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November
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Last night I dreamt I lost my camera bag in a shuttle after landing in LA, but I was having too much fun with new friends to care about it then.
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I am very happy my succulents haven’t died yet. I also love these pots.
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I dreamt of an old friend last night, one I haven’t seen for a very long time.
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I had my very first physical therapy appointment today, and all in all, I’m unimpressed.
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I didn’t sleep well last night. I lied in bed and scrolled through Instagram, double tapping on all the pretty pictures I saw.
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Did my first intense workout today since hurting my back three weeks ago.
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I woke up a few hours after going to bed anxious about the election results.
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Amazing that I shot this nine days ago, and the weather today was in the low 60s.
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I read once that Leonardo da Vinci had the best posture.
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New haul. Excited!
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There are many things I find puzzling but nothing more so than rural Americans.
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I love it when it rains.
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I wonder how many balloons get inflated every election season and how many bring more sorrow than joy.
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I felt like the whole world bounded together in unity yesterday, and I felt so good joy-scrolling instead of doomscrolling for the first time in four years.
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I spent some time tweaking a few aspects of my website that make me love my blog that much more.
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Languages
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The best times of my life are when I let go and go with the flow rather than forcing things to go a certain way.
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Ever since I was a kid I’ve wondered what it would be like to be elderly, to be lying on my death bed and looking back on my life.
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Monday:
Tuesday:
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Instead of trying to figure out what to say next, I need to learn patience and the beauty of silence.
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Coming from California, I never had to worry about not wearing enough warm clothes.
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Good morning!
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If I had to guess the ratio of caffeine to blood coursing through my body, I’d say it’s about 50/50.
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What a beautiful sunrise this morning.
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Following Friday the 13th, Saturday the 14th doesn’t sound very spooky at all.
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Before COVID, I had dreams of traveling the world and living life to the fullest.
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I feel like the art I love creating the most is the art of capturing a memory.
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I’ve been re-training my body the last few weeks, and I’ve never felt better.
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A very foggy morning.
Back to work but all I can think about is the future.
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Is iPhone dependence similar to alcohol dependence? Because I think I’m suffering through that.
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My goal for the next few months is to lose at least five pounds.
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I love the smell after a night of deep rain. The world feels cleaner, like a shower after a long day of work.
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I’ve been iPad-only since I bought the first 9.7” iPad Pro four years ago.
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I had a really good time talking to a friend yesterday about my dreams.
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Our first winter snowfall came last month, but it’s been nothing but rain since.
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I spent more time today tweaking my website. I updated my home page with a brief biography and I love it.
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Other than living within the borders of my country, state, and town, I’ve been living within my own mental borders, too.
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I’ve been vegan for almost four years, but I just recently started cooking with tofu.
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Toward the end of June, I drove down to the river and made this recording of the sounds around me.
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It’s snowing. Coming from southern California where the weather was always 70° and sunny, the snow in Montana makes me happy.
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When I first moved to Montana, all the provisions I needed fit in two bags.
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Some snow has melted and the weather was a bit warmer.
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There’s a lovely young girl in first grade that loves to call me “Mar Mar.
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Before I accepted my current job, I didn’t know if I liked kids or not.
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Last night I made more adjustments to my website. I’m reminded of my time in high school when I first learned HTML and Photoshop.
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Noclip’s documentary on Microsoft’s Flight Simulator is absolutely amazing. The tech required to recreate our entire planet, all the way down to the weather, gives me strong “are we living in a simulation?
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I’m thankful for silliness.
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When I was a wildland firefighter, I loved spending weeks sleeping in my tent with nothing but the essentials.
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One of the benefits of wearing a mask outside is the fact that it hides my face.
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In On Photography, Susan Sontag wrote:
All photographs are memento mori.
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I daydreamed I was learning French again, saying the basics like, je suis and je m’appelle and remembering how intoxicating it is to say je pense que tu es belle.
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Went to the park this morning. It was 20°F/-6°C. Met a man who declared his love to the beauty of our town.
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I felt hesitant to go to the park yesterday because I’ve gone so many times before and I didn’t know if I’d find anything I hadn’t shot before.
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I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time the last few days learning all I can about web design.
December
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Slept about four hours last night. As I lied in bed, my thoughts wavered between past regrets and future hopes.
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This might sound lame to some, but I’m super proud of this: I figured out how to display my photos on my Photos page as a single column on mobile.
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This was the last photo I took before I dropped and broke my X-T20 camera in August.
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A few nights ago I slept for only four hours and I spent the next 20 hours awake.
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I feel so much better today. I guess I pushed my body past my limits.
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I don’t do it everyday, but I love photography. I was feeling a bit down today, and a friend texted me randomly and told me to go outside and shoot some photos.
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Winter is so beautiful. I just wish it wasn’t so cold!
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Another winter shot. My aunt says this one reminds her of a crazed insect.
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“That looks like something living,” a friend of mine told me.
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I’ve been going through old photographs and getting lost in memories.
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I think it might be one of those four hours of sleep kinda night.
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I slept for over nine hours last night, and I’m amazed at how better my days are when I get enough sleep.
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“One day this will all end,” I wrote in July, “and the question I ask myself is whether it was worth it.
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I have another doctor’s appointment tomorrow, but this time I’m seeing a new doctor.
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Last month I said that I wished I knew more about CSS.
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Today I had one of the absolute best experiences with a doctor in my life.
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I’m writing something that made me go back and look through my old firefighting pictures.
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Stuck on a nostalgia trip. This was my first “real” fire.
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When you’re building line, you’re taught to dig as close to the black as possible.
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When you can’t kiss the black, whether because the fire is on inaccessible terrain or it’s raging too wildly to send firefighters to fight it or for another reason, you do the smart thing and fight the fire with more fire.
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There’s a yellow pack the veterans make most rookies wear that’s colloquially known as a piss pump.
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I think the thing I’m most grateful for during my time as a firefighter are all the places and things I got to see.
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I didn’t grow up dreaming of becoming a firefighter, but when I moved to Montana, I was penniless and in debt.
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2020 Books
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Pixar’s Soul was incredible. A great movie to end the craziness that was 2020.
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I finally got around to watching the new Mulan movie, and oh my, what a beautifully shot movie it was.
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Ewan McGregor in episode 7 of Long Way Round, after a couple of Russians killed a black bear, skinned it, and took its gallbladder:
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Healed
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How to Use Social Media if You Have Social Anxiety
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The Markup and The New York Times both had stories about Amazon this morning.
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I came across this beautiful quote by Seneca:
There is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with.
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Is Dairy Farming Cruel to Cows?
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Had some fun playing in the snow tonight.
2021
January
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Goodbye 2020, Hello 2021
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I wasn’t looking forward to returning to work today, but my favorite little 1st grader ran up to me and gave me a big big big hug as soon as she saw me.
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I’ve been sore every day for the past week, but the last few days have been more painful than normal.
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I have to remember that I’m not as young as I used to be.
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Once Upon a Time, There Was America
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I bought my first capo and tried it out for the first time yesterday.
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I filled seven notebooks in 2020. This week, I scanned and processed them on my computer.
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Woke up early to run some errands and was awarded with a beautiful sunrise.
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My favorite 1st grader ran up to me and gave me a hug.
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Books and music. What else do I need?
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My daily routine, as of today, so I can remember it later:
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Like McCarthy, Rooney doesn’t use quotation marks for dialogue. I like that.
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A sketch I did a few years ago. I want to start drawing again, but I keep finding excuses not to.
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Finished Normal People by Sally Rooney, and I’m really not one for reviews, but my god, what a well-written and unbelievably beautiful book.
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Another recommendation today. The final season of Attack on Titan is incredible.
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A photo of the big dipper I took with my iPhone.
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I wish I was there in person to watch Joe Biden get sworn in as our 46th president of the United States and Kamala Harris as our first woman vice president, but I am so grateful nonetheless.
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James Kochalka on Being Creative
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I’ve slept an average of just a few hours every night for the past week because of my noisy neighbors.
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Caste by Isabel Wilkerson should be required reading for everyone on the planet.
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Normal People on Hulu was just as good as the book, in its own way.
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I stopped taking photos, especially macro photos, and that has made me sad.
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Made a detour on my way to work today.
Met some guys who planned a morning of ice fishing.
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Winter vibes.
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Happy
February
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All bark and no bite makes Mario a nice young man you might want to introduce to your parents one day.
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Watching The Plot Against America on HBO almost a month after an attempted coup and after 4 years of a Trump presidency was a traumatic experience.
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I prefer coffee but creek water works, too, I guess.
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I try to be stoic with most things in life, as in, I try to only focus on the things I can actually control, but goddamn, sometimes life just wears me down so much.
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I’ve been feeling directionless lately, like a boat adrift at sea, but every time I look up at the moon, I feel comforted.
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The best thing about fog is when it lifts.
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I’m not allowed to have pets in my apartment, so meet Roscoe, the best and goodest boy there is.
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I played one season of baseball in middle school. I was hit by the pitcher like a dozen times.
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I’ve been vegan going on five years now, but the one exception I make is sushi.
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Hope I hope to keep posting my love of leaves without shame in the years to come.
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Muddy Whenever one of our teachers misbehave, we dump a bucket of ice cold water on them.
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Summer of 2015. We were staged in a valley a few miles from the fire while we watched the lightning storm roll in and light up the sky.
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I decided to fully test out Apple Fitness+ this week. On Monday and Tuesday, I did two 30-minute HIIT workouts and felt great after each one, but today I’m sore as hell.
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I love HIIT workouts. I love the fast-pace and the buckets of sweat.
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September 2017. Fires are sometimes located deep inside the forests and the mountain roads that lead to them are rocky and rough.
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I live on the Flathead Indian Reservation, so I was giddy with excitement when the latest episode of Sidedoor featured Tailyr Irvine, a photographer from the reservation whose project, Reservation Mathematics, features some old friends of mine.
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Don’t mess with the queen.
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A few February’s ago, I participated in the Figuary drawing challenge.
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How to Be Idle: A Loafer’s Manifesto was a frustrating book to read.
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Through rain or snow, I regularly see this man standing outside our local Walmart holding a sign that simply says, “God Bless.
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Abyss
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Selfie before I started the first day of my new (and current) job.
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Toward the end of 2019, I finished transcribing A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway by hand in my notebook.
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On February 13, 2015, I finished transcribing The Great Gatsby by hand.
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I love my niece, but she just…
…won’t…
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This is a working draft of my planned Apple Fitness+ workout schedule:
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As someone who absolutely loved Octopath Traveler, you best believe I’m all over Project Triangle Strategy.
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I think this was the last family photo where we were all together.
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Viet Thanh Nguyen on page 267 of The Sympathizer:
You know how to tell if someone’s really dead?
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Earlier today, as I was walking to the main office at school, I saw Zoe, a second grader, with a snow shovel.
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Craig Mod Has Another Newsletter
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I took this last summer, a week after I purchased my macro lens.
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Morning skies are the best skies.
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I’ve been reading a volume of Demon Slayer every morning this week, and I’m just enthralled with it.
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I finally had some time to update my Colophon page today.
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As flawed as this country is (and forever will be), I’m still a pretty proud American.
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Ducks, Dicks, and Death
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Careful not to stare at the flame too long lest you be caught up in its spell.
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ASMR fire sounds. This is the fire I wrote about here.
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Philip Roth, in his introduction to Saul Bellow’s novel Herzog:
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I feel sad. I haven’t visited my island since Halloween! I want to get back into it.
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Breakfast of champions! I really don’t know why I have this picture let alone why I took it.
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Getting Roasted by My Villagers
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Baby Mario.
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Some Photos of the Mountains
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Not the best picture but one that shows one of my favorite memories.
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I Got My First COVID-19 Vaccine Shot Today
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This is a study of Winslow Homer’s Child Seated in a Wicker Chair I did a long time ago.
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I caught this snowman after a night out of partying 🥴
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A masterpiece.
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From a recent walk.
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When I read The Sympathizer a few weeks ago, I had no idea Viet Thanh Nguyen had written the sequel, let alone that it was to be released in March.
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Playing Around on a Sunday
March
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The shadow of a western conifer seed bug looks really cool.
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It is very very difficult to quit Amazon. Much more difficult than quitting Google (deleted), Twitter (deleted), Facebook (deactivated), or Instagram (deactivated).
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Back when the kids loved to wear masks.
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Judging by the screenshots from this Verge article, Fantasian, a game by the creator of Final Fantasy, looks absolutely gorgeous.
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New book! I’ve been slowly weening myself off email over the past few months, from only checking work email at work (sorry boss), and turning off all email notifications from my devices.
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Speaking of Amazon, Peak Design just released an amazing video where they pretty much roast Amazon and their predatory Amazon Basics brand.
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When you’re reading a book that just shakes you to your core, where your hands are trembling but you can’t wait to turn the page, where you’re reading and you look at the time and 15 minutes have passed, then 30 minutes, then an hour, and you can’t wait to turn the page, when you read a passage that hits your soul and you underline it and you re-read it and re-read it, where you feel so grateful that you’re alive to read these words, to let them infect you and become you—that’s how I feel after reading American Pastoral.
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Demon Slayer
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I’m kinda giddy that John Gruber’s favorite iOS writing app is iA Writer.
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A beautiful and tragic work of art. I’m tempted to buy the Library of America’s complete collection of Philip Roth’s novels.
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Happy Sunday!
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People Sketching and Some Thoughts on How to Be Happy
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I created a new tag: guitar. I went back and tagged a few older posts with it.
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When to Say Yes
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Molly Wood in the latest episode of Make Me Smart with Kai and Molly:
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I’m not really sure what’s going on here…
…but I like it!
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The SIFT Method
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Creative Frustration
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I’m on my final two weeks of my Apple Fitness+ trial, and here’s my upcoming schedule:
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Canceled my New York Times subscription and resubscribed to The New Yorker.
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Consistency.
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More chalk art. I love this one.
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I got my 2nd and final shot of the Pfizer vaccine today!
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Deleting Tweets and Other Social Media Content
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I loved The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen.
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Graham Greene’s Writing Routine
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Learning
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Progress Update
April
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Life has been all over the place the last few weeks, but thankfully, things seem to be slowing down.
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The Expanse
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Robert Adams in his foreword to Why We Photograph:
Though these essays were written for a variety of occasions, they have a recurring subject—the effort we all make, photographers and nonphotographers, to affirm life without lying about it.
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The Playground
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As an addendum to my last post, some elementary teachers are annoyed at me because I told their students to call me Super Mario.
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Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk.
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Okay, I think my site redesign is done. Phew. That’s more of a statement to myself to stop fiddling with it now and move on.
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Saying Yes to Things
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Three Words
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I’ve been looking forward to Nier: Replicant for months, but now that it’s here, I’m hesitant to purchase it because I don’t think I have the time to play it anytime soon.
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Mortal Kombat was ridiculous, vulgar, bloody, brutal, extremely violent, and a helluva lot of fun, exactly what one would want in a movie based on an extremely violent, brutal, bloody, vulgar, and ridiculous video game.
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Wow, Nomadland was beautiful. I’ll be thinking about this one for a while.
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I added my reading page today, but I haven’t added it to any part of my navigation yet.
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Mortality
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After finishing Demon Slayer back in March, I’ve read through all of Jujutsu Kaisen (so good!
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SiriusXM Is Buying “99% Invisible”
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
2022
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August