Stumbling around the useful mistakes

In the not-so-distant past, I found myself sitting alone on a rug in my living room, wondering if I would ever be more than the culmination of all my previous mistakes. In that place of darkness, the good things we do seem so dim, and I could not seem to add my good things up…
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Book Recommendation: Endurance by Alfred Lansing

Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage is the type of book you read when, 1. You’ve realized you need to work on personal discipline, and 2. You’re open to stories of survival against all odds. Endurance is the story of Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic voyage in 1914. Imagine setting sail for Antarctica in a single ship, determined to…
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Is discipline better than motivation?

In early 2019, a friend informed me that I lacked discipline. I argued I did not lack discipline; I lacked motivation. She sent me a South Park meme in which the karate instructor says, “Cartman-San! You rack disciprine!” Cartman replies, as can be expected, “Nuh uh, I do not rack disciprine!” But he did, and,…
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The solace in “Surrender”

Now and then I come across a song that knocks me over in a positive way. In this case, the video is also a powerful statement. The song is called “Surrender” by MALINDA, and is a story of post traumatic stress disorder in sound and motion. I can’t fully describe how much I love this…
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Just learn to see…

“Just learn to code.” There aren’t many modern phrases that annoy me quite like that one. It’s usually a comment casually tossed at someone who works in a declining industry, by a candidate for office whose business is almost guaranteed to never decline. It isn’t always meant to be condescending, but it almost always is.…
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The February 2019 Update

I took most of 2018 off to deal with the death of my brother. He would not have liked that, but you have to do what you have to do. As the one year anniversary approaches, I decided to peek out of the cave and reenter the world. Part of that is a website refresh.…
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The truth about vanishing

This isn’t your typical status update, but it will explain why there have been no updates lately. I’m hoping it will not only give some insight into what I’m doing, but if you’re going through something similar, I hope you’ll understand you’re not alone. My brother dealt with a variety of health problems from birth,…
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Let her Fly: On Challenger and the Rise of the Dream

I hadn’t been born when Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. I was too young to get a feel for Svetlana Savitskaya, or the first American woman in space, Sally Ride.