Now

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Writing

Aside from occasional guest posts and ghostwriting gigs, I'm mostly working on my newsletter, Hello, My Friends. Issue #70 is about a camping trip my son and I went on over Father's Day weekend. It's the first one with just the two of us.

Last year, after we participated in a reading together, the talented poet Teresa Mei Chuc recited (in very good Russian) the poem "Giraffe" by Nikolai Gumilev for me. Later, she sent me the entire poem and I had started to translate it into English but got waylaid by life. I resumed working on it recently and intend to see it through.

I started a short story called "Goner" a while ago. I had written several drafts and received good feedback from trusted sources but had basically abandoned it probably out of a combination of laziness and fear. Too lazy to revise almost 6000 words again and scared that once I do I'll need to send it out and face potential rejection. So, writer stuff. I need to get on it. It's pretty much done!

Health

In the first quarter of 2024, I began tracking my bedtimes with the goal of shifting it to before midnight. As you can see by the scatter plot of the minutes from midnight from 2/23/24 to 6/22/24, I haven't done a very good job of it. Of the 116 days there, I went to bed at midnight or before 64 times (55%). I'd prefer if that number was at least 75%.

I continue to train for a 5K on July 28th. My original goal was to finish it in 30-35 minutes but my latest run around the 3.3 mile Rose Bowl loop was 29:35 so I've pushed my goal to finishing in 28 minutes.

Other

I just finished listening to the audiobook, Admiral Hyman Rickover: Engineer of Power by Marc Wortman, a very good biography of the pugnacious Navy man that pushed the United States to build nuclear submarines. I'd never heard of him, but his influence on military affairs was nearly nonpareil. Indeed, he was on the cover of TIME magazine in 1954. It's been slow-going but I've also been making my way through the fascinating Libraries and the Enlightenment by Wayne Bivens-Tatum. Right now, I'm learning how the German model of the "university" shaped American education in the 19th century. Ironically, I just started reading Karin Klein's Rethinking College: A Guide to Thriving WIthout a Degree. The book is not out yet so the publisher sent me an advanced reading copy since I'm interviewing the author for work in July. On top of all of that, I recently started listening to the audiobook of HBR's Ten Must Reads: On Strategy. I'm hoping to learn more about approaches to thinking beyond ground-level.

I should be going camping a few more times this summer and I'm looking forward to it. I went camping for the first time ever in May 2022 and am really pleased that I started this hobby.

This page was updated from Glendale, CA, USA on 23 June, 2024