Chrome Tabs : 67 → 62
Gmail Inbox : 45 → 93 Unread, 50 → 99 Total 
Note that most of this just needs to be sorted through and probably deleted, so I should be back to ~50-60 soon! 
I’ve been having trouble lately getting these updates posted on time. Feeling a bit overloaded in various respects. But I still feel they’re important, so I’m going to keep putting them out there, when I can. As my Anytype contract wraps up in a few weeks, I anticipate having a bit more time/space in my life, which should help. 
Anyway, it’s a short one this week!
The paradox of mindfulness is that you don’t know you’re not being mindful until you notice it, and then… you’re being mindful. 
This week I realized that I have the sense I haven’t been as mindful lately as I’d like to be and, along with that, I feel as though I haven’t been as compassionate with myself as I would like (and have the capacity to). So it’s just a little reminder to myself to pay attention to my experiences, and give myself space for my feelings, needs, failings, etc.
One of the companies I’m dealing with, and have offered tech help to, seems to be not-so-good at following up messages, e.g. voicemails. As a customer this is a bit annoying, but I’m more interested in whether this is a systems problem that could be solved with changes to tech and practices, or if it’s more of a fundamental staff time, financial, or other issue. Hopefully I can talk to them more about their needs soon.
A reality that has allowed me to help a number of people like this is that many people are often unaware of existing, affordable, and easy to use tech that could improve their lives. So a lot of what I end up doing is just finding and making them aware of these options, and in some cases (but not always!) implementing them. For this situation I’m wondering if something like a shared Dialpad account, that all employees can access on their phones from a mobile app, would help them keep track of messages not yet replied to, etc.
My primary job is in real estate, with a family company founded by my grandfather and my uncle. Both remain involved to this day, and my grandfather is particularly active (even at 102!). He is a great source of knowledge and wisdom, but he’s also quite opinionated. But he also surprises me (pleasantly) sometimes. Working with family has its own unique challenges, and over the past ~2 years in this job I’ve had to navigate some uncomfortable conversations. This past week, some of the things I had to take a stand for and felt resistance from my grandfather around previously, were now coming out of his mouth as firm convictions! And it’s a valuable reminder that everyone can change their mind, and speaking your own mind about a disagreement isn’t futile even in the face of great power or resistance. Sometimes, when you’re right, the other side will realize that in time…
This week I had my first IFS therapy session. It felt largely informational, a lot of exposition about my challenges, needs, things to work on, etc., and then responses and explanation about how IFS relates to all that. Useful and important to do, but I’m eager to get into the real experience of the therapy process. Coming soon!
Meanwhile I also had a conversation with my existing therapist around the possibility of ending our work together, or at least pausing it for some time. It was surprisingly emotional, though in retrospect it shouldn’t have been that surprising. He’s been a regular part of my life for the past 6 years! And has become someone I trust, respect, and appreciate. Not a friend, per se, but certainly a close relationship. I’m not yet sure how we’ll approach this change, but it’s an important one to be making, and to take the time to do well.
I’ve been a reluctant user of Yelp for many years now, trapped by having bookmarked 1000s of businesses in it, having no export option, and not wanting to leave those lists (and notes!) behind. But Yelp makes it pretty miserable for list (bookmarks/collections) users to actually benefit from the list functionality, so it’s a real Catch 22. This past week I discovered a fairly amazing Chrome extension called BrowserFlow, and within minutes I had a method that might work to hack around Yelp’s limitations and actually get all my data out! I had some initial success, but couldn’t quite figure out how to make it work 100%. Some quick and very helpful support in their Discord server had me up and running, and about 30 minutes later I had exported some 3900 bookmarks to a simple CSV, including the business URL and, most importantly, my notes on each one. Life saver! Wow.
This probably seems trivial, but it’s hard to communicate how actually important and exciting this is to me. It was an instant subscribe for me, just to support such a cool and well designed tool. And I do expect to have more uses for it soon. After that I also had some great discussion with the founder/developer (largely a one-man show there I think!), and he actually sounds like an amazing guy, and rather a kindred spirit. So you never know where connection will come from. 
Last but not least, I took a (likely) final trip of the season up to the Yuba River, one of my favorite places on Earth. Temperatures were a bit cooler than usual, but I found the river was still quite lovely, even if it was a little chillier than usual. We got used to it pretty quickly. The only time I had second thoughts was when a cloud lingered over the sun for about 10 mins and the breeze picked up. 
But overall it was great, and I’m so glad I went (with some great folks for company too!).