The Art Of Not Asking Why

I wanted to go over a couple of things that have been happening in the last week or so.

Write them, well, record them rather, and then see how microblog’s feature of transcribing it I think that’s the word to text would work So, there’s a lot of areas to talk about and I’m going to try to go through them quickly bullet point style In general, there are a lot of things I’m doing and I kind of feel like I’m losing track of all of them because these different things carry me in different directions On the blog, which I kind of put on the side for a little bit, not on the side, but I wrote less That’s actually not true, I didn’t write less, I didn’t publish as much because of the whole Middle East political stuff I’ve been writing about recently, that took me a very long time to write, to actually get out It’s been hard stuff to write and also very hard to edit, to kind of put into something that would be read-worthy is one word, but also reflect in a way that makes sense back to me I didn’t want to erase the emotional load, of course, in these posts because that’s the point On the other hand, I didn’t want to just come across too whiny or for it to be completely emotional to the point that there is no informational value in it It is still mostly, I would say, on the emotional side, but I kind of feel like it took care of the mental load I had in my head and now I can slowly deviate more towards more informational things, the way I see them like try to quote a couple of articles that I read, explain certain things, at least the way I understand them and most of all this has been, not most of all, for the most part, that’s what I’m trying to say this has been a positive experience, people read what I wrote they were kind, they replied with comments that reflected that they care in general, that they’re interested and those that were less interested or didn’t want to read just didn’t, which is fine, this is why the disclaimer is there but this was very important to me to write, I felt like the blog started to feel almost, I shouldn’t say almost, basically started feeling incomplete because these are such important things to me and they’re just missing from this personal blog, so I had to add them so now these two main pieces are there, there is another one that I feel I need to write it’s not exactly leftovers, but it’s an additional thing that I need to, the story continues beyond where I stopped writing, the period of a couple of months that I recorded has a continuation I need to write about in terms of technical things on the blog, there are two things I want to work on and add one of them is the on this day feature on the blog which takes a day from last year at this date and posts it I have a post explaining, I forget the name of the person, I’m sorry, I don’t want to open the blog and look someone explained the idea of blog gardening, might actually add the reference note later and the idea of blog gardening is that he looks at the post from on this day a year ago and then he goes to that post and he goes through it again basically to spell check, to reflect on it maybe things change, maybe take it off completely, it’s a way to prune and make sure the post is staying in order and he explains that he kind of goes one post beyond to that date and one post before and he kind of uses that as a way to clean up the blog, and I like the idea of on this day so I want to implement this, I know where the code is on github, that’s supposed to work with microblog there is a template, this is getting a little bit technical, I have enough information to give it a try let’s put it this way, the other part, the other thing I want to add is right, now there is a game page on the blog, games, games is another part of my day to day activities that I do, just like watching movies, reading books, and I think games are important in my personal opinion everyone should play games to one extent or another, it’s almost as important as reading books it is important as reading books, as long as you don’t do it too much, or taking photos for that matter because the level of interaction you have, and also the level you interact with other people if you’re playing games with other people, is something that we don’t get out of the other solo activities it’s important to play games with everyone to an extent so I like to talk about games, I started, I have an official page but I would like to add an introduction, basically, to this page explaining where to find out more, there is a whole mechanism working behind the games and tinytheme, which is the theme I use for microblog, has a feature, has a microhook that would allow me to do that, and I need to play with that to see that it works that takes care of the blog I’m aware, speaking of the movies I just brought up, I haven’t watched any good what’s a good movie?

I haven’t watched any good movies I’ve watched movies that I know are entertaining, have an entertainment value, and that’s fine but I kind of miss the movies that are different, that are independent that make you think a little bit, or make you feel a little bit differently this weekend I’m staying with a friend, and I think that would give me the option of watching such movie I have a couple on my list yeah, and I’m just aware this has been a little bit missing, you know, from the blog and I haven’t been watching anything that interesting, so I want to…

my previous recording stopped, and I don’t know why, so I’ll continue here so, another thing I’ve been trying to look into is Dragons and Dungeons, Dungeons and Dragons I forget which is which RPGs if you will, tabletop RPGs I’m trying to get back to this, it’s always something I’m trying to get back into it captures the game, of course the game itch but it also captures reading a good story or watching a good movie itch and it’s also very social activity with a couple of people I want to hang out with at once so instead of just seeing one friend, I get to see four of them it also really helps with, because usually it means I’m DMing so it’s kind of like, you know, I have this creative itch, it takes care of but this is one of the hardest, if not the hardest one to do because it’s not just up to me, right?

it means that besides just relearning the rules and coming up with everything is you need to gather the people, you need to gather your friends and I need to be that sort of a social anchor which is something that is alien to me it’s not something I’m good at naturally it’s not that it’s hard, it’s just that I’m very aware I’m doing this this part where you have to keep, quote-unquote, bugging people and chasing them and sending messages to make sure they follow up even if it’s an online activity, which is a must these days because we all have work and other obligations so meeting in one place logistically is already hard but then, I mean, the distance is one problem but then we also have the problem of actually finding the time so that’s a big issue with RPGs that I’m trying to get into there’s a new game I picked up, which is very simple and I’m trying to get the rules going and that requires a certain level of solo playing which is a concept I’m teaching myself how to do it’s basically like you play with yourself, essentially, with an RPG it’s a make-believe, you just switch between your own character to another character and you roll the dice as a way, as a mechanism to kind of randomize the world around you so you don’t completely predict the story you have an element of surprise in the story you build and then you kind of try to react it’s kind of like improv, it’s a lot like Whose Line Is It Anyway?

where different prompts are getting thrown at you and it keeps you on your toes and you try to react to it like what would I do if I was in this person’s shoes in this situation which is a lot of fun I’m going to stop here because…

this recording business proves to be more cumbersome than I thought it would be I have different parts that I have to connect together and then I have to edit them before I put it up and I’m realizing that writing it would be so much easier and I was trying to save myself time by recording I’ll keep going for now Alright, so another part that is left of course it’s last but not least in a way in terms of my interest I want to go back to Emacs which is of course the tool I use both to write a blog and write almost any technical document I’m running or anything that takes me more than 5 minutes to write in Emacs it’s also my scheduling and my to-do tasks my to-do lists, I mean so it’s time to go through it again evaluating the rather recent project workflow I developed it’s in my posts I also want to go back into my Emacs settings where I go through the different tweaks and changes I’ve made to see if they still make sense if I have notes to add to that for now my Emacs configuration is not public again what happened is I wiped my Mac and I need to basically rehash my credentials with GitLab I believe, I just need to authenticate again for this to happen there are certain configurations there that are personal what I mean personal for example my RSS feeds that I separated I don’t want because some of the RSS feeds I pay for and they’re specific and should be secret RSS feeds I need to separate them from my configuration because Emacs is my RSS reader certain directories and folders reflect my job and people I work with by name because it makes sense to me and I use it every day and it’s not appropriate for those to be in the settings so I need to go through them and make sure they don’t reflect that and it makes the process just a little bit more involved a little bit more complicated and then I end up having a public list of settings versus a personal and I know you can go down to the level of leaving certain things out of the Emacs settings so Emacs will go look in certain folders for certain files that explain what are the specific path of folders for example but I don’t feel I necessarily want to go to that level just to have public notes it makes more sense to me maybe to just explain on the blog what I’m doing instead of having this whole note thing going on which is a whole different thing to take care of especially in light of the other interests and the other things I want to keep doing this has been my interests in terms of work just not to get too much into it here but just to explain it’s been busy-ish there’s been days that it’s not as busy days it’s more busy I’m getting some help at work there’s a person who’s going to work with me for the first time for the first time in two and a half years or so since I changed roles and my position is pretty unique at this point it’s pretty much what I make it I mean there’s of course I’m not it’s not like I’m my own boss or anything I mean of course I have a supervisor and there is a level of expectations but it is a lot things that I develop and I do and it’s my workflow I remember we had a manager who knew specifically what I was doing and I had a team of four people working with me and then I had to fit my workflow to an existing workflow what happens here is mostly I have a workflow and I need to explain it to someone else and it’s a totally different person who doesn’t use the same tools and uses the same tools who might have different ways and different strategies to work and I need to be open to that so while I’m teaching this person I need to be open to also keep my ears open and see what ideas and suggestions this person brings to the table so that’s going to be interesting that’s kind of like an involved process it’s going to take a couple of weeks at work but I’m looking forward to have help with some of the projects I just cannot I don’t have the time to start even and the last thing I want to mention that I think is worthy in this I don’t know how to call this weekly summary it’s not a week it’s more like a month it’s almost like a yearly summary I’ve been more focused on my exercises I don’t think I published it there was a post where I explained again I’m using TrainWell which is an exercise app which connects you with a real life coach this exercise app used to be called CoPilot they changed the name for obvious reasons you can’t call anything CoPilot anymore unless you want to have a lawsuit so now they’re called TrainWell the coach is phenomenal she’s great she’s very attentive she keeps listening to me and adjusting the exercises according to my feedback so not only the length and the difficulty but also what exercises work better in my space to what degree to what kind of weights I’m using and I see results and I’m really enjoying the results and I have more of motivation these days to exercise basically four or five times a week which has been a continuous struggle I’ve been able to do it before but with a lot of willpower I can say that it’s finally I wouldn’t say I’m looking forward to the exercise it’s still a struggle but it’s easier to get into exercise mode in my head and go into autopilot and your brain is used to it so there isn’t as much resistance and I find other activities to do while I exercise for example I can try to watch something I try to work I even play low-key relaxing video games that I can pause exercise, go back and it ties in with the exercise in a certain routine that I like so that’s been going very well I’m enjoying the results I’m not they’re not paying me or anything but I know there’s a lot of people who struggle with exercising and feeling better doing that I really recommend this app if you have the money for it the first two weeks are free so you can subscribe it’s a hundred bucks a month for the first two weeks I definitely think it has been that’s my opinion alright, I’ll end here these are my notes and yeah, we’ll see how it goes