I did a thing today that brought me more satisfaction than I expected. I cleaned my car. ...Not the whole car, though. It's really dusty. But part of it ( Read more... )

I had a weird dream the other night. I was back in graduate school. Except it wasn't, "Hey, I'm 22 again and working toward my degree," it was, "Hey, I'm today years old and I've gone back to grad school to earn another degree." Today-me in grad school was miserable. I hated it. And I didn't even know why I was there! I even poured out my heart in ( Read more... )

This past weekend was a mostly gloomy one. It was mostly gloomy both in terms of the weather and our spirits. We did get a break in the weather- and a boost to our spirits- Saturday morning when we went hiking at Sierra Vista. But by early afternoon Saturday the weather clouded up and our spirits sank ( Read more... )

An interesting thing about the recent failure of Silicon Valley Bank is that it's not due to bad investments. It's actually mostly psychologicalSVB didn't invest in fundamentally unsound investments. These weren't complex and dishonestly mis-rated mortgage backed securities, like what screwed up banks in the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. These ( Read more... )

It's been a challenge staying centered the past several weeks. Since we became aware of the surging Omicron cases while we were vacationing in Hawaii in late December, things have been spiraling down. We didn't bail out of the trip and come home early but we did scale down our activities to stay safer. And we canceled our following trip, to spend ( Read more... )

Earlier today I blogged about my worst date ever. You may have noted my remark in there that I "barely even attempted to date" in high school and college. I debated whether to elaborate on that point. I decided my why was probably too peculiar/too hard to explain and thus would distract too much from the narrative. What an odd coincidence, then, ( Read more... )

"Visualize success." It's a phrase that's used so often in motivational guides it has become trite. Even worse, it's frequently misapplied. The self-improvement category of books, articles, and blogs is rife with insistence that if you simply visualize success you will be successful. It's become a form of magical thinking mumbo-jumbo that, somehow ( Read more... )