What I’m Working on and Thinking About Right Now
Last Updated 5/25/2023
How now is now?
The giant caveat to the “now” of this is that I am a chronic procrastinator. This is a list of things I am actively working on, as well as some I very much want to work on and complete in the next week-to-month, but it’s also likely that much of it won’t get done. I aim to improve on that over time. To see how this page has evolved over time, try out the Discourse Post Edit History function (the little pencil icon at the top of this topic).
More or Less Now
Thinking about which of my various projects and #Idea s I should focus on and invest time into. From the currently languishing open source dating app (that I remain passionate about at least philosophically!) to my Discourse plugin project to create a graph view for navigating connections between topics (that recently got a big donation which I hope to take advantage of soon!), to various content creation ideas, a YouTube series on PKM tools, one focused on home bartending, another on non-alcoholic drinks 
, and more.
To help figure out what I wanted to spend my time on, up until very recently I had been tracking my actual time “allocation” and use very in-depth, attributing every 15 minute increment of time in each day to one of my “life categories”, e.g. Work, Health, Recreation, etc. This was less laborious than it sounds, I promise. 
And it was very helpful and brought me a lot of useful insight, as well as some very interesting albeit still unanswered questions about how and why I spend some of my time in particular areas. All told I tracked my time this way for about 6 months, and recently I decided I had enough data for now. I hope to return to this practice in a more optimized way, perhaps “sampling” 1 month out of every 3 (i.e. quarterly), and using a tracking system more integrated into my PKM (previously I was using Google Sheets, which at first was easy and low friction, but ultimately was less easy to analyze over time).
Big ambitions are exciting and inspiring, if sometimes also daunting. But there are some things in life that must take precedence, and for me one of those is family, particularly my mom. She’s been having some challenges recently that I knew I could help her with, so I’ve been shifting a couple days of time each week to being there for her, and I think it has been really valuable. I’m hopeful she’ll be in a better place soon, and I’m glad I’ve had the space, flexibility, and solid foundation in my own life to be there for her through this. 
One of my big projects this past year has been improving the setup of my house for hosting people in various kinds of events, get-togethers, etc. I’m hoping to start having regular “open bar” nights here soon, so polishing up my bar area has been the biggest focus, and I’m nearing completion of that, with just a few things left to do. I also began hosting brunches for friends a few months ago, cooking all the food (and, in the future, batching some drinks!), and I hope to continue that and expand into other hosting activities as well. Along the way I’m experimenting with new food and drink recipes, and different ways of prepping, batching, and otherwise maximizing my ability to handle guests in larger numbers. I had my first bigger bar night a couple months ago and made some really well-received cocktails, and some helpful feedback (spoken and otherwise 
) on menu design, drink naming, etc. It’s been a while since a brunch (New Years Day in fact!), and I hope to get back to that soon. But overall it’s going well, and is one of my most satisfying and successful projects of late!
I just finished up a big consulting project with ClickUp, which was pretty exciting and cool to be involved with as a PKM enthusiast. But quite honestly I’m glad to have a bit more time free to focus on other things (still, if you have an interesting project you want my help on, let me know!). One of the things I’m hoping to invest more time into is a volunteer-based technology services organization for small businesses. For now that has taken the form of me simply offering my consulting services for free or work trade to individuals and (very) small businesses, where it feels like my involvement will really help create broader change I believe in. I’m still very much figuring out how this works and what it will mean, but I feel like some version of this is a bit of a calling, if I can manage to make it sustainable. And a couple months ago as I finished up the core work of one particular year-long project in this area, the tremendous satisfaction I felt was definitely a big validation of this path! Now I’d love to find collaborators who feel similarly about offering their skills and knowledge for free or cheap to good causes, because one big way to make all this better would be to have people to work with on it. 
Investigating and considering opportunities to outsource/delegate some of my activities, work, and projects to focus more on the things that matter to me and that I’m uniquely suited for. Notably this includes potentially outsourcing things I have until recently seen as things I am really good at and/or passionate about, or that I “should” do myself, like developing my PKM systems. As part of this I’ve also (like everyone else) been experimenting with newly-available AI tools and AI-based augmentations, like ReadWise Ghostreader, and even AI-based photo selection and editing! It’s an exciting time, and I anticipate huge efficiency gains in some areas of my life that I think are genuinely not valuable uses of my time (you’d be shocked at how long it takes me to decide on a set of say 100 photos from a photo shoot of 1000!). No AI art for me though (not yet, at least).
Speaking of PKM systems, I am thinking about and researching these constantly, and am in progress on a large migration from multiple tools over to Fibery, although I’m having some second thoughts (or rather, may settle on a somewhat more complex, hybrid solution with Obsidian). The recent addition of Canvas to Obsidian definitely contributed to my interest in keeping it in my workflow. Unfortunately I haven’t even had (or rather made) time lately to do anything further with this, but I’m hopeful that I may be able to pull together a bit of funding and a coder or two to create a Fibery ↔ Obsidian integration/sync.
My long-languishing YouTube ambitions finally started to see some movement over the past few months in early 2023! 
I did end up focusing on non-alcoholic cocktail content, beginning in late “Dry” January, and while I didn’t produce as much as I wanted to during that period, I’m now starting to build up a decent number of videos. I’m still finding my rhythm, process, and toolset for recording and editing, so my publish schedule is a bit erratic, but I hope you’ll check out what I’ve got so far! Meanwhile, with this as my current focus, my PKM channel (10 Minute TfT) and other cocktail channel ambitions remain on the back burner for now…
Pursuing a better understanding of myself, my motivations, needs, and the different aspects of that within through the Internal Family Systems model, and working with a therapist and coach
I have made slow, intermittent progress in overhauling my various dating app profiles (OKC, Hinge, Bumble primarily), and over the past year my actual motivation for doing the day-to-day interaction of swiping and commenting was honestly pretty low. Perhaps it’s no surprise that I haven’t met many people who really excite me for quite some time. So I’ve decided to really focus on increasing my engagement, at least for a while to see how worthwhile it is to invest more time. This would no doubt benefit from a good foundation of a well-polished and current profile and photos, so I’ve begun work on a more structured overhaul and engagement plan to try out for the next month or so. I reached out to friends to get any newer photos they have of me (not as many as I’d hope, but hey, COVID times), I’ve continued to take my own “fancy selfies” with my “big” camera, and I’m narrowing down to a set of best and most current options. I’ll also sync the contents of all my profiles as much as possible (within character limits, prompt differences, etc.). If nothing else it’s a good experiment!
I finally finished reading “Behave” by Robert Sapolsky, and it’s damn good, albeit very dense. Highly recommended! So what’s next? Well, I’d like to mix in something non-fiction for a bit of a cognitive break. Any recommendations? Doesn’t have to be recent…
Get In Touch
Feel free to comment on anything of interest here. I’m always looking for input, feedback, suggestions, ideas, and new collaborators for the things I’m working on and interested in! Since I’ll be updating this single post over time, try to quote the specific part you’re responding to in your message, if possible. It will continue to work even when the original text gets updated.