D&F 01/1/23

Happy New Year!

It feels like it’s still 2020, honestly, but I guess it’s almost three years since the beginning of COVID in the states. Wild.

It’s a rainy week in Oakland, which put a damper on my plans to ride a lot. Instead, I watched a load of movies, and tv, and read. I also met up for a very surprising evening of wine and crime scene with Wonja, Dan, Haley, and André. Luckily the wine and tomato soup was good.

This weekend also meant a new chair delivered to my apartment to ideally look a bit less shabby than the one it’s replacing that Snorri enjoyed sharpening his claws on. It’s cozy.

My plans for this year are modest, but I’d like to return to Japan again, and also visit friends in New York. Beyond that I hope to ride more than last year and spend tons of time with Snorri.

I’ll also keep up the newsletter in 2023 with loads more…

Links

• Here’s my very own best-of list for 2022. It’s nothing if not subjective, but there were some truly amazing movies, shows, books, and albums in 2022.
• You’ve probably seen bullet journaling on Pinterest, Instagram, or Youtube, with its abundance of pens and prep, but there might be lessons to take from it to put into a simpler, faster system. People tend to be terrible at accomplishing things on to-do lists. We’re better at writing down everything we want to do than actually doing any of those activities, which is a bummer. Personally, I try to use Things to remind me of my weekly tasks, links for this newsletter, and things I want to tackle that day or week that I might forget. The work tasks I need to do also live in Things, but tend to have definite start and ends times, which helps. I also strive to say no to a lot of things and keep my calendar as clear as I can so I have time to accomplish what I need to.
• With Twitter fully gone to hell, the best thing to move to is Mastodon, at least if you want short-form blogging and social space. Otherwise, Discord or Slack are just fine, I think. If you want to jump ship from the awful world of Instagram, then Pixelfed is another alternative that uses the same underlying technology. I hope we get to keep using decentralized tech instead of ad-supported software run by billionaires.

Closing

Today might be sunny, which means I get to go on a nice ride and take in a bit of vitamin D. 2022 was a strange year, but maybe a bit better than 2021 in some ways. I don’t know what to expect in 2023, but whatever comes I am glad to have my friends, chosen family, and cat beside me. Whether your holiday break is nearly ending, or you’ve got a few more days or weeks to catch up on those novels you’ve stocked-up, I hope you savor your time. Keep reading, and take a nice big whiff of a page or two sometimes, space cowgirls~