I came across this old roommate agreement from college 😂🤣

We definitely considered mutual back massages, I can’t remember if it ever happened though… 🤔💭

A chart displays information about roommates' sleep schedules, noise preferences, and commitments to maintaining a quiet environment.

Is it normal for a toddler to want spicy pickled garlic for breakfast? 😅

A jar labeled Grandpa's Cheesebarn Inc. Spicy Pickled Garlic is sitting on a wooden surface.

I scribbled in the margins this morning that the passage below made me think of the amplifying effect of social media. But then I was struck by the idea that I might still have this Bible in 50 years. If I come across my marginalia 5 decades from now, will social media seem like a distant memory? I think so. But what will have risen in its place? It got me thinking a lot about what stands the test of time, and what doesn’t. It’s crazy to me that I can’t imagine social media, at least as it is now, being around for 50 more years, but these words are from 2,000 years ago.

Ephesians 4:17-19 NIV
[17] So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. [18] They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. [19] Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.

You have plenty of time, the problem is emotional overwhelm

I really enjoyed this conversation between Brett Kistler and Joe Hudson. They discuss that what we call “time scarcity” is really emotional overwhelm. The key to overcoming that overwhelm and feeling like you have more time? Being present. This message really resonated with me. It’s easy to whip out my phone when I’m feeling overwhelmed, which creates a vicious cycle. But the times when I lock myself in, be present, and experience my emotions are when I feel the most fulfilled and time abundant.

The joy of indexing

Indexing is one of my favorite parts of journaling. It’s joyfully tedious. There’s no way to do it quickly, and the slower the better in my opinion. I love going through each page one by one, and copying the gist into the index at the front of the journal. The end result of having a fully indexed journal is satisfying, but even better is the process and getting lost reminiscing in long forgotten memories.

This redesign was long overdue

I have to admit, when I first launched Fed Meetup, I wasn’t very proud of the UX . I pieced it together quickly to meet a need at NASA, and didn’t make the time to go back and clean it up. But that bad user experience has been a thorn in my side ever since I launched the tool. That’s why I redesigned it from the ground up. The result is a clean, intuitive, and much more beautiful interface.

I spent this morning writing an outline for a blog post with the draft title: “I spent eight years crafting the ultimate pocket journal setup”. I’ve been wanting to do this post for years, but it feels like it’s going to be a huge undertaking. I care about this a lot, so I really want to do it right and share all the details with more pictures than anyone probably cares to see. I can’t promise it will come soon, but I’m excited to start working on it.

Are you looking in the right places?

This morning I was assembling a Minnie Mouse puzzle with my daughter and all was going well, until we got to the end and realized we were missing Minnie’s phone. “Let’s find phone!” my two year old shouted. And off she went, scouring the house for a little purple phone. I laughed when I saw the first place she looked. She walked over beside our couch, lifted up an air vent cover, and peeked inside.

I found a better way to migrate my Google Photos between accounts. I realized I can use Partner Sharing to automatically “save” the photos to a new account. It makes me a little hesitant, because it says the photos don’t count against my storage quota, so they must still be saved under the original account technically. Apparently, when the photos are deleted on the original account, then they will be saved into the new account that they have been shared with. It smells fishy, but I’m going to try it out. I’m making backups of all photos first before I try it though. I’m really hoping this saves me from all the downloading, unzipping, and uploading 🤞

Thank you to the good people of reddit and UConn for sharing this method. I’m glad I came across this because I was already seeing issues with missing metadata from some of the photos I was exporting from Google Takeout.