Weeknotes 2025W31

Some movement on the housing and employment front happened this week. We made it through some steps on a small apartment we want to rent. I reached out to a former employer and chatted with a recruiter there for about 20 minutes about Peace Corps, travel, and what I’ve been up to.

I broke out my tools and borrowed a jack to install some new brake pads on AM’s car. Like any good DIY mechanic, I put the new ones in exactly how the old ones were even though the “LEFT” and “RIGHT” markings printed on the pads weren’t making sense. There was some scraping so I followed the markings and they are installed correctly now.

Lots of thunder and rain in Central Oregon this week. It’s been stormy for the last few nights.

Links

• AdRetro. A bunch of really cool vintage print ads. Lots of design inspiration in here.
• Underused Techniques for Effective Emails by Michael Lynch. Good techniques for quickly getting your point across in writing.
• Acting because you don’t have to by Oliver Burkeman.

  But there exists another, very different sort of productive action: the kind you take not because you feel you have to, in order to feel OK, but precisely because you understand that you don’t have to – because you already feel basically OK about yourself, so now of course you want to take action, because action is how you express your enjoyment in being alive, being good at a few things, and being able to use your talents to make some kind of difference in the world, alongside other people.