Well, it’s that time of year.  A time for reflection and thought.  This year we went to the Dominican Republic for NYE and spent a week in the sun with our daughters and a few friends and their family.  It was quite nice to get away for a little time, which I spent thinking about the next year and what’s next.  Every year I try to build resolutions and change my personal behavior to improve the life of myself and my family.  Most years that means tangible outcomes, and this although this year isn’t completely different, I’m going to practice abstraction.

The key themes for 2020 are pretty simple:  consume less and maintain more.

Consume Less:  It took my taking a new job in renewables to really understand what is happening today with the human race in regard to using resources of the planet.  We are using too much, too fast, and having a potentially irreversible effect on our environment due to emissions increasing the global temperatures.  I could go in depth on this but will not as it’s not the point here.  The concept of consuming less is primarily driven by the fact that we need to do so collectively in order to maintain our way of life.

Consuming less isn’t solely about environmental impact, though.  Excess in life isn’t really an advantage.  I find that most humans in the US believe the path to happiness is paved with the newest gadgets, clothing, vehicles, domiciles and whatnot all increasing in expense and scale over time.  It isn’t completely their fault of course, our society is predicated on economic stimulus that teaches all of us to want those things.  Sadly there is no pot of gold at the end of that rainbow, only more stuff and a bigger boat to buy.

It’s interesting to think about sources and uses, stock and flow, of all the things in your life.  Ultimately it’s similar to a business with cash flow, you have to optimize it based on objectives.  Most folks like to focus on the uses of consumption.  From a dietary perspective this might look like setting goals to do more exercise in order to lose more weight.  Yet the best possible thing to do is to limit the amount of your intake initially, as opposed to solving the issue after the fact.  You see this in all facets of life.  The doctor doing an interventional procedure for a heart attack, instead of the patient eating healthy and exercising their entire lives.  The mechanic replacing an engine instead of routine oil changes to prevent wear.

Limiting consumption is about optimizing what you actually need.  There are many levels to what you actually need.  Physical needs, mental needs, social needs, spiritual needs, etc.  It’s not just heading for the hills and living an ascetic lifestyle.  It is considering what’s really of value to you and acting on that, while limiting the superfluous waste in your life.  How do you practice that?  I don’t have that figured out, but I do have a plan which I’ll cover off on at the end.

Maintain More:  I’ve never been good at maintenance.  It’s always been an after thought.  Part of it is that I’ve always been in the position as an adult to purchase new or better goods when something wore out.  And our culture encourages buying new things for fashion as well as for fun.  As a kid I once pulled by 1992 Taurus into the local hospital where my mother worked due to the grinding sound coming from the engine.  One of her coworkers came out, popped the hood and pulled out the dipstick, “This thing is bone dry!”  It’s not that my father hadn’t already explained to me to change the oil, it’s that I was too stupid too listen.  Thankfully the car kept on keeping on but probably should have been dead at that point.

Some of this lack of focus on maintaining my lot is due to a lack of formal training of course.  With no formal training in practical trades like plumbing, electric, carpentry, computing, and so on makes it difficult to dive in, at least when I was growing up.  Today of course there’s a Youtube listing for anything and everything to do it yourself.  So there’s some nature and some nurture to my former life of not keeping things ship shape.  This is a societal concern, we are raising a lot kids (not all of them) without much practical understanding of how things actually work in their homes and society.  It would be great to see more focus on this in education.  Ultimately I fall on the side that individuals are responsible to learn and apply these things but it’d be great to see our education system nudging them too.

Why maintain more?  There are a number of reasons.  First off, it will limit surplus consumption of new goods and services by extending the life of those you’ve already purchased.  It’s also financially rewarding for obvious reasons.  For every day items, the cost savings may not be immense, but for the largest items in your life (houses, cars, insurance, education) purchasing something once and making it last can drastically lower costs via eliminating transactional fees, as well as lowering overall costs of ownership.  I find that assessing mobility (vehicles) is the easiest way to showcase that.  For some simply taking an Uber somewhere and biking or walking the rest of the time is a huge boone financially.  For others that’s not feasible and finding a reliable vehicle that can be used upwards of 200,000 miles will reduce their cost of ownership and mobility costs incredibly.  Yet many people still choose to buy brand new vehicles, or lease them, every few years.  For them, the value of that new vehicle or prestige is worth it.  At that point however the value is derived from prestige and has changed from a purely rational, dollars and cents economic argument.

There is also a very real psychological value to understanding the value derived from the goods you purchase and their longevity.  In Walden, a favorite of mine, Henry David Thoreau catalogs the costs to purchase materials and build his small shack near Walden Pond.  You can sense his delight in the line items for building it, and the value he will derive from it.  Understanding what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and how well its working is in itself an enjoyable aspect of life.  Plan your work, work your plan.  Also keeping things tidy is in itself a great way to do work and live your life.  Maintenance includes living in a clean home, having a tidy work space, and generally living the way you want to.

The first thing to do is buy high quality items that will last.  That isn’t always easy, but there are some resources that help find the best items, best meaning value based, you may not need the absolute pinnacle of something to make it last a lifetime.

Next is actually planning to maintain things.  I’ve failed miserably here in the past, but hope to instill a new system where I’m actually keeping things up to snuff.  You do this by categorizing the different aspects of your life that need maintaining and scheduling a routine.  Since my early life failure, I learned to get an oil change by 4,000 miles with my vehicle.  My current vehicle just hit 150,000 miles and I’m hoping I can get to 200,000.  But it’s always dirty because I neglect to clean it.  I’m planning to remedy that in 2020.

My resolutions for 2020 are that simple.  There’s more work to be done for both of these concepts, but I believe if done properly they’ll have a big effect on my life and the way our family lives.  All the best to you and yours in 2020, I hope you have an excellent year.

OK, well I’ve clearly given up on blogging since having a second child.  I suppose that’s acceptable, all given.  Yet there’s some unstoppable force of guilt that emanates from a lack of writing.  There’s something truthful about writing, even when it’s poor.

I’ve even written on LinkedIn recently without posting here.  I’m considering making this a “private” blog now.  I know there’s still a long tail of readers coming to the site randomly from the interwebs, but at this point in my life I don’t see picking up writing in a consistent way until the girls are all grown up.

So if you’re one of the random folks with this blog on your RSS:  hey!  Sorry I’ve been out of touch.  All is good here, hope all is well there.  Perhaps I’ll figure out a better way to keep my thoughts on digital paper soon.  If not, keep well.

Every year I post a retrospective on my favorite music.  Here is 2017.

I used to spend a good deal of time building this post, but due to lack of time and frankly a lot less listening to music in 2018, I’m going to keep it pretty short this year.  All these albums are very good, in my esteem.

Honorable Mention:  Charli XCX – Pop 2:  This one is definitely out of my area of expertise but the last few years I’ve tried to buy more pop albums and this one is a gem.  I definitely skip a few tracks here and there, but the overall vibe is interesting and high energy.  Her sound is new and she deserves attention.

10.  Hop Along – Painted Shut:  Great indie band with a different sound and a female lead vocalist that is one of a kind.  Their new album this year was also good, though more varying than this one.  I’d start here if you’re new to them.

9.  Gillian Welch – Revival:  She’s wonderful and croon bluegrass unlike anyone else.  Her voice is a calming salve after a long work week on Sunday morning.  Can’t recommend her enough, but this album is one of her finest.

8.  Gregory Alan Izakov – Weatherman:  This album will always be linked with the week I took off after my baby Olive was born.  It is a quiet masterpiece of unassuming beauty.  The album plays similar throughout, no need to skip a track.  This was the first time I’d listened to Izakov, but it won’t be the last.

7.  Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend:  An album I should have bought a decade ago when it was released.  Ezra Koenig is one of the better artists to make music in the last ten years and has a new album coming out in 2019.  I’ve heard all their other albums and this was one that just eluded me and it is fantastic, better than Contra in my opinion and arguably better than their last release.  If you like indie rock it’s a must.

6.  Extra Glenns – Martial Arts Weekend:  Wouldn’t be a music list from me without a John Darnielle offering.  This is a side project of Darnielle, they’ve got two major releases which I purchased both of.  This one stands out as a “typical” Mountain Goats sound from the late 90’s…and by that I mean it’s just phenomenal.  There are a wide variety of tracks and the entirety of it is eminently listenable.  Have some.

5.  Eminem – Kamikaze:  Despite the crass lyrics, Slim still delivers due to his capability to craft bars.  No one like him, definitely top five.  Rappers rapper, this isn’t my genre, but I don’t know of anyone who has his technical skill.  Additional points at this point in his career for longevity and still being a menace.  He is definitely going to run out of gas with younger generations due to still using terminology unacceptable in today’s time, though.

4.  Courtney Barnett – Tell Me How You Really Feel:  She continues to shine on her solo efforts.  With lyrics that embody all of our insecurities and awkward interactions with one another, she has this incredible ability to relate in songs that you sing along with.  She is a remarkable artist and I’m excited to follow her throughout her career.

3.  Frankie Cosmos – Vessel:  Another excellent album from one of my favorite bands today.  Probably as good as their last release, but slightly less compelling to me personally simply due to it not being a “new” sound.  I listened to this album a TON, and will keep listening to Greta throughout her career.  What an amazing songwriting and singing talent she is.

2.  Snail Mail – Lush:  Wow, she blew me away.  “Pristine” is probably song of the year for me (close second is Sufjan Stevens’ “Tonya Harding”), and the rest of the album has a very high quality.  The last song is also tremendously emotional, and I’ll have it on playlists forever ever.  I’d gotten very close to putting this at the top of the list, but ultimately the density of the best album won out.

1.  Carseat Headrest – Twin Fantasy:  Number two in 2016 with a defining rock album, this year simply had to go to Will Toledo, et. al.  It’s kind of hard to describe why this was such a powerful album.  It’s a remake of his previous work, which I’d not listened to but is available on Bandcamp.  Like his last album, Toledo holds nothing back in terms of creating moods, flipping between slow and building crescendo, only to have waves of chorus come crashing down.  He builds you up, breaks you down and does so again.

Clocking in at 1 hour 12 minutes over 10 songs, there are tracks that you just get lost in and have to check in to see if you’ve moved on to the next song.  It’s the best rock record of the last year, an album you can lose yourself in for months and come back to, much like his last release.  Very few groups are putting out music like this in the rock genre and it’s required listening if you have any interest in that music today.

It’s that time, in fact it’s a little past when this blog usually posts new years resolutions.  Here’s a quick recap of last year and how I believe things went:

1.  Lower caffeine levels:  A, my goal was to go down to two cups of coffee per day and that is what I did.  The effect has been good.

2.  Internalize ideas and thought processes prior to stating them:  B, I yam what I yam to an extent.  It’s really hard to stop thinking out loud when I’ve been doing it my whole life.  In fact, it’s difficult to be as effective as I’d like to without vocalizing ideas to “sort them out.”  I can write them out as well, but often in the normal day to day discourse it’s hard to do that.

3.  Carve out more time for my daughter:  C, we did more things together last year, including starting swimming courses and other things but Juniper is still learning the things she likes and finding where our interests overlap is the next stage.  This will come in time.

4. Continue efforts to learn and add value at work:  A, things continue to go well in my current industry–solar energy!  I love working in this sector and made a good amount of progress last year, though not necessarily in the areas I consider to be my “wheelhouse.”  One thing the last few years has taught me is that things take a lot longer to progress than you initially think they will.  Still, it’s been an amazing role and a great experience for my career.

As far as 2019 goes, I’ve fallen behind.  Life is very hectic today, which is why there aren’t more posts on this blog.  I’m OK with that outcome as this is more an area for self reflection than it is a publication (though to you readers who do still visit, thanks for reading!)  So I’ve been thinking through my resolutions the last week.  Every year I have financial and physical goals to work on — they’ve become less quantified recently as our lives have become more predictable.  Continuing to work out 3-4x per week and save the same amount of money, or put it toward loans or house projects keeps things improving.  That’s great, but I don’t know that it’s of value to post here.

Without further ado, here are the things I’ll be working on in the next year:

1.  Work Life Balance:  The last 3+ years I’ve spent a very good amount of my time outside of work on supplemental information about my industry.  Namely podcasts and books on the electric industry.  Truthfully it’s a fascinating subject as it intertwines traditional capitalism, economics, and regulations of a public good.  But returns on every incremental page and podcast listen are diminishing for certain.  There’s still a lot to learn, but I can’t learn it all and it is probably time to start broadening the things I spend time on as well.

What does that look like?  It means listening to more music and reading more outside of the industry.  That may sound really easy, but I’m a bit of an obsessive compulsive and the idea that there is information that is essentially free if I work hard to understand that can add value for my company makes *not* reading it a tough proposition.  Goals are best when quantified, so to state this numerically my consumption pattern should go from 80/20 work related to 40/60.  That’s doable.  The sad thing is that I have these three books to get through before I can do it.

This is also inclusive of new family initiatives, such as finding areas where Juniper and I overlap and activities we can both do together.  Introduce her to new things and find out what she enjoys.  The same is true for Olive, but she’s just getting started.   Time spent with my wife is also difficult due to our lack of babysitters and close family.  It may be time to figure something new out in regard to that.

2.  Consider and Contemplate – Let Things Pass:  I saw an excellent video of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett describing their consideration of what to do with time and how to interact with things happening at that moment.  My bias is normally for action (thank you Tom Peters) and that culminates in a tendency to interact, to debate, to want to solve things.  That tendency is not necessarily a good thing as it lends itself to over managing things.  Some ideas get credence that they shouldn’t in the first place.  The point made in the discourse between Gates and Buffett was essentially that you don’t have to engage in everything happening around you.  You have to learn to sit back and absorb everything using logic, and engage when it makes sense.  Let everything else go.

3.  Get out and travel to new places:  I’m a big believer that you need to do new things continually in order to keep life interesting.  It also gives you something to look forward to during these cold Minnesota winters.  We haven’t travelled very far in some time due to Olive just joining us in July, but this year we can remedy that.  We have a trip planned for Hawaii in March, but I’d like to do two more major trips to new places we’ve never gone, or at least places we haven’t been to in some time.

4.  Be kind:  This one is not easy to describe.  I wrote a few things down which I deleted and rewrote, then deleted again.  I don’t think I have this sorted out for public consumption just yet.  I’ll leave it as the Jeff Bezos quote, “It’s harder to be kind than to be clever.”

That’s it for this year.  From our family to yours, may the new year bring you tidings of joy.

Let it be known that 2018 has been an insufferably rainy fall.  It’s just kept on and on the last month and a half.  I’d like to get the leaves cleaned up, but it’s been so wet that finding a pocket of time to do so has been challenging.  Same goes for winterizing everything; difficult to get things set properly if they’re wet due to potential for mold.

It’s hard to pin any of this on ideas like climate change, seems more like an anomaly of weather.  If you’re unaware the difference between climate and weather, here’s a good link.

Outside of that, we’re making good progress on the garage–it’s all painted and I’ll probably put up some shelving today.  It feels warmer today with the insulation, but the test of time will tell the tale.  December, January, and February are the true barometers.  It looks a lot better either way, so there’s that small victory to hold close.

Olive and Juniper are both doing well.  The house is in tatters most of the time and I’ve come to simply accept that children are agents of chaos.  They’re unwilling to leave things in a place and need movement at most times.  It’s trying, but has to improve in time.  Teresa has gone back to work, which seems to be improving her spirits, though it’s tiresome with all the baby activities necessary coupled with work.  It’s a really busy time.  But it’s a good time too.

Work continues to be busy for myself as well.  Business planning is finally wrapped up and we can start implementing some strategic plans for the coming year.  Balancing all of it has been a test this summer–it’s flown by–but hopefully 2019 will bring some return to normalcy.

Best to you and yours, hopefully we see a dry week before the chill truly sets in.

Last month I re-read “Where the Red Fern Grows” by Wilson Rawls.  I don’t recall the first time I read it, but did remember enjoying it immensely.

It’s the story of a boy who grows up near the Ozark mountains, way out in the hills.  At a very young age he finds himself in love with the idea of having hunting dogs.  His family is poor, and cannot afford them.  He spends many days and months pining for them and pleading with his parents, to no avail.  Eventually he becomes infatuated with the idea of saving for them and spends all his time collecting any spare money he can by working xand saving.

In a few years, he has finally saved enough to purchase the dogs and does so through his grandfather, who owns a local store.  After getting the dogs, he spends his time training them and eventually hunting. The rest of the book is mostly different tales from his time with his dogs, including an hunt where they compete against other teams.

Without spoiling too much, the book does an excellent job explaining some of the intricacy of living out in the countryside versus the city, the lives many people live outside of communities, and how a young boy spends his time.  It reminded me of growing up, though my life wasn’t really like the boy Billy, the time you have and the freedom from a consistent job and other aspects of life are pretty representative.

This is really a heartwarming story and something I’d recommend a great deal, especially if you’re looking for something a little more uplifting–who couldn’t use something like that today?

It’s pretty hard to be excited about the future in the US right now.  The political climate is incredibly toxic.  The things politicians are trying to ignore and sweep under the rug to assume power are outrageous, and divisive, like all politics today.

But they say it gets darkest before the dawn.

The truth is most Americans are genuinely good people, but the system that we use to govern ourselves is susceptible to poor actors just like anything else is.  Most people I know are pretty distraught about the current state of affairs, and rightly so.  This is not our forefathers had hoped for as a democracy.

Yet to a certain extent a of this was bound to happen.  When a system rewards poor behavior, it becomes more common place.  When systems can be bent toward the will of those with resources to influence, and an incentive to do so, it will happen.  So to a certain extent, this is like a natural system that self regulates.  When a forest becomes too dense, lightning strikes and it burns.  Then it regrows.

I genuinely feel that’s what’s happening today with our political system.  It’s going through a timeframe where the ugliness and corruption are coming to light, for all eyes to see.  And it is ugly.  It’s awakened me to a number of things I was pretty clueless about, most prominently the way women are marginalized and silenced.  That scares me.  It enrages me.  It’s hard to imagine what it must be like, and I hope no one close to me has to go through it, but I’m sure they have already.

All of this is necessary to change.  These are the toughest times I’ve witnessed, but I do believe we’ll get through it.  I hope you do too.

Fall, in all its splendor, is here.

The temperature is warm, yet brisk.

The insect colonies have largely decided to pack it in.

The leaves are falling, but only at a slight pace such that the mower eats them up.

Football is starting in earnest tomorrow at noon.

Halloween and Thanksgiving are both within reach.

Oh, the joy of a brief and beautiful season.

Dog days of summer came, lay on the floor for a bit, and are slowly getting up and out the door.

The cooler weather has begun to grace our presence, and it’s an excellent time of year.  With that cool weather comes the ability to do a few house projects, this year now that the bathroom is remodeled I’m insulating the garage.

Last year, the winter was pretty severe and the garage was always an ice cube.  The cold from the garage and front stoop created a double front of frigid air that makes the entryway much colder than the rest of the house–it’s a split level.  I’d planned to insulate the garage and then try out a winter to see if it had much of a warming effect.  If it’s already good enough, leave as is.  If it’s still cold, consider a heater to keep it at 35 degrees or so.

It is not a fun job.  The insulation is itchy and a pain to cut and measure.  After each day I take a shower to make sure I’m not covered in minuscule dust.  It is warm work, as you have to climb up in the rafters of the garage and put the product into place, not to mention the dust and dirt that are harbored there.  The list goes on.

Having a project has been good for exercise though.  Using a lot of muscles I don’t necessarily work out at the gym.  Probably need to get into some other household projects moving forward.  We will see how everything turns out.  Next year we want to redo the entryway and add heated flooring, so if the garage is still cold that should hopefully fix it.

The cool weather post summer also has another nice effect–the ability to get outside without worrying about the heat.  We took advantage of that this weekend.  Olive was born July 21st, so she’s roughly 1.5 months old now and we brought her and Juniper out for hikes.  It was Olive’s first foray into the wonderful world of nature.  When Juni was about a month old we took her to Murphy Harnehan and did a brief hike.  We did the same with both this year.

Hiking and connecting with nature are things Teresa and I both really enjoy, I hope we can teach both of our girls the same.