+++ title = “07” date = 2019 +++ We have an abundance of low quality literature in our culture. It used to be that when you wanted to read something interesting, informative, or aligned with your hobbies, you’d seek it out. You’d head to the library or the book store. Perhaps a friend would lend you a copy of their most life-changing book. The term “high quality” is subjective of course – my mother used to read nothing but Harlequinn romance novels at breakfast when I was a kid, but it made her happy, and that it’s important.

In the book The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, the author claims that habits can never be broken but they can be changed. This struck me as odd, because of course you can break a habit. I’ve done it many times. But as it turns out, any time I’ve broken a habit, I’ve actually just replaced a behavior with another one, whether that was due to a change in environment or in my financial abilities, etc.

+++ title = “07” date = 2019 +++ Rituals are so important. For some, Friday nights are reserved for pizza night with their family. For me, it was Blockbuster video. Blockbuster video represented a particular sensory experience – the feet walking around on the carpet, dampening the sound of the footsteps. The smell of the plastic video cases. The walls full of the latest releases. The cardboard posters. But most importantly, walking through the aisles gave us a little journey.

+++ title = “07” date = 2019 +++ I describe myself as a technologist sometimes when I’m explaining what I do for a living. The other day, someone asked what this means and I was reminded of something that my old boss said to me once. I was trying to solve some problem with our software and kept coming up empty. As a last resort, I asked her for help and she went back to her desk for a few minutes.

What came first? The thinking or the thoughts? Do we have thoughts? Or do thoughts have us? If it’s the latter, then thinking is a kind of cultivation, a gardening of the plants that emerged through a natural process. But if, on the other hand, we do produce thoughts the same way we excrete waste or Co2, then we are magical creatures, built with superpowers even we do not understand.