12 Rules for Living

 I came across a few posts. 

 https://lisielilli.medium.com/12-rules-for-life-df3593099c3f

 https://www.natemeyvis.com/12-rules/

 Talking about coming up with your own 12 rules for living. I'm not too sure what mine are, but as I decide on them, I'll update this post.

 1. Try to do something hard every day. For a bit there I was taking cold showers, those are hard things. I think deciding *what is hard* is a challenge in and of itself, but I suppose I can try to do cold showers until they are easy :). (That makes it easier for me to do hard things without having to really try to figure it out).

2. Living without heartburn is magical, do not ever take that for granted, if you have heartburn finding a way to get rid of it (preferably) by improving your diet does two things, a) it changes your life for the better making sleep easier etc. b) likely....it's healthier. I have found eating apples and bell peppers helps my heartburn, so like eating that is way better than eating a Twinkie or something dumb lol.

 

3. Value your time. Decide what is important and don't let things take away your time when given the option.

4. Read books that change how you think for the better occasionally.

 5. Prune constantly. Prune stuff....by not pruning earlier and more often, we are constantly fighting with the deluge of consumerism.

6. Kids are the best and worst thing in the world. If you have em, I assume you know. They teach you about yourself in so many ways, and sometimes you might not like what you find out (this the worst thing about kids). If you have kids, prioritize them as much as you are able. Staying at work late is almost never worth it if it comes at the cost of missing time with your kids.

 7. Lead something, try to be the best you can be at it, learn from other leaders how to do it, etc.

7b. Invest in your community (with your time) not sure if this is 8 or 7b, for now it's just part of 7, but I think leading and community go hand in hand.

8. Invest in your retirement "health" account by working out, eating healthy, etc regularly. 

Right now it's new years eve, I will prob come back to this.

 

complexity

 I've been thinking a lot about complexity lately, what I don't know and can't decide is whether it's a permanent thing or not in my life.

Ok let's talk about complexity pain points.

1. Home lab/network/tech complexity. I host some stuff on my own, stuff breaks, I have to fix it or figure out why it isn't working. Case in point, I was using jellyfin at home, but it wasn't working with Roku, I could visit the webpage and it worked fine. Heck I could visit some other video files and it worked fine. It turns out a format I have been ripping my files in, is apparently suddenly 'less compatible' with Roku, or my network or something. Why don't I just stream Netflix/Hulu/Disney+ etc, and forget about it.

I could go deeper but I like to own my own stuff. so I buy a lot of DVDs and rip em, so I can watch stuff at home, and not rely on services with licensing agreements, etc. 

 

2. Financial. I won't get deep into this for obvious reasons, but I have too many accounts, but if I want to invest in way X, I have to have an account, same for Y and Z. 

I guess I could only have one account, but would I make as big of a return? Dunno. But complexity.

 3. Food. I'm picky, I'm sure Ive mentioned it before but I'm picky, we went out to eat last night (teppan style), but I don't like onions, mushrooms, and broccoli, so things are complicated ordering. I ended up paying for fried rice I wouldn't eat. And only got about half the vegetables I would normally get due to pickiness. 

How do I fix this? Dunno, pick only restaurants I don't have to modify what I'm eating? Fix my pickiness? (Maybe a new years resolution?)

 

4. Health. I think everyone says sleep is important, so get a ton of sleep, but if I get more sleep...I get more sleepy through the day, so do I sleep less? Will that affect my health? It would be nice to keep my sleep to a minimum so I can do things like work on projects, or even workout. Which also working out is complicated for me, I don't want to use certain apps so instead of getting a workout recommendation and following it, I kinda just do what I feel like, which is not ideal.

 

I'm sure there is more but I'll stop here. These are things I thinking about and wonder, do you dear reader think the same? How do you manage this complexity? 

 

books I read in 2025 or something

 I started rereading moneyland -- basically a book about how terrible people can be and how they can extract out wealth from everyone and don't give a darn. I haven't finished it (second read), it is a very ....eye opening... book if you haven't read it.

I started reading the anxious generation. (First read), and while I agree with much of what is being said, I think the trouble I have is the scale of the problem, this is a problem of pandemic proportions, with little to no clear path straightforward, aside from outright bans of the devices.

 

I started reading the pathless path, I got one chapter in, and so far....I'm not too excited about it, I was kinda hoping it would help define how I've gone through my career, and it's (so far) more about an entire existence without a path. I am not entirely surprised, and do plan to finish it just to see where it goes. But I kinda hoped it would help someone who just kinda follows what is interesting and less about quit your job, etc, find what matters. I like what I do, but do I have a plan....nope, am I "following" the standard career progression, perhaps by accident, but I'm definitely not aiming to move up. Anywho just some things I think about.

 

I read the Sherlock Holmes stories volume 1, and it was great. 

 

I'm sure I read other stuff, but those are my most recent stuff! 

the Internet isn't what it used to be

 It's Christmas, this is one of those....get off my lawn, back in the good old days kinda short post.

 

The Internet isn't what it used to be ..... Or maybe I/we have changed enough that what it once was, isn't enough anymore.

When I was young, I remember spending tons of time on the internet, but if I'm being honest I have no idea what it was that was so appealing. Now I'm an adult and I sped tons of time on the Internet, and yet I still don't see the appeal. I think a big part is the problem of habitual use.

I habitually check two things...that's it....hacker news, and YouTube. Neither have (really) interested me in quite a while but I keep going back to them, because I think I've gotten bored of the internet. 

 

Gotta run and do the dishes, but maybe I'll post more thoughts as I think then in this post.

 

Merry Christmas! 

Retirement savings

 A few posts back I talked about setting goals. Cool, always a good idea. But what really got me going? A really obvious comment someone made. Exercising, eating healthier, etc. those are deposits in your retirement account. 

When you go to the gym and take a step, that's a dollar in your savings account. 

 I've seen people become less mobile, as they aged, and it bothers me, I want to stay mobile, so that's my goal, sure I have short term goals, but long term, I want to be unable to enjoy my old age. 

Sure random crap happens, I could get hit by a bus (crosses fingers not to), but ignoring random stuff, I am going to be working harder and harder at doing better at life.

 

We are coming up on the new year, and so let's talk goals.

I am planning on 52 weeks of the gym. 

As I'm writing this I decided, I wanna run a 5k, I think I could do it. I don't care about time, but I wanna just complete it without stopping.

I watched a video on Japanese running, basically run slow enough you can still smile. Sure someday I'll aim for faster,but for now, just completing is the goal. My "longest" run so far was a bit over 30 minutes using that method.

Next I wanna see my blood work come back as good or better than this most recent one. 

I haven't gotten my recent one *yet* but my Dr called and said it was the best one of mine she has seen. I haven't been with her that long, I think 3 or 4 years, so basically I wanna continue a good trend.

Finally weight, I've lost *some* weight, over the last year, now depending on my gym routine I don't really wanna lose muscle either, so I'll be looking at the scale a bit, but I also need to get better at measuring, so maybe I can make a goal of taking measurements on the 1st of the month. That way I'm not overdoing it. So I should see 12 measurements over the next year.

 

That's health, I need to give thought to other goals of mine but this is fine for now. 

heartburn followup

 I think I'm going to categorize heartburn a bit more, of course based on personal anecdote. 

I currently think there are 3 primary forms of heartburn. This may change but is how I'm thinking tonight while I have some heartburn! 

 1. General health caused heartburn.

I think this kind of heartburn is just a result of eating poorly in general, not enough things like good fiber, etc in your diet. I used to be super guilty of this. So I would have heartburn basically every night.

2. Trigger specific heartburn.

This is something like, I ate some milk chocolate (a minimum amount which I can't quantify just yet). Milk chocolate typically gives me heartburn, dark chocolate and white chocolate in general seem to be no problem.

3. Stress related heartburn.

This is the kinda heartburn driven by being stressed out. I guess I could give an example but I think also people may be stressed out but not realize it and could attribute heartburn to the above but it's really stress. 

I think that (a?) solution to this one is potentially exercise related.

 

Ok so those are my thoughts. basically start eating healthier on a regular basis, and exercising more regularly and I think it will cover a lot of the problems (of course eating apples and bell peppers is a good start, I also eat a shrimp, bell pepper and snow pea mix, which is prob healthy for me).  

 

Once you're down to "trigger based" you can begin to identify what things cause you heartburn. I speculate that if you leave items 1 and 3 unchecked, you can search what causes #2 but it will be very difficult to identify what heartburn is #2 related vs #1 or #3 related.

 

Do you have opinions on this subject? Contact me, I think my email is on the page somewhere or basically my first name and at on the domain here, or you can text me if you know my number. 

 

 

Ok wanted to also add.....just a random thought a day later. I am wondering if sleep is also a factor here, meaning that for much of my life I was used to sleeping 6 or so hours a night, but, for quite a while now I've been trying to sleep more. Is this related to less heartburn? I don't know, I have slept closer to the 6.5 hours the last few nights, and have had light heartburn during the day, but I have also had some milk chocolate ..soooo which is it? Not sure yet, more experimenting required! 

brain rot

 Ok this isn't quite the same brain rot as what the kids are saying today, im more today talking about something I have been observing more lately. 

When I need to sleep but I can't, I put a show on, or something (screen off) just loud enough it drowns out my inner monologue.

 Over time I have come to realize that if I'm trying to drown out my inner monologue to sleep with this noise....what is it doing when I do it while I'm awake? 

This might not seem like a big deal, people do it all the time, however, I'm an engineer, I like to see problems and to to solve them with software or if I'm able in hardware

But the problem is that I can't do that if my brain is turned off.

This is similar to the problem people are complaining about with using LLMs, and how we will cause brain stagnation. (As an aside, while I can see that being a problem, I don't personally see the issue for myself there, as I am using the LLM as an assistant, I usually already know what I need to or want to do, but I'm letting it be my hands a bit).

Here's the thing, stuff like this is (IMHO) kinda like a drug, it's harder and harder to get off of it, and I think it's probably doing literal damage to me in various ways. we used to have idle cycles for our brain to think about things.

1. Probably not good for my hearing

2. I fall asleep watching movies now.

3. I'm not thinking about problems I want to be thinking about. 

4. I'm not even having time to discover and think about new problems.

 

Going forward I'm going to be thinking more deeply about how I'm consuming media, and if I'm using it as a 'brain off' mode, or if I'm using it to actually aid (like I treat LLMs).

 

Before I forget tho, there is one benefit to using this to help sleep, it does help me sleep, I used to sleep less, but if I think about it, that never bothered me, I liked sleeping less cause I could work on my projects for an extra hour or 2 every week anyways....and I don't think I felt 'bad' when I slept that amount, in fact I feel more tired now than back then. 

Let's see how it goes, I'm going to stop using media to shut my brain off.

I said it...let's see if I can stick with it! 

 

there's a new pandemic

 There's a new pandemic. It's something I've been noticing more and more. As a parent with children in multiple activities. Finding, and coordinating, and leading volunteers is hard. the economy has changed from a group of people who knows eachother doing stuff, into a transactional relationship, I drop my kid off, and these people take care of them, and I pick up later. Yes there are exceptions, people who volunteer. And I am so thankful for those people.  I try to be one of those people as much as I can. 

 What I have also seen more and more of is lack of interest in leading. I'm guilty myself sometimes of this, but sure you can volunteer when an event is happening and pick things up and move things, or stand somewhere. And we need those, but we also need people willing to think about our goals as an organization, and figure out how to achieve those goals the best way possible. People don't want to commit because it takes time. too much time. I challenge you to look at how much time it takes to plan and think about these things? (Or ask another leader) And look at how much time you spend, on YouTube, Facebook, etc. I wonder how much different in time it would be to be a leader and make an impact, vs watching YouTube for 5 hours this week?

 

At work I had a manager once tell me, it's easier to see promotions via being a leader, because no one wants to lead, so it's easier to stand out. 

 

No one wants to be a leader, everyone is checked out, and without personal relationships no one cares about the success of an organization, a mission, or a goal. 

 

I think building personal relationships is a big part of the solution, but in today's day and age, that's a tricky business! 

 

To me this is a real pandemic we don't have a vaccination for, and that makes it even scarier. 

goals are a good thing

Goals give me something to aim for, I hate doing them at work, because so much of what I'm doing is not free form where I can choose what I want to do. So goals there are meh for me. But goals at home give me a direction to aim, I had a goal of going to the gym 52 times this year, meaning I went (on average) 1 day a week. 

Compare this to my last 10 years, and well, I'm not a frequent gym goer, I would hit it hard for a few weeks then die off. But by putting a number to it, I hit my goal, I'm on track to hit 75 visits to the gym this year, yes part of it is a goal to get healthier, but it was also easier to say, well if I just go once this week, I'll hit my goal, so I did. 

 Years back I had a similar goal for reading, gotta read X books, I blew past it, I think my goal was 50 books, and I read 100, I was listening to books and reading books constantly. 

I don't have a clue about all my goals for next year, but I do know that 104 is my goal for the gym next year. 

 

I frequently have ideas for products/things so maybe coming up with a goal there, but there's the rub. A goal like go to gym X times is an easy metric it's like lines of code. So many other things in life don't have a straightforward metric, and as humans we are metric optimizing machines. 

If you told me I would get paid (only) based on lines of code written, and how much I got paid was based on that, and literally nothing else, I would be writing code like a madman. However, that just results in a bloated mess. Finding tangible clear metrics or goals to aim for can be tricky, so I'll be thinking about that. I have done a mix of health, mental, and emotional goals in the past but they were fuzzy, so this year will take some work! 

 

Do you have goals? Hit me up! blog@onaclovtech.com  tell me about them, maybe I can steal a few :)