Last week was mostly about being a Dad (my wife was traveling so I was solo for a bit) and working slowly on the million house projects we have going. It’s easy to get frustrated by how much there is to do. The thing that’s hard about making progress on new home improvements is that you still have all the existing house maintenance (like mowing the grass, weeding, etc) that you need to carry on doing alongside any new projects. It seems there is about one new thing per day at most that I can do, which feels painfully slow.

Day by day though, it is adding up, so I gotta keep that in perspective. Also, all this house stuff, it will never be “done” and there will always be more to do. That is either a liberating thought or a maddening one depending on the day.

Ok, enough of that, let’s get on to the weekly selection of what I was reading, drawing, writing, and doing.

I shared a useful thought exercise/journaling prompt that is good for navigating any time that get into a challenging spot. Ask yourself how would you like this story to end?

I wrote a short summary of a short story by Haruki Murakami with some of the themes and excerpts that stuck with me.

During my solo Dad week, I was most proud of surprising the kids with their favorite weekend breakfast meal for dinner on a weeknight. That got me a lot of points.

I spent way too much time playing Elden Ring and searching YouTube for answers. More on that to come next week…

Here are some other things that caught my attention last week:

• The Follower – an example of someone using AI in conjunction with “open” cameras and Instagram to find where and when people took their photos. Pretty crazy.
• Rise Above Bad Behavior – I work with a fair share of irate customers so this video was a great reminder on keeping a healthy perspective. In my retail days, kill them with kindness was always the motto.

• Ayahuasca – a personal account of Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s experience leading up to and taking the hallucinogenic drug in ceremony. Fascinating.