Category: sign on

Yesterday, I was able to get 1400 words out the door, so today will be a day of clean up. I’ve published more in the past two months than I think I have at any point in my life. And I must say: it’s fulfilling.

If there’s one take-away I have from the velocity I’m moving, it’s that I don’t want to get pigeonholed into writing long-form technical essays. The beauty of this whole thing is that you can do whatever you want, write about what ever you want to write about.

So, while I wait for notes on my larger project, I’m taking the time away from the keyboard to read good work. Literary fiction mostly, because that’s where the interesting things happen. If you’ve got anything you recommend as a detox from narrative non-fiction and science and technology, please send it my way.

Nothing particularly interesting on the feeds this morning, so I’ll leave you with this:

Currently reading: Underworld by Don Delillo

The weather is balmy here, and the mosquitos have decided that it’s time to make being outside miserable. This will go on for the next four months. Precisely during the time my grass requires watering the most. I am not amused.

On a slightly related note, the city about 150 miles southeast of me will run out of water within the next year. Which is unfortunate, because I actually love visiting every summer. But I’m slightly more concerned that this doesn’t seem to be getting a lot more attention than it has.

Lots happening this week. Hoping to get a new article out the door, and to continue reading through some research I am doing for a project. So mostly reading, jotting down notes, and writing. More on that front later.

Finally got through the introduction to Delillo’s Underworld. This book is enormous, and I’m still not entirely sure what it is about. I’ve been intentionally staying away from recaps or reviews for it, since that’s what I did with White Noise and ended up loving it.

So far, though I’m not sure what it’s about, I can see what Delillo is setting up. Not plot-wise, but thematically. If my senses are correct, then I am excited for this thing to unfold. It will likely be the last winter book I read for the year. We’ll see.

That’s me for today. Here’s so music for your commute:

Hello, I am alive.

It feels interesting to be posting back here. Invigorating, yet slightly disappointing. Disappointing mostly because I’ve been leaning into writing quite a bit this month, and I wish I’d done that earlier

My writing has been mostly technical in nature, for practical application in my career field. But I have started exploring some additional questions tangential to some of those applications, and I’m feeling inspired—hence invigorated.

You should also expect more here, as I have given myself some mandates to publish more. I’ve also found time to read again, something that eluded me a bit mid-February.

As I get older, I find myself really committing to the things I care about. Reading, thinking, and writing are three of those things, and I am going to allow myself the grace to make time for them. It’s not like we get any less busy at this point in our lives.

Currently reading: Underworld by Don Delillo

Currently watching: The San Antonio Spurs vs The Portland Trailblazers

Do something slowly and intentionally this weekend.

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, 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.

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