Philosophy on The Dangling Pointer

The Auditorium of Grief

Mon, 14 Apr 2025 16:51:54 +0000

Each grief has a voice. Sometimes they speak at once. Sometimes they’re quiet, just sitting there with you. And for a while, you just let them.

Love the light and endure the darkness

Tue, 04 Jan 2022 15:19:06 +0000

I saw this quote on a friend's wall as I was leaving their house. I found the original and decided to share it here.

I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.

Og Mandino

The Radio Effect

Wed, 01 Dec 2021 19:52:08 +0000

I listen to a lot of electronic and trance music to keep a part of my mind occupied while I focus on my work. What I've noticed over the years is using a playlist or a service like Pandora doesn't quite do it for me. I could never put my finger on it until it clicked one day. Having the ability to skip a song makes the experience of listening more in the foreground where I have yet another choice to occupy my mind. Do I like this song? Should I go to the next one?

The Impact of Sixty Seconds as a Kid

Sat, 15 Feb 2020 01:06:52 +0000

I have memories from my childhood but most of them are fragmented with how my ADHD brain works. There have been plenty of times talking with family about things that happened when I was young and I have no memory of it. I suppose my crappy attention & focus made it hard to store contiguous memories.

There are some things that are very clear in my head, though. One of those clear memories is of my dad and it lasted exactly 60 seconds.

The Last Battle

Thu, 25 Oct 2018 00:49:05 +0000

The last few weeks have been hard for me getting over the loss of Burkley. Every day is a little bit easier. Things like this poem have been helpful. Grab a tissue, it's a good one.

The Last Battle

If it should be that I grow frail and weak And pain should keep me from my sleep, Then will you do what must be done, For this — the last battle — can't be won. You will be sad I understand, But don't let grief then stay your hand, For on this day, more than the rest, Your love and friendship must stand the test.

What is Your Definition of Success in Life?

Fri, 08 Sep 2017 18:02:53 +0000

successful

How do you define success or if you're successful in life? To some success is defined by their monetary reward or compensation. To others success is defined by the number of children they've raised. Success could also be defined simply as living a life you enjoy.

Most likely once you've defined what success is, you're in a state of non-success. Success is something you still want to achieve. The problem with labeling yourself as not yet successful has the connotation though that you are the opposite of success - which is failure. This boolean expression is a logical falsehood. Humans are always striving to be successful at life or individual tasks. If you don't reach your definition of success I'd rather re-evaluate the definition than give up and declare failure.

Stop being a butthole about what tech you hate

Wed, 09 Aug 2017 18:13:51 +0000

I’m attending an awesome conference this week and I’ve been seeing a trend that I want to address.

On more than one occasion I’ve noticed people bad-mouthing a particular technology they’ve deemed as being inferior. Specifically I’m addressing the number of speakers and panelists bad-mouthing WordPress. On more than one occasion WordPress has been called (and I’m paraphrasing) crap and useless.

As a full-time mobile developer I do not develop on the PHP side of WordPress. I barely know how to create a plugin even after working four years at Automattic. I personally do not have a drive to learn WP dev beyond what I need to accomplish my job. Just because I don’t use WP directly and only the APIs doesn’t mean I don’t have respect for it and the entire community of developers and volunteers behind it.

Being Mindful for 122 Days

Sat, 20 May 2017 13:44:13 +0000

It's been nearly four years since I started the journey of understanding how my attention & focus work. Along the way I've learned several things that have been key factors in developing tools to modify my behaviors to perform better.

Most importantly any tools/habits you use or create are ephemeral. The tool may or may not work for you. Maybe the tool works for you for a couple months but then it becomes a hinderance. Possibly even the tool feels like it has always worked but something lets you understand it never really did help. The key thing to realize is your toolbox will and should continually change with you over time. No matter what people say you're a continually changing person - even old dogs learn new tricks. It's okay to throw things out and to try new things.

Don't try to change too much too quickly. This is probably just as important as the first key but it's not very obvious until you start trying new things. If you try to change too many things or switch a habit drastically it's much easier to abandon when you don't feel immediate successes. Instead try to incrementally change towards something longer term.

I've always wanted to have a meditation practice and make it part of my daily regimen. I felt it was the one missing piece to my daily routine with exercise that could help curb some of the ADHD symptoms. The problem was I didn't know where to get started and was really afraid of being a failure. I've always had a very open heart and mind when it comes to spirituality - if I couldn't "get" meditation then that would make me question a lot of things. I realized that my biggest fear was based upon my perception of how meditation can work and look.

Mindfulness meditation is one of the many ways you can practice meditation. Specifically it focuses your mind on being present in the moment - to be aware of what you're doing but not getting overwhelmed or misdirected by emotions, memories, and other inputs. My husband started meditating with the Calm iOS app to help with his challenges with anxiety. I learned that meditation doesn't require hours of effort every day and having an app on my phone made the barrier to entry super low. It also helped that he broke the ice by starting the practice and the two of us support each other with motivation to try to get a session in every day.

Leadership, Awareness, and Fear

Wed, 15 Feb 2017 13:28:08 +0000

~ Aaron Douglas, sometime this week

I've been a team lead for a couple years now at Automattic - a little over a year of that with the larger team (Go Slytherin!!). I've made several discoveries of what being a lead (team, project, technical) means. I've realized one thing I have to do is to put myself into a higher state of awareness and embrace fears.

Awareness

Leads have to see the business landscape with different eyes. My main goal as a team and project lead is to unblock the pathways for my teammates to succeed. I'm required to involve myself in conversations that are out-of-band from what the team is connected to. These conversations get summarized in my head and become part of discussions with project leads and individual 1:1 meetings. I have to pick out the important things that relate to the team and bring that into conversations to establish insight amongst everyone.

Focus & The Non-Permanence of Pencils

Tue, 07 Feb 2017 15:11:16 +0000

I've been trying to brainstorm ideas on paper lately before committing to an approach on how to solve a problem. For some reason I wasn't getting a ton of satisfaction switching back to pen & paper - it wasn't helping my focus. Then I realized something from my days in school. I used to prefer pencil over pen because of the feel of the graphite on the paper and the non-permanence it implies.

Experience Life as a Beginner

Fri, 03 Feb 2017 19:12:49 +0000

I'm nearly four years into my challenge of hacking my brain to be successful at working remote with Attention Deficit Disorder. I've struggled with trying to understand my behaviors and challenge myself to change incrementely over time. There's one repeated concept that always comes up in my practice - my past experiences both help and hinder my progress. The key is being able to experience life as a beginner.

Beginners have a great platform to learn knew things. First off they realize they have a set of things they need and want to learn. There is motivation to better yourself and usually a fairly well defined place to gain the knowledge from. Beginners have (or will quickly) admit they don't have all the answers. Those of us with experience trying to learn new things may think we understand things well enough. We're not open to seeing things as a whole.

It's Funny What Kids Will Remember

Sun, 15 Jan 2017 16:04:24 +0000

Back in the mid 1980s there was a kids' TV Game Show called "Double Dare" on the Nickelodeon channel. We didn't have cable TV but at some point it started to air on regular television. Our local TV station even aired an episode early in the morning before school at 6:30am.

The show format was fairly simple. One part were standard panel-type questions with answers gaining you points. Sometimes your team would have to perform "physical challenges" which usually involved something messy - like digging through a small pool of pizza sauce looking for a flag. The team with the most points at the end got to go through an obstacle course for sixty seconds. Collecting flags throughout the course got you more money and prizes to take home.

Stop Looking at the Past in One Year Chunks

Wed, 11 Jan 2017 20:50:34 +0000

We all do it - look back at the previous year somewhere around January 1st. We total up what we've accomplished in that one year and determine if it was a success or it sucked. Variables like births, deaths, accidents, career changes, friendships, personal health, and travel all seem to be popular indicators of success or suck. The reality is you should really stop looking at your past as increments of one year advances.

The Cross-Posting Effect

Fri, 30 Dec 2016 16:49:55 +0000

A lot of my friends on Instagram are also my friends on Facebook. They, like myself, tend to cross-post photos from Instagram onto Facebook and Twitter. I noticed a funny effect from that cross-posting - you end up missing a lot of posts from your friends.

Mindless scrolling. We all do it. Facebook was made for it as well as Instagram. Your brain is bored so you grab your phone and start scrolling through posts. I think we're sort of zombies when this mode clicks in. I usually end up snapping out of that zombie scrolling mode when I see posts I've already remember seeing. Semi-conciously I feel I've reached the end of any content that I may want to read or view.

Bicycler's Quiet

Fri, 19 Aug 2016 13:05:29 +0000

Bicycling is my meditation. I use it as part of my toolset to calm my brain and to train my mind to take in a lot of input and focus on important things. I recently realized that there's a moment that doesn't happen very often when biking. It sometimes takes an entire summer for me to have it occur. I call it the Bicycler's Quiet.

Bicycler's Quiet is the sudden loss of wind noise in your ears when you're cycling with the wind. It doesn't happen very often because you need to be cycling at roughly the same speed and direction of the wind. Biking on days with very little to no wind doesn't do it because your movement creates wind across your ears.

Another Year Around the Sun

Thu, 18 Aug 2016 12:30:32 +0000

I turn 37 today. It's been an amazing journey through life so far and I can't wait to see where the next 37+ years lead me.

In the past five years alone things have changed so much. I finished my master's degree, we got a place "up north" for the weekends and met so many fun people, I've had amazing jobs doing what I love - software development, and I've had the opportunity to speak at a number of conferences about the things I've done. I've also learned a lot about myself listening to my brain and figuring out this thing called ADD/ADHD.

I am a procrastinator.

Fri, 12 Aug 2016 14:11:48 +0000

I have always believed I was a procrastinator. I tend to put difficult tasks off until when they are due. I always believed it was the pressure of the deadline that forced me to complete the task. College gave me a series of structured deadlines to learn new things. Procrastination can also add undue stress onto your system. Over time it will make you feel like you're stupid and can't get anything done. ADHD and procrastination seem to go hand in hand as well.

Just Get Started

Thu, 16 Jun 2016 13:10:29 +0000

I tend to set myself up for defeat with how my brain works when trying to accomplish a task. I overthink things.

When I pull a task from my list of things to do a process starts in my head. I visualize the task and then try to figure out what the solution is and how it looks at the end. Smaller tasks with a clear goal seem to start just fine. Tasks that are a bit more nebulous or aren't clear how to do everything end up stalling. I end up wasting time misdirecting myself so I don't have to face the fact that I don't have an immediate solution.

The Power of Five Minutes When Working Remote

Wed, 15 Jun 2016 17:46:44 +0000

Minutes can make a difference. This is something I quickly discovered early on when I started working remote.

The granularity of a usable block of time was much bigger when I worked in an office and had a 20 minute commute each way. Unconsciously I believe I felt 15 minutes was the smallest unit of time I could use to create or do something effective. Since I started working remote, I've discovered that unit of time has decreased to something even smaller which is closer to five minutes.

Teachers, Students, Learning

Wed, 13 Jan 2016 00:03:04 +0000

Sometimes the hardest part of being a teacher is figuring out what your students DON'T know. It's relatively easy to teach a subject to an entire group when you're following a prescribed curriculum. The problem comes when the teacher doesn't realize everyone is learning at a different rate or figuring out what some students may already know. Maybe the needed skill is empathy - knowing when students are lost/misdirected - and to foster less resistance to ask questions.

The lonely little cottage

Sat, 28 Nov 2015 23:00:30 +0000

My husband and I visited an area of northern Wisconsin today to look at a little cottage down the road from where my grandmother had a cottage growing up. The pictures online showed it needed some work, which we expected and planned ahead for. Sadly when we saw it in person we discovered it needed a bunch more work.

We're going to keep looking for the right place. For now the campground we're in with our travel trailer gets us the "away place" during the summer. However, while we stood outside the lonely neglected little cottage, I fell back in love with the peace, quiet, and serenity of the north woods.

Committing to a no-commit Saturday

Mon, 23 Nov 2015 13:42:36 +0000

I wasn't trying to accomplish this but it looks like I don't commit code on Saturdays all that often. I like it.

I am a geek through and through but even I need days to switch gears. Always doing the same thing all the time gets old. Saturdays are usually filled with non-tech things like knitting, visiting with family and friends, bike rides and a ton of camping in the summer. :)

Reminder to Self

Mon, 23 Nov 2015 02:01:43 +0000

Breathe in, breathe out.

https://www.doyogawithme.com/yoga_breathing

Live For Something

Sun, 22 Nov 2015 01:50:25 +0000

One of my favorite shots taken in Park City, Utah during a bike ride.

Death Is Much Like Chronic Pain

Sun, 15 Nov 2015 01:22:36 +0000

I had a moment of introspection today as I sat in a pew at a good friend's dad's funeral: Death is much like chronic pain. A few years back, on a different blog of mine, I made this statement regarding chronic pain with my cluster headaches:

And lastly, the most important lesson I’ve learned? The pain reminds us that we’re alive. Without the pain we’d go through life not understanding what a gift it is to be able to relax without pain and distractions. That pain keeps me from being a sheep, tooling around life without knowing where I came from and where I want to go.

Death sucks but it reminds us we're alive. Cherish the time you have with your living family and friends. Everything doesn't have to be a party - but ever so often have a moment of reflection and smile when you're having a good day.

Power of Mobile Apps

Fri, 23 Oct 2015 18:00:59 +0000

I've been noodling some ideas lately and I sort of rediscovered an idea I remembered I had from the past.

Most mobile app interactions are 20-30 seconds in length (at most!). It makes a lot of sense to design an experience around these types/lengths of interactions. Some interactions go beyond that length and their design should be completely different.

You know you're hitting the right area in the users' brains when you find your app is the first thing they use in the morning and/or the last thing they use before sleep. This is an incredibly powerful place to exist in someone's life.

Culture vs. Culture

Mon, 24 Aug 2015 19:40:28 +0000

Today I was musing about company culture. Most tech job postings these days mention "our culture" and tend to interview for you to be a culture fit. Sometimes I really wonder if they're confusing culture vs. culture:

culture |ˈkəlCHər|

The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively: 20th century popular culture.
The cultivation of bacteria, tissue cells, etc., in an artificial medium containing nutrients.

Source: Oxford Dictionaries

Forcing a culture on new employees tends to lend itself to definition #2. Finding new employees that fit into what is perceived as the #1 definition actually means your culture is artificial. Exposing your human intellectual manifestations to your candidates and letting them determine if they want to contribute to that culture seems to be the right move.

The Fear of Missing Out

Wed, 12 Aug 2015 19:59:51 +0000

Working for a 100% distributed company presents a number of benefits as well as challenges. One of those challenges is the fear of missing out or FoMO. It is a real thing.

The Fear of Missing Out is the emotional stress we can experience when we feel like things that should be important to us are occurring without our observance or involvement. Social media plays an important role in this as we experience other people's involvement in activities that portray a perceived positive impact on their well-being. Even though we know that the world isn't as rosy as is portrayed through these sites, we feel a tinge of jealous a number of times.

Missing my DSLR Camera

Mon, 27 Jul 2015 12:49:12 +0000

I love photography. My love for taking photos is an ebb and flow. I'm not sure what exactly affects the arbitrary direction of those currents other than the nature of my brain. I still take a fair number of photos but sadly they're only with my iPhone 6 Plus as of late.

I have a fair amount of camera gear, centered around my Canon 40D from a few years back. I was seriously proud when I bought that digital SLR. I also have a number of pieces of studio lighting equipment and related paraphernalia. I enjoy the whole concept of being a full time photographer - but for some reason I just peter out and lose interest. I've been pondering why lately and this is sort of my mental dump on the subject.

Getting Burned Out

Wed, 01 Apr 2015 13:13:41 +0000

It's In Our Nature

The human body seems to have a natural instinct to burn itself out. We find something we like and want to continue receiving those brain signals so we keep on doing the thing. Eventually our brain grows weary and sometimes our body too. My scientific analysis has some gaps but you get the idea. We like to put blinders on until we feel pain that something is no longer fun.

Things With Wheels Flash Talk

Mon, 02 Feb 2015 14:51:25 +0000

Every year at Automattic we get together at what we call the Grand Meetup. Everyone is expected to give a four minute flash talk on any subject - literally any subject. Last year I described a funny story about a boss stealing my iPhone. This year I combined another funny story with some personal philosophies.

Last summer I posted about how Things With Wheels Are Meant To Move and that paired well with my tweets about my philosophy on systems. This flash talk is an amalgamation of those two posts.

Systems Philosophy

Tue, 22 Jul 2014 20:24:50 +0000

I was apparently feeling philosophical the other day and posted two tweets about dealing with systems architecture. They generally apply to life as well, so I'm posting them here on my blog so I don't forget them.

Just because something was done a certain way, doesn't mean it was done right and even if it was done right at the time it may be wrong now.

https://twitter.com/astralbodies/status/488786577360171008

Wax on, wax off.

https://twitter.com/astralbodies/status/488786693999558656

The Non-Linear Nature of Progress

Mon, 28 Apr 2014 14:07:52 +0000

My friend Marty gave a nugget of wisdom today that I thought I'd share. I mentioned how I've been doing good at losing weight but this past weekend I cut loose a little with family over. I intended on relaxing the calorie count so I don't feel guilty at all. His quote though, brought things into perspective.

Progress is never a straight line. You just need to re-focus this week.

Progress really never is linear. Looking at all of the metrics I've been capturing relating to my progress with improving my health that is certainly the case.