Journal

If you act on the assumption that things can change, well, maybe they will. Okay, the only rational choice, given those alternatives, is to forget the pessimism.

Three stars for the Q&A format which was ultimately tedious; four or more stars for the ideas contained within.

Overall the word for this book is breadth. The four-hundred page book covers almost as many distinct topics as there are pages. As such, this book is a great introduction to many of these ideas and valuable as a thought-provoking starting place.

The Q&A format gets tedious because of the repetitious structure and rapid rate of new topics within the book. Ultimately, no matter how well edited the book is, the conversational nature leads to a scatter-brained result.

I ended up skimming much of the last 30% of the book due to the tedium. In fact, I suspect a strategy of seeking out small bits of content within—and pertaining to subjects one cares about—is a way to enjoy this book a bit more. I will consider revisiting it in this way over the years.

I have my money on vacuum decay, personally.

Overall, this was a fun read—oscillating between things I couldn’t hope to understand and fun quips that bring the whole book back down to earth.

The book rambled a bit; it felt a bit like how a professor rambles between one subject and the next. Don’t get me wrong, this is a positive in my opinion.

Learning about cosmology really helps to put everything in perspective. It’s good to remind oneself that nothing really matters in the end. We’re insignificant in the vastness of the universe!

A solid book about a horrifying subject. Straight-forward to read—heavy in subject but not in prose.

The shear number of victims in this tragedy almost make it hard for a book like this to humanize the event and the singular pains of each of the victims; nonetheless, Iris did a good job pulling forward the humanity with individual stories of the victims.

Reading about the International Safety Zone was especially riveting—it’s amazing that so few were able to save so many.

It’s kind of crazy how much this is glossed over in the history classes I took over the years. This is my first foray into learning about the Sino-Japanese war, but it won’t be my last.

I didn’t write a focus areas post for 2021. Bluntly, I just didn’t feel like doing it. I started to feel the self-driven pressure of the rising streak—having written a post yearly since 2017. Between that and the tumult of covid, it felt like a great year to skip. Here I am in 2022, picking it back up. Below are my focus areas for 2022.

1 — Relationship first

In my mind this has to be my number one focus. It takes true effort to maintain, nurture, and grow the bond my wife and I have together. Without this, the relationship will stall at best and fail at worst.

I tend towards routine. And this is especially true with the world of covid! This area of focus requires me to push outside of routine and have new experiences with my partner, something that is very important to her and that I find value in.

2 — Run consistently

After my most recent move, I fell off in my consistency of running. I used to live in one of the most beautiful areas of town and would run almost daily.

Where I live now, I have to run up a mile-long hill first thing in my run, and it’s not particularly pretty until I make it past that first mile. This has caused me to fall off a bit in consistency.

Recently I’ve done a better job at pushing past this, but I want to be even more resolved in 2022 to consistently run and keep myself in top shape.

3 — Read consistently

I’ve done a pretty good job the last couple of years of keeping up with reading. I had the insight a few years ago that I need to abandon books rather than try to push through—otherwise I end up in a quagmire and don’t make progress. I’ve been doing a good job of abandoning books this year!

However, I could be even more consistent and make reading more of a daily habit rather than a weekly one.

This focus area is not about number of books read, number of pages read or anything similar—It’s about a habit of consistently learning and acquiring knowledge.

4 — Don’t accumulate stuff

I don’t like owning things. Generally, clutter makes me unhappy. Because of this, when possible, I shouldn’t get new things to bring into my house and I also should make an effort to get rid of things that are no longer needed or are being replaced.

I’ve realized that—for me—getting rid of things is significantly harder than obtaining things; as such, I want to make a purposeful effort this year not to obtain new things when possible.

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And that’s a wrap on my focus areas for 2022. Predictably, the post isn’t that different than previous years. In some areas I’ve regressed a bit (running) and in others I’ve done a good job being relatively consistent (reading). With some effort, hopefully this year I can iteratively improve across the board.

Happy 2022!

Terrific book and reporting. The author dives head-first into privatized prisons by joining one as a guard.

The chapters oscillate between first-person accounting of the author’s experience in prison and historical context about private prisons—an effective strategy that keeps the book engaging.

Overall, I learned a ton about the dark side of private prisons and what they look/feel like on the inside. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject.