Captain’s Log, 2025.12
Some months just do not go as planned.
My GTD/PKM/WTF/organizing system hit critical mass and required a reorg.
This happens every so often: I discover some improvement I can make, the improvement allows me to scale up, the scale reaches critical mass, I feel like things are falling through the cracks, I get super anxious, I find a way to improve it. Repeat on a timer. But someday it will be perfect, you’ll see! :eyeroll:
- Last year I discovered Johnny Decimal, which is a way to assign numbers to your stuff to make it easier to organize and find. I broke my brain trying to settle on a taxonomy before realizing that it’s better to just toss it all in the bin and let it emerge organically. Since then it’s gotten tight (this is a good thing), and I’ve been able to roll it out across the file system as well as Obsidian. I love it, I’ll never go back. (This particular endeavor is
21.02 Industrious One, in case you were curious.) - Anyway, Mr. Decimal specifically says not to use it for storing next actions but I did it anyway because that’s how my old system was set up and I thought it wouldn’t really matter.
- It really matters. I found myself creating artificial categories to contain actions that didn’t really fit anywhere, either because they were too trivial or because they were cross-cutting and shouldn’t really have an “owner”. So I spent much of the month unwinding action stuff from knowledge stuff, which then allowed the whole system to become much simpler. Simple is good. Everything fits comfortably now and I feel like I have plenty of headroom in the system again. Onward.
Still with the burnout.
I mean, okay fair, but also enough already. I’m starting to feel antsy and ready to get on with it. But rather than forcing it I decided to go the other way and completely unplug for the holidays. Much relaxing, much ease, nothing more intense than Disco Elysium and a few rounds of Brotato. Of course that was right thing to do, as if “try more hard” ever made any kind of sense. As I write this entry here in 2026 I’m feeling better for it. Between this therapeutic chillaxing and the reorg, that’s most of the month accounted for.
I survived the holidays.
This was the first one, ever, that I spent entirely on my own. It was…weird. I thought since it was just me it would feel like any other day and I would just do my normal thing, but I was wrong. You can feel the holiday in the air, even if you’re not directly a part of it. So I put on The Seasonal Music while I made myself a fancy coffee and breakfast, then sat down to celebrate the Dah Hoo Rah Hoo.
- It was an interesting experience to have. I did take an academic enjoyment in the whole thing.
Got up and running on GrapheneOS.
It was on my decorporatizing roadmap for 2026, but then I fumbled my iPhone trying to pay a SEPTA fare and kablooie. Terrible timing! Fortunately, among the many reasons why Delco is awesome is that we have a Micro Center, where I was able to pick up a refurbished iPhone 13 and a new Pixel 8 Pro on clearance for way less than a new iPhone. Money I hadn’t planned on spending on that particular afternoon, but survivable.
- The GrapheneOS install was totally straightforward, and I was up and running that afternoon with Obsidian and Signal and the built-in Vanadium browser. I’m still figuring out where everything lives, and who knows how long it will take for me to be fully off the iPhone, but the process is now underway.
- The Pixel is a nice bit of kit, but it’s heavy. No wonder you Android users all look so fit and svelte, lugging these things around all day.
Signed up for Obsidian Sync.
Speaking of Obsidian: I should have done this so much sooner! I had been using iCloud Drive for sync and it was fine? And free (or already paid for, anyway)? But it wasn’t quick, and Obsidan could take quite a long to get and index all the changes. Now updates appear everywhere near instantaneously and startups are quick enough that I can now use Obsidian as a quick-note inbox, which lets me get off Apple’s Notes app.
- I live in Obsidian. It is truly ridiculous that I hadn’t already done this.
- Fortunately I got this in place before I kablooied my phone. It’s almost as if I knew.
Helped run a mobile device security workshop for our local community action network.
How you’re vulnerable, how you’re targeted, and what you can do about it. We helped disable problematic defaults and harden settings, moved several people from Big Corporate messaging to Signal, and had some good discussions about installing Linux and self-hosting.
- @valsombra is cybersecurity C-suite by day so it was really her show to run. I helped out with the iPhones, because she’s an Android.
- I am not a public-facing person, and wasn’t in an entirely good place that night. I almost bailed out on it. But it turned out to be a fun evening!
Got (some of) my dotfiles under control.
I’ve been doing more of my development work on Sherman lately, enjoying its larger screen and leisurely performance. But now I need a way to keep my settings in sync between the two systems so I can easily bop back and forth. I followed the setup described in Dotfiles: Best way to store in a bare git repository from Atlassian and it’s been working pretty well. I have my Neovim, Ghostty, and Git configurations in there now. Having to work from the command line is pain but I’m muddling through.
Finished watching the 2025 F1 season.
- Landoooooo!!!
Thoughts & Advice
- Want to feel better. It is really easy to stay stuck in mood.
- SLOW. DOWN. It’s the easiest and fastest way to feel better and get more present. I was reminded (again) on this week’s track day when my cool down lap almost topped my personal best: slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
Random Links
