Today I lost someone I cared about, it sucks and I’m sad. A big part of me wants to mope, turn off the lights in my house and not do anything. Just sit in the dark with my phone off and ignore the world for a few days. Maybe I will take that route, or maybe I won’t. I don’t think there is any 1 “correct” way to deal with someone you love dying…..
In general I’m a super positive person, so I like to find positive in everything. That’s pretty hard to do right now, but I will say the one positive of death is that it jolts you into appreciating everyone around you more. You are not shy about telling your family and friends you love them more often, if only for a while… I think this phenomenon is a big part of one of my favorite quotes which goes:
“The closer you are to death, the more alive you feel”
That quote came to me mainly in regards to explaining why I love to do risky activities like sky diving, scuba diving, skiing in back country… ect… but while writing this I realized that it also hits home for me now.
“Even the Terrible Things Seem Beautiful to Me Now” is a collection of articles written by a Chicago Tribune columnist, Mary Schmich, and anyone who ever lived in or wants to live in Chicago should read it.
The first section of the book is about Mothers and the very first story made me cry as I read it in the book store while I was deciding if I was going to buy the book or not. in such a relatable way. The way she describes a powder blue bike that her dad gave her even though he didn’t have much to give, made me think about cruising on the city streets at dusk, swerving to avoid car doors and feeling free with the wind on your face and in your hair.
She talks about tragedy and strength in the same sentence as she describes how a Chicago judge, who’s husband and mother were murdered, comforts her children and ends up going back to work.
Schmich is able to take a normal life, a normal story, and show it for the incredible gift that it is. She says her mom told her, in her old age, that looking back across her life she could only see good. She said that even the terrible things seemed beautiful to her now. How hopeful is that for every reader? That life gives you what it will and in the end – somehow- everything looks beautiful.
Book Review Grade: A
Writing style: Frank, honest and raw
Mood: while there is a lot of sadness in this book, there is a prevailing theme of hope and strength and survivorship
Over the years I have constantly struggled to maintain a “productive” schedule. I tried post it notes, calendars, too-do list… pretty much any kind of productivity hack you can think of, all of which I had various degrees of success with. The main problem with all of these methods is that they would get complicated, and they don’t really show you a “big picture” of how you are doing. I recently came across a quote from Seinfeld about the method he used when he was early in his career, and he credits it with powering his success. Naturally this intrigued me since he is one of the most successful humans on the planet, so I set out to see how this method works for me.
The basic premise behind this method is very simple. Get a large calendar, hang it up on your wall in a place that you can easily see it. Then decide on 3-4 activities you want to do every day. If you do those activities, you get a big check mark for that day, if you don’t do those activities then you have to put a big ugly x mark on that day. I’ve been using this method for 5 months so far this year, and it has REALLY improved my life, and my overall productivity. The goals for each day are completely arbitrary, and will be different for everyone. My goals happen to be to wake up at an appropriate hour, to spend between 3-6 hours of “focused” working, and to get at least 45 minutes of exercise in. To get an idea of what kind of calendar you should use see my setup below:
My book of the Month to read was Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell:
General Thoughts:
I went into this book pretty excited because I have herd a lot of “hype” and good things about it. For the most part it did not disappoint. Gladwell has filled the book with tons of interesting insites. My favorite portion of the book was the chapter on professional ice hockey. I think this struck me as the most interesting chapter simply because of my love of Hockey. It was very eye-opening to see that such an arbitrary thing like your date of birth could have such a profound effect on your likelihood of playing hockey in the NHL.
There were portions of the book where I thought Gladwell stretched or was reaching a bit. Specifically in the portion he wrote about intelligence. However he does very well to back most things in the book up with concrete examples, and research. The most interesting part in the entire book for me was the discussion of underprivileged kids school performance. Specifically that they statistically actually “out performed” rich kids if you looked at just the school year, then when rich kids spent their summers doing as Gladwell so aptly phrased it “rich kid things” like summer camps and continuing their education, they started to leave the poor kids behind. Additionally the fact that we even have such a long summer break for kids, and how that is directly tied to our cultures way of farming I found very fascinating. I really love learning about things like that. Once Gladwell presented the question I realized I had no idea why we took the whole summer off from school growing up. I remember loving it at the time. Seeing how this formed over 100 years ago so that kids could help farming activities makes total since, and also his proposal of removing this antiquated summer vacation to allow for underprivileged kids to keep pace with “rich kids” made perfect sense to me. It is really interesting that something as simple as basing our school schedule off of how our ancestors farmed over 100 years ago could be the leading cause in education and income inequalities in this country (assuming you subscribe to the notion that the more education someone has, the more income they will earn over their lifetime).
Would I recommend it:
Definite Yes in the recommendation column.
I recently purchased a Nest Thermostat, I’ve gotten tons of questions from friends and family about it so figured I would write a blog post on it and direct anyone with questions here:
Step 1: Turn off the power to your furnace and thermostat, then decide if your system will work with a nest? Any low voltage system works with a nest, according to their website they say that is ~95% of all home systems. A real easy way to check is to pull off the cover plate on your thermostat, and check the back. If it says less than 95 volts you are good to go (for reference mine was installed in 1982, and was listed as 25 Volts). A quick picture of what removing the cover plate looks like is below:
Step 2: After you have determined that your system will work with nest, its time to buy and install one. This is very straightforward, and they come with solid directions. The first one I installed took about 25 minutes, the second one took about 10. To start with you have to fully remove the cover plate on the wall (not just the cover plate from step 1 above, there is actually a second plate that needs to be removed) See picture below:
A couple notes from this picture:
-You will have an extra “jumper” wire or 2 that don’t hook to anything once you install the nest, that’s fine these are no longer needed
-You will have a big hole where your old thermostat was, dont worry Nest provides a plate to cover up this hole
-Once you unhook the wires from the plate, and unscrew it make sure to hold onto them as you remove the old cover so wiring does not fall back into the wall
-If you are the one installing the nest, make sure to download the app onto your phone so you can exert unilateral control of the thermostat from wherever you are!
The Final Result and Cost Savings
-First full month with Nest installed my heating bill was 113.21, My previous months heating bill was 157.23.
-Second full month my bill stayed pretty constant at 110.51 (both of those are great savings!)
-As its starting to heat up and the AC is needed, I’ve saving a ton of money by not cooling the house much during the day.
Final install photo:
Miscellaneous notes:
I’ve found after installing and living with the Nest for several months that is its well made product, and it is really promoting me to be more energy conscious. It gives me the “leaf” scores, and almost gameifies energy savings a bit. I’ve found myself not using the AC much during the day, and then just opening the windows at night to cool the house down… I spend a lot of time in the basement anyway so its has been surprisingly easy for me. In conclusion if you are on the fence about getting a nest, Do it! And if you have an old “dumb” thermostat you will save enough money to pay the nest off in a year or two so its more than worth it “financially”