Weeknotes

I want to work on trying to think more like a marathon runner.

Perhaps it’s the ADHD, perhaps it’s the situation I’m in.

I tell my kids all the time of The Tortoise and the Hare. I say to myself, I’m not the hare because I’m not cocky and rarely nap. But…

Maybe I’m hare-like. I do these insane short bursts. I do everything. I run and I run so fast that I crash. My crashes are mostly mentally and emotionally, which my wife loves 🤨

Also, when I’m in my particular position I say yes to everything, what else am I doing? I make a mountain pile on my shoulders so big… then a subtle wind from life, let’s say a little girls upcoming 4th birthday party, and down it all crumbles.

I need to get back to simple, slow and, steady.

I’ve been trying to flex the brain a bit more since my last weeknotes.

Orality and Ong

I’ve continued my journey comparing today’s world with Ong’s characteristics of an oral culture:

• Empathetic and Participatory Rather than Objectively Distanced
• Aggregative rather than analytic
• Redundant or ‘copious’

It’s coming along. I’m enjoying some of the interesting things I’m connecting with. Still not sure how to tie a bow on all of this. However, That’s the reason for the exercise, to explore.

ActivityPub

I’ve also continued my exploration of what could be an ActivtyPub platform for me to tinker on all AP idea’s. I’ve taken months to hunt and try a bunch of possibilities out. They are all are really good in their own way, but to me, feel like I’m strong arming what I want it to do. So… I’ve started and stopped and started and stopped, and now I’m started again to do the silly thing, and build something for me and my own brain.

• Using PHP – because everyone has a server for PHP. Plus it’s the simplest for my hosting and my budget, which should be no more than I’m already spending on hosting.
• Using Slim PHP – because I want to keep this light. Laravel and Symphony are great, but overkill at the moment. If this becomes “a thing”, then a rebuild would be in the cards, but that’s a 2.0 or 3.0 problem.
• ActivityPub first – this is where I’ve found my mental problems. Many implementations feel like you’re always fighting some dissonance with a core foundation. It’s an extension, a plugin, a layer it on top of.. all of which work… but… not quite what I’m looking for.

• Up and down and up and down
• a flip; a pissed away day
• twiddle the thumbs
• clean the house and never succeed
• stare at a squirrel climbing a tree
• reconsider mostly everything
• journal, blog, post
• feel great about the time I have
• sad about my indecision and paralysis
• spend too much time on things
  • what else am I doing?
• hunt for something to do

That’s been my week.

AKA: More like bi-monthly.. now with the option of daily

I’ve been temporarily laid off. You could call it a furlough ( though no one ever used that term ).

A string of bad luck in the world of startups. They’ll call me back if they can. We just don’t know when.

Oh whoa is me… boo hoo boo hoo.

My cheese was moved

If anyone knows me, I’m the world of “who moved my cheese“, I’m not the one who’s sitting back. I lean forward and move.

It’s time to ( in no particular order ):

• clean the house ( seriously… I’m going into housekeeper dad mode )
• wallow for a teensy moment while watching some Sci-fi
• ponder the mysteries of universe and reconsider the place I want to be in it
• Write ( aka this blog )
• Give’er 🇨🇦

Any plans?

Not yet. After all it’s only day 1. I will trust my golden horseshoe and whim.

• What does that look like right now 🤷
• What does that look like next week 🤷
• What does that look like next month 🤷

Now with Shit Goggles!

I’m usually a happy-go-lucky look-on-the-bright-side-of-life kinda guy, but seems like not been so much.

My wife had to have a hard talk with me.

And now, boy oh boy do I hear it. The back handed comments, the “sure this is good, but….” amendments to every sentence.

So, what do I do? These things feel a little glued on right now. So I’m going to focus on the small things. The things I can change. I’m going to break a pattern or two, ever so slightly.

Breaking patterns, even the smallest pattern, by the fewest of moments, means you can change the big things.

It’s a twist on the classic making your bed speech.

Hold off on picking up your phone for 20seconds once in the morning, then tomorrow you can wait 22; then 30; then a minute; then 5; then 15; then 30; then an hour; then longer.

Go to bed 1 minute earlier.

Get up 10 minutes earlier

Sit on the opposite side of the couch.

Instead of doing X – try doing Y, just once a day.

And when my patterns can change, hopefully the shit can crack a little, and a little more until it rolls away, and I can get to that happy-go-lucky look-on-the-bright-side-of-life kinda guy.

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Oh ya – and I was inspired by Derek Sivers’s now page so, I have one too now.

Way things are going, it’s been more bi-weekly updates. But the thing with weeknotes, remind myself, that’s ok. Keep Calm and Post on.

Laravel & Statamic

I’ve really been reading more and digging into Laravel, specifically Statamic.

I’ve been looking for a foundation to do my own ActivityPub “thing”. I have my own ideas on what it can do, should do, and with a plugin.. maybe… 🤔

Other ActivityPub thoughts

I don’t want to re-invent the wheel, there’s a lot of really good foundational apps already in the wild. WP’s ActivityPub plugin is fine. I also really like what’s going on with Ghost. But, Statamic and Known have caught my eye from an infrastructure perspective.

• Statamic being having more jazz hands, flare, and a very vocal and fun loving community
• Known having a really portable and rock solid underbelly and foundation.

Reading through the ActivityPub specs, there’s a lot of really interesting possibilities, however right now, it feels like projects are mostly staying in their own lanes. Taking a smaller lane approaches, which makes total sense. However, I really want to “play” with the whole specification; more extreme possibilities, like IntransitiveActivity:

• Replace Last.fm scrobble with something in ActivityPub
• If we’re going old school, Fouresquare check-in’s.
• The Quantified Self all via ActivityPub

But more than that – I’m imagining a more monolithic app rather than micro-service approach to it all. One that doesn’t need fancy cloud hosts or only a hand full of hosts offer support for crazy languages ( not that I can’t set those thing up… ). I just want to sftp it on a classic host and go from there.

But as always no time

Yet as always, I am bound by a 3 years old and 6 year old that rule my world ( btw: I love that they do ). I’m still struggling to find a balance to get some “me” time. And when I do, being at a computer is not always what I want – I’m on it all day after all.

So hey, if you you ever want to chat more with me, ask away on the socials. Want to take it on yourself and beat me to it? Who’s got two thumbs and can beta test. Have at it.

Noticed I missed last week did you?

It’s been that kinda few weeks where one gets sucked into the suck of the web. I’m Canadian, I have a lot of hope, but man… that hope is being tested for sure. I think we need to come up with some other name for doom scrolling… it’s not so much doom as WTF.

I’ve been trying to pick the pieces up from my last weeknotes. I had a nice hiatus celebrating my Wife’s Birth Week ( yup a whole week here, full of zany 3yr & 6yr old ideas for how to celebrate ). Topping off with a great no-kids bday party which opened a window just a little bit in my immune system for me to then be smote down by some good awful bug. One that taunts you be being healthy just enough during the day to try and work or feel really guilty for not, and then when the sun sets, the beast is released in a rage of heat and chills.

So, in the end, those pieces I’ve been trying to pick up off the ground, pieces of my ego, hope, drive… ya, those are mostly still on the ground being gently shuffled over by a dirty slipper to make a path to my bed.

I’ll keep if brief.

How I feel at work

How I feel at home

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Update: Haha! it’s 2025, not 2024. Let’s change that title shall we. I’ve since typed 2024 10,000 more times by accident.

You know, sometimes you start the day tripping over something in the dark trying to get up quietly no to wake anyone up. Then you bang around and the whole house is awake?

That feels like the beginning of my year.

I’m not going to jinx it, because I remember that on those day’s, while it take a bit, I do get some semblance of recovery.

Missions

My weeknotes for work ( I do them on an internal blog ) was about setting missions. I used to do Chris Brogans 3 Words. But right now, that seems much to much. I’m going to focus a but more low key on smaller missions this year. What’s my mission today? this week? Nothing more, nothing longer.

The goal, if I choose to accept, is simply complete the mission.

Is work not that into me?

One mission I have is to get people at work sharing. There’s something about our communication that feels too silent for a relatively small, all remote, growth stage company.

Part of the difficulty of working all remote, is something you feel like “they just aren’t that into me”. Which most of the time that’s not the case. Silence, when you don’t want it, is probably the hardest part of remote working. You go a bit zany. The more asynchronous communication processes you can instill, can help with those moments.

Right now, I’m feeling it.

And I want to fix it.

Designing my life

My outside work mission? To get into the drivers seat to design my life. There’s a few exercises I’m stuck on, but one foot in front of the other. I’ll get there. I’m saying it out loud on a blog on the internet, so it must come true – By the end of the year I’ll be prototyping and experimenting with life idea’s.

Happy 2025!