Ben Norris

For me, sticking with something has never been the issue. Sticking with something without becoming rigid? Now, that can truly be hard.

Fantastic approach to the bathrooms at Taqueria 27. And great illustration of the inclusivity good design can foster.

Likely to have “Chopsticks” in my head all day. Each time I hear it, I grin, thinking of my 12yo and 10yo trying to figure out a duet together. I mean, is there anything better as a parent?

📖 American Sniper

By Chris Kyle

We had a lovely dinner with extended family today to celebrate our daughter Arwen’s blessing (like a christening). Nothing fancy—scone tacos and fruit kabobs. Such a great time with people we love.

Micah (7yo): “If I get my tooth out, I’ll get like a dollar. That’s what I’ve been getting for the last ones.”

Me: “What if you get 10¢?”

Micah: “Then I would be so mad. I would just leave a little bomb under there that would… What time does the tooth fairy come?”

Me: “You never know.”

Micah: “Ugh. Then I would just set it to go off in the morning. And I would make it look like a tooth. I wish she would leave me $100. Then I would have lots of money and be revenged for the 10¢.”

Micah: “Dad, I get way more than 10¢. Add another zero and a dollar sign.”

💮 I had a hard time sleeping last night, and kept thinking about what mark I want to leave on the world. After my family, I feel like the best thing I can do right now is to increase awareness and decrease stigma of mental health, especially in the workplace.

💮 The key to recovery is progress. Ask yourself every day, “What can I do that is hard today?” Keep working towards your goals.

This is something I want to write more about soon that has been on my mind lately.

⚾️ Congrats to the Washington Nationals! First World Series won as a franchise, and first time the road team has won every game in a postseason final.

After spending the last few days recovering from hernia surgery by laying around watching shows, I’m reminded how doing nothing for too long can make you feel like shit. 🤕

📖 Dead Man’s Walk

By Larry McMurtry

🎧 📖 You Are Special

By Fred Rogers

😂

7yo went into the bathroom with his cookies, after asking for books to be slid under the door. As he went in the bathroom, he let out a curdling scream. When he came out, we asked, “Was there a fly?”

“Hashtag a million fruit flies. And there was a fly.”

📖 📱 Right Ho, Jeeves

By P.G. Wodehouse

My Do Not Disturb sign fell off my resort door, so I just had to get up to have the minibar restocked. #roughlife #releasenotesconf

😂

“Dad, I had a level 10, super-weird dream. I can’t even explain it. It was too weird. Well, I can explain part of it–with a dog. It was a mix of some movies. From Coco there were a couple of the dogs. And from National Treasure, it was the people. It was so weird.”

—7yo

📖 🎧 Blink

By Malcolm Gladwell

😂

Me: “Can anyone clean up Clue for us?”

14yo, while looking down at the phone: “I can.”

Me: “Great, thanks!”

14yo: “Wait, what!?”

Wife: “You’re cleaning up the Clue game.”

14yo: “Do I have to?”

Wife: “Yes! It will be a lesson in listening.”

Life is like walking against a moving walkway. We need to regularly stop and take stock of where we are at, and whether we are still focusing on what is actually most important.

In my job as a software engineering manager, there are a number of possible activities in which I can engage on a daily basis. It is easy to allow myself to coast and be reactive; just dealing with the crises that arise on any given day. The natural pull of entropy is constantly tugging at us to disrupt and distract us from our priorities.

One thought that I have had lately is to more regularly consider the question, “What work am I uniquely qualified to do for our team?” Particularly as the manager, it can be tempting to dive in to help with minutiae that may or may not benefit from my time and attention. Often, the most helpful approach for our team in the long-term is to delegate as much as possible so that others on the team gain more experience and comfort dealing with different issues. Ideally, as the manager, I have a unique perspective across all of the issues the team is facing, and my time will best be spent at a macro level, while trusting my team to execute on the micro level.

Recently, I wrote about prioritizing experiences over artifacts. In general, I still think that is true. However, as a manager, my most important work is communicating with others. I do need to have experiences that continue to shape and define me, and I need to spend considerable amounts of time thinking, but by and large, I need to communicate my thoughts and vision to others. This means that I need to prioritize artifacts more often in my professional life. My focus needs to be on facilitating experiences for my team, and creating artifacts.

The other crucial part of my role is to be available to help the people on my team when they need it. I will be most effective when I am able to make them more effective, and ensure that they are not blocked in their efforts. This involves a high level of reactivity, but when planned and anticipated, it can feel more proactive. I would rather be the one running around trying to figure out some obscure piece of information from just the right person, and allow the engineers on my team to focus on delivering great software. A balance is needed here. I do not want to completely insulate them from other people in the company—I need to foster connections. But so much of the preparatory work of connections is a slog of investigative and archaeological drudgery, and I would rather save my team from that.

Outside of those two main activities, nearly everything I do is a distraction and is taking me away from my primary role. This is something that I want to remember better, and I know I will need to pause and reflect again many times to ensure that I am focused on the right things.

📖 📱 Warheart

By Terry Goodkind

📖 📱 Severed Souls

By Terry Goodkind

📖 📱 The Third Kingdom

By Terry Goodkind

📖 📱 The Omen Machine

By Terry Goodkind

A month of intense reading led to rediscovered relationships with a number of old friends.

At the beginning of August, I decided to pick up a series that I started when I was a teenager: The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind. I have often enjoyed fantasy as a genre, and wanted to read something purely enjoyable instead of informative and educational. More than with most books, the characters of this series draw me in, and I wanted to read more to spend more time with friends that I have not seen for years.

One interesting phenomenon that I noticed as I got back in to these books is my tendency to lose myself. I have always loved to read, and can often get lost in a book. Stopping to eat, or sleep, or work can feel like a chore. Previously, I had never understood this part of myself. But now that I have gone through my journey of discovery and recovery with OCD, I recognized exactly what it was. In addition to the character friends I spent time with, this last month has been a close time with my old friend of OCD.

Now that I know how OCD feels in my life, it is easier to recognize his presence when he shows up. One of his defining characteristics is a total domination of my mind. That manifests in the cracks of my life. In every spare minute, my mind immediately jumped to my books, and in many of my spare minutes, my eyes jumped to my Kindle, or the app on my phone.

When I finished the first book, there was a definite sense of familiarity, as if I was returning to a comfortable state in which I had lived much of my life. As the month drew on, I realized that I was not happy with the effects this state was having on the rest of my life. I wrote recently about changing my toilet time to reading instead of playing a game, but now that I was compulsively reading my books, I was just as absent from the family.

As I wrapped up the series, it provided a natural moment to pause and evaluate. There is a delicate balance to be struck here. On the one hand, I love reading, and enjoy losing myself in a story, completely inhabiting another world, and making new friends. On the other hand, I do not want to feed the OCD side of my brain, and want to make sure that I remain in control of deciding how to spend my time. The month of August was not a complete loss—I was able to engage in a number of important events and activities. The most monumental of those was the birth of a new baby girl in our family, which was a magical experience.

I feel good about where things are at right now, and hope to remember to regularly introspect and maintain balance. Living with OCD is a constant exercise in managing tension, and I expect this to continue moving forward. The more I learn about myself, the better equipped I am to make informed choices about my life.

📖 📱 Confessor

By Terry Goodkind