Category: Happy

For the first 25 years of my life I never got too much into music.  I would listen to the radio.  I never really had favorite bands.  I have never gone to concerts.  I was really never open to the music.  I would listen to it, and enjoy it on some level, but I was never open to it.  I am grateful in the last decade that has started to change and I’ve started to enjoy more of what music can offer us.

I’m finding music can be fun.

Music can lift the mood a little bit.

Music can make a film like Star Wars a lot better.

Music will never run out, there is always more to find and enjoy.

Being able to experience music on some level is nice.  I never experienced it all that much.  I’m not that open, I don’t have some super emotional connection to all sorts of music.  It doesn’t speak to me strongly, but I’m glad it nudges me a little.  Having and creating the ability to be open, and experience things, well that is a beautiful thing.

WARNING: The following post contains spoilers for The
Mandalorian.

I am so grateful the future of Star Wars has arrived, and it is the Mandalorian.  This show is perfect.  I have finished watching the first season, and I can offer no complaints or negative critiques.  This show is a master class in awesomeness and we get to watch it.

The Mandalorian touches on everything a TV or Star Wars fan could want.  There are storm troopers being horrible.  There is a cute baby.  There is a knight in armor.  There are jetpacks.  There are spaceships.  There is a killer robot.  There is a nanny robot.  There is force choking!  There are great catchphrases.  The show gives you so many things you would want from a Star Wars show, and it does it right.

Maybe the greatest thing about the Mandalorian is the pace and restraint the show has.  There is one lightsaber for 5 seconds in the show.  Many writers might overdo the lightsabers.  Jon Favreau is brilliant as The Maker.  He has written a show that allows itself to develop.  He isn’t rushing the cool stuff.  I predict that there will be a Jedi lightsaber battle, but that obviously will come in later seasons.  There are so many cool things you can do with a Star Wars TV show and he does a lot of them, but he also paces himself and doesn’t do them all.  Disney has also shown some restraint in this process. The big reveal of the show was Baby Yoda, and they didn’t hint at the child once in any of their media and toys.  I saw that they lost 3 million dollars in toy sales because Baby Yoda wasn’t on shelves for Christmas.  The last bit of restraint that impressed me is that we see Pedro Pascal’s(the lead actor) face for 10 seconds in the whole show.  He is in a helmet the entire time, because Mandalorians wear helmets and don’t remove them.  Some actors would have ego and want that helmet off, but he has gone with the helmet and that’s awesome.  It’s just wonderful that everyone is trying to make the show cool and right.  

Doing things right is hard for a lot of those big companies to do.  With the Mandalorian Disney does it all right.  It is so awesome to watch something be done right in media.  The goal was obviously to make an awesome show and that is what they did.  It seems like setting up sequels, and setting up toy sales were not the first priority, this is awesome.  If more shows were made with the care and passion of the Mandalorian then TV would be in a Golden Age.  I 100% believe The Mandalorian shall bring balance to The Force.  This show shows everyone how TV and Star Wars should be made.  It is a study in craftsmanship. 

The craftsmanship in this show is almost inspiring to me.  I think I could take the same care and thought they took with the show and put it into my projects.  I can go deep where deep is warranted.  I can have fun with the aspects of projects that are fun.  I can restrain myself when restraint is wise.  Ultimately I can care about what I am doing.  It is evident that Jon Favreau and crew care very much about Star Wars and that is something we can all grateful for. 

I think all of this because…. THIS IS THE WAY. 

I HAVE SPOKEN!

I enjoy having dedicated spaces for doing things.  I have a gym I go to for working out.  I have a home for sleeping and eating.  I have a public library to use as an office and study.  In the last couple years I have spent a large amount of time working and studying in the Monticello Public Library.  It has become the place I go to get after it and get some work done.  I am super grateful to have such a good spot available to me that facilitates and enables growth.

I spend much of my time working on entrepreneurial projects, writing, consulting, and job searching and the library is a perfect place for such activities.  I cannot work from home in any productive fashion.  Having a library gives me a place to serve as a good workplace.  I am happy to have this place just a mile from my house, because without it, I might not accomplish much most days.  I am also so happy for all the side benefits this whole “library office” thing affords me.

I am lone wolfing all of my projects so the library gives me at least some minimal human interaction throughout the day.  I spend so much time writing its nice to at least have the desk folks to say hi to at the library.  The children visiting the library also provide me a good laugh a lot of the time.  It’s hard not to smile and laugh when a little kid comes in and is yelling about how excited they are about the fish tank.  I mean fish tanks are really awesome.  My workspace at home is in a cold garage, I like it there, but it lacks some of that important human touch the library can provide.  The library provides me all this and asks nothing in return, it just exists as a place to be my office.

Libraries really do just exist to serve us all without any real agenda.  They might be one of the most pure and innocent things out there.  I can use them as an office anytime I want.  I can hangout at a table and do my work all day, just because I want to.  The library is just there to help people, it makes you wonder why we don’t have more places and organizations like libraries.  I would say there is a lot more to learn from the library than just the facts in those books they have.

In the last couple years, like millions of Americans, I have jumped into listening to podcasts.  I spend a lot of time walking and listening.  I also listen when I have time to kill and am waiting in lines or things like that.  I listen to all sorts of things.  A lot of the podcasts I listen to are for education and self betterment of career interests.  I also have started to jump into listening to some podcasts for fun.  The big category of “fun” podcasts I have been listening are history podcasts.  I am so thankful that people decided that history podcasts needed to exist.

I am mostly thankful that history podcasts exist because they have woken up a bunch of stuff that was dormant inside me.  They have reawakened a desire to learn cool things for the sake of learning.  I also started to remember I liked history as a kid.  A lot of these podcasts go really deep on subjects and that really satisfies some of my internal nerd tendencies.  The world is just a lot more cool with history podcasts in it.

My Top 3 History Podcasts

The History of Rome Podcast https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/

Hardcore History  https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/

History On Fire (there are both free and paid episodes, Itunes will have a couple free episodes a year and the backlog of about 50 episodes are there.)  https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/daniele-bolelli/history-on-fire/10c7f0c4-18a7-44e8-ab47-0ba1a54a4c09?_branch_match_id=586001273282984204

January 4^th 2020, I wrapped up attending my last Christmas party of the year.  Due to schedules, we end up doing this party a little into January every year.  At 35 years of age, I am still getting together with my grandmother, all my cousins, uncles, aunts, etc. for a big family Christmas party every year.  It’s starting to become a pretty big event.  I am one of the youngest cousins, the rest are having kids, marriages, one is a grandmother now.  There are getting to be a lot of us these days.  I can’t think of anything cooler than the fact that we are still getting together every year for Christmas, things have really gone on much longer than you would have thought they would.

Sometimes things go on longer than you would think they would.  If you had asked my family 30 years ago if we would still be getting together like this, they would have probably said no.  The truth is that as families get bigger, the logistics get to be a pain.  It is a special luck, blessing, and magic that this is still happening.  Sometimes these things start to have more value because they do go on longer.  When we were kids we didn’t think much about getting together with everyone.  I think it’s in the back of our minds every year now that it might be the last time we do this.  I know I’m consciously thinking every time we do this that “Hey this is cool we’re doing this.”  At some point things will change, and that’s ok, everything changes.  Things didn’t change this year, and that’s a cool thing.

There is something cool about the fact that things haven’t changed and we have kept this good thing going longer than you would have thought.  There are a lot of good things that can end up going longer than they should in our lives.  I think if this starts to happen we would all be wise and happy to try and keep them going, maybe just one more time or one more year.  I am lucky to have a few of those kinds of things in my life, big family Christmas parties is one of those things.

My life is in a time of transition and big changes are necessary.  I am beyond thankful I have the time and mental space to gain some mastery and really make these changes.  By the grace of God, family, friends, and a few good decisions on my part, this space has presented itself.  It is great having the time and energy to get good at things.  Some people are so dragged down getting through the day they don’t have a lot of time or energy to get better.  Personal change must be much harder for those folks.  I feel very lucky to have the time and energy to make changes in a more easy way.

I have so much time right now.  I am unemployed, so I spend time looking for work, but other than that I have little responsibility.  My time can largely right now be spent on creative projects and personal growth.  I can take the time to become a master of things, and I am taking that time.  To live the kind of life I want to live in the future I must change.  I am immensely grateful that I get a really good shot at gaining the mastery to live the way I want to live.  A primary purpose right now for me is to up my writing game.  This is a path forward in so many ways.  I am so thrilled to get to spend time being better at this.  Having time to do this is a gift, and I don’t want to waste this gift.

On a cool day I most often find myself reaching into the closet for flannel shirts.  I am thankful I have so many shirts made of this wonderful fabric.  It has almost become like my winter uniform.  The warmth of flannel is of course amazing.  It can be a bit classy, and common folks wear it too.  It shows that I am a man of ease, free of the trappings of style.  Flannel is also supremely comfortable.  Flannel shirts are something that suit me, and I like finding things that suit me.

Something like wearing flannel just seems to put Nehemiah more into “Nehemiah Mode.”  I think when we embrace things that suit us, we can be a bit more of ourselves.  For myself, I think being more of myself is the only way I win in life.  Some people are good at being what they are supposed to be, my path appears to be less conventional all the time.  Embracing the flannel is just another way of doing what suits me.  It is me doing me, and that is always a good thing.

I am a master web developer.  I can build a database.  I can sling code.  I can write an API.  I can deploy resources.  I am grateful WordPress exists so I don’t have to do any of that stuff.  This thing called WordPress means I don’t have to worry about building websites to have a website.  All the work has been removed for me.  I can do the work but I’m glad I don’t have to.

There was a time when having a website meant lots of work messing with the website.  While this can be fun and cool.  With my current projects I would rather spend my time blogging and writing than working with the website.  In a lot of ways it comes down to a matter of focus.  A tool like WordPress just lets me focus on building the content I am building and not all the other stuff.  Too many times we all get bogged down in the technical stuff.  Anything that can eliminate that baggage is worth a look.

In the last year I wrote a book and really upped my writing game.  I think this process would have been a much longer one if I had been stuck in technical details.  I barely touched any code or technology at all in 2019 and it really freed my mind up.  So thank you WordPress for making life easier.

Fresh herbs are a wonderful thing.  They complement many dishes.  They take other food, that is otherwise good, and then brighten everything.  In the past few years I have been using more and more fresh herbs.  I wonder where they have been my entire life?

I’m using mostly parsley, basil, and cilantro.  These have proven to be cheap, easy, and most useful with the food I make.  Tossing some of these in are just huge flavor bombs.  They are a superb culinary investment if you can grow them where you live.  Screwing around with the herbs can also be a relaxing little hobby.  I am so happy I started using these herbs, and wish I had started with them earlier.

I guess no one told Young Nehemiah that fresh herbs were so much better than the dried herbs I was used to using.  I missed out on years of tastier food.  So this is me telling you to start growing, or buying fresh herbs now and then.  Your food will be tastier and more bright.  A few cilantro leaves might brighten more than your salsa.  I know I can use them to just brighten the day as a whole.  This can all be filed under “Silly But True.”

If there is a larger lesson to be gathered here, maybe it’s that the smallest, cheapest, and easiest thing can have profound impacts.  For the price of a trip to the coffee shop, you can elevate your meals.  You can’t really mess it up either, you chop the herb, and put the herb on food.  We can all do that.  There are probably a hundred things out there like herbs we should be incorporating into our lives.  We just have to go out and find them.

In the last couple years I have become a devotee of long walks.  They clear my head and help me think.  There are also exercise benefits to be gained from a good long walk.  I go on them mostly to think though.  It is nice that they can be done most anywhere too.  However, I am very thankful that my hometown of Monticello has built a nature park in recent yards with some nice walking trails.

Walking in nature seems to help with thinking and relaxation.  I don’t have to worry about getting hit by a car when crossing streets, or sidewalk mayhem.  I can just walk these trails and disappear into thought.  There are some studies that say that being out in nature is mentally healthy too.  So the random deer, squirrels, and rabbits I see might be making me a little bit more healthy.  Having this park as a place to walk and think, that just makes me happy.

I know I am lucky to have this park for my walks.  Ten years ago, this place didn’t even exist.  I would have walked elsewhere, but it’s nice to have a nice place.  I wonder what our lives would be like if we tried to have more nice places for things.  A lot of nice places exist around us, we just have to find them I think.