We tend to follow similar patterns. A similar conversation, with similar content sometimes prompts the same stories. Have you ever noticed that a friend of yours, in maybe very similar situations or in topics of discussion, weaves the same tale? They may tell that story, with the same gusto and belief as if you’d never heard it before, because they were prompted by the same conditions as when you first heard the story. Someone mentions a pool and your friend tells his story of nearly drowning. Something like that.

There’s nothing wrong with this, it’s simply to illustrate that we tend to function in cycles. And in these cycles we build up our personality. Our actions and our behavior is born out of these patterns of thought.

What does this mean for us then?

It means that we’re largely just creatures of what we’re obsessed with at the current moment. Everyone has obsessions, or points of interest. Things that they’re focused on. Maybe pillars of their personality or self-image. Vegans telling you they’re vegan, that’s a pillar of their personality. It’s part of what they see themselves as. Entrepreneurs tend to focus and obsess about the process, the business, the community. I’m a maker. I’m an entrepreneur. I’m a business owner. I’m trying to start a business. I’m a weed smoker, I’m a doctor, whatever.

It can also be habits and wants. I’m a runner, I’m on keto. Maybe it’s exclusive groups. I belong to the local country club, I’m a millionaire.

‘What does this mean’, you’re saying. ‘Of course people are built up of their habits and thoughts.’

What I’m saying is that this focus is largely singular. I think that often we pick just ONE of these things. That thing may change and ebb and flow, but for the most part it’s a singular thing. And that thing acts like a social touchstone on how we act and behave. It also likely determines or at least has a huge effect on who we consider our friends. On what stories we tell at parties. On what we eat, even! It is our own personal obsession.

We must be aware of this personality tunnel vision; this obsession. Of this self-image and focus on belonging to a tribe or a group or activity, in ourselves and others.

The singularity of the role is the important part, I think. We are all of course a mother, a brother, a sister, a father, a friend. A boss, an employee. We’re all of these people all the time. However, they’re presented and focused at different times in different places. So when you and an old friend grow apart over the years, perhaps it’s a divergence of your obsessions. Perhaps that’s not a bad thing.

We are all obsessed with something. There is something that we pine over, we meticulously examine and enrich ourselves with. Writers write. Painters paint. Entrepreneurs entrepreneur.

This obsession blinds us to vast amounts of information. I haven’t found the reason why, yet, but I think that being ‘detached’ is at the core of success and achievement in a lot of areas of life. And I believe this obsession is at the center of our attachment to results and how we validate our actions.

What is your primary role? Are you aware of it? Is it beneficial? What if you tried a different role for a while? What if you completely flipped it on it’s head?

Perhaps your obessions need to be monitored, adjusted. Do you see yourself as a creative person? No? Do something creative. Try it. See how it feels. And vice versa. Are you largely creative? Work on something technical.

Something tells me it will inform your life elsewhere.

Something tells me it’s good for you.

I do.

It’s been two weeks since I’ve written anything. I’m lazy. I’m useless. I can’t commit to anything — woah, woah.

Hold up.

I’m just as hard on myself as all of you, but here’s the deal. Sometimes you must be easy on yourself. In the game of life consistency and volume is key. And sometimes you’ll be inconsistent.

Sometimes you’ll be lazy and say “Not tonight, I think I’m gonna have a beer instead.”

Just like when I stopped writing for two weeks. Ha ha ha…

But I’ve lowered my goal (so it seems less daunting to help with adherence), and I’ve thought about what and why I want to write.

All these things will hopefully help me to do it again, yay!

So what have I been up to? Well, I’ve installed Dokku on my servers. Dokku is a PaaS that you host on your own server. The way that I like to think about it is it’s one or two days of nightmare dev ops to never have to worry about dev ops again. Which I think is going to help me with my next goal:

To finish one side project every month for the remainder of the year.

I was struggling with topics to write about. Which is a weak ass excuse. I figured the easiest way to have something to write about is to do something interesting. Setting up Dokku was the first step for that.

It was rough. Tell you hwhat. While not particularly weak in dev ops sometimes pushing and pulling and doing all of the stuff required to get a server up and running is a NIGHTMARE. Tiny little differences in tons of places need to all be mystically aligned. You need to sacrifice a goat and the moon needs to be in the right place in the sky.

And then your server spins up and you have an application.

Dokku relieves some of that mysticism and folly.

Typically an application results from a properly worded git push dokku. It’s like white magic and black magic. You gotta say the correct words (levi-oh-sah) and suddenly you get a web app. It’s nifty, and I like it.

Anyway, the first thing I did was get an up and running version of Skeleton Key. Sick. It lives. I can do things. I can write and deploy applications quickly and efficiently. That was the goal of Dokku and Skeleton Key. To be able to build apps faster.

Second, I started working on Project #9 Body of Knowledge.

I like naming things dramatically. But I’ll talk about the Body of Knowledge tomorrow. ❤ Also if you haven’t played the game Apex Legends it just came out, definitely give it a shot.

Makes my head spin. I probably worked 30 hours in 3 days last week. Plus a shitload more this week. For me, that’s a lot. I’ve spent my whole life avoiding working for long periods. I used to kind of wear that with a badge of pride, as if I was avoiding some trap that other people had fallen into. Standing at the edge of the spike pit I’d look down and poke fun. “I work as little as possible,” I’d say. Then I’d watch you bleed.

I’m not certain if that’s so wrong. But I’m not certain if it’s right, either. I definitely think work for work’s sake isn’t healthy. It isn’t good to be in something that sucks your soul from you.

You should spend most of your time doing things that fulfill you. I think that’s right. But I think taking pride in working little isn’t right either. I think there’s a certain amount of suffering that’s required. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to work at places that appreciated me, and payed me well. I’ve also been pretty fortunate to be a very satisfied person. Money isn’t really a massive driving force in my life.

I’m cheap, one might say.

Another person might say frugal.

I know that there’s been times I’ve been sick of not having a ton of money. But I also know that if I had to live off of rice and beans for a few months, I could definitely do it. There’s a lot of stoic philosophy around accepting your current circumstances that I enjoy a lot. If you haven’t read that stuff, you should. Stoicism and philosophy are both very much in vogue with the silicon valley tech type. Of which I guess I would be a member.

I think everyone’s searching for answers. How to be happy. How to be successful. How to.. achieve the things they want to achieve. I like that. I like that people are always looking. I think as race it’s beautiful that people want to be better. I know I do. This constant striving for betterment is something to be admired.

Maybe stuff like philosophy can give you answers. Or at least make you feel like you have answers. I don’t know.

What did I write about today? I guess nothing.

Outwardly, this sounds terrible. It sounds like we’re not in control. Like we’re unable to function when confronted with a new experience.

To some extent that’s true. But let’s take the opposite. Imagine if every day were completely different. You never ate the same food twice. You never woke up in the same place. You never were the same person. That’d be pretty rough, too, right?

And so we have these little islands of normalcy — of consistency. Some people’s islands are bigger than others. Some people have routines and they drink the same coffee from the same barista and take the same train to work every day and that’s fine. In general if we disturb these habits and patterns, you’d be met with anger or at least general discomfort.

Other’s have smaller islands. They wake up in the same place, or maybe they don’t. They try new things as often as possible. They take the long route to work.

It’s important to remember that this isn’t inherently any better than the other. I’m not trying to make some case for spontaneity — rather illuminate the unconscious choices that we make every day. Those are the scary ones, after all.

When you wake up, do you do the same thing every day? Do you go to the same place? Do you think about the same things? Do you drink the same soda and eat the same Big Mac?

Do the guys and gals at the gas station know what kind of cigarettes you smoke?

When you’re done after a long night at work, do you come home and drink the same six-pack and fall into oblivion? I used to do that. It was a habit. I stopped at the same gas station, because it was on the route to my house. Because it was easy.

These unconscious choices make or break us. I really honestly do think that. I think taking time to consciously examine and understand them can go a long way to self improvement.

Anyway, I originally wanted to talk about what keeps us lighting up. What keeps us sipping the soda. What part of you craves things? What part of you is trying to drink the poison? I have a friend who buys cheap liquor. I always asked why, why not buy the good stuff? He said, Jake, I’m literally poisoning myself, does it make a difference? I kind of shrugged. I think so. I like expensive booze. But he still had a point.

What part of you needs it though? Is it part of a greater routine? Are you drinking the coffee or is the coffee drinking you? Bad example. Are you drinking the coffee because it provides some type of beneficial caffeine boost, or are you drinking the coffee because yesterday you drank the coffee and the day before you drank the coffee and for as long as you care to remember — you drank the coffee.

I’m not saying stop drinking. I’m not saying stop with the soda or with the Big Mac. Fuck me, I love a Big Mac. What I am saying though is that we spend an awful lot of time on autopilot. And that scares the shit out of me.

The man could feel the bindings biting into his wrists. They were bleeding. He was tied to a pole, with his arms around his back. Men, women, and children milled about him. All of them took careful consideration to not notice him. Some of the ladies carried large banana leaves filled with treats, others carried huge pots of water balanced on their heads. Many of them had an assortment of containers, perched precariously above them. Some used old cooking pots, others used oddly shaped pieces of metal. Others still used actual clay pots. The clay pots were the smallest. The local potter had yet to perfect the art.

Even now you could see the striations of class rippling through society. Some of the women had pots that leaked. Some could hold several gallons, ones that were to be used for cooking stews or stock in a now defunct restaurant.

And he could see children playing. They ran, nearly naked. Some carried plastic toys, but most just ran. Their arms slung out beside them, imitating an airplane. Or holding an imaginary sword, like a knight from yore. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen children actually playing.

His arms and legs ached. His face was purpled, bruised, from the beatings. He could feel the solid wood pole — he thought it was a telephone pole — supporting him. He tongued his chipped and cracked teeth. He could feel every inhale against them.

The weather was hot. Obviously. In this tropical climate men and women had learned to wear little. To want little. Like other places they found their homes. Their places where they could live. But every place was different.

A man crouched in front of him. His pants were patchwork, multicolored and bright. He looked like a court jester. Resplendent in colors to distract you from the truth of what he said.

“Well, lookee here.” he said.

He scurried around, and jumped in furtive fits. He moved like a bird on a low branch.

“Looks like someone has-a found themselves in a pre-dick-a-ment.” he drawled. He was heavily southern. The bound man had never heard anything like that. The words were so close together he could barely tell them apart.

A bell rang in the distance, and the jester moved away. People stopped walking in the streets. He lost consciousness again.

The water that hit him next was warm and tepid. It had probably been brought up from the ocean only moments before. The salt burned the cuts on his face. He was hauled to his feet, and a man was speaking.

“For crimes against the commune,” he said.

There were noises, and the bound man couldn’t really understand what was being said.

“Denied the right of court,” more mumbling and droning. He wished he would just get on with it. He realized he was high up. High enough to be dangerous if he fell. In fact, he didn’t see anything but ground, a mere 10 feet below him.

“Sentenced to death.”

He felt a shove at his back, and the merciful air ran along his face and through his hair. He hit the ground, roughly. He tasted sand. His hands were unbound now. Freedom. Finally. At last.

The ground began to rumble beneath his feet.

He lurched, his weakened legs barely carrying his weight. If he could just make it to the tree line in the distance.

If he could just make it a few more steps.

Today was a long day.

It’s been a long time since I’ve worked that long straight. A good 10 hour coding sesh. Put that one in the books. Mark it down on a little piece of paper.

There’s something about working for a long period of time. It’s exhausting, but fulfilling at the same time. Slogging across multiple tasks, poring over codebases. Even though it sucks while you do it, at the end you feel better for it. You feel accomplished.

You feel like you’ve finished a grand task.

Sweat wiped from brow, a glorious effort. An effort of love. For others. For yourself. For the work itself.

I don’t think that there’s any denying that the world is built on work. Simple effort in all things. There are men and women working to keep your lights on, working to keep your house heated. Working to keep your roads clear. Working to pick up your garbage in the morning. A lot of these tasks aren’t glamorous in the common sense. They’re dirty. They’re hard. And they’re essential.

This work often goes unrecognized. Kim K. can get a million likes but how about Bill who’s drove your city’s street sweeper for twenty five years? How about you throw him a bone, huh?

Maybe this is just the plot of Dirty Jobs, and I’m your Mike Rowe for the day. But one thing I know is that I haven’t worked hard enough. Pretty much my whole life I’ve skated by. I got lucky, I knew someone, I had things given to me. I’ve had a lot of things given to me. I’m thankful for that. If I wasn’t that’d be terrible.

But I also want the work. I think parts of me crave the deepness of it. The all consuming work. I think a part of me wants to be consumed wholly with a task, with real world consequences and value.

I think work is always paired with a why. Work and why. The why is why the work gets done, of course. Sometimes the why is greater than the work, even. Your family needs the money. You believe in the cause with all of your being. Your why is the reasoning behind pursuing it. It’s that drive. I think a lot of us are missing the why in nearly everything we do. It’s easy to forget why we do things. Routines and habits are dangerous.

I think the amount of work you do is valuable. I think hard work is more valuable than easy work. Not that that value exactly relates to real world terms. Hard work can get paid a lot less than easy work. In fact I’d say it usually does. A funny quirk of life, I guess.

There’s something intrinsic in the work.

Regardless of it’s outside value, effort is inherently admirable.

I need to work harder.

💀 🔑

If you haven’t heard of Skeleton Key, boy are you missing out.

Just kidding. It’s not even close to done yet, lol.

But, it’s definitely taking shape. Currently I have the frontend and backend all up and running, and I’m working on support for teams as we speak.

Next will be subscription support. Stripe is the platform I’m most familiar with, and it’s likely what I’ll implement in Skeleton Key. What I’m actually most excited for though is to create some really detailed documentation. I think not only will docs help me, but I believe a well documented framework, maybe even with methodologies and best practices, will help adoption.

Oh, and I want to include Dokku documentation, because I think that’s gonna be awesome. I have to figure out how to use it first, though.

The pivotal part will be video walkthroughs of first project setup, modification of data models, queries, mutations, and production deployment. I think these are all the massive pieces that if you see somebody do it once, you can recreate it and adapt it to your own needs and your very own projects!

Grids, graphs and profiles, oh my!

I think it’s less a question of what to include in Skeleton Key, and more a question of what not to include. One of my biggest issues is this massive bloat and interconnectedness of boilerplates and frameworks. And of course there’s a certain level of complexity assumed, but when you’re coming in from the outside it always seems so daunting and miserable to pick up. You spend half your time learning the structure of the application as it is, before you’ve even begun to shape it the way you want it.

So with that being said, I’m going to try to simplify and separate any components and pieces of Skeleton Key that I can. I’ll make it as modular as possible, so the base install will be very small, but you can easily add and remove components at will.

For example, I think a basic graph component would be useful, but it would only be clutter for most people, so I plan to separate that off into it’s own repo.

Stylin, wilin.

The next question comes to exactly how much styling should I force on the boilerplate? My first instinct is that what draws people to a good boilerplate/seed is the prewritten code. That’s money and more importantly time saved. Styling being a massive undertaking of effort.

At the same time however, I hate having to fight with CSS that I haven’t written. It’s not how it should be done. I’ll have to be incredibly careful to walk that fine line of too much or too little. Gotta be just right.

It begs mentioning that styled-components will help with the weight of this, all styles of components will be contained within their own files. No hunting and pecking for conflicting CSS. (hopefully)

I’m not even really that thoughtful.

But holy shit do I love VR.

I was invited today to go to a VR Arcade in Green Bay, about an hour north of where I live. I can safely say I was happy I went. The staff was crazy welcoming and all-in-all just a really great group of nerds. I mean, of course they’re nerds. They’re running VR Arcade. So obviously we automatically felt right at home.

This, however, wasn’t my first VR experience. I had previously been to another VR experience. I wouldn’t call it so much an arcade, because you only got to pick between two games. And it certainly wasn’t a recent installation. It was at one of the water parks in Wisconsin Dells, I can’t remember exactly which right now.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it was certainly an eye opening experience. Maybe not worth the 60 bucks I paid to do it, but definitely worth it just to catch a glimpse of the magic.

What magic, you ask? There is something intangible, something so incredibly interesting about VR to me. I think it crops up in these little movements and moments that don’t feel like anything else I’ve ever done in a game before.

This particular game, at the VR Experience in the Dells, was a zombie shooter. First, my mask was kind of clouding up and it was funneling most of my breathing air straight up at the screen. Poor headset design, bad-ish sound. And even with all these things that destroyed the immersion of the game, I still found myself jumping when a zombie broke through a door, or rushed at me.

That’s that magic I was telling you about. It has this ability to produce really visceral, gut moving feelings. Vertigo, panic. All of these crazy feelings that are closer to real, intense emotions. I remember there was a tiny elevator that brought you up to the second story of the game.

As I moved up, I fully expected the floor beneath my feet to be moving and shaking.

I left that experience with a newfound appreciation for VR. It convinced me then, even. However I hadn’t pursued the thought anymore. I can’t possibly afford to spend 60 dollars every time I wanted to experience it. And at the time a lot of the home VR setups seemed lackluster, and development hadn’t caught up with the hardware quite yet, I think.

But today? Today was a whole different story.

The headset fit snugly, and I was even provided with a little spacer that let me keep my glasses on during it. (That was a no-go in the last one) The space was new and clean and ultimately quite well done, even with an area for easy restaurant type food. Pizza, fries, that sort of thing.

And the games. Man, the games.

The first we played was Quiver, basically human tower defense. Large mobs of monsters come running at you and you have only your trusty magic bow and arrow.

It was so incredibly entertaining to try to figure out the mechanics of a game like this. In a computer game your interaction with the mechanics is so incredibly limited. Press and hold, release to fire.

In Quiver you actually had to reach down into your quiver, grab an arrow, and nock it to your bow, then draw it, and fire it. Hoping to hit one of the massive horde of animals attacking you and your friends.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, your friends are in there with you, too. Teleporting from perch to perch, calling out when monsters are getting too close to your gates. It was incredibly fun.

Then came beatsaber. The quintessential music-DDR-esque timing game where you attempt to swipe through 3D blocks flying at you with your two lightsabers.

It’s incredibly fun. It’s just fun. It’s hard for me to remember the last time I had this much fun with games. Sure games are ‘fun’, they’re definitely entertaining. But this was just so different, getting your whole body into it has something to do with it. I found myself dancing a little bit along to the beat of the game. It was incredible.

And last, but definitely not least, was my favorite. Super Hot VR. Now I had heard of and seen tons of videos for Super Hot for the PC. The slow down mechanics looked awesome, and I loved the art styling of the game, so I had to see how it looked in VR.

It’s amazing.

The game menu is simply you in a room, filled with steampunk-esque computers. You load a floppy disk into the drive, and a white light shines down on you. Looking up — physically tilting your head back and looking above you — you realize there’s another VR helmet, hanging in the room you’re in. Reaching up, you pull it down over your head, and the game begins.

How fucking cool is that?!

The game was both challenging and incredibly entertaining. The permadeath features of SuperHot lend it to attempting the same task over and over and over again, and it never got tiring.

The only unfortunate thing was as always: all good things must come to an end. Our little timer went off, and our games were shut down.

And I was left just being blown away.

I’m already looking at graphics cards and processor upgrades for my PC.

I see more VR in the future. At least for me.

I bought a kind of expensive pen and a Field Notes notebook today. Is that pretentious or committed? Does it matter?

I unfortunately had nothing to write in it. No inspired insights and no fun commentary. No design perspectives or typography notes.

I did really enjoy the snow on the roads today. Nothing flows like snow across concrete.

I wonder if I should pick up the habit of walking. There’s so many people in history who did a lot of thinking and walking. People pace on the phone. You move around with nervous energy, but people also pace when they’re thinking intently. At least thats what books and shows lead me to believe. Do people think better when they’re walking?

Heck I just googled it and it looks like people do think better when they’re walking.

“All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking” — Friedrich Nietzsche

But it’s so crazy cold outside in Wisconsin. It’s 10 degrees outside and snowing. Walking in that sounds miserable. I also think the best bet would be to walk without music or entertainment. You have to be thinking. I wonder if I should pair it with my meditation? I wonder if distance or if you actually go anywhere matters.

Could I just pace back and forth in the house for 10 minutes and get the same benefits.

This is the type of stuff I’m obsessed with. These seemingly big things. If so many people seemed to have noticed it across years, why isn’t anyone talking about this? Why didn’t my Dad say to me one day “Well son, if you’re looking for the answer maybe go for a walk?” Of course I wouldn’t have listened, but I probably would’ve at least thought about listening.

I didn’t outright dismiss everything he said, just a lot of it. Which was dumb. But everyone has to learn somehow.

It looks like if I were to literally just read a little bit of that thing I linked I’d have some answers:

Walking outside produced the most novel and highest quality analogies. The effects of outdoor stimulation and walking were separable. Walking opens up the free flow of ideas, and it is a simple and robust solution to the goals of increasing creativity and increasing physical activity.

So outside is key. That sucks. Makes sense. But at the same time I have been looking for something to take up time outside of lifting three times a week. I don’t want to lift more because I’m a firm believer of recovery time. But of course I don’t have a beach body, so who knows the efficacy of my opinions?

Attempts to improve individual creativity often involve training people in the steps of creativity including shifting perspective (Kozbelt, Beghetto, & Runco, 2010), trying something counterin- tuitive (Amabile, 1983), or, in the most direct fashion possible, simply trying to “be more creative” (Christensen, Guilford, & Wilson, 1957). While effective, these depend on diligence and the direct, perhaps effortful, manipulation of one’s creative processes. Rather than trying to improve people’s command of the creative process, we simply had people walk at a natural pace. If successful, it is an easily adopted (and healthy) approach for enhancing creative output.

This paper is actually pretty cool, I’ve never actually spent time trying to ‘be more creative’ or even really thinking about systematically improving my creativity. That feels like a cheat, I just figured people who thought ‘creativity’ was from some muse were wrong, but people who thought they could get it by some non-creative means were also wrong.

I guess I thought if you just put in the work it would come. And I guess to some extent that’s right. Regardless of whether or not I have an idea of what I’m going to write when I sit down, if I just start writing, eventually something comes out.

I guess that’s the beauty of it really.

I think I’m going to go for more walks. Maybe you should, too.

The day was warm. Oppressively so. It was the kind of heat that would make it nearly impossible to walk about.

But still, Paris’s elite appeared in droves. Men and women in colorful drapery, attended by servants and sycophants alike. The grounds were vast and covered with assorted greenery, immaculately trimmed and tended.

Walking within it’s massive circular walls, lords and ladies pointed at the cages, oohing and ahhing. There was no internet. There was no video or photo. This was a truly enrapturing display of power and wealth.

Occasionally animals were brought here, to fight to the death.

The calls of birds and the roar of exotic animals rang across the Royal Menagerie at the Palace of Versailles. This very menagerie sparked the creation of others across Europe, copying it’s template nearly identically.

Another scene. The clanking metal of a rollercoaster in the distance. The faint beep and buzz of an unattended arcade. On these grounds roamed giraffes, flamingos and orangutans. Not to forget possibly the most important of their cadre: Bubbles the chimpanzee. Though in his prime he was in fact gallivanting the world.

Massive sycamore trees frame the entrance. Emblazoned in the green metal gate in a crisp serif font is “Neverland, Once Upon A Time”. The pop idol Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch housed an incredible collection of rare and exotic animals, some, like Bubbles, even travelled the world with him.

And I was going to write another fanciful little piece about how Mike Tyson owned tigers, but I really think that a picture is worth a thousand words:

He raised his tigers from when they were little cubs, by the way. I found that an interesting little tidbit.

Hugh Hefner also owned a weird collection of rare animals by the way.

And so I tell you these stories for what reason? I like finding connections or patterns. Maybe that’s why I like writing software so much. It’s all patterns. It’s all connections. That’s all it is.

So I started to realize: people, especially rich people, have always been fascinated with exotic and rare animals. And I really do wonder why?

When you’re rich you start to look for things that other people simply can’t have? Is the motivation behind it simply that intense rarity? Nobody can reproduce a tiger. There’s no dumbed down or slower version of a tiger. There’s no budget tiger. There’s no generic brand tiger. It’s a fucking tiger. Either you have a tiger, or you don’t.

I also found it incredibly interesting that it seems to span time. Sure, a bunch of rich people in America collectively decided that owning weird animals is cool.

But Louis XIV of France and Charles III of Spain? Both of them built their menageries in 1664 and 1774 respectively. Hundreds of years ago. So this isn’t just showing off immense wealth and power then, is it? It’s something deeper. Something more tied to the human spirit.

Maybe we just like seeing things caged up.

Maybe we just like having people see what we’ve caught.