One Year Later

“The whole value of solitude depends upon oneself; it may be a sanctuary or a prison, a haven of repose or a place of punishment, a heaven or a hell, as we ourselves make it.” — John Lubbock

Neat! It has now been exactly one year since I restarted this site with something other than nothing or a test.

So many tests. So many unfinished tries.

I have managed to post 3 posts a month. Even though most of them are all at the end of the month. I’m feeling pretty good that I’ve managed to meet my goal here.

And, as of the writing of this post today, that has yielded over 39,000 words. Assuming the average rate of speech is 150 words per minute, that’s 240 minutes of speaking. Which is 4 hours. I think that’s neat too.

I’ve actually managed to maintain at least three streaks.

• 648 days of walking at least 10,000 steps in a row.
• 564 days of tracking¹ intermittent fasts in a row.
• 545-ish² days of sticking something into my current journalling app — Day One.

I think that’s pretty cool.

I also hope that I manage to implement Markdown footnote support. If I don’t then there are gonna be some funny looking thing that’s a hat followed by a number that’s then wrapped in brackets.

I’ve had a bunch of ideas. I’ve written about a bunch of ideas. And I’ve been questionable at following through with those ideas.

Which is my challenge.

It seems that these recent posts have gravitated toward writing about ADHD struggles. Probably because that’s the easiest thing to write about right now.

I’ve got lots of little funny life moments that I wanna post. I need to setup my content workflow to support quickly and easily posting what I want when I want.

“It’s complicated.” Is still how I respond to almost every, “How are you?”

It will probably always be since it’s the most accurate word. If someone wants to really know then they’re more than welcome to ask me questions to learn more. Most people do not do that though.

Nine years after separation, then divorce, of my son’s mother, I signed up for Hinge, paid for 6 months because I thought I was being pragmatic, and then was introduced to my now partner about two weeks after I’d paid.

So, basically, I accidentally ended up in a committed relationship, we decided to live together after six seven of daily exposure, and now we are.
 I learned more about Clean language, I learned about John Gottman, and then I managed to completed both the Level 1 and Level 2 courses and passed their appropriate tests. Which means I can now be a “relationship coach³” if I want to practice that.

I was one of the primary leads of a cloud migration project. The non-profit I worked with was acquired by an organization that is owned by a private equity cabal, the project I was leading was cancelled, a large portion of the team I’ve been working with for years were axed, and then organizational structures were rearranged with no consideration given to how they may impact the supportability and maintainability of the platform that runs the (substantial) revenue-generating product.

And boy-oh-boy. I’ve got thoughts on this. To write of in the future. It’s to close to now to write about them now.

I’ve made tons of progress in sifting through a houseful of over 20 years of stuff. This has been challenging. And in the process I’ve modernized my house a little. Every switch and light and most other electronic bits are now “smart⁴.”

Circling back to that relationship thing, I’ve been learning⁵ how to model a healthy relationship, and so is she. This means making an effort to communicate positively and connect each day.

And circling back to that Gottman training, I learned that 69% of conflict within a relationship is ​perpetual​. As in, the conflict revolves around the same topic repeatedly.

And 96% of the time the conversation about the conflict will end with the same sentiment in which it began. In other words, if a conversation about conflict is started when you’re all fucking pissed off, then the end of that repair attempt will likely end on a negative note. Whereas, if a conversation about the conflict is approached in a curious, mostly positive and solution oriented, manner then the conversation just might conclude on a positive note.

That link — The 6 Things That Predict Divorce — is great. It kinda applies to most human relationships — friendship and professional especially.

I’ve learned that learning that stuff is more of a rarity than a common practice. When I share what I learned nobody so far has known what I’m talking about. This is interesting to me.

I have recently realized that as I age similar experiences between people changes. Pretty sure that’s that whole generational divide thing. Pretty sure that catalyzes change quite a bit. Dunno.

Other than all the really negative and challenge things I’ve been working through, I’m of the conclusion that this year had quite a few positive outcomes.

So that’s pretty neat.

And I’m so close to having created something to convert the Day One entries into something that’s compatible with Hugo.

So fucking close.

That’ll feel pretty nice too.

And then best yet, within the scope of this post… after I exported this post, and shoved it into Hugo, I noticed that all the footnote stuff just worked.

That is fucking awesome.