Apparently should have built the cat tree before mounting the TV on the wall...
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I enjoyed watching the replay of the Disabled Body of Christ’s Christmas Eve service. I’m reflecting on the prompt: “Where is one place in your life or the world where you want love to be born this Christmas?”
About the service:
“Disabled people are a necessary part of the Body of Christ. This is not a healing service because our bodies are not problems to be fixed and disabled bodies are also part of the Body of Christ just as we are.”
— Rev. Kate Harmon Siberine
It’s part of the Episcopalian church and streams Wednesdays at 11AM Eastern on TikTok. It is usually about 25 minutes long.
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"text": "I enjoyed watching the replay of the Disabled Body of Christ\u2019s Christmas Eve service. I\u2019m reflecting on the prompt: \u201cWhere is one place in your life or the world where you want love to be born this Christmas?\u201d\n\nAbout the service:\n\n\n\u201cDisabled people are a necessary part of the Body of Christ. This is not a healing service because our bodies are not problems to be fixed and disabled bodies are also part of the Body of Christ just as we are.\u201d\n\n\u2014 Rev. Kate Harmon Siberine\n\n\nIt\u2019s part of the Episcopalian church and streams Wednesdays at 11AM Eastern on TikTok. It is usually about 25 minutes long.",
"html": "<p>I enjoyed watching the replay of the Disabled Body of Christ\u2019s Christmas Eve service. I\u2019m reflecting on the prompt: \u201cWhere is one place in your life or the world where you want love to be born this Christmas?\u201d</p>\n\n<p>About the service:</p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"h-cite\">\n<p class=\"p-content\">\u201cDisabled people are a necessary part of the Body of Christ. This is <em>not</em> a healing service because our bodies are not problems to be fixed and disabled bodies are also part of the Body of Christ just as we are.\u201d</p>\n\n<p>\u2014 <a class=\"p-author h-card\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@kateharmonsiberine\">Rev. Kate Harmon Siberine</a></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>It\u2019s part of the <a href=\"https://www.nhepiscopal.org/worship-liturgy\">Episcopalian church</a> and streams Wednesdays at 11AM Eastern <a href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@kateharmonsiberine\">on TikTok</a>. It is usually about 25 minutes long.</p>"
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Latourell Falls, on the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge
#SilentSunday #OregonExplored
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"html": "<img alt=\"\" src=\"https://pxscdn.com/public/m/_v2/4580/c19ce1b25-2f8843/eWnmuo3p9amE/CTqyQjKyqvF9d2krtreyNeRP3xgUEQXQGENjYlu6.jpg\" /><p>Latourell Falls, on the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge<br /><a href=\"https://jaredwhite.com/tag/silentsunday\">#SilentSunday</a> <a href=\"https://jaredwhite.com/tag/oregonexplored\">#OregonExplored</a></p>",
"text": "Latourell Falls, on the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge\n#SilentSunday #OregonExplored"
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The most perfect timing ever for the light at Hidden Falls in Happy Valley 😍
#FallVibes #OregonExplored
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"html": "<img alt=\"\" src=\"https://pxscdn.com/public/m/_v2/4580/3dc769ff5-aadbb1/8T1yrqFoyXXY/qzBOLkPF0YadlodyZo6d2HOhLc7cKrjV58AxLCvA.jpg\" /><p>The most perfect timing ever for the light at Hidden Falls in Happy Valley \ud83d\ude0d <br /><a href=\"https://jaredwhite.com/tag/fallvibes\">#FallVibes</a> <a href=\"https://jaredwhite.com/tag/oregonexplored\">#OregonExplored</a></p>",
"text": "The most perfect timing ever for the light at Hidden Falls in Happy Valley \ud83d\ude0d \n#FallVibes #OregonExplored"
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Spent most of the day moving @anomalily's livestreaming gear to her new office, and we decided to build it in to her desk! Everything is neatly tucked away, the cables are hidden under the desk and gear inside this drawer.
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"html": "<img alt=\"\" src=\"https://res.cloudinary.com/mariposta/image/upload/w_1200,c_limit,q_65/magical-fall-waterfall.jpg\" /><h2>I went into this year wondering if I was about to make a terrible, terrible mistake. Did I? Well you\u2019ll just have to keep reading.</h2>\n\n<p>Never a dull moment. Count your blessings. I survived. It\u2019s about the journey, not the destination. Follow your heart. <em>That was a hell of a thing.</em></p>\n\n<p>Many platitudes & clich\u00e9s flood my mind as I consider what I\u2019ve done, what I\u2019ve been through, what I\u2019ve accomplished, and what I\u2019ve failed at in <strong>2025</strong>. I won\u2019t tell you this was the worst year since the pandemic, because that would be <strong>2023</strong> for personal family reasons I will fully reveal one day (but that day is not today). Yet I\u2019d be lying if I said <strong>2025</strong> was a walk in the park\u2026although, ironically, <strong>I did a lot of walking in a lot of parks! \ud83d\ude02</strong></p>\n\n<p>This year was fairly unique for me in that I truly went through all four seasons in an emotional and energetic sense. My winter looked nothing like my spring which looked nothing like my summer which looked a bit like my fall but also sort of not. And I must admit, <strong>I rather liked that temporal topology.</strong> I liked it so much I\u2019m trying to consider how to take steps to ensure 2026 follows similar contours. If the life I\u2019m living in August 2026 doesn\u2019t look all that different than my life in February 2026, I will have failed. <strong>And failure is not an option.</strong> *<em>dramatic closeup</em>*</p>\n\n<p>All right, so let\u2019s put some skin on these bones and detail what my year looked like\u2026at least to the extent such an objective can be manifested in one blog post.</p>\n\n<h3>Winter 2024\u20132025: I Can\u2019t Take It Anymore</h3>\n\n<p>I started out the year mad as hell and not gonna take it any more. Such malaise certainly had its roots in prior months, and that was in part due to the shocking U.S. presidential election results, yes, but also the carryover of certain family issues from 2023 into 2024. While those issues got more-or-less \u201cresolved\u201d in late 2024, the lingering mental anguish certainly wasn\u2019t going to dissipate in a day. I\u2019d also spent a significant period of time in the last few months of 2024 fairly sick\u2026one bout of respiratory illness after another which certainly wasn\u2019t life-threatening but was definitely life-thwarting.</p>\n\n<p>One realization I\u2019d first had all the way back on July 3, 2024 was that <strong>I wasn\u2019t happy where I lived</strong>. Oh I was happy to be in <em>Portland</em>, but not my specific abode. I tried some various changes: most notably, where my home office was located. It was an improvement, but ultimately it was a band-aid.</p>\n\n<p>My growing malaise, coupled with increasing financial difficulties, all culminated in an epic drive out the Oregon coastal town of Lincoln City right after New Year\u2019s in January. Something in me broke, or perhaps something in me was restored. In any event, it was the mental shift I needed to embark on a course of action <em>which would completely change my life and define what this year would mean to me.</em></p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://jaredwhite.com/articles/revelation-in-the-car.jpg\" alt=\"in my car looking at sunset over the Pacific Ocean, having a subliminal revelation about my life\" /></p>\n<p>I knew what I needed to do. Mere days after the mind-melting occurrence of one Donald J. Trump becoming President of these United States\u2026<em>again</em>\u2026I submitted my 30 days\u2019 notice to the landlord, and on February 28, 2025, I left; left the world of stationary housed people behind; left a predictable, \u201cnormal\u201d life in search of a different kind of stability, an inner spiritual groundedness. <strong>In short, I became a nomad.</strong></p>\n\n<p>I haven\u2019t quite finished writing my full travelogue, but <a href=\"https://jaredwhite.com/tag/nomadlifestyle/\">you can read all of the various installments and other ancillary bits about my adventures here</a>. (Accompanied by many photos & videos!)</p>\n\n<h3>Spring: The World I\u2019m Passing Through</h3>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://jaredwhite.com/20250522/passing-through\">As the Bruce Hornsby song goes</a>, I willingly and eagerly became \u201ca vagabond and a drifter\u201d and indeed it was \u201cnot so hard to be.\u201d</p>\n\n<p>I won\u2019t cover my travels too much here because that\u2019s what the travelogue link above is for. Instead, now that I\u2019m on the other side of those adventures (spoiler alert!), I can form a few concluding thoughts about my experience.</p>\n\n<p>One: <strong>I miss being a nomad desperately.</strong> I had a variety of fears going into the nomadic lifestyle for the first time, but one of them was this: <em>that I would love it too much</em>.</p>\n\n<p>Yeah. \ud83d\ude04</p>\n\n<p>I\u2019m very grateful my eventual reentry into stationary housing was an excellent one (more on that below), and I don\u2019t at all want to sound dismissive of that. But I will say: I would rather live on the road out of my car than live in a house I don\u2019t like or in a location I can\u2019t stand. My \u201callegiance\u201d to house living is on pretty thin ice these days.</p>\n\n<p>And in many ways, that\u2019s a really good thing. As mentioned, my financial picture this year did not start out in the healthiest of places, and to be brutally honest, it\u2019s now in the fucking shitter. But I often muse on how good it was I got to experience life without \u201ca place to call home\u201d because if at some point I\u2019m \u201cforced\u201d back into the nomadic lifestyle rather than choosing it willingly, I already know what that\u2019s like. And\u2026<em>it\u2019s actually pretty fucking fantastic.</em></p>\n\n<p>(I understand many people classified as \u201chomeless\u201d who are desperately poor and have no resources at all experience a way of life which is often not good at all. I was extremely fortunate to be able to continue working on the road through the magic of computing and Internet access. I recognize that being a \u201cdigital nomad\u201d vs. being a nomad due to crushing poverty cannot be compared in good faith. My lived experience though is that where I once had the fear of \u201cI could lose everything\u201d\u2014aka lots of material stuff in a house\u2014I no longer have that fear. <strong>I learned it\u2019s possible to be happy with relatively little\u2026</strong>a lesson learned by many wise sages and great spiritual leaders throughout history.)</p>\n\n<p>Two, and this is very much related: the ways in which American politics is so often <strong>unnecessarily cruel to poor people and vagabonds</strong> is <em>despicable</em>. (I suppose one could argue this is hardly unique throughout the history of civilization\u2026or maybe <a href=\"https://nebula.tv/videos/jdraper-we-didnt-start-the-class-war-the-tudor-homelessness-crisis\">it\u2019s just a Tudor thing</a>.) If I suddenly inherited massive wealth, I would put all of it into local library systems, community centers, public restrooms, volunteer wellness facilities, and other non-commercial \u201cthird places\u201d. I am <strong>dumbfounded</strong> by how rank consumerism and unfettered capitalism has made it nearly impossible to live a dignified life outside of a heartless & relentless transactional system. Our culture is so spiritually ill, so poisoned with an addiction to the pursuit of money, <em>we actually look down on the poor</em>. Like there\u2019s something \u201cwrong\u201d with them, rather than something tragically wrong with us.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Listen to me when I say:</strong> I have more respect for the beggar on the front steps of the library than I do the rich capitalist who backs inhumane policies which will lead to the closure of said library.</p>\n\n<p>All of the strength I now have to join protest movements, write endlessly about the dangers of LLM proliferation, and fight back against online watering holes being overrun by fascists, has come from the inner strength I received from my travels. <strong>I believe everyone should travel at certain times in their lives.</strong> There is nothing which will open your eyes more. And I don\u2019t mean \u201cvacation travel\u201d with a fancy jet and a fancy hotel and a fancy party you got invited to over the span of a few days. I mean more of an aimless, \u201cnothing but what you can carry\u201d sort of travel spanning a meaningful breadth of time. <strong>That, my friends, is an education worth more than all the gold in Trump\u2019s ugly penthouse.</strong></p>\n\n<h3>Summer: Rescued by a Friend</h3>\n\n<p>As much as I might paint the picture that, as a nomad, I was carefree and without any responsibilities, nothing could be further from the truth. I also am a father, and so on the regular I would have to return to the same general area of Oregon and spend time at a hotel with my kids. And I knew this was eventually unsustainable\u2026as much as <em>I</em> might enjoy my ability to travel around and have adventures, my kids need the kind of stability which comes from knowing each of their divorced parents has got their shit together. As my teen emphatically put it: \u201cDad, you can do all that stuff <em>after</em> you retire!\u201d <em>(And so I shall, without a doubt!)</em></p>\n\n<p>Thus as the spring progressed and I began to make plans for the summer, I started to take the idea of \u201csettling down\u201d seriously once more. I\u2019d already downsized quite a bit so I could fit my remaining stuff into a modest storage unit, but as everyone knows even small apartments for rent in most urban centers on the coasts of the U.S. can cost a pretty penny.</p>\n\n<p>A little ahead of schedule, I was thrown a lifeline: a dear, dear friend of mine had recently gotten engaged, and as a consequence of them and their fiance moving in together into the main floor of a gorgeous old Portland home, a cozy AirBnB-vibes basement apartment (of said home) was suddenly available to rent. Might I be interested?</p>\n\n<p><em>Interested?</em> <strong>Interested?!</strong> <em>WHERE DO I SIGN ???</em> \ud83e\udd2f</p>\n\n<p>OK sure, it was a slightly more introspective decision than that\u2026but not by much. And so, on May 22, 2025, I received the keys to my sweet little castle. Again, I would have preferred this to have happened truly in the summer (as after only three months of glorious nomadism I was hardly ready to hang up my hat), but sometimes you don\u2019t choose timing. <em>Timing chooses you.</em> And I knew this was absolutely the right next move for me.</p>\n\n<p>All in all, this was a Good Summer. In spite of \\*<em>gestures wildly</em>\\* everything happening the world of technology & politics this year, I was deeply thankful to have landed in a place which felt so <em>me</em>\u2014not just a house but a <strong>home</strong>. (And very much adjacent to a local community of creative Portlanders whose presence in my life I definitely will never take for granted.)</p>\n\n<p>It was fun to rethink how I wanted to set up a house, <a href=\"https://humansare.social/c/downthelane/p/2127/art-decos-revenge-the-rise-and-fall-of-millennials-and-their-gray\">what kind of decor and design to aim for and why</a>. And it was exciting to experience a completely different <em>style</em> of living in Portland: previously I\u2019d only lived near the city center in a very urban environment. Which was exactly what I needed at the time I was there! But now I was in more of a true residential neighborhood, albeit still close to public transit as well as many cute-as-all-get-out \u201cstreetcar corridors\u201d <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6uy6Sw3P3o\">which define the highly-desirable urban fabric of Portland\u2019s east side</a>.</p>\n\n<p>If you love early 20th century bungalows and all things Arts & Crafts (as I do!), this whole region will make your heart explode. \ud83d\ude0d</p>\n\n<h3>Fall: Descent to Turbulent Undercurrents</h3>\n\n<p>Despite my multiple attempts to course-correct my career as a software engineer throughout the summer of 2025 and find more stable financial footing, it had become clear that the hellish toxic stew of Trumpian politics & Big Tech\u2019s death march into the Cult of AI was destined to thwart any meaningful progress. And so with the winding down of the year and the literal specter of increasing darkness in the outside world, I found myself once again fending off that double-headed monster of depression & fatigue.</p>\n\n<p>I truly wish I could end my <strong>Year in Review</strong> on a positive note. And yes, it\u2019s accurate to say a number of things are going pretty well. I had a lot of renewed success in open source the second half of the year, culminating in back-to-back releases of <a href=\"https://www.bridgetownrb.com/\">Ruby web framework Bridgetown 2.0 and 2.1</a>. I feel like <a href=\"https://pixelfed.social/@essentiallife\">my photography this year</a> took a significant leap forward in quality, and I look forward to pushing further into travel photography in 2026 (and of course, you have to travel in order to do travel photography <em>heh heh</em> \ud83d\ude0f). I wrote a whole hell of a lot this year, <a href=\"https://plus.intuitivefuture.com/\">juggling multiple publications & newsletters</a> better than I ever have in the past.</p>\n\n<p>While all of that creative output is personally rewarding, I can\u2019t claim I benefited financially from it much at all. Which, again, isn\u2019t the primary reason I publish\u2026never has been. But as someone who would <em>like</em> to diversify and make a steady partial income from content creation, it\u2019s frustrating.</p>\n\n<p>Closing out the year as winter begins once more and a New Year daws, I wonder what the future holds for me. It\u2019s not a feeling of dread, per se. Dread implies I can envision what evils might befall me. And that\u2019s the thing: <em>I really can\u2019t.</em> My mind\u2019s a blank. I\u2019ve never felt so uncertain about my career, even while wishing wholeheartedly that I could continue it (I\u2019m very content being a professional freelance programmer, even though I don\u2019t want that to be my only hustle). I\u2019ve never had such a conflicting feeling about what might happen in technology & politics in 2026.</p>\n\n<p>This isn\u2019t a \u201cpredictions\u201d post. I\u2019ll save that for the next one. But I <em>am</em> predicting an overarching theme, and unfortunately it\u2019s not a pleasant one: <strong>collapse.</strong> Or perhaps more accurately: <strong>apocalypse.</strong></p>\n\n<p>May you be reminded that an apocalypse doesn\u2019t have to be fully doom and gloom. <em>Good things can come out of apocalypses.</em> The end of one age can precipitate the beginning of another. So the implosion of the MAGA movement, the bottom falling out of AI, and the record scratch moment for sales of hulking EVs\u2026these events will be very discomforting for some but ultimately beneficial to all. OK, I\u2019d better save the rest for my predictions list\u2026</p>\n\n<h3>Winter 2025\u20132026: There and Back Again</h3>\n\n<p>And now it\u2019s wintertime, one year after my consternation about where and how I was going to live. I need no longer worry about where and how I\u2019m going to live. (Where and how I\u2019m going to make an honest day\u2019s living\u2026still up for debate!)</p>\n\n<p>I went into this year wondering if I was about to make a terrible, terrible mistake: throwing everything I still own into a single room-size storage unit, loading some must-haves into my crossover, and venturing forth into points unknown. <strong>Turns out, that was among the very best decisions I have ever made in my entire life.</strong> Then I wondered what would become of me if I did want to settle down again. <strong>And that decision was made by the universe on my behalf, via circumstances I never could have engineered on my own.</strong></p>\n\n<p>So in that regard, though this year brought with it many obstacles, 2025 also gave me a greatly renewed sense of\u2014for lack of a better word\u2014<em>faith</em>. I have a lot of faith in synchronicity, in friends, in amazing people I meet near and far, and perhaps most importantly in my self. And what more could you ask for as you celebrate the holidays with the family you love and the communities you care about. \ud83d\udd4e\ud83c\udf84</p>\n\n<p><em>See you on the flip side\u2026</em></p>\n\n\n\n <br /><p>\n \n <a href=\"https://jaredwhite.com/tag/lifehacks\">#lifehacks</a>\n \n </p>",
"text": "I went into this year wondering if I was about to make a terrible, terrible mistake. Did I? Well you\u2019ll just have to keep reading.\n\nNever a dull moment. Count your blessings. I survived. It\u2019s about the journey, not the destination. Follow your heart. That was a hell of a thing.\n\nMany platitudes & clich\u00e9s flood my mind as I consider what I\u2019ve done, what I\u2019ve been through, what I\u2019ve accomplished, and what I\u2019ve failed at in 2025. I won\u2019t tell you this was the worst year since the pandemic, because that would be 2023 for personal family reasons I will fully reveal one day (but that day is not today). Yet I\u2019d be lying if I said 2025 was a walk in the park\u2026although, ironically, I did a lot of walking in a lot of parks! \ud83d\ude02\n\nThis year was fairly unique for me in that I truly went through all four seasons in an emotional and energetic sense. My winter looked nothing like my spring which looked nothing like my summer which looked a bit like my fall but also sort of not. And I must admit, I rather liked that temporal topology. I liked it so much I\u2019m trying to consider how to take steps to ensure 2026 follows similar contours. If the life I\u2019m living in August 2026 doesn\u2019t look all that different than my life in February 2026, I will have failed. And failure is not an option. *dramatic closeup*\n\nAll right, so let\u2019s put some skin on these bones and detail what my year looked like\u2026at least to the extent such an objective can be manifested in one blog post.\n\nWinter 2024\u20132025: I Can\u2019t Take It Anymore\n\nI started out the year mad as hell and not gonna take it any more. Such malaise certainly had its roots in prior months, and that was in part due to the shocking U.S. presidential election results, yes, but also the carryover of certain family issues from 2023 into 2024. While those issues got more-or-less \u201cresolved\u201d in late 2024, the lingering mental anguish certainly wasn\u2019t going to dissipate in a day. I\u2019d also spent a significant period of time in the last few months of 2024 fairly sick\u2026one bout of respiratory illness after another which certainly wasn\u2019t life-threatening but was definitely life-thwarting.\n\nOne realization I\u2019d first had all the way back on July 3, 2024 was that I wasn\u2019t happy where I lived. Oh I was happy to be in Portland, but not my specific abode. I tried some various changes: most notably, where my home office was located. It was an improvement, but ultimately it was a band-aid.\n\nMy growing malaise, coupled with increasing financial difficulties, all culminated in an epic drive out the Oregon coastal town of Lincoln City right after New Year\u2019s in January. Something in me broke, or perhaps something in me was restored. In any event, it was the mental shift I needed to embark on a course of action which would completely change my life and define what this year would mean to me.\n\n\nI knew what I needed to do. Mere days after the mind-melting occurrence of one Donald J. Trump becoming President of these United States\u2026again\u2026I submitted my 30 days\u2019 notice to the landlord, and on February 28, 2025, I left; left the world of stationary housed people behind; left a predictable, \u201cnormal\u201d life in search of a different kind of stability, an inner spiritual groundedness. In short, I became a nomad.\n\nI haven\u2019t quite finished writing my full travelogue, but you can read all of the various installments and other ancillary bits about my adventures here. (Accompanied by many photos & videos!)\n\nSpring: The World I\u2019m Passing Through\n\nAs the Bruce Hornsby song goes, I willingly and eagerly became \u201ca vagabond and a drifter\u201d and indeed it was \u201cnot so hard to be.\u201d\n\nI won\u2019t cover my travels too much here because that\u2019s what the travelogue link above is for. Instead, now that I\u2019m on the other side of those adventures (spoiler alert!), I can form a few concluding thoughts about my experience.\n\nOne: I miss being a nomad desperately. I had a variety of fears going into the nomadic lifestyle for the first time, but one of them was this: that I would love it too much.\n\nYeah. \ud83d\ude04\n\nI\u2019m very grateful my eventual reentry into stationary housing was an excellent one (more on that below), and I don\u2019t at all want to sound dismissive of that. But I will say: I would rather live on the road out of my car than live in a house I don\u2019t like or in a location I can\u2019t stand. My \u201callegiance\u201d to house living is on pretty thin ice these days.\n\nAnd in many ways, that\u2019s a really good thing. As mentioned, my financial picture this year did not start out in the healthiest of places, and to be brutally honest, it\u2019s now in the fucking shitter. But I often muse on how good it was I got to experience life without \u201ca place to call home\u201d because if at some point I\u2019m \u201cforced\u201d back into the nomadic lifestyle rather than choosing it willingly, I already know what that\u2019s like. And\u2026it\u2019s actually pretty fucking fantastic.\n\n(I understand many people classified as \u201chomeless\u201d who are desperately poor and have no resources at all experience a way of life which is often not good at all. I was extremely fortunate to be able to continue working on the road through the magic of computing and Internet access. I recognize that being a \u201cdigital nomad\u201d vs. being a nomad due to crushing poverty cannot be compared in good faith. My lived experience though is that where I once had the fear of \u201cI could lose everything\u201d\u2014aka lots of material stuff in a house\u2014I no longer have that fear. I learned it\u2019s possible to be happy with relatively little\u2026a lesson learned by many wise sages and great spiritual leaders throughout history.)\n\nTwo, and this is very much related: the ways in which American politics is so often unnecessarily cruel to poor people and vagabonds is despicable. (I suppose one could argue this is hardly unique throughout the history of civilization\u2026or maybe it\u2019s just a Tudor thing.) If I suddenly inherited massive wealth, I would put all of it into local library systems, community centers, public restrooms, volunteer wellness facilities, and other non-commercial \u201cthird places\u201d. I am dumbfounded by how rank consumerism and unfettered capitalism has made it nearly impossible to live a dignified life outside of a heartless & relentless transactional system. Our culture is so spiritually ill, so poisoned with an addiction to the pursuit of money, we actually look down on the poor. Like there\u2019s something \u201cwrong\u201d with them, rather than something tragically wrong with us.\n\nListen to me when I say: I have more respect for the beggar on the front steps of the library than I do the rich capitalist who backs inhumane policies which will lead to the closure of said library.\n\nAll of the strength I now have to join protest movements, write endlessly about the dangers of LLM proliferation, and fight back against online watering holes being overrun by fascists, has come from the inner strength I received from my travels. I believe everyone should travel at certain times in their lives. There is nothing which will open your eyes more. And I don\u2019t mean \u201cvacation travel\u201d with a fancy jet and a fancy hotel and a fancy party you got invited to over the span of a few days. I mean more of an aimless, \u201cnothing but what you can carry\u201d sort of travel spanning a meaningful breadth of time. That, my friends, is an education worth more than all the gold in Trump\u2019s ugly penthouse.\n\nSummer: Rescued by a Friend\n\nAs much as I might paint the picture that, as a nomad, I was carefree and without any responsibilities, nothing could be further from the truth. I also am a father, and so on the regular I would have to return to the same general area of Oregon and spend time at a hotel with my kids. And I knew this was eventually unsustainable\u2026as much as I might enjoy my ability to travel around and have adventures, my kids need the kind of stability which comes from knowing each of their divorced parents has got their shit together. As my teen emphatically put it: \u201cDad, you can do all that stuff after you retire!\u201d (And so I shall, without a doubt!)\n\nThus as the spring progressed and I began to make plans for the summer, I started to take the idea of \u201csettling down\u201d seriously once more. I\u2019d already downsized quite a bit so I could fit my remaining stuff into a modest storage unit, but as everyone knows even small apartments for rent in most urban centers on the coasts of the U.S. can cost a pretty penny.\n\nA little ahead of schedule, I was thrown a lifeline: a dear, dear friend of mine had recently gotten engaged, and as a consequence of them and their fiance moving in together into the main floor of a gorgeous old Portland home, a cozy AirBnB-vibes basement apartment (of said home) was suddenly available to rent. Might I be interested?\n\nInterested? Interested?! WHERE DO I SIGN ??? \ud83e\udd2f\n\nOK sure, it was a slightly more introspective decision than that\u2026but not by much. And so, on May 22, 2025, I received the keys to my sweet little castle. Again, I would have preferred this to have happened truly in the summer (as after only three months of glorious nomadism I was hardly ready to hang up my hat), but sometimes you don\u2019t choose timing. Timing chooses you. And I knew this was absolutely the right next move for me.\n\nAll in all, this was a Good Summer. In spite of \\*gestures wildly\\* everything happening the world of technology & politics this year, I was deeply thankful to have landed in a place which felt so me\u2014not just a house but a home. (And very much adjacent to a local community of creative Portlanders whose presence in my life I definitely will never take for granted.)\n\nIt was fun to rethink how I wanted to set up a house, what kind of decor and design to aim for and why. And it was exciting to experience a completely different style of living in Portland: previously I\u2019d only lived near the city center in a very urban environment. Which was exactly what I needed at the time I was there! But now I was in more of a true residential neighborhood, albeit still close to public transit as well as many cute-as-all-get-out \u201cstreetcar corridors\u201d which define the highly-desirable urban fabric of Portland\u2019s east side.\n\nIf you love early 20th century bungalows and all things Arts & Crafts (as I do!), this whole region will make your heart explode. \ud83d\ude0d\n\nFall: Descent to Turbulent Undercurrents\n\nDespite my multiple attempts to course-correct my career as a software engineer throughout the summer of 2025 and find more stable financial footing, it had become clear that the hellish toxic stew of Trumpian politics & Big Tech\u2019s death march into the Cult of AI was destined to thwart any meaningful progress. And so with the winding down of the year and the literal specter of increasing darkness in the outside world, I found myself once again fending off that double-headed monster of depression & fatigue.\n\nI truly wish I could end my Year in Review on a positive note. And yes, it\u2019s accurate to say a number of things are going pretty well. I had a lot of renewed success in open source the second half of the year, culminating in back-to-back releases of Ruby web framework Bridgetown 2.0 and 2.1. I feel like my photography this year took a significant leap forward in quality, and I look forward to pushing further into travel photography in 2026 (and of course, you have to travel in order to do travel photography heh heh \ud83d\ude0f). I wrote a whole hell of a lot this year, juggling multiple publications & newsletters better than I ever have in the past.\n\nWhile all of that creative output is personally rewarding, I can\u2019t claim I benefited financially from it much at all. Which, again, isn\u2019t the primary reason I publish\u2026never has been. But as someone who would like to diversify and make a steady partial income from content creation, it\u2019s frustrating.\n\nClosing out the year as winter begins once more and a New Year daws, I wonder what the future holds for me. It\u2019s not a feeling of dread, per se. Dread implies I can envision what evils might befall me. And that\u2019s the thing: I really can\u2019t. My mind\u2019s a blank. I\u2019ve never felt so uncertain about my career, even while wishing wholeheartedly that I could continue it (I\u2019m very content being a professional freelance programmer, even though I don\u2019t want that to be my only hustle). I\u2019ve never had such a conflicting feeling about what might happen in technology & politics in 2026.\n\nThis isn\u2019t a \u201cpredictions\u201d post. I\u2019ll save that for the next one. But I am predicting an overarching theme, and unfortunately it\u2019s not a pleasant one: collapse. Or perhaps more accurately: apocalypse.\n\nMay you be reminded that an apocalypse doesn\u2019t have to be fully doom and gloom. Good things can come out of apocalypses. The end of one age can precipitate the beginning of another. So the implosion of the MAGA movement, the bottom falling out of AI, and the record scratch moment for sales of hulking EVs\u2026these events will be very discomforting for some but ultimately beneficial to all. OK, I\u2019d better save the rest for my predictions list\u2026\n\nWinter 2025\u20132026: There and Back Again\n\nAnd now it\u2019s wintertime, one year after my consternation about where and how I was going to live. I need no longer worry about where and how I\u2019m going to live. (Where and how I\u2019m going to make an honest day\u2019s living\u2026still up for debate!)\n\nI went into this year wondering if I was about to make a terrible, terrible mistake: throwing everything I still own into a single room-size storage unit, loading some must-haves into my crossover, and venturing forth into points unknown. Turns out, that was among the very best decisions I have ever made in my entire life. Then I wondered what would become of me if I did want to settle down again. And that decision was made by the universe on my behalf, via circumstances I never could have engineered on my own.\n\nSo in that regard, though this year brought with it many obstacles, 2025 also gave me a greatly renewed sense of\u2014for lack of a better word\u2014faith. I have a lot of faith in synchronicity, in friends, in amazing people I meet near and far, and perhaps most importantly in my self. And what more could you ask for as you celebrate the holidays with the family you love and the communities you care about. \ud83d\udd4e\ud83c\udf84\n\nSee you on the flip side\u2026\n\n\n\n \n\n \n #lifehacks"
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"name": "A Year in Four Seasons: 2025 Was One Hell of a Ride",
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Finally got the power supply for the motorized shades installed! I mapped out most of the wires, at least enough to know which ones need to be powered. I didn't bother getting out the ladder to trace the 6 that are super high up tho.
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"text": "Finally got the power supply for the motorized shades installed! I mapped out most of the wires, at least enough to know which ones need to be powered. I didn't bother getting out the ladder to trace the 6 that are super high up tho."
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Spent the day frantically trying to wrap up a bunch of work projects before people turn in to pumpkins over the next two weeks. Here's a photo of the bunny that lives in the yard.
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"text": "Spent the day frantically trying to wrap up a bunch of work projects before people turn in to pumpkins over the next two weeks. Here's a photo of the bunny that lives in the yard."
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welp, we failed the mechanical inspection today because someone didn't hook up the microwave hood ducts. This is definitely not my job, but also I'm kind of surprised I didn't even notice this in the last couple months. Unrelatedly, the plumbing inspector went batshit and failed us for no reason, but that's a story for another time.
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"content": {
"text": "welp, we failed the mechanical inspection today because someone didn't hook up the microwave hood ducts. This is definitely not my job, but also I'm kind of surprised I didn't even notice this in the last couple months. Unrelatedly, the plumbing inspector went batshit and failed us for no reason, but that's a story for another time."
},
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"type": "card",
"name": "Aaron Parecki",
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It feels crazy to drill a hole through the perfectly nice cabinets, but this will be great when it's done. Unfortunately the hole didn't line up because the drip tray drain was welded on at a weird angle. So now I need to get a hole saw and make this hole larger.
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"text": "It feels crazy to drill a hole through the perfectly nice cabinets, but this will be great when it's done. Unfortunately the hole didn't line up because the drip tray drain was welded on at a weird angle. So now I need to get a hole saw and make this hole larger."
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New bed! Turns out it's way easier to build a bed in the room instead of moving an already built bed.
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"text": "New bed! Turns out it's way easier to build a bed in the room instead of moving an already built bed."
},
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Trying to get to the bottom of the weird error the hot tub is showing. They wanted me to take a photo of the wiring, so here it is.
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"text": "Trying to get to the bottom of the weird error the hot tub is showing. They wanted me to take a photo of the wiring, so here it is."
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I didn't expect to have to trim this electrical plate cover to fit. Apparently I installed the closet track too close to the hole, tho that's the only place it could go because that's where the stud is.
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"text": "I didn't expect to have to trim this electrical plate cover to fit. Apparently I installed the closet track too close to the hole, tho that's the only place it could go because that's where the stud is."
},
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"type": "card",
"name": "Aaron Parecki",
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Sprinkler guy missed a few caps when he was here... bathroom, bedroom, entry. Not giving me a lot of confidence.
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"text": "Sprinkler guy missed a few caps when he was here... bathroom, bedroom, entry. Not giving me a lot of confidence."
},
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"type": "card",
"name": "Aaron Parecki",
"url": "https://aaronparecki.com/",
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{
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"url": "https://nadreck.me/2025/12/wrapping-up-2025/",
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"name": "Wrapping up 2025",
"content": {
"text": "Sorry for the radio silence the past little bit. Even though I recognized I was going into a fallow period, I was still trying to get something out at least once a month, and I totally missed November. It\u2019s not just the writing \u2013 I\u2019m behind on my RSS feeds and other regular media diet, too!\n\n\n\nWhat I\u2019Ve been up to",
"html": "<p>Sorry for the radio silence the past little bit. Even though I recognized I was going into a fallow period, I was still trying to get something out at least once a month, and I totally missed November. It\u2019s not just the writing \u2013 I\u2019m behind on my RSS feeds and other regular media diet, too!</p>\n\n\n\n<img width=\"1024\" height=\"355\" src=\"https://nadreck.me/backend/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-10-11-18.30.49-1024x355.jpeg\" alt=\"\" /><a href=\"https://nadreck.me/2025/12/wrapping-up-2025/#more-12160\">What I\u2019Ve been up to</a>"
},
"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": "Nadreck",
"url": "http://nadreck.me",
"photo": null
},
"post-type": "article",
"_id": "46834469",
"_source": "2935"
}
{
"type": "entry",
"published": "2018-12-08T14:41:40-05:00",
"url": "https://david.shanske.com/all/",
"author": {
"type": "card",
"name": null,
"url": null,
"photo": null
},
"post-type": "note",
"_id": "46833705",
"_source": "1905"
}
