I was looking at my On This Day page, reading an old post I wrote that’s especially thoughtful and in-depth about improv, and it struck me that I don’t think that deeply anymore. I miss it.

But I do think that deeply at work, I’m just not blogging about it. May be time to start blogging that stuff.

πŸ”– Read The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion? by Oliver Burkeman (The Guardian).

I’m trying to find a space where determinism and existentialism co-exist. I just keep coming back to the line from the TV show Angel: “if nothing we do matters, all that matters is what we do.”

Finished reading: Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis πŸ“š

The first novella in a series of three. At first I thought it might not be the right moment for me to read this, but I’m glad I stuck with it. The payoff is great.

πŸ“šπŸ’¬ “… there’s no reason to believe you’ll ever feel ‘on top of things,’ or make time for everything that matters, simply by getting more done.” Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

πŸ“šπŸ’¬ “… once you become convinced that something you’ve been attempting is impossible, it’s a lot harder to keep on berating yourself for failing.” Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

πŸ“ΊπŸΏ How I Met Your Mother co-creator Craig Thomas wrote about the influence the movie A Christmas Story had on the show.

I replied with this:

This has me thinking about the voice-over narration in The Wonder Years, beautifully done by Daniel Stern. A Christmas Story (which for years my dad would put on for its 24-hour marathon) came out in 1983. The Wonder Years ran 1988-1993. What other films and shows use this device? (I think maybe 8-Bit Christmas does?) Are they all doing the same thing with it? What does it do that stories without flashback voiceover don’t? I would read the heck out of a smart pop culture essay about this.

πŸ”– Read HTML Is Actually a Programming Language. Fight Me by Tim Carmody (Wired)

Carmody and I came to HTML within a year of each other, both via Netscape, and I love this love letter to my favorite programming language (yes, I love HTML more than BASIC). Count me in as part of HTML’s posse.

Finished reading: Whiteout by Adriana Anders πŸ“š

Like if The Thing, that Antarctica episode of The X-Files, and a Michael Crichton book all had a baby with a romance novel. So, you know, pretty great.