought two years ago on Pearl Street in Boulder: The Stronghold by Dino Buzzati (an NYRB Classic).

While I’m still warming up to Buzzati’s specific prose style, the imagery and allegory in this book are stunning. It serves as both a commentary on modern life and a powerful parable. We shouldn’t let an uncertain future dictate our lives today. The present is all we are guaranteed.

How much time lay before him! Even a single year seemed interminably long and the good years had scarcely begun. They seemed to form an extremely long series, the end of which was impossible to glimpse, a treasure still untouched and so enormous that it could cause boredom.

I disagree with the common reading of this book. I believe the characters’ mastery of monotony is actually what unlocks their appreciation for beauty. This richness is woven into the descriptions of the clouds, mountains, and the Fortezza. Even amidst military drills, the soldiers intuitively feel the changing seasons. It’s a powerful reminder that discipline can lead to deeper awareness.

The snow fell thick and heavy, accumulating on the terraces and turning them white. Watching it, Drogo felt his usual anxiety more acutely. In vain he sought to drive it away by dwelling on his youth and the many years that remained to him.

The story’s conflict isn’t the wait; it’s the search for meaning. The Fortezza represents the human vessel: existing in nature, aging with time, and waiting for a “something” to justify its existence. It’s built for a war, but not a physical one. Our main character, lost in his own lack of direction, adopts the fortress’s mission as his own. He never gets the glory he expected, but he does eventually find his purpose. The tragedy is that as soon as he grasps it, it slips away.

And yet the winds of time were blowing. Paying no heed to humanity, they swept back and forth around the world and laid waste to beautiful things.

And that is what I think Buzzati’s real message here is: You should never lose hope, but you shouldn’t let hope be your justification for indecision.

Currently reading: The Brothers Karamazov (Part Three) by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Currently listening to:

Current inbox: 5 items that need doing – and I can’t find the motivation to begin even one of them

The past two weeks have been a whirlwind of driving, delivering technical lectures and demos, and managing aggravated customers. Not uncommon in my line of work, but where this haul has been constant, the baseline is sporadic. This gave me lots of time behind a windshield and that means a lot of time to think. What did I learn, you might ask?

I hate hotel rooms.

The trips themselves are always disruptive to the normal flow of life, but I always manage to waste away the time in these rooms either working or doomscrolling.

Currently reading: Hard Rain Falling, by Don Carpenter (US)

I picked this one up after I finished part one of The Brother’s Karamazov as a quick palette cleanser. It is far from that. Hard Rain Falling is all at once existential and tragic. Some of these passages are jarring:

He had always know he wanted freedom… and when he was ready, he escaped. That was all. Then he no longer wanted his freedom, because he had it.

The freedom, our narrator later goes on to tell us, to manuever within the system. A system that will swallow you whole if you exercise your freedom. Because the system knows that, when left with their freedom, humans, most humans, become the worst versions of themselves. “You are free as long as you don’t do these things.”

He had found their limits – they would not, could not, just take him out and shoot him, and they couldn’t let him run around loose, because he would not take any of their shit, so they had to lock him up and feed him… all because they had limits – limits that he did not have.

The anti-hero’s lack of restraint forces the system to exercise restraint.

Wrapped in grit and sordid on purpose, this book wrestles with some complex questions you’ll miss if you’re just reading for reading’s sake. Enjoying it.

Currently listening:

Currently working on: Getting everything done so I can be out of the office for 5 days.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Currently listening:

Currently reading: The Botanist by MW Craven

Currently working on: Bash scripting, determining how to generate new work

Lots of change in the political landscape of the US took place last night. A sharp reaction to the fatigue that the country’s been under over the last 10 years, to be sure. People are tired. They want to be left alone. They want the system to work for them. You can’t have both though, can you?

Real wealth is poverty adjusted to the law of Nature. — Epicurus

Currently listening to: Selected Ambient Works 85-92 – Aphex Twin

Currently watching: the Buffalo Bills at the Carolina Panthers

Crisp and sunny out today. Perfect Sunday weather.

On the road tomorrow, so send your podcast suggestions.

Currently listening:

Currently reading: After 1177 B.C. by Eric H. Cline (US)

Currently temperature: 71°F – overcast with promises of rain later. The kind of weather for reading.

Currently working on: Clearing out my inbox from a week’s worth of gunk. I’ll be on the road next week and should make sure that most loose ends have been tied up.

Today’s Tao was Chapter 18 – When we lose touch with genuine goodness, we replace it with performative morality. That feels relevant.

Currently listening:

Currently reading: After 1177 B.C. by Eric H. Cline (US)

Finished The Precipice by Toby Ord on Sunday evening. It’s well thought-out albeit a bit out-dated. Written in early 2020, one of the existential risks Ord includes in his list is pandemics, and the irony almost made me put the book down. Some takeaways:

While markets do a great job of supplying many kinds of goods and services, there are some kinds that they systematically undersupply. Consider clean air.

And, notably:

The Anthropocene is the time of profound human effects on the environment, while the Precipice is the time where humanity is at high risk of destroying itself.

One thing he doesn’t highlight is that, quantum computing and artificial intelligence will converge in our lifetime. I’m not sure that we’re ready for that, but I am watching with equal parts optimism and trepidation.

It’s finally cooling down here.

Currently reading: The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity (US)

Currently listening:

This morning was an early one, and I spent nearly 6 hours muddling about in the world of post-quantum cryptography. While this isn’t something most people would get excited about, I love learning and I like computers. Although what I learned didn’t give me any real comfort for what were up against over the next ten years.

I’ve long believed that, while things like nuclear warfare and ground assaults are still very much part of the lexicon of modern conflict, that we’ve found ourselves in the unique position of having to worry about conflict on multiple planes: the physical and the digital (which often begets the mental). Different conflicts, to be sure. And most of us seem to be an unwilling participant in at least one (or both).

Production ready and commercially available quantum compute is not far from becoming reality. With that comes a new set of risks and real problems that we will have to deal with. For example, GenAI has accelerated scientific progress but has also enabled bad actors to create and distribute harmful propaganda at speed and scale.

Quantum computing will further accelerate technological, biological, and medical progress but will also completely break all forms of cryptography that protect our digital world. This poses a real problem.

This is such a fascinating time to be alive. Also kind of terrifying.

Current status: Cleaning out the inbox before disappearing into the weekend.

Be kind.

Currently listening: The Sleeping Forecast

Currently reading: The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity (US)

Current temperature: 81°F – Clear Skies

If you’ve not heard The Sleeping Forecast before, I urge you to check it out. It’s hypnotic. Thanks to Warren Ellis for the recommendation.

This is my sign of life. I’ve been working on de-toxing from socials again. My Threads account has been deleted, no more X. Facebook is a nightmare, so I hardly login to it anyway. Instagram remains a source of entertainment, but has been completely propagandized. My stint with TikTok was very short. Sleep is coming easier now.

We’re not out of the woods yet. I’ll write more soon. Hold on for now.