What I am up to now

Updated 2025-10-22

It has been a busy summer, with family trips to Michigan and Louisville, and with individual trips all over the place. It is now nice to just be home for a bit.
Lots of big purchases have happened this quarter, such as a new minivan which the children have dubbed Mini Mouse, as well as less fun, but still helpful purchases, like a fridge, new basement flooring/walls, and new paint in the kitchen.
The kids are back in school and loving it as always. Somehow Forsyth has been a perfect match for them, and while they have tough days occasionally, we could not ask for better support from the staff there.

Start-up life has been intense in a way that my previous start-ups have not been. I am not sure if it is due to the rise of AI which pushes expectations higher, or that the culture of a hungry NYC start-up is just different than West Coast versions, but I am definitely learning a lot!
Unlike my last few jobs where I essentially did nothing except front-end development, here I am spending about a third of my time writing Node API code, which has been mostly nice. While I still do not want to go back to full-stack all day, being able to flex those muscles again is nice primarily because it feels like riding a bike instead of being a struggle.

Neem and I watched the first season of Nobody Wants This to my great joy. It has enough romance and comedy (amazing combo of Bell and Brody) to keep us both engaged in the story drama, but also enough meat on it with the difficult topics of family and religion to feel like it is not just puff fiction.
None of the movies that I have seen have been huge hits for me, largely because we have been watching lighter things at movie night. Luckily, I was able to see Yojimbo in the theater and that was a fantastic experience.
My reading has been very puffy recently, given that I am about 25 books through the Animorphs series. It has been a great time and a nice reprieve from an otherwise pretty taxing schedule.

Hades II came out and has eaten pretty much all of my gaming time. Because I can play it on a handheld device, it is easy to get an hour or two in during an evening after bedtime. I am not loving it as much as the first one, but it is still a fantastic experience and a great core loop.
Because spending time with friends can be hard while also watching children, Split Fiction has been my co-op game of choice. It is pretty much just a narrative movie, but it provides a fun backdrop to a conversation while playing it with a friend.
At BenCon, I played all sorts of board games (and pinball), but none really stuck out as being particularly memorable. Being able to play with friends is fun even if the games are not great, but it would have been nice to get a new favorite.

The purchase of a 3D printer has been fun since it is a toy that is purely a hobby for me. Most things I have gotten into feel like they become chores eventually, but this is just pure fun and not really any kind of temptation to turn it into more. Being able to make Halloween costumes for friends or board game inserts has been a treat.
Years ago, I created a Dungeons and Dragons kingdom called Galeduhr which we played in for a little while but set down. Recently a group reached out to me and we are running another game in it. The conceit of the game is that players schedule time to play and tell me what they want to go explore, but the world is large enough and fleshed out already, so the prep work for me is fairly minimal. This has made it so much more fun to DM since I am largely not scrambling to come up with something and can instead focus on making the session fun.

Figuring out what I want to get out of therapy has been a consideration. I originally went because I wanted to get better control of ADHD symptoms, but since going, I think they are better handled than I thought (particularly after finishing How to ADHD, which was amazing) even if there is still room to stretch. I am still aiming to find ways to be more productive, but think that a lot of that starts with getting better in touch with my own energy levels and emotions.