My wife and I are discussing a tropical vacation to celebrate our 25th anniversary. We visited a couple of resort web sites and I followed a couple of interesting options on Instagram. Now, every ad I see is for a Caribbean resort.
I occassionally do this thing where I go to bed early, then wake up at 2 am and work until about 4 am. I find that I’m more productive after some sleep. Thankfully, I’ve learned to schedule my emails for delivery at normal times, so people don’t think that I’m insane.
Our house is on a golf course that went out of business. Long story, but the course was eventually purchased by the original developer and gifted to the local rec commission. It’s taken a while for them to rebuild pedestrian bridges and do some improvements, but now, the park has about 4.5 miles of (very hilly) trails accessible from our back yard. Went on a wonderful walk with my wife this weekend and discovered trails I never knew existed.
Finally got around to watching Glass Onion. So much fun. Going to have to watch it again to catch all the details.
I’ve been walking on Main Street at lunch this week. Today, I ran into a bunch of friends who were also out and about. Almost had a pre-COVID vibe.
Looks like BMW has found a use for color e-ink technology… car exteriors.
Every time Sticker Mule has holographic stickers on sale, I end up buying some. I love the way they look and $29 for 50 die cut stickers is a great deal. Just got to figure out what I want to order.
My 11-year-old son is cleaning out his backpack after winter break. I’m not sure how he accumulated so much junk and trash.
Getting back into the normal rhythm this morning. My wife has to work today so the alarm was set for the first time in two weeks. Brutally early. Tomorrow, the kids are heading back to school and I’ve got work, but I wanted to get back on schedule so I’m up, too.
The Verge wants us to bring back personal blogging.
2023 was a great year for Star Trek. Strange New Worlds was my favorite new Trek, but lost in the shuffle was Star Trek: Prodigy, which just wrapped up its first season with a spectacular finale. Smart show with a solid arc. If you like Star Trek, give it a shot on Paramount+.
I want to keep a daily journal in 2023. I’ve tried DayOne several times in the past. Love the app, but I’ve never stuck with it for more than a few weeks. Any recommendations for other apps/services/approaches that have worked for you?
Who Wants the Metaverse? An interesting academic look at the history of the term “Metaverse.”
Reset: 2023
Trying to find balance
I’ll be honest, I’m not sure I ever found my footing after the pandemic shut everything down. I’ve been trucking along keeping everything going, but the last half of 2022 was especially challenging. This rhythm and pace is not sustainable and it’s time to reset the balance between family, work and school.
Family is first, as always, but even more so now that my oldest is about to head off to college. I want to spend quality time with her before she moves out and heads to school. Work is going well, but is constantly busy. With graduate school, I’m taking the spring semester off to spend some time getting into a new routine.
For 2023, I need to focus on four areas: health, writing, organization and creativity.
Focus on physical and mental health
I’ve got a list of things to work on — from getting enough sleep to finding time to walk at lunch. I feel like I know what I need to do, but making time for a healthy life has been challenging over the last year. I need to develop consistent, healthy habits.
Write more
I’ve been writing for school almost constantly for the last year. And that’s great, but it’s come at the expense of writing for myself. I’ll still be writing for grad school, and hopefully getting some journal articles published this year, but I want to expand the type of writing I’m doing and improve my skills. Writing on bobwertz.com (via Micro.Blog) is going to be my primary personal writing outlet for the year.
Smartly organized
In general, I’m organized, but there are some areas that are an absolute train wreck. I’m working on some using the tools I have — like Notion and Tot — more effectively. There’s a fine line here, though. Time spent on getting organized is time that I’m not working out, writing or designing.
Rediscover creative endeavors
I’m a designer, but I’m not designing much right now. I have a bunch of projects, from stickers to typefaces that I want to work on. These always end up on the back burner when family commitments and grad school deadlines take priority. I need to carve out some time for visually creative projects that I’ve been neglecting.
I’m looking forward to hitting the reset button and restoring some balance to my slightly chaotic life. In past years, I’ve shared a check-in post at the midpoint of the year to evaluate how I’m doing on my theme and goals. This year, I’m going to try and post quarterly to keep myself accountable.
Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina.
Got word this week that a book review I wrote for New Media and Society was approved for publication. It feels so wonderful to have this finalized before the end of the year.
Just bought some Nanoleaf smart lightbulbs for our bedroom lamps. Setup with HomeKit was incredibly easy and the price was reasonable. I really like them.
At my daughter’s physical therapy session and it’s hard to believe she had an ACL repair just over a month ago. She’s moving really well and her leg strength is improving rapidly.
Merry Christmas from Team Wertz. 🎄
I’m intrigued by Keychron’s Alice keyboard releases. I love my current Keychron K2 and I don’t really need another keyboard. But I’m tempted.
For years, our Alexa was incredibly reliable, but about six months ago, accuracy dropped significantly. I bought a new one recently thinking the issue was with the older hardware, but nope. Still bad. We are having better luck with Siri and our Apple HomePod Mini and I think we’ll start using that more.
Had coffee with a friend this morning and was telling him about Micro.Blog. I followed his Mastodon account and he was able to follow me on Micro.Blog, which worked great. I need to polish up my Micro.Blog sales pitch, though, and my explanation of Activity Pub.
The little suburb I live near doesn’t have a historic “Main Street” like a bunch of the other cities around us. (Irmo was founded in the 1920s as a railway stop for nearby dam construction.) The weird thing is that they’ve just decided to insert a new Main Street into the middle of the existing community. I’m not sure how I feel about it. I’m sure it will be nice… but instead of leveraging what’s already in the community, you are creating something that never existed.
📺 Rewatching some Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episodes. Such a great show.
Taking all of my index cards from my planning session this morning and capturing it all in Notion.