It is somehow fitting that the day I retire, the state of Ohio chose
to unveil an historical marker outside the former headquarters of my
first employer, CompuServe. I guess I’m history :-)
I started in June of 1985, and, looking back, what was going
on there was world changing: the first commercial email, the first
online banking, the first online shopping, the first electronic news
wire feed, the first song released exclusively online (Arrowsmith 1994),
online chat (CB), OS and compiler development, VPNs (X.25 !), data
over cable in ‘82 …
In the course of my career, it turns out that many of the things that
mattered wound up coming out of individual side projects, not grand
corporate visions.
All the world’s a text,
And all the men and women merely editors;
They have their reads and their writes,
And Emacs in its time plays many parts…
With apologies to William Shakespeare and actual odes.
Figure 1: “2015-02-02 Making a virtual Emacs conference happen – index card #emacs #organizing-people #conference #planning #questions” by sachac is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=openverse.
In your “Presidents Log Book Entry” article in the monthly newsletter, you
talked about the need for the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club (PATC)
to build its “brand identity” to reach our target “consumers”. About
that…
Do something radical.
Count your blessings, name them one by one
Literally. Do it. Write them down. Meditate on all the good stuff in your life. Maybe even give thanks.
https://hymnary.org/text/when_upon_lifes_billows_you_are_tempest
(the fact that this follows yesterdays “Making Lists” musing is just coincidental … he asserts … our maybe it’s the positive application)
#47 of #100DaysToOffload take 2.1, https://100daystooffload.com/
The past couple weeks, I’ve intentionally cut the phone out my morning
routine. I was already writing a daily journal (on paper), about a
page or two a day. I’ve always found that to be cathartic, as well
as a good way to organize my thoughts and do some day-to-day planning.
Now I’m writing two daily journals.
Believe it or not, you will be OK if you don’t use your “smart”-phone
to look up everything the minute you think of it, if you don’t have it
by your bed at night and you don’t turn it on for a few hours. You
might even regain a less-addicted, more thoughtful “smart”-you.
Today I’m going to pay my taxes, work on updating my living will and
health care power of attorney, telling others when I want
doctors to pull the plug if I can’t make that decision myself.
Death and taxes. You can’t live with them, and they get you in the
end.
When discussing death, taxes, and “I know I’m right, why is all this bad
stuff happening to me?”, there’s no better place to turn than Job…
