weekly write up: week of september 1
What did you do this week? What’s next?
Last week, I shared more writing, and a link to a Google Form so that I could send an email to folks when I hit the publish button next. Thanks to the 16 of you who don’t mind getting an email from me! I’ll try to make sure you don’t regret it.
David and Z and I got to spend the weekend outside of Santa Cruz with my dad for his birthday. I will be the first to admit that both of my parents can drive me nuts in their own unique ways, but also the first to admit that being a parent yourself really does change your perspective. It’s probably most simply put that I enjoy seeing my daughter experience the best parts of each of my parents. This weekend, watching my dad read books in silly voices reminded me of how great he was at those voices 30+ years ago when I was a young kid. I always loved that I could crack my dad up, he just got my weird sense of humor or something, and seeing him laugh at my goofy kid was another really bright spot in the weekend.
Running was rough last week. We’ve been fighting off some daycare virus, I definitely over did it two weeks ago, and my body just felt awful. It’s hard not to be upset with myself on weeks like this. I of course know that it’s better to scale back when you need to than to push through and end up injured. I of course know that progress is not linear, or WHATEVER. Still, it can suck to be reminded of how fallible and human you are. I’ve been using a mantra lately “How fit can I get?” and there’s a million reasons I like it- more on that below- but this week it worked well because I could say “How fit can I get, despite a set back week?” We’re all gonna have them, and have a set of feelings around them. This week, we’re running a work out with some “mile pace” efforts. I have never in my life attempted to run an all out mile, and the fact that I have no idea what “mile pace” effort is somehow makes this more exciting.
I went back this week and read through my last two weeks of write ups and decided I like this “work style” format better for my own use. I realized I still hadn’t shared the writing I promised two weeks ago on how to plan a week of meals, and that I have a bunch of half finished recipes I want to share. I did share my thoughts on meal planning here- woohoo! And in lieu of sharing recipes I’ve been cooking lately, I cleaned up and reviewed the meal planner app I made myself and have been using for a couple months. There are over 150 recipes already saved and ready for you or anyone else to use, the blogger nonsense edited out, and tags galore. My next little project is going to be to move all of these little things here to my own website. I am hosting with vercel, and rather than maintain a bunch of URLs, I think I want things to be tidy and in one easy to navigate place.
I finally started writing a list of every single thing I want in my next official job. So much of what keeps popping up is how important I find ritual and routine. Maybe next week I’ll write more about how ritual and routine create a solid rhythm for me personally, but it was interesting to reflect on some of the things that I have learned about myself 15 years into my career. Weekly write ups are one way I’ve tried to keep that rhythm for myself, and I’m noticing others creeping in too. As I keep trying to avert my eyes and attention from one more ‘9-9-6’ post or commentary about ‘hustle culture’, I feel more and more sure that all of the best and fastest and most dynamic work is done by people who can set a steady beat, and stick with it.
I got to have a few great chats with people I’ve worked with in the past over the last couple of weeks. I am so flattered and humbled to hear things they’ve had to say. When I work with a team, I really pride myself on bringing good energy, setting a celebratory and generous tone, and approaching everything like the biggest opportunity is to learn something new. Hearing versions of that echoed back from people is validating, and I’m proud of myself!
Goals for the next week
- Get at least 1 person to try my meal planning app
- Learn something about computer vision
- Send some emails
Have you changed your mind on anything? What have you learned?
Changed my mind about The Pitt. I binge watched Season 1, halfway through season 2, I felt like it was just too much drama, and too little reward. Great show, but I’m opting out. This says more about me and my relationship to TV than anything else.
Changed my mind about trying to find spoilers to books. This is insane- stay with me. I am the kind of person who will look up how a book ends, to decide if I want to finish the book. With most of life we have no idea where we are going. There’s no way of knowing how it ends, so all you can do is focus on the present, enjoying the day, doing what feels right, right now. As many more talented writers than I have reminded us- it’s all going to end, and we’ll never know when.
With books (and movies) you know it ends! You can ask Reddit how it ends, you can ask your preferred friendly AI agent, you can antagonize your friends who have already read or seen said book or movie. This, in my opinion, is the superior way of going about things. Reading and watching movies takes time- if you really enjoy spending your time on books and movies, like I do, then you should be willing to invest that time even if you know where you’re headed. Perhaps especially if you know where you’re headed? I tried to do that last week with a book I got for free from Amazon. TLDR: Gemini hallucinated an ending that was actually way better than what the actual author wrote. I was so disappointed to actually finish that book. If you read this far and are thinking that’s my karma for using AI to get the book spoilers, you are right.
I tried to learn about SEO. This seemed fun! Important! Maybe it is, and also I don’t have enough traffic on my personal blogging page yet for there to be any interesting data yet, or data at all. This is fine. I may also just be learning that one of the things I love about anything is some good data. I’ve been thinking about public data sets that must be available and what I could do with them, just because I miss a good graph. Gapminder isn’t scratching the itch, I’m going to have to do more tinkering.
Learning and leaning into the power of a great mantra. I, like many type A people, love a plan and love to anticipate what could go wrong so that I can plan around it. I am tough, I like to see difficult things ahead and decide that they can be difficult for someone else but NOT ME, I’m just going to Deal With It. Too much of this, particularly in running, means I spend too much time with the “but what if’s?” I want to run a marathon PR, but what if I can’t stay healthy because DAYCARE GERMS, I want to run a marathon PR, but what if I travel a lot and all of my long runs are trash. I want to run a marathon PR, but what if I’m just not strong enough yet post partum? I’ve started asking myself “How fit can I get?” This is the best question for me because there is in fact no answer. How fit can I get despite the day care germs? Despite the travel? Despite the major lack of quad strength I never thought I’d struggle with? How fit can I get without sacrificing my health or my ability to be present with my family? How fit can I get while chasing other dreams? How fit can I get by December? What about March? How about 2028? I’ve never been HUGE on mantras for running, but maybe thats because none of them have resonated with me like “How Fit Can I Get?”
What went well? What didn’t go well? What could be improved?
WWW: After last week’s write up, several people shared with me that their first banh mi was their most memorable sandwich experience. I love that.
WWW: Claude design is pretty dang good, and along with this my prompting and design taste could use some major improvements.
WCBI: My popcorn trail mix experiment (ube + furikake) was over oiled and over ube’d. Will have to try again.
WDGW: The week felt a little short, but a bit of reflection makes me think this is because I had expectations for doing things that didn’t match the reality of my calendar. That’s okay, adjusting for this week!