I went to an event in the Old Northside area of Indianapolis. I had no idea there were so many beautiful old homes. Unfortunately, the weather was rainy or I would have taken a walk and pictures. It does make me want to explore my town more. Maybe by bike as I can easily bike downtown.

I have been practicing meditation almost daily for the past two years. With an early morning flight and a busy day ahead of me, I decided to give meditation a try on the airplane. I had noise-cancelling headphones, so it was able to drown out the noise except for a few close by conversations. That was not enough to keep me from getting into the zone. Following my ritual of practice, I was able to get into a good state and focus on my breathing.

Being an introvert and working from home, I do not get out as much as I would like. There is a strange pleasure I get in watching others go about their life. Making judgments, assumptions, and even trying to figure out their lives based on visual clues. There is nothing redeeming about people watching, but I really do enjoy it and often feel a sense of emotional recharge in doing so. A busy airport is about the best people watching you can get. Everyone is out of their element, in a hurry, and lacking the wherewithal to be cooperative with those around them.

Not a full book read per se, but read the first half and will slowly do the exercises in the last half over time.

A few weeks back, I had a neighbor over to watch Thursday night football on the outdoor television while sipping on some whiskey. What more could you ask for? Consistent and good wireless. That’s what. I highly suspect it is an Amazon streaming issue as that seems the least robust, but looking at the device, it was a weak signal. What makes this story worse is that my neighbor is a Director of IT and having a strong home network game is a source of pride for him and quickly became a source of embarrassment for me. We laughed it off and he offered me some very good tips for improving my network situation.

I headed to San Francisco for work. Each time I go, I always expect this will be my last trip. I am not fatalistic, I have made this trip many times over my career and have seen everything I would like to see in the city. I do not need to go anymore. This is a city I consider as my birthright. I feel a deep sense of spiritual home as this is where my parents grew up, met, married, and had me. We had moved very shortly after I was born. I always felt a close connection like I was returning home. In my old age though, I think I have lost that and no longer care about that connection or maybe it is not reciprocated.

I am often caught up in the method and not the purpose of getting things done. I will oscillate between written systems and digital systems to keep track of general todo’s and also identify what are my most important tasks for the day. Ultimately, none of it matters. What matters is if you are making progress on the things that are important to you. Putting your focus on the how and not the why is not a useful place to be. For me, I can become obsessive with the how and completely forget the why. I find I will be avoiding something and fall back into the idea that if I just tweak or change up my system, it will somehow materialize the motivation I need to get started - and it does, but for a short time. The result of change is I feel everything is out of place and further time is wasted trying to get back to todo list equilibrium. The more your todo system is unstructured and the more it can be aimed at the essential few things that matter, the better your outcomes will be. I am at a stage in my life where I pick the top three things I must do for the day to move the important things forward. Everything else is friction to that. For the record, more times than not, I am using my Field Notes as my guide to get through the month. There is no magic to it, but writing things down tends to help solidify what is important in my brain. It does not matter though - it is the outcome that matters.