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On Reflection

First Published: 2026 July 5

Draft 2: 5 July 2026

Three years ago, at the end of this month, I wrote a post about reflection. In that, I focused mostly on the chronology of my life as it pertained to writing and what the point of it was. A lot has changed since then; a lot has changed in the past months and days. So, let’s take some time and reflect.

Yesterday I read a book that helped me understand something that I have struggled to articulate to many people. The book is called “The First 20 Hours”1, and it explicitly calls out in the intro the idea that it takes ten thousand hours to master something. Rarely is my, or the author’s, goal to master something, however. Instead, my goal is competency or at least mediocrity. The author and I agree that this is a much faster process, though he goes so far as to call it attainable in twenty hours.

He does an interesting job contrasting practice, learning, and skill acquisition, which I’m sure I’ll touch on in the review. It helped me mostly in that it reminded me that I do not have to try to be the best in the world at everything I do; I can and want to and probably should seek instead to be able to do many things at least acceptably well.

I’ve also been thinking about what I want out of my life lately, especially because it’s hard to be long distance from my partner. That’s a situation we both want to resolve, but that involves uprooting my entire life.2 Before I tear the roots I’ve grown out of the ground, I want to know where they go. I’m also moving apartments, for the first time since moving for graduate school. I’ve lived here for six years, and that’s not nothing, in the span of life.

I just realized I haven’t really stopped to consider that this apartment where I’m currently writing is the place I’ve lived the second longest ever. For the next decade, at least, it will remain that. If I do not outlive my mother3, this is where I will have lived for 10 percent of my life. That’s something to say goodbye to, and a home to mourn for sure. Anyways, back to the reflection.

Why am I here?
What is my calling?
How do I get there?
These questions are ones that I consider often, and they are questions I do not have an answer to.

But, nearly six thousand words of writing later, I do also find that I’m out of the mood to reflect. Maybe writing by hand would help, but I doubt it. So, I’ll choose to treat this time of reflection as what it was. I’m grateful I had the morning to reflect4, and I’m grateful that I’ve had these past few weeks to reflect.

I am grateful for those in my life, past and present.
I am grateful that I never, for a moment, doubted that I could come to my mother with anything to receive the help I need.
I am grateful that I still know that there’s always a place I can return if I need.

I am grateful.

I am still filled with grief about my mother’s passing; I likely always will be.
I am sad that I am losing the place I spent the past six years and that I’m also losing the time it takes me to move. This is the last place my mother will ever help me move into.
I am unhappy that I do not live near my partner. I want to build a life with her, and our distance makes that harder.
I am sad that my friends from graduate school have and are moving elsewhere, even as I am so excited and glad that they are building and continuing their lives. I am especially grateful for those who have kept me in their lives.
I am not satisfied with my current work. It is not where I am meant to be for life. That’s something that I knew going into the job, but it’s still a shame.
I’m nervous to go back to work tomorrow; I worry that people will be mad or disappointed in me for being injured, and I worry that I’ll be unable to get the work done that needs to be finished.

I have many negative emotions, but they do not define me.

I am defined by the boundaries which create me. Those boundaries come primarily in the interactions I have with others and the bonds we made; I am where these bonds intersect. I am not the person I was at the start of this musing, and I am the person that I was when I laughed at my very first breath.

I find that this sort of reflective mood is not the most conducive to me doing anything, but I also find that I tend to drown it out. I’m going to take some time to see what it feels like to just sit with the feeling; I’ll lie down and just breathe for a bit. After that, I’ll work on removing the traces of my life in this home.5

Draft 1: 5 July 2026

I don’t entirely know how I’m feeling right now. A few hours ago, maybe even an hour ago, I would have said solely positive. But, I realize that I had not given myself space to pause at all up to that point in the day. I woke up, rushed out (with an audiobook on) to Pilates, then left Pilates, left voicemails, turned back on the audiobook, and only turned it off to shower and shave, then write. At no point today was there a moment of just sitting and being.

I said that I would let myself take a nap after having some caffeine, because I do know that caffeine also helps when feeling sleepy. I drank the caffeine, and then I lied down6 for about ten minutes. In that time, I did some thinking, though about what I no longer fully remember. I did some resting, I imagine. And, more than anything, I had my headphones off7.

That didn’t dim the mood. But, I do think that it made the mood at least a little more introspective. Reflective, one might say.

It’s a good thing that this was already the plan for today’s blog post! The last time I had a post with the URL “reflection” was about three years ago. That post is not quite negative, though it does end on a negative note. It’s focused much more on a chronology of my life and considerations for what I’m doing writing. It’s strange to realize that it’s been ages since I wrote in my little notebook at all, and so my penmanship hasn’t gone through the same forced change it otherwise would have.

I’ve reintroduced lower-case letters to my writing, though. I think that came because I was going into pure8 cursive for a while, and then I wrote a letter to a child.9 Children, as far as I’m to know, learn cursive well after print, and I wanted to be considerate of that.

I still write my letters strangely. My capital A is still closer to a triangle, and my lower case a is now effectively a 2. I’d been trying to avoid having hard reversals in the letters I write. When I started working on my left hand’s hand10, I noticed that cursive is full of these backtracking notes. It’s strange, then, that it’s considered the running script; I find that my running form doesn’t have many hard stops and starts. Still, penmanship is something I’d like to get back into; I no longer get compliments about the way my writing looks, so something is clearly degrading.

I thought about the point of what I write during the last reflection. That’s no longer a huge consideration for me. I said that this blog might be a nice resource for my future children; I neglected to consider that it’s also a great place for a future partner to learn about me and how I’ve changed through the years/what’s been on my mind.11

The penultimate paragraph of the post goes:

When I look back at myself this time next year, what will I wish that I spent more time on? I have to imagine that it will be similar things that I wish past me had spent time on now. I wish that I would have practiced art, though I can never really explain why. I wish that I would be better at organizing. And, despite the fact that one of my most common compliments is that I am good at keeping in touch, I wish I did better at that.

I didn’t end up blogging a year later. The reflection post came at the end of July. I wrote a post July first and July second, and then not again until November. Even just looking at that first post when I came back is still hard, which is something that’s going to be kept with me forever.

As a child, I think that at times it confused me why my dad still so clearly carried the weight of his own father’s passing. After all, his father had last known him as a high schooler. At this point in my life12, I do not think of myself as particularly connected to even the college part of me, let alone the high school part of me. And yet, that if anything makes the loss of my own mother hit all the harder; she never got the chance to see me like this.13 The weight of that is something that I’m going to feel on many days; growing up I knew that my side of the aisle at the wedding would not be filled with first cousins14, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. At this point, I at least have an aunt and an uncle, even if I don’t have a mother I can walk down the aisle with. She will not be there to see her grandchildren born or her son’s partner follow in her footsteps.

My goal with this post was not to wax melancholic about the passing of my mother. Then again, my goal with almost nothing these days is to consider her passing; that might be part of the issue.

When my grandmothers both died, I was in middle school. I kept myself from sinking into sorrow the best way that I knew how; I listened to music as soon as I woke up and until I went to sleep. It went so far that I tried to use a song looping as an inverse alarm clock, thinking that when the song stopped playing I might wake to its absence. (For the record, that did work, though it was not a restful night). This lasted until my mother and I went to the Boundary Waters for a canoeing trip.

There are no electronics on that trip, or at least there weren’t when I went on it. The books that were brought were explicitly intended as firestarters; when we were done with half the book, those pages would be used to start the flames for our nightly fire.15 We talked to the other people on the expedition, we played games, and of course, we worked out. It’s not nothing to portage a canoe and two weeks of supplies every day for two weeks.

But, there was also a lot of time for silence. I cried a lot that fortnight, and it was very healthy for me. When I returned home, I still listened to music, but it was no longer to drown out my thoughts.

These days, I can ignore the lyrics in music. I can, in fact, almost ignore all of music, if I try. It still acts as something which prevents my thoughts from fully going, though. Likewise, the headphones I wear, although noise-cancelling, produce an inverse sound that works in a similar way, allowing me to block out part of what I don’t want to consider. If I’m going to be reflective right now, then, I should take off the headphones.16

Three years ago, I talked about how I was being ramblier than usual in the post. Looking at my posts lately, they’re all at least as rambly as that one was.17 That’s something that’s interesting to note, and I’m sure I’d notice many other things if I was to continue reading through old posts. I do especially appreciate my note about three sentence paragraphs, which I do often find myself using.

Looking at the Draft 0, I see a few things I wanted to talk about. First is something that will be irrelevant by the time any of my readers can see this post; the abridged version is that the back-end for my blog was written in 2018. The code it runs on is now deprecated, and so I need to update something to make the posts get pushed to the site.

The second comes from a conversation with my partner.

This morning, my Pilates instructor was a former graduate student in the same department as me. She Mastered18 out, and she now works as a Pilates instructor and professional dancer. Lately I’ve been thinking that I want to use my Ph.D. in my long-term work, in a way that my current job doesn’t seem equipped to allow. But, thinking about how much joy it brought me to see a chemist doing something else, I know also that I don’t want to do only chemistry. No, that’s not totally it.

I’ve known since the start of my Ph.D. and before that I am not someone who has a single interest. Or, at least, the interest I have and had are not those which map onto a career that becomes my life, much as I admire people like Erdős. I especially admire those thinkers who, by drifting through different fields, are able to impact multiple fields.

I think about this in the context of a podcast I listened to recently about Natural Law. The podcast was about how the modern Catholic apologetics around the theory tend to ignore a lot of what is foundational to both the conception in Aristotle and Aquinas’s Catholicization of the idea. I’m not going to rehash the ideas in the podcast here,19 but something that the author mentioned is really meaningful to me; the great thinkers in Natural Law did so while also practicing other pieces of human flourishing: poetics and poetry. Few, if any, of the leading apologists who weaponize20 Natural Law are also practicing poets or work in poetics.21

I mentioned on the call with my partner that I think that I want to work in chemistry the way that an 18th century person might have. Not, as joked by her, in a shed with no rules, but rather as something integrated into the quest for knowledge. Three years ago, I thought about how the writing I do serves me, and I asked if it’s bringing me closer to G-d. In a way, it’s a similar question here; how does me using my Ph.D. bring the world to G-d?22

Or, at least, it feels like a similar question. Chemistry does not provide the tools to answer every question. Where chemistry provides the tools, it’s incredibly powerful. I do love rotational spectroscopy, and I do love astrochemistry. I don’t know if I see a world where my fulfillment comes in absence of both of those.23

How, exactly, chemistry impacts my life will depend so much on the life I end up living. If all proceeds according to current plans, I’ll be married with children, likely serving in more of a domestic role. I know from one of my mathematician friends that some of what I consider baseline ingrained action is seen by the outside world as chemistry; they messaged me all excited about the kitchen chemistry they did to make cheap Pedialyte replacement. I know that I want to instill in my children and other children the idea that the world is understandable. I know that I feel a deep need to make knowledge more accessible.

I have been wanting to get into philosophy for more than a year now. When the idea of finishing my dissertation was still more an amorphous idea than something with a deadline, I really wanted to spend time looking at the ways that philosophy can interact with science. No, that’s not right. I wanted to look at the ways that the Academy I exist within fundamentally has its sets of philosophies and how we can improve them for the sake of improving knowledge, or at least how we can expose them for the uninitiated.

I still want to do that, and I still think about the fact that it’s only in the oldest quantum mechanics textbook I found that there’s an intuitive explanation for bonding.24

In making the astrochem doc and adding the text, I realized that I have a folder of old blog posts.25 I have a post I was going to reflect on here, “On Grief”. However, I have not posted this anywhere. That’s interesting, and I did start to go through to see what else I have.

That’s not the project for now, though. Nor is reading my post about grief or the idea of turning 60, though I am interested in those as well.26

Where was I?

eh, I’ve rambled off track here enough that I’m going to move on to a new draft.  Maybe Draft 2 will be coherent?

Draft 0.5: 5 July 2026

I’m planning to write this draft before I do my daily reflections, because I generally want to spend some time thinking about where I am.

It’s always fun to see the ways that my posts can interact in conversation with each other; three years ago at the end of the month, I also wrote a blog post about generally being reflective. I’m sure that the main reason I’m feeling reflective this morning is that I recognize that today is the last day before I return to my normal behavior.27 It also helps that I woke up early, went to a lovely Pilates class, and am generally feeling good today.28

So, let’s quickly think about what I wanted to reflect about?

No, I’ve gotten distracted from that.29

Let’s do the daily reflection and then go back to this to write the major reflection.30

Hmm upon finishing the daily reflection, that is a two thousand word daily reflection. That’s like (45 minutes?) of writing, which is maybe more time than I should be spending. I guess that a few hundred of the words are template, and that’s ok. Still, I don’t know how conducive this will be to my every day experience. I guess album club won’t have a full draft each day. Also like, I think that all the questions are good questions. It still only took me an hour to do, including the breaks and whatnot, which is an hour that I’m happy to spend thinking about life.

One question will have to be whether we can do this writing in the morning? Might be good to start the day with that kind of intentionality.

Regardless, I’m going to take a break before the next draft and order my agenda for the day, then go and close the many HumbleBundle tabs I have open right now.

Draft 0: Some random rambling I did on 5 July 2026

Ugh the blog from yesterday failed to post... well, I guess that we’ll have to do some git training today

reflection plan today: what do i mean by chemistry like 1800s? Like integrated with other things

Bring up the whole "natural law, aquinas was also a poet" , so was aristotle

book from yesterday, easy to get competent. I already have/had most of the skills. One of the skills he learned was coding for his website... i should maintain my own site

this text was removed because it’s not something I want publicly shared right now

Upcoming Posts

Daily Reflection: 5 July 2026

  1. already on the list of future posts as a book review↩

  2. just realized there’s no section on social in the reflection. Adding now. Why social? because yesterday the bartenders were sad to hear I’m planning to uproot my life and I talked with the person who’s acted as the sound and light manager for the bar for the past 13 years. I can’t imagine myself in thirteen years, and he was lovely to talk to.↩

  3. though I do, of course, hope to and plan to↩

  4. coincidentally, it’s currently 1159, so wow. (just turned 1200)↩

  5. sorry that the very ending here got more practical again, but that’s where my mind is at. This footnote is because the app I use wanted another five words↩

  6. I think that lay/laid/lain is the one with an object and lie/lied is the one with out↩

  7. I tend to write with my headphones on because they’re noise canceling↩

  8. read: intentionally using cursive letters, rather than picking up the pen↩

  9. who, in retrospect, still couldn’t read at all, nor should I have expected that↩

  10. that’s probably a redundant hand, but I’m not sure↩

  11. in retrospect, I’m no longer even certain that I told my previous significant other (hmmm is there a reason that I use SO for one and partner for the other? probably) this blog existed. I’d actually be pretty certain I didn’t tell her↩

  12. wow, three A sentences in a row, that’s interesting↩

  13. or, depending on our views of afterlife, I never got to have her see me like this, as the newly minted Dr. Rebelsky↩

  14. what most people tend to just call cousins, in my experience↩

  15. for those feeling bad, they were mass-market paperbacks, we didn’t burn the plastic covers, and they were recent enough books that I am certain there existed other copies↩

  16. wow I immediately feel uncomfortable. Why didn’t I bring the weighted blanket with me for safety?↩

  17. my dictionary doesn’t like rambly, probably rambling would be the ideal term, but I would say rambly, and I want this to be an accurate reflection of me, at least in part↩

  18. since Master is the degree title and is capital, I’m capitalizing the verb as well↩

  19. though you could watch it on YT here↩

  20. because when wielding to dismiss others, it’s a weapon↩

  21. which I understand is the study of poetry as craft and art and philosophy↩

  22. I can tell that some of my philosophy is straying from the Roman orthodoxy, in part with the fact that I think that theosis (wow it took me a while to find it), the becoming like G-d, is doable and what we should strive for, as the Eastern Church does. Also, like the Jews of my ancestry, I take the idea that my service is to the world and of the world, rather than personal salvation. that’s something to think about. (adding to the post list)↩

  23. though, admittedly, that’s quite possibly just me not being able to envision right now↩

  24. I do not recall the book, but I’m sure I’ll find it. It mentions that we know many things a priori, such as that there is an ideal bond length somewhere between nothing (because we are not an infinitely dense mass) and infinite (because we are not infinitely separated particles). Adding to the posts on teaching (astro)chem doc↩

  25. admittedly, not well organized, and not well-filled↩

  26. and I’m adding cleaning this site to the list of tasks to do in the future↩

  27. read: working at my corporate office job↩

  28. which I’ll attribute in part to eating something last night↩

  29. before the second line of Draft 0, my partner called and we had a lovely 20ish minute call. I was already kind of distracted then, so I am even less sure what I wanted to write then↩

  30. or, most likely, drink some more water and eat the bagel I bought and maybe take a nap↩

  31. stolen from a prior list↩

  32. and this should also like tie in the thing that a lot of writers are told to do which is directly write good poetry or prose down to get it in the hand. This also has the effect of practicing hand writing. I think that there’s also the whole like “when we want to be better at running, we also stretch ”↩

  33. see footnote in this post’s second daily reflection about written word, poetry↩

  34. see footnote in this post’s daily reflection about written word, audio book for context↩

  35. also added today as a list so I remember↩

  36. from the First Draft of this post, footnote where I discuss changes to my theology.↩

  37. I feel like I’m a little too live-streaming this post. I did feel like I lost an hour, but in retrospect, probably not↩

  38. I think that after the bartender invites me to after-work drinks I get to call them a friend↩

  39. because I know that I’d want to do it so much and it’s way too dangerous for a boi like me right now↩

  40. fixed today↩

  41. look at me, optimistically assuming I’ll be blogging tomorrow↩

  42. fungenda is a neologism I learned from my partner. It’s a portmanteau of fun and agenda↩

  43. wow that’s coming up a bunch↩

  44. I think that’s the plural↩

  45. and, presumably, have a backing band↩

  46. I’m choosing to capitalize the↩

  47. this is getting sent to them directly because I don’t entirely know how to figure out how to fix the blog↩

  48. who also makes a series on where the sounds in recordings actually come from that’s really cool, if only because I find it really impressive when non-classically trained scientists do really rigorous science↩

  49. I’d forgotten which sound it was, which is on me↩

  50. new today, so all action items new today. In general I’ll plan to add action items with footnotes as needed↩

  51. thanks isometric drawing guide!↩

  52. read: it’s 10 AM and I’m feeling my eyes get heavy. Not sure if it’s a lack of food or water or sleep or caffeine, but I’ll probably lie down for a bit after this daily reflection↩

  53. admittedly, a BIG cream puff↩

  54. the pizza felt like not much food at all, but in retrospect, half a pizza is probably a meal, especially because it’s like 1800 calories, if I’m doing my math correctly. Ok I feel better about it now↩

  55. about 9:15↩

  56. out of bed by 6:50↩

  57. new place has a washing machine IN UNIT!!!!↩

  58. read: an hour is never enough, and ten isn’t either↩

Monthly Reflection June 2026

First Published: 2026 July 4

Draft 1: 4 July 2026

It’s more than a little strange to me that I’m today living through what we choose to celebrate as the 250th birthday of my country of origin. I’m constantly reminded by the song that Harry Chapin wrote half a century ago to celebrate its two hundredth birthday, “There Was Only Choice”. The song is one of my favorites, and has been for ages. In part, I love that it’s practically a medley; there are completely disparate sections, many of which seem to track their own narrative lines about both loss of childhood innocence and coming to terms with life in an imperfect world.

Anyways, let’s look at the past month.

Since I am only now restarting this blog, I don’t have the goals that I would otherwise have made at the start of the month.1 Instead, I’m just going to give myself a bit of a mental “what happened?”, then look at my calendar and whatnot to see how accurate the reflection is.

Looking at the calendar, that’s more or less accurate to what happened! I also started the new embroidery project, but that’s so totally fine as a thing.

So, all in all I do think that this month was good for me if only because it forced me to start thinking at more than the day by day level. Whether that’s happened enough, I’m not totally sure.

So, what’s the new daily reflection going to be?

That’s a decent start at least! Let’s do my normal “nest everything” approach, and add the open ended questions like in the prior version.

Now I’ll add this to the bottom of the document and reorder as it feels most appropriate.5

And finally, what are the things I look forward to in the coming month?

I’m excited to visit my partner, I’m excited for the camp I have coming, and I’m excited to move!

That’s a pretty packed month, if I do say so myeslf.

Upcoming Posts

Daily Reflection: 4 July 2026

New Reflection Template

  1. also, for some reason my typing accuracy is way down today. Not sure what that’s about↩

  2. ish↩

  3. which reminded me that I needed to clean my email, so have done some of that now! Woo, go me! Added to list of future musings↩

  4. ope! Just realized I didn’t do daily reflection yet!↩

  5. e.g. I think that I’ll put practical considerations last↩

  6. stolen from a prior list↩

  7. and this should also like tie in the thing that a lot of writers are told to do which is directly write good poetry or prose down to get it in the hand. This also has the effect of practicing hand writing. I think that there’s also the whole like “when we want to be better at running, we also stretch”↩

  8. see footnote in this post’s second daily reflection about written word, poetry↩

  9. Other than corners, which ummmm hmm I’ll figure out eventually↩

  10. six just feels inconvenient these days. Four glides through the fabric in a way that six doesn’t. Also, my partner’s aunt uses four for 14 Aida, which is what I’m using, so I’m following the expert in this↩

  11. added today↩

  12. added today↩

  13. added today↩

  14. admittedly, YA↩

  15. which probably means that I should unfollow the remainder↩

  16. just watched a beautiful video about the Odyssey, and it stuck with me↩

  17. read, not edited, unlike the version I sent my beloved↩

  18. forced is the wrong word, but algorithmic? almost. Let’s add that to the future musings↩

  19. should that be capitalized?↩

  20. It’s still a low voice choir, but now it’s open to anyone. Adding to the upcoming posts.↩

  21. the old and broken one. I’m trying to take better care of the newer one, so it’s currently back at Home Base (from here on how I’ll refer to childhood home), which has a better set of climate control.↩

  22. keep wanting to write beloved, but iirc that name has been taken in this blog↩

On Recovery

First Published: 2026 June 28

Draft 2: 28 June 2026

Recovery is such a strange concept to me. On the one hand, it brings forth for me an image of restoration, returning back to some prior state. On the other1, there’s no returning to any previous point. When something is broken, repair is making something new, especially when it comes to a living being.

Every cell inside of me is being constantly replaced. Most every molecule is constantly being reacted and re-made, if not actively filtered out and replaced itself. I would have few doubts in my mind that most of the individual atoms themselves2 are even being cycled through relatively quickly.

So, then, what does recovery mean to a body in constant change?

In this case, my acute recovery is focused on the large patch of skin that was removed from my arm. Something that feels somewhat strange now that I’ve taken a moment to think about it is how our body can regrow each part of our skin at the same place. The freckles and moles I have do not change location. In some ways this makes sense; the relative location of my skin does not change, so if there’s a piece that says to grow weirdly, I suppose I would expect it to keep regrowing weirdly. Right now, though, I’m less sure of that fact.

When the skin was removed from my arm, the surgeon3 sewed the edges together. The goal is to minimize the amount of scar tissue that forms. That raises an interesting question for me, though: what happens to the relative skin location of each chunk.

There are a few ideas that would make the most sense to me:

Unfortunately, I did not look for the location of any mole right on the edge of where the incision happened, so I do not know what my body will be treating as the answer to recovery. I’m sure that, in general, the body does some combination of the three. Honestly, given the strangeness of the human body, I’m sure that it actually does some other thing.

But, that’s neither here nor there. What is here is the fact that my body is rebuilding itself. It’s strange to me, therefore, that I am intentionally weakening and restricting my body from maintaining its strength.

It makes sense when I stop to think about how all that will stretch and tear, and I don’t want to stretch and tear the stitches or the fragile web of new skin that connects their pieces. It’s fun to me, though, that to improve one injury, I must allow other parts to become weaker.

This reminds me of what I’ve heard is a difference between European and Chinese teaching styles. Both compare children to fields. However, while a field of wheat needs time to rest and years to sit fallow, rice paddies improve when they are constantly maintained.5 As a result, European models include long breaks and discrete rest, while Asian models do not. I’m sure that this is moreso racial storytelling than anything real, but it’s something that can help here; rather than think about this time as becoming weaker, it’s time for my body to rest fallow. This is the time that I rest to allow for better growth in the future.

Fallow is something that I think we need to get back to as a culture. Not necessarily in the initial context of farming, I’m all for man’s domination of the natural world, but in the realm of our lived experience. Unlike the people who extol boredom and the experience of not having anything to do, I think that it may be better for me and others to consider the idea of letting the mind and body sit fallow.

When a field is left fallow, whatever happens to grow on it grows. This allows the minerals and chemicals that desired produce require to refill naturally. As we have improved farming techniques, lettings fields fallow has become less important. First, we know what plants can be used to replace missing nutrients, and we can intentionally seed them instead. Second, we know what chemicals are the nutrients, and we can manually add them to the soil and plants as they need them at each different stage of growth. This is certainly better; we have fewer years of famine as a result of fields not producing.

But, there’s a value in letting nature take its course. I’m sure of that fact, even if the analogy may not work for farming. OH wait!

When fields are left to fallow, the plants which return are often plants which local pollinators yearn for. Local pollinators, for all that we tend to consider them unneeded, are responsible for large portions of agriculture. Giving them opportunities to eat the diets they most desire helps with that.

Second, when fields are scheduled to be fallow, we are reminded that time exists not just within the cycle of the year, but within the cycle of multiple years. We have removed the Jubilee year from our society, and we are the weaker for it. So much of modern business relies on this idea that there will be eternal debts.

Nothing, however, is eternal.

If every debt came issued with the knowledge that at the next forty-nine or fifty year mark6, what changes would happen? Well, it certainly would be harder to get a loan in the years directly before the Jubilee. We would not have this issue of generations of wage debt. The company store never would have been able to trap people for their entire working life.

I note that, for all that we are consistently being told by the fascists and proto-fascists in power that we need to return to biblical principles, not one has seriously proposed that we have universal debt forgiveness.

When we do not let the ground rest, why would we expect that we would let our fellow man rest? The way we treat any part of Creation mirrors the way that we treat all of it. In the past, when we needed to let the world rest, we understood that we needed to let one another rest. Today, we know what chemicals we need to make someone productive. We know exactly when and how to give them for optimal performance.7

There’s evidence that fruit trees grow more fruit when they are not monocultured. That’s more work to harvest, though, so we will not do that.

As I take this time for recovery, I am reminded that the idea that I, a single man, would be expected to keep my home, feed myself, work, and all else is a completely modern idea. The boarding house was, so far as I understand it, the most stable iteration of the removal of young men from their families to follow their career. And yet, that idea feels so absurd now.

What does it mean to recover?

Recover comes, through steps, from the idea of seizing again. It is to recapture something which has been8 lost.

To recover, then, we must lose something. To recover, we must grasp something.

To recover, I must accept that I have lost many of the aspects of me that were my most joyful.

To recover, I must grasp for them.

Draft 1: 28 June 2026

I’ve been back home for the past two or so weeks recovering from a surgery that was far more disabling than I expected. That was not in my plans for the summer, but I’m also not entirely unhappy with the fact that it happened. I love my time with my family, and it’s been really nice being able to focus on the recovery and my family life.

It’s also been nice to be able to use this time to work on recovering some mental health. I think that I’ve posted here in the past with the fact that my rate of blogging loosely correlates with my mental health, at least over a few week to month term.9 Because I have had so few obligations on my time and attention, I have been able to put my focus towards figuring out what serves me best.

Some major takeaways from the physical aspect of recovery:

I hate having a shaved arm. It’s very itchy, especially since it’s wrapped in such a way that I can’t really use my arm.

I miss working out, and especially working out in Pilates classes. They feel really nice in the moment and they help me feel more centered in general. My hips are tight now, which is causing some lower back pain. Probably that’s because Pilates helped me strengthen some muscles that were previously weaker, and so now that muscular strength and endurance is degrading10, there’s a mismatch in what my body can do. It will be nice to be able to work out again.

When my arm is splinted, there’s still a fair amount of rotation possible in the shoulder. This is bad, as it means that I have to make sure my shoulder is rotated correctly to prevent my arm from hurting.

While I can use my right hand for a task for a few moments, within a minute or so there is a large amount of pain. This reminds me that I do not respect my boundaries or listen to my own body.

I am not great at remembering to take medicine on a routine that’s more often than “upon waking up”.

Showering is hard when I can’t use my right arm. Many things are hard, but the fact that I also have to ensure I keep it dry absolutely doesn’t help.

Great!

Some mental notes:

The things I have been given to help with focus help. In particular, when I am on my standard working dose of stimulants11, I am able to churn through large amounts of work in relatively short periods of time. When I remove caffeine from the equation, I find that I am less able to go for as long, and I also find that I am less able to stay awake through the day.12 When I remove all stimulants, I cannot do anything, it feels like.

I often feel like there’s this vague cloud of unease around me. When I sit down to journal, the cloud disperses, letting me know that, in retrospect, it was a worry that there might be something on my mind, rather than anything in particular on my mind.

Being in a relationship with my partner is fantastic. It both gives me another reason to feel better and helps me when I’m thinking about the future. I’ve not made a secret in life or on this blog that one big reason I have yearned for a partner in the past is for a reason to build my life along a certain path. In front of me at all times are infinite branching directions I can take my life. So many of these branches are now useless to me, as they do not involve my partner or are actively antithetical to remaining with her. That’s been honestly really nice as I consider my future.

Much as I would like to believe that I am a being that exists separately in separate spheres, I am in fact a composite being. Stressors in one part of my life bleed over into others, and when any part of me is struggling, all parts of me struggle more. This does also work in reverse, however. As any part of me improves, the entirety of me is bettered.

So, that was far more rambly than expected. Let’s take a bit, call a friend13, and then come back and see what we think. Great.

Called the friend.14

Upcoming Posts

Daily Reflection: 28 June 2026

  1. Gardner says I don’t need to say hand↩

  2. in as much (inasmuch?) as I still believe that distinct atoms exist within a molecule. Eh. It’s a helpful abstraction, at least↩

  3. or someone↩

  4. is that the word for disconnected? non-contiguous?↩

  5. is this true? Who can say↩

  6. although I am not educated, I’m generally now on team forty-nine not fifty year cycle↩

  7. or, at least, optimal performance in the metrics we can measure↩

  8. presumably↩

  9. not counting hiatus years, which I think were generally decent↩

  10. are degrading?↩

  11. read: the dose of stimulants I often am taking while at work↩

  12. though the fact that we’re generally a napping family now also doesn’t help me stay up↩

  13. did the daily reflection first today↩

  14. coming back about fifty minutes later↩

  15. stolen from a prior list↩

  16. and this should also like tie in the thing that a lot of writers are told to do which is directly write good poetry or prose down to get it in the hand. This also has the effect of practicing hand writing. I think that there’s also the whole like “when we want to be better at running, we also stretch”↩

  17. Now meaning when I decide to↩

  18. or, at least, it did last time↩

  19. because I am doing this blog post because otherwise I lack faith that it will be done at all↩

Revisiting RebelFit in 2026

First Published: 2026 June 22

Prereading note: this is very rotational spec heavy and very rambly... readers be advised.

Draft 1: 22 June 2026

So, I really want to get back into the spectral fitting program which made up the bulk of my Ph.D. dissertation. My biggest let downs with the project as it stood then were:

The other major features that I would want to add to the program to call is something to be proud of:

So, how would I resolve this?1

Let’s start with the first issue: calling the catalog generating program a number of times. This is not a new issue in the field of rotational spectroscopy. Since before even this program was created2, there have been methods to approximate the value of the energy levels in a way that can be pre-computed. If I remember correctly, three-ish gigabytes is the storage needed to solve the primary rotational constants to basically floating point error. It also only took like twenty minutes to generate, and that gives all possible values of the rotational constants. Since RebelFit works within a range of values, that takes far less time. Still, thinking about the optimization part of it should come later. For now, let’s talk through what I would need to solve in order to get this to work.

  1. Showing that SPCAT A, B, C and a hard-coded (read: manually solved (read: I put in the math and make my computer solve it)) A, B, C produce the same transition locations

  2. Showing that SPCAT A, B, C and hand-solved X, Y, Z lead to the same transition locations

  3. Showing that SPCAT A, B, C and A reduction lead to the same transitions as hand-solved A, B, C (or X, Y, Z) and A reduction

  4. Showing that SPCAT A, B, C and A reduction lead to the same transitions as hand-solved X, Y, Z and Watson T reduction3

  5. Showing that hand-solved X, Y, Z match up to the approximation version for X, Y, Z

  6. Showing that hand-solved X, Y, Z and T match up to the approximation version for X, Y, Z and rho4

  7. Showing that SPACT A reduction matches the approximation version

  8. Reading and using the paper that defines transition intensity to match the approximation to the SPCAT intensities5.

  9. Ensuring that this new version is actually faster than the old version

  10. Hopefully don’t need to repeat to get the S-reduction available

  11. Something something make it work for other forms of distortion6

Since I’m often told something that my writing7 lacks is connection between fact and conclusion, let’s motivate each step.

  1. SPCAT A B C matching computed A B C.

    This is in theory not a step that I actually need to do. These are mathematically identical. However, I’ve tried to read the SPCAT source code before and I have legitimately no idea what it’s doing. Three rotational constants is easy enough that I should be able to do the coding for it in a few seconds, and then the issue is just having SPCAT run a few times. In general, I probably want it to run one very oblate, one very prolate, and one that’s just basically intermediate.

  2. SPCAT A B C matching computed X Y Z

    So, in general, rotational spectra are solved using A, B, C rotational constants. However, computational chemists are more likely to use X, Y, Z. There are8 six ways to pair X, Y, Z to A, B, C. So long as I match them appropriately, this should take moments at best to verify.

    Given that I think it’s trivial to verify, why do it? A few reasons:

    Once we ensure that we can reliably match the rigid rotor to the SPCAT rigid rotor, it becomes important to match them with reductions. There’s a slight hiccup here, which is that A, B, C in rigid rotor world are not, as it turns out, the same as A, B, C in A reduction world. As I write this, I am a little curious if that’s the issue that I’m running into or was running into, at least, when I last worked on this.

  3. Showing that SPCAT A, B, C and A reduction lead to the same transitions as hand-solved A, B, C (or X, Y, Z) and A reduction

    So, this is better named as three different steps:

    Since realistically, I don’t really want to manually compute these values, I’m likely going to have to trust that the values are as linearly interconvertible as I remember that they should be. In practice, this calculation is way more computationally expensive, because the Hamiltonian gets much more complex. Then again, since it remains a numeric matrix, computers do, in fact, go brrr.

    Assuming that I get this, I have more or less proved to myself that SPCAT and real Hamiltonians result in the same transitions.9

  4. Showing that SPCAT A B C and A quartic match the computed X Y Z and Watson T10 transitions.

    The ultimate goal here is to use the approximate form of the rotational Hamiltonian that Watson outlines. Watson gives his T values in terms of A quartics and in terms of the approximate quartics. While I’m sure that there’s a better way to solve for them, I don’t entirely know what they would be.

    Two questions to try here are giving SPCAT values and back solving for T values, and giving T values and feeding SPCAT the T values.11

    If this works out, then I have confirmed for myself that I can, in fact, solve five equations for five variables. Also, it makes it easier to test the next parts.

    At this point, I luckily no longer need to use SPCAT, which means that I get to save the half a gigabyte of storage that computing transitions takes up on my computer. That’s probably offset by the amount of memory that my computer is using, but that’s not something I have to manually clear, which is great.

  5. Showing that hand-solved X Y Z match approximate A B C

    Again, this should be relatively straightforward. At this point I don’t really care too much about the transition energies12, and so can just compare matrix outputs.

    I’ll probably want to generate a representative sample of values, just to be certain13.

    Above I had this listed as approximate X Y Z, but I’m like 99 percent certain that the approximate value calculation relies on A B C. In theory, though, it’s incredibly straightforward to match X Y Z to A B C, so again, that’s not a huge concern

  6. Showing that hand-solved X Y Z and quartic distortion (either A or T, since we’ve demonstrated interchangibility) match approximate distortion form (most likely using the Watson approximate distortion)

    This one is likely to be the painful portion, if only because I’ll need to be really clear whether I’m working with A(A) or A. Then again, assuming that I calculate out the values for the hand-solved exact version, I can also play around with different options and versions within the approximate form. At the very least, it’s something that I can try!

    If this works out, then I’ve (through the transitive property) shown that the approximate version of the rotational constants matches the SPCAT output for quartic centrifugal distortion. Sextic distortion at that point should go really quickly.14

  7. Showing that SPCAT A and approximate match up

    Having tested the intermediary, I’ll throw the program against what most people would use: SPCAT itself. Issue here will be again, ensuring that I’m using the right versions of each constant.

  8. Showing that I can also calculate rotational transition intensity

    There’s, as far as I can tell, basically a single paper that people use for determining the transition intensity of a rotational transition. I’ll read the literature a little more to make sure that’s true15, and then have the calculations run given the arbitrary constants and some arbitrary values for the dipoles.

    Realistically, as long as they more or less approximate the values that SPCAT uses, I’m totally happy. SPCAT is known to produce approximate transition intensities, and so that’s so totally fine with me if mine is approximate as well. One issue I’m foreseeing is that calculating transition intensities requires population analysis, which is temperature dependent. My assumption is this is where most of SPCAT’s runtime actually occurs, and so that’s not great.16 Then again, it’s also likely something that I can extrapolate to a general form when solving the Hamiltonian a million times.

    E.g. if I solve the relative population as a function of energy one time at the start of the run (or for all energies before a run), then all I really have to do is use a lookup table! (Assuming that this is the right way of viewing the problem. I forget whether the exponent has other funky things)

  9. Ensuring that this new version is actually faster than the old version

    Since we need to solve for energy levels, it’s possible that a single run may be much slower. When doing one hundred runs, however, I cannot believe that it would be anything but far faster. When doing more than ten thousand runs, there’s no chance that it’s not faster.17

  10. Hopefully don’t need to repeat to get the S-reduction available

    The A and S reductions are the most popular ways to solve a centrifugally distorted rotor. Having done all the work to make A work, I’m assuming that the work to make S work will be trivial, especially because A and S reductions are interconvertible.

  11. Something something make it work for other forms of distortion18

    There’re other forms of distortion that people care about. A lot of the research Hamiltonians focuses on these complex issues, especially because most easy molecules have been solved. Then again, there are still a number of molecules with no rotors or unpaired electrons, so there’s every chance people would jump on the promise of more or less instant solving.

How do I make the Latin Capped Hyperspherework? Few steps19:

  1. Figure out how to pick the n+1 sample space based on the output of the n sample space.

  2. Ensure that the powers of two are all lined up, because in the past I’m fairly sure I wasn’t letting it search as far

  3. Ensure that it works to converge on the right answer

Let’s motivate the Latin Capped Hypersphere:

There’s a relatively recent paper that argues a better way to sample astronomical observations is via Hypersphere, rather than Hypercube. The main argument comes down to the fact that a hypersphere inscribed in a hypercube takes up vanishing amounts of the hypervolume at higher dimensions. If I remember correctly, it’s something like 1 percent the hypervolume by ten dimensions.

So, if one is relatively confident in their center point, then there’s effectively a hundred-fold increase in sampling density within the reasonable area by using a hypersphere rather than a hypercube.

My own personal motivation for capped hypersphere is that it feels somewhat rational. That is, I’m fairly sure that, at early levels of solving the rotational Hamiltonian, there is no real assumption that the center point is correct, so a Hypercube is the appropriate choice. When approaching the correct answer, however, the displacement that a transition needs is well-correlated to multiple values, and so searching around the near space makes the most sense.

As I write this, though, I’m realizing that I’m already intending to include multiple forms of distortion constants so that I can have for the distortion what I have for A, B, C: something which imposes constraints on the pure sample space. That’s pretty exciting to me, and likely will be exciting enough to others.

There’s a question in my mind about whether to use the limiting values based on A, A(A) and A(S) or not. I think that it could make sense to truncate the distortion constant ranges based on them, but not so much A, B, C. Mostly that’s because it feels rational to me that the “pure” rotational constants would be better able to be found than the distorted ones, but maybe that’s not true!

Ugh, then we get into the hard issue of “given that A(A) depends on A, Delta J, and Delta JK20, what is the actual variable values of A given the bounds of A(A), the bounds of Delta J, and the bounds of Delta JK?” I don’t know that this would actually be too much of an issue, but it kind of feels like it would be.

Let’s assume not.

So, the ending sample space would have nine dimensions: X, Y, Z, XX, XY, XZ, YY, YZ, ZZ. That is, the rotational constant in X, Y, Z and the six quartic distortion constants. From there, we would sample I (real), which is defined as the sum of 1/X or Y or Z (real). I think that’s the best one to choose as our defining value, because it’s the one that’s most physically meaningful. Regardless of the representation we use or whether we ensured all inertia is along axes, it feels reasonable to assume we can know the total moment of inertia.

After I (real), we’d sample C (real). C (real) would be limited by the maximum of:

and the minimum of basically the above.

We now have two of nine dimensions sampled. Since sampling either of A or B gives the other for free24, let’s see what we’d do there. Lower bound of A25 is the largest of:

Oh wait, can I ignore A(X) for sampling C? That’s something I think that I need to think through more... I think so, but I don’t feel confident.

Let’s see, if we assume C max, then the possible ranges for A are dependent on that, and therefore so are the possible values for A(X). Is it possible that C max defines a value of ranges for A which, given the ranges for distortion, are not possible for A(X)? Mathematically it sure seems like it! Maybe. Given that we know that C max has to have an available value for A, I have to assume that it would never end up breaking. Still, probably good to ensure that it’s true for realsies. Maybe I throw that calculation in the C(X) calculations, though.

That’s a question for future distortion me.

So three variables later, we have (effectively) X, Y, Z and A, B, C.

From there, we know that each of the five distortion constants can be calculated based on some linear combination of the six real distortion constants.26

Set each constant based on its limit given itself, the bounds of the other constants in each X, and the bounds for A(X), B(X), and C(X).

This goes point-wise, and creates a really weird sample space after the first hypercube. At some point want to set it to re-open, though that’s again a question as to when. Also, what are the starting ranges?

Part of me wants to go fully computing and say “we have no idea what literally any value can be”, part of me thinks that maybe asking the person for reasonable bounds would work, and part of me thinks that like starting at 1 percent of A, B, and C for distortion constants feels reasonable as an absolute limit? Or as a starting limit if not entered.

Realistically, all that would need to be input is a range for I and a range for C. I’m sure that one can reasonably well approximate the moment of inertia of a molecule based on just its molecular mass. And then let’s see, we know that C is greater than B is greater than A.  If all of the mass is in the C direction, then it’s value will be 1/I, and B will equal A will equal infinity. That’s not super helpful.

We could try asking for an approximate level of non-prolateness27, or we could just set arbitrary bounds and let people manually set bounds if they’d rather. As a scientist, it’s always frustrating to me when a modeling software28 doesn’t let me set arbitrary bounds. Exactly what the default set of inputs I’ll require and outputs I’ll give will be, that’s a question for the implementation team.

I do kind of feel inspired by the idea of using something with expected values. E.g. instead of a Latin hypercube, do an orthogonal search29 based on the empirical CDF from the previous search. Maybe somehow have like increase the orthogonalization as the dimension searched increases?

Or something like “the more that the optimal value for a constant moved, the more/less to use orthogonal search?”

I just generally don’t like the current method of take the top 530 points and use them to define the new sample space. It feels ugly, and even if it worked in the sample molecule, it still failed a fair number of times overall. So, let’s come back to the question of rebounding later, once we’ve got the question of sampling down.

Oh wait, those two are kind of linked questions.

Eh, maybe a distribution with a floor function?  That is, less than some percentage of our maximum strength just doesn’t count?

I know that in the past, using previous values resulted in bad outcomes because one lucky guess would just forever fix the current values. I do still believe in the fundamental stability of the correct answer and the cheapness of computation. Throwing out a previous run’s values upon generating the next run does still feel pretty ok to me, especially if I store them for later use.

Part of me does still think about the question of the total hyper-radius, as much as that makes sense as a concept. Eh, that’s a problem for V2.

Upcoming Posts

Daily Reflection: 22 June 2026

  1. for those asking why I write this here, rather than just doing the work, mostly it’s that I had a script that had most of the tests and hard-written math pre-coded in it that somehow (read: when I purged my computer, being done with graduate school), didn’t make it to my current computer setup. When I return to the campus wifi, I do plan to try to find it again.↩

  2. I think, don’t fact check this claim right now↩

  3. which he calls the more interesting reduction iirc. There’s equations he gives which have T1 in delta X etc. format, but not vice versa. I’m like 40 percent sure that I did that in my thesis though↩

  4. I think? Watson introduces distortion constants that use the approximation, though I forget where↩

  5. within a few orders of magnitude and in relative accuracy. E.g. if it’s all off by a flat factor, that’s fine, because it’s all relative strength anyways↩

  6. admittedly, this is a dream step↩

  7. at least, my academic writing↩

  8. shockingly↩

  9. and if they don’t, I am very concerned, because they REALLY should, or someone else in the field should’ve caught it in the last three decades↩

  10. my naming↩

  11. which is also true above, now that I think about it↩

  12. which I only cared about because that’s the output format that SPCAT uses. I’m almost positive that nearly all of the computational time comes from computing these values also↩

  13. and also to make sure that I can plug in arbitrary values for A, B, C and know it will work↩

  14. I am manifesting this for myself↩

  15. read: look at the WesterFit paper and see if they use anything else↩

  16. then again, there’s also likely a fair amount of time spent manually writing the file with all of the data it uses↩

  17. ok at one second per SPCAT call, if it takes 30 minutes to generate the full array, that’s 1800 seconds, so yeah that’s absolutely going to save time↩

  18. admittedly, this is a dream step↩

  19. is this post just going to be five thousand or so words of me rambling about the research I could be doing? ...yeah, if it’s taken this long for you to notice, I’m very sorry↩

  20. or something↩

  21. X here meaning “arbitrary version of C”↩

  22. because I(X) feels icky for some reason I can’t fully articulate↩

  23. or, I think that I might forcibly move I such that its bounds are possible... that’s something to consider, if there’s a way to balance I being able to converge with the fact that like, I do want to explore A, B, C. Eh.↩

  24. in theory↩

  25. biggest number↩

  26. n.b. in real life, we are unable to mathematically uniquely identify values for the six distortion constants based on transitions, we can only get five values out. That’s why we use five distortion constants in the reductions. They’re mathematically equivalent, just one is unique and one is not guaranteed to be. I’m pretty sure that by using the deltas and d’s (the S reduction uses d), we’ll be able to make unique sets, but maybe not! It’ll be fun to find out! That’s for sure.↩

  27. I forget the term for that value↩

  28. which RebelFit arguably is↩

  29. difference is that the Latin hypercube only uses end points, while an orthogonal search uses a weighted distribution↩

  30. iirc↩

  31. stolen from a prior list↩

  32. see the above post, I guess↩

  33. admittedly, very tentative↩

On Remembering to Reconnect

First Published: 2026 June 21

Draft 1: 21 June 2026

As often happens when I start writing anything, I begin to remember all of the other forms of writing I do. I’d planned on restarting one web novel, beginning another, and starting to journal again.1 What I hadn’t planned on, though, is the fact that some of the writing which feels most impactful to me is my communication with friends.

I have a variety of things about me which make it hard for me to reliably and recurrently2 message those who matter to me. That’s not a positive feature about me, but it’s also not something that I think is likely to change.3

Something that I have attempted in the past is making a list of people who I feel like I should message with some sort of regularity so that I remember to message them. This doesn’t feel like a great solution, and not just because it didn’t work. I also feel like it makes part of the connecting I do with some people more of a chore than something I do out of love. The distinction between doing something out of love and out of a sense of duty is not always clear, but it’s also something that some people in my life have expressed dissatisfaction about in the past.

Why is this the focus of the post today?

It’s the focus because today I remembered to reach out to a number of people I care deeply about today. I’ve not made a secret here or in life about the fact that these past months4 have been pretty rough for me mentally. As with many cycles in my behaviors, there is a clear feedback loop at play. When I feel bad, I am less likely to reach out to people. When I don’t reach out to people, I both feel and become more isolated. When I am more isolated, I feel bad. This repeats until something breaks me out of the funk.

In contrast, I don’t think that there’s a virtuous5 cycle in the same way for interacting with friends. Instead, I think that interacting with others serves mostly to put a floor on how bad I really feel. There’s a large subjective difference between objective symptoms. As an example, if I’m in a lot of pain from a recent surgery, the pain doesn’t necessarily recede from my attention or memory when someone laughs at my joke. What does happen, however, is that I am better able to ignore the sensation. Maybe that’s a bad example.

I’m no more able to move my arm when people say hi. However, I am much less bothered by that fact, even when the limitations I have are made clearer. So, then, what are some ways that I might better keep in touch with those I love?6.

I can update the lists and therefore have something in paper to reference to message people.

Pros of this approach:

Cons of this approach:

What’s another idea? I guess I can keep on with what I’m doing, but that is of course not really a solution.

Third idea: I could keep a bunch of names in a jar and then pull one out whenever I’m feeling disconnected.

Pros of this concept:

Cons of this concept:

Message people on special events related to them. Big pro of this is that there’s a reason that I’d be messaging them. Big con is they’re probably overwhelmed by the sheer number of messages going out.

Another idea: maybe I just remake the daily to do list on this blog. Have an item for “have I messaged a friend to re-open lines of communication this (day? week? month?)”. Assuming that I can keep up with the blog9, that’s just a lil reminder each day that I’ve got something to do. I think that’s maybe the best idea.

Also, while I do feel like part of what some people10 want from this site is updates about my life, I don’t feel like they go well in with many of the topics I’m discussing. Right now the solution has been a first draft that’s much more stream of consciousness, but I don’t think that is necessarily the best or most stable long term option. So, sure, let’s add a new section to the bottom of each post11 where I can do some reflections.

Let’s do that daily reflection now!

Ok so going forward, this is likely a reflection I’d want to do before I write the post, but then we get into the whole “how do I make that work what with the whole ‘I sometimes am working on multiple posts at once’ thing”?

So where was i?

...

Oh, yeah I’m just going to use the daily reflection section of the blog to remind me to keep in touch with people. For now, I’m hoping that works. And at this exact moment, I’m feeling bathed in the love and good positive intentions of those who love me.

Upcoming Posts

Daily Reflection: 21 June 2026

  1. though for now, journalling is a left handed activity↩

  2. should be recurringly in my opinion↩

  3. and, I’m sure, it’s linked to many of the positive things about me!↩

  4. years?↩

  5. vicious and virtuous cycles are what I’ve a memory of being told behavior loops are↩

  6. As I think I’ve said here and I know I’ve said in person a number of times, I think that one way we help with the male loneliness epidemic (as it’s called) is by normalizing (if by force) the idea that men can and should love one another↩

  7. or, I guess, by vice, even though no one I have ever known or read uses such an expression↩

  8. admittedly self-inflicted↩

  9. big assumption, almost certainly not something I’ll be able to do given past performance↩

  10. if only me in the future↩

  11. below the Upcoming Posts section↩

  12. stolen from a prior list↩

  13. other than, of course, the embroidery design, which is just very fun.↩

  14. ... that would have been perhaps a more fitting post for today. Alas↩

  15. there has to be a positive word for this idea, but like which of my friends go “ope! got another message, glad I’m still in thoughts even when I forget to write back”↩

  16. read: I’m fairly sure I have no plans today that are going to be urgent and important enough that I can’t push them aside for the length of a call↩

  17. even though I would normally also fill that time with random background noise, I’m going to use the time to instead sit and think quietly or at least not be deafening myself with noise. I’m realizing that quiet time, sucky as it often is, is usually very good for me. Is this really best as a footnote? Maybe or maybe not. Regardless, I think that most who read my blog are the sort who also read the footnotes, so really it’s probably half of one and six dozen of another (wait. no, the opposite. Half dozen or six).↩

  18. nope! I inherited some of my toxic “every day is a great day for labor” from him↩

On Tapestry Embroidery

First Published: 2026 June 19

Draft 4: 19 June 2026

I’m working on a design for a tapestry embroidery. My plan is to have some sort of a color gradient beneath a loose woven layer beneath some sort of geometric design. Part of me would like to play with transparency between layers, but that feels better as a follow-up project once I’ve demonstrated to myself that I can do something like this at all.

There are a series of questions I need to answer:

  1. Material:

    1. What count Aida fabric?

      Right now I think that I have a large roll of 18 squares per inch, so that’s a tempting choice. However, I think that the last project I did was on 14 count Aida?

    2. How many threads per stitch?

      In the previous project, I used 6. In some quick trials, I think I found that four looked best to me. Will need to see, though.

    3. How many colors?

      DMC makes an almost infinite amount of colors. The more I use, the more smooth of a gradient I can produce, but also the more pain it will be, because I’ll need to swap colors more. Also, there’s something to be said for the digital nature of stitch-work.

    4. How large of a piece of fabric do I need?

      This question is going to need to be answered based on the first Material question and the first design question. Ideally, smaller is usually better, but there’s also something beautiful in a large embroidery.

  2. Design:

    1. How many stitches large?

    2. What base layer color or color gradient?

    3. Weave:

      1. How many stitches thick are the strands?

      2. What’s the strand density? I.e. how much of the base gradient is visible between crossings?

      3. What color or colors are the weave strands?1

      4. Is the weave going to be a Celtic knot? If so, what is the design for it?

      5. Do we incorporate the base gradient colors in the weave strands, and if so, how much?2

      Of course, all of these questions are fairly inter-reliant. A thicker strand will result in a higher strand density, and a larger total stitch-count project will likely mean that I need to have a thicker strand for visibility. Then again, there’s also something really compelling to me in the idea that the strands might be almost invisible when looking at the embroidery from afar. Who can say for certain?

    4. Foreground:

      1. Do I want braids?

      2. Do I want a Celtic Knot?

      3. What shape?

      4. What thickness?

      5. How gappy?3

      6. What colors? I think that it could be cool to do something that gives an impression of depth, so like crossing gets darker.

      And, of course, I want the top layer to appear organic and not rigid, even if that’s going to be really difficult to do.

There are more than a few trials that I’ll need to do as well to figure out the answer to all of these questions. For now, though, I think that I’m going to work on trials for the base weave question.

That is, how thick and how dense, and then by extrapolation, how much that affects the visibility of the background. I have a vague idea, if nothing else, of how to make the weave design, so I need to think of the trials I’m going to run. For now, I’m thinking I just pick a relatively bold color weave against a contrasting background color. Then try one through four stitches thick per strand, with the same number of stitches per strand as the gap between strands, making four or so crossings? That should take up some time, so let’s go ahead and draw it out.

Oh, shoot, part of this will also end up depending on the number of stitches per inch that I choose. I’m just going to commit to the fabric I have with me being the fabric count I’ll be using for the final project? Eh, the relative density probably doesn’t depend too terribly much on the thread fabric saturation. Let’s just not worry about it for now.

Woo! Blog post ready to post.

Draft 3: 19 June 2026

I don’t think that I wrote anything about my design process for the last embroidery project I did. This one, however, I will document here, at least right now. I make no promises about continuing the documentation, but I hope that my writings here might be useful to a future me or other who would like to also make a design for embroidery.4

The planned design is a partially transparent flame and logs atop a woven pattern atop a sky gradient.

Open design questions:

  1. How many total colors will I use?

  2. How large will this be in stitches?

  3. What size fabric am I using? Probably 18 holes per inch Aida, but maybe not?

  4. How many threads per stitch. If using 18, then the answer is four, I think. If using 14, I think that the answer becomes six? Will need to run some tests to see what does what I need.

  5. What gradient, exactly? I think that a sunrise to sunset motif would be beautiful, but need to figure out what exactly that will look like. Potential options include:

    Right now I’m mostly leaning towards something that goes a variant of dark to light via warm colors back to dark via cold or have bright to dark to bright.

  6. What weave density to use? I.e. how much of the gradient is visible in the gaps between weave lines?

  7. What weave thickness? I.e. how many stitches per weave line?

  8. Pure weave or make it a Celtic knot? If knotted, what knot design?

  9. What color for the weave?

  10. Does the weave line need to incorporate the gradient within it? E.g. if the weave is silver and it should be on top of black, do I do like two silver and two black?

    1. If it does, what percentage?

  11. How do the fire and logs look?

  12. Smoke?

  13. Etc.

So, things to trial out now:

  1. Weave densities.

  2. Weave thicknesses.

  3. Weave and background color ratios within the weave thread

These trials are of course all interlinked variables. The thickness is particularly going to depend on the final design as well. I’ll need to decide how visible I want the weave to be and how thick relative to the total size of the fabric I want it to be.

You know what, I don’t actually think that I want the art to be representational. I just want geometry. So, then, I’ll do a cute flowy Celtic knot made of a braid! That will be gorgeous.

Draft four for new set of questions.

Draft 2: 19 June 2026

I apologize for my absence. Anyways.

I’m wanting to make a tapestry embroidery project. My plan is to have some sort of color gradient as the base layer, a weaving or potentially even Celtic knotwork secondary layer, and then a flowing Celtic knot made of a braid as the top layer. My other idea was to have something like partially transparent glasses, and then attempt to make something like “the view of the floor from a lit low-saturation stained glass window”, but I think that might be a good third or fourth project.

So, what is keeping me from making the pattern?

First, I need to decide what color gradient to have as a base layer. Right now I’m drawn to the idea of black at the corners and white in the middle5 with two sides being sunrise color gradients6 and the other two being sunset7 transitioning into the blue of a clear day and then the whiteness of staring into the sun.

The second question is how to do the weave8. Depending on the density of the weave, it may be vitally important that I have the base color represented in it. Questions within this question include whether I can stitch multiple times and if that behaves the same as stitching once with multiple threads. E.g. I might want one strand of silver. If I just stitch the entire canvas in silver and then use three more threads for the appropriate colors, will that look the same as just swapping colors? I guess not, and also it feels icky to do that.

Third question is what the upper layer will be.

I usually feel inspired by flames and fire, and so kind of want that. I also love Celtic design, and want to incorporate some of that? Or, at least, I love patterns, and so that feels like a good thing to do. As a Catholic of Irish descent, I feel no qualms about using these motifs in my work. While I do love mandalas, or at least the Westernized versions I see in adult coloring books.9

However, as I mention in the first draft, I am also interested in potentially exploring some sort of representational piece of art. Fire would work well for that, as would a flame with smoke. If I did a fire, though, there’s a potential issue with the background gradient being lost? Though, fire is often at least somewhat transparent.

Hmm. Hard to say for certain.

Now, one benefit of doing all of this pre-work is that the number of stitches I will need to do is completely independent of the complexity of the design, which is a huge perk to me. Like with cross stitch, each stitch is effectively a pixel. Since I’m planning to use every pixel, the only question is how compressible the pixels will be.10 And, I enjoy this part of the planning too.

Another question I have is how many colors to use. The last embroidery I did was with non-DMC colors11, because I bought a sunburst kit from the store. That had a limited number of colors, which meant I had to and got to be creative about my choices. I did a six-strand embroidery, but doubled up each strand12 so that I wouldn’t have to worry about the thread falling off the end of the line. That meant I had up to three color options, which did make it really pretty.

In general, I don’t see a lot of people mixing and matching different colors of thread, which I’m not totally sure I understand. Sure, Yellow and off Yellow may approximate Yellow three, but the interplay of which exact thread is on top for any given part of the embroidery is unknown until stitching, which gives it more animation. Then again, if the goal is to draw attention away from the thread, I guess I can see why it is that people would use the specific color they want.

Oh! I remember what I don’t like about Bargello now!

Because it’s worked vertical, the Aida fabric vertical strips often also shines through. Tapestry embroidery, by contrast, is worked diagonal, so is able to cover the full thing.

Not for this project, but for a future project, I’m also very curious about layering tapestry embroidery. That is, if I embroider a base layer all going like a forward slash, if I then use a single strand of floss to go in the back slash direction, will I be able to see two images? I don’t know, and I am more than a little curious.

Back to the point, though: what do I want to have as the major image of the picture?

It needs to be something with gaps so that the gradient can shine through. It needs to be representational, because I decided it does. It needs to be pretty.

I guess I could do four layers and in such a way still have some sort of a Celtic triquetra as the third layer? Eh.

Maybe text as the top layer? That could be really nice, actually. What would the text say?

Hmm. There are so many beautiful texts in the world.

Maybe just a classic “Love”, or something like that? I could make the most fun commentary on modern art with three tapestry embroideries that are super detailed that in total say “Live, Laugh, Love”, but that feels maybe a little too on the nose for my taste.

A net? That’s got some promise, if I do like a net that’s been draped over something.

Something burning?

A tree branch on fire?

A lightning strike?

I think that a partially transparent flame does actually seem like my favorite idea. In the next draft, I will write down the series of questions that I actually need to answer here.

Draft 1: 19 June 2026

So, I haven’t been here in a long while. I’ve even written a few posts since the last time I was here, but none felt up to the quality of a returning post. However, I’m currently disabled13, and have therefore decided that now is as good a time as any to get back into this site. I know that I feel better when I write, and I know that I have multiple14 readers, and they have expressed sadness that the site lacks updates.

I’m going to go back to calling it a blog and saying that I’m blogging for now, because, while I am interested in the meaning of what I’m doing, I’m also not willing to stop myself and remember what I decided to call the site. I am still interested in doing meta-data and whatnot for the site, but that’s something that would need to happen in the future. I have ideas for how I don’t have to use the new blog15 and still write in markdown, but I’m also out of my love of markdown era. Ideally I think that there would be a way for me to use mediawiki as the base writing, because I like how it lets me do nested lists the best. However, that’s not the purpose of this post.

As I assume everyone who reads this blog knows16, I’ve begun seriously dating someone. Among her infinite wondrous qualities, she also has an aunt who was17 a medievalist and does tapestry. When I first heard this, I assumed tapestry in the woven on loom sense, which was wondrous and fascinating to me.18

I later learned that she does tapestry embroidery.19 I loved my Bargello embroidery project, but I had some dissatisfaction with it, much of which I think came down to the vertical stripes, for reasons that I cannot fully articulate here. Tapestry embroidery, by contrast, is performed with diagonal stitches, like the first half of a cross stitch. As such, it is more something that I cannot find the word for right now.

And so, I decided that I really want to make a tapestry embroidery project.

I recently watched a documentary about Jerry’s Map, which is a performance art piece20 or an algorithmic art piece21 or something. It’s a series of panels that an artist has been working on for decades. It never ends, and part of me is inspired by that same idea, even if I would not want to make a tapestry in the way he does it.22 Anyways, that was something I have been thinking about as I think about how to make this tapestry.

Why come back to embroidery now? A few reasons.

  1. I know that it’s good for me to do creative things

  2. Right now I can’t use my right hand for much, and embroidery feels like a good way to get some dexterity in my left hand.23

  3. I like making art

  4. I want my internal association with embroidery not to only be the grief embroidery I did

  5. I like showing off the things that I create

  6. I like seeing beautiful things and want to make them

What’s stopping me from making the embroidery right now, then?

A few things.
Chief among them, however, is the fact that I don’t entirely know what I want to make. The tapestry that my partner’s aunt24 made was a portrait equivalent25, and that does lead me to think that it might be best to make something representational. In my last project, I made a large Celtic knot with a cross in the white space. There will not be white space in this project, because tapestry embroidery fills the entire page.26

I loved the color gradient in the initial embroidery I made, and would like to really lean into that. Many parts of my brain love Celtic knot and adjacent patterning, and so I was thinking it could be really nice to have a Celtic knot background27 underneath whatever I make. I don’t love that the last project I did was so blocky. That’s not the right word.

Digital? Maybe.

I guess that I’m trying to express that I don’t like how rigid28 the previous one was.

I was considering perhaps doing a braid or a flowy Celtic Knot29, so that I can use something there. I think that might be the best bet, so will be doing that! Now I just need to do the design portion.

Alrighty, on to draft two, which is hopefully going to be more coherent.

Upcoming posts

  1. look at that, managed to write the sentence so I didn’t need an is/are↩

  2. initially this said “do we need to” but I realize that this project is not needed in any sense, and so there is no version wherein it is necessary to have it↩

  3. I’m trying to think of a word that’s like saturation but pixel-wise. E.g. if I have two lines 10 cm apart from center to center, the gap will be smaller if the lines are thicker. What’s the term for the relative size of the gap? Eh. Gappy with this footnote works↩

  4. shoot, the Buddhists are gonna be coming after me for that line. There is no static me, so the future me is an other↩

  5. or vice versa, depending↩

  6. read: warm colors of red and yellow↩

  7. read: purples and maybe greens? Because I like green, at least↩

  8. even if it ends up being Celtic knots, I will be having it as a fairly rigid pattern, and so I’m comfortable labeling it as the weave for the purposes of this project↩

  9. looking it up on Wikipedia, very few of the shown examples resemble those in any real sense↩

  10. in a data compression sense. The more similar the colors are next to each other, the more easily the computer can just go “that whole area is one color, just fill in X,Y box”↩

  11. spicy↩

  12. thanks for the tip friend!↩

  13. officially. In practice, I stand by a social model of disability which tells me that, since I have the accommodations that I need right now, I’m not disabled. Legally and practically, though, I cannot do the things that are required for me to perform labor I have been contracted for, and so am disabled in that sense absolutely.↩

  14. maybe even more than I can count on one (functional) hand!↩

  15. j.rebelsky.com/newblog↩

  16. if not, hi! I presumably miss you dearly and would love to have you in my life again. Please drop me a line and I’m more than happy to continue the thread!↩

  17. is? love living in capitalism end-staging where we are only what labor we perform for the job we are paid for is what defines what we are↩

  18. semi-related, I have an idea for a future blog post (which is returning to the end of these docs) about wonder↩

  19. I still don’t know if she also does loom tapestry, but↩

  20. maybe?↩

  21. maybe?↩

  22. I don’t like the idea of destroying old parts of the art, and I like pre-planning↩

  23. yes, I do recognize the humor in the fact that dexterity explicitly refers to things being like the right hand. Anyways↩

  24. gosh I hope this doesn’t count as doxxing. If either of the affected parties here want me to take this down, please let me know↩

  25. I do know abstract versus non-representational. I don’t really know the art words for most of the other things, like the difference between a picture of a person and a portrait, etc↩

  26. interestingly, looking up Bargello embroidery, I’m told that it’s mathematical in nature, so there’s I guess an argument to be made that what I’m making would still be bargello↩

  27. or at least a diagonal weaving with over and under alternating↩

  28. There it is!↩

  29. Like a triquetra, as it’s apparently called↩

  30. stolen from a prior list↩

On Feeling Heavy

First Published: 2026 April 5

Draft 2: 5 April 2026

I do think that there could be something interesting in my trying to see how tight the correlation is between the number of words in a draft or post that I take to get to its subject and the amount that I don’t want to interact with the subject. I right now assume that the correlation would be very strong, only limited by the fact that I do not always have the same writing pace.

The first draft touches much more on the title of this post, which is feeling heavy. Right now, I’m remembering the second half of what I must do every time that I feel like this, or in this realm, at least: I need to ignore that voice.

Right now, the albatross that feels like an anchor is the fact that I have not been writing. Another albatross is that my home is not clean enough to host those I wish to host.

Those are both real and true things! It is not just valid that I feel them, it is if anything probably a good thing that I feel dissatisfaction with the state of my home and the absence of words I have written.1 However, spirals, fascinating as they are to look at when drawn, are just as captivating when dragging me down.

This month starts a biannual writing competition on the site I write2 my web serial. I told myself that I would use that to make me write again, and this feels like the reasoning I need right now. So, what are the fiction ideas I’ve told myself I would like to write some day? I guess you’ll have to see!

Draft 1: 5 April 2026

So even though it has been far too long since I wrote anything, let alone on this exact site, I do want the record to show that I did write a full3 post yesterday. But, I didn’t feel like I had gotten to a stable point in my thoughts.  I’m currently removed enough from the daily practice of this site to remember if I used to feel this sense of closure, but I’m going to imagine that I did. Even when I ended somewhere that wasn’t a final answer, it at least felt like a final enough answer. Yesterday’s post, perhaps because the first 2500 words were me attempting to discover what the post was going to be about, did not feel finalized.

My past writing is, in one sense, the topic of today’s proflection4. In general, however, my goal for today’s post is to externalize the internal feeling that I have right now.

In previous posts, I know that I’ve expressed, whether implicitly or explicitly5, the I have felt as though my body and mind betray me. I still somewhat deal with this struggle, though I am actively putting in the work day by day to accept that my body does not fail me. Either I failed it by failing to give it the nourishment it needed, or it was not a task that my body was capable of.6

N.B. to future me7: maybe try starting the inevitable draft two with a meta reflection on how the amount of time it takes me (or number of words, at least) to actually start talking about a thing here is probably correlated to how uncomfortable I am with it.

It’s relatively easy for me to accept that my body has limitations, because I can see the effects of aging on myself, and I know that much of the athleticism I once was capable of required double digits of time spent actively working my body. That is not my priority right now, and so it’s unfair to expect same results with less resource allocation.

It’s much harder, however, for me to accept the ways it feels as though my mind fails me.

My memory feels terrible these days, and I don’t like that. I can still remember facts, at least in the eyes of most, but my visual memory is effectively gone. I have very few moments I can see in my mind’s eye, and those that I  can tend to be from a third-person perspective, letting me know that they’re more imagination than recollection. I assume that this, like the fact that I’ve gotten worse at mental math, has more to do with where I focus my mental energy than much else, and so I can somewhat accept it.

But, last night I felt a migraine setting in. I, in what feels like a big change for me, left where I was and went to sleep, rather than trying to power through the pain and keep going, like I would have for much of my life. I don’t like that my body needed the break there, especially because I cannot point to a cause.

But, more than that, as the title suggests, I have difficulty with the way that my mind makes everything feel heavy right now. Depending on the metaphor I’ve used, depression has been a variety of things. However, at least as far as I can remember, the load has felt metaphorical. These past few days and today in particular, I feel as though I am actively being pushed down.

Each time that I try to stand, there is a voice in my head that tells me it’s pointless. There’s another that points out that I’m already feeling kind of light headed, so do I really want to risk standing up? Another mentions that we’ve just gotten to a good point in whatever activity I was exercising.

To be clear, none of these voices are verbalizing within my mind.8 I have these vague impressions that I should not stand up. Vague may be the wrong word. I have amorphous but powerful impressions telling me to not move.

As the series of posts I have made about feeding myself might imply, I struggle to nourish my body.

Today in particular, when each breath actually feels like effort, when even the act of blinking seems to take a bit of effort, food is much more difficult.

But, more than anything, it’s this weight that presses me down and tells me not only that I cannot do anything right now, but that anything I did would be pointless anyways. I have an unwelcome visitor right now who tells me that I have failed to live up to my own potential, that I have failed those who love me, that I have failed myself. I don’t like feeling this way.

Right now, I think that it may be most acute, because, like most procrastinators, I had an external point where I told myself I would start writing again. The website where I used to write my web serial has a biannual writing competition, where authors attempt to put out a little over half a century thousand of words in thirty five days. It’s something I’ve done before, while actively keeping up with my other novel. I think that my idea was that, realistically speaking, fifteen hundred words a day is not that many for me.9 A shock to the system might be what I need to get back into this and the other writing I do, was the thought at least.

Of course, I did nothing to keep track of when, exactly, the event started. I realized yesterday, after writing the three thousand and some words about where I am right now, emotionally, that it had started on the first. Missing five days isn’t really that much time to miss.10

Honestly, part of what I always tell myself is that the weight I feel is not a sign that I should give up. It’s a sign that I should ignore the pain and power through. Let’s take that advice to heart, at least for now, and try to write these 55000 words before the next four and a touch weeks have gone by. I guess I need to figure out what I’d write about; I think I want to at least start a new story, even if I’m not totally sure where/what or anything else. That’s something I can consider. Or, I can just start writing and see what happens? I can look through my notes and see what fiction ideas I’ve had in the past.

  1. typed↩

  2. past and future tenses, so it averages to present, right?↩

  3. more than one draft, 3400 or so words↩

  4. Is that the word I ended up settling on?↩

  5. oof I’m loving parentheticals, or whatever else you’d call the sentence structure I’m using here↩

  6. I know I’ve had the conversation about how failure is not a moral judgement, and I do stand by that, and that it’s ok to fail, with at least one of my regular readers (ooooof that sentence structure hurts me but I’ve decided no more pressing the delete key unless it was literally a typo for now). However, I do think that it’s not fair to call it a failure for a child to not stop a speeding train (oof don’t make the mental image, just know I meant “a not Superman to do a Superman thing”. If I don’t give someone any colors, just black ink, they did not fail to paint an accurate picture of something rosy red. They were not given what they need for that. So too my body (is the idea)↩

  7. rhyme!↩

  8. Not in the “I promise I don’t hear voices” way, but in the “these are subvocalizations I can track into full thoughts if I put forth the effort”↩

  9. I’m at over a thousand right now, and the document claims I haven’t even been on this page for 19 minutes yet↩

  10. again, I type fast and the expectations are low for writing quality, both in myself and in the general reader base↩

On Another Year of Thanksgiving Bagels

First Published: 2025 November 28

Draft 1: 28 November 2025

Another Thanksgiving has come and gone. For the first time I can remember, we did Thanksgiving not at home. Except, that’s not true, because I do also have a firm memory of going to Thanksgiving at a friend’s house sometime when I was the same height as the chef.1 It’s possible that I’ve gotten that holiday mix in my memories with some other seasonal celebration, it’s possible it was one of the years near COVID being in the public consciousness, and it’s possible that I’m remembering back to high school, which is further than I can remember.2

This year for Thanksgiving, my family decided that we would not be making our own dinner. I’m generally not opposed to the concept, because very little about Thanksgiving that’s important to me is also related to cooking. Part of me is a little sad that I don’t get to enjoy slop3, but that’s a fairly minimal part of me. Not having to make the meal4, and especially not needing to clean up the kitchen after making a large meal is really nice.

It was also so incredibly nice to not have to worry about timing when it came to making bagels.

For whatever reason, this year I decided that I’d like to make exactly a gross of bagels. Unlike previous years, I didn’t have to finish cooking before some arbitrary deadline, which meant that I was finally able to do the bagel making in what, in my mind, at least, felt more photographable. So, I slept in a little5, and then broke the large dough into twelve smaller balls, each of which was then shaped into a dozen small balls, with mixins as appropriate. Once I had a beautiful6 144 balls of dough, I punched a hole in each and started to boil and bake them. Rather than trying to shove as many pre-boils into the pot at once as I could, my brother pointed out that doing them by the dozen wouldn’t actually end up costing any more time.

So, 144 bagels went into the oven and came out delicious and brown.

Unlike every year before, I also7 did not let people start eating bagels until I had a photograph of the entire batch finished. I’ve never before seen all the bagels at any stage, in large part because of the historic process.

Back in the before times, if I was making a large number of bagels, I would separate the dough that was getting whatever form of mix-ins, shape balls and bagels, and then immediately boil and put into the oven. The overall timing ended up meaning that I was more or less constantly moving between putting bagels in water, shaping them, putting them in the oven, taking them out of the oven, and mixing new flavors into the base dough. It’s definitely a faster process, probably saving more than an hour of overall time. However, it’s also much more stressful of a process, and it’s significantly less photogenic.

While making my variant of a poolish8 the night before, my brother commented that it’s “terrifying” the way that I actively avoid using measurements. Although this is not untrue, I feel like, especially for bread, it’s an unfair expectation. The general considerations that come into making a good bread are the relative moisture content and the protein content of the flour.

Flour can vary by such a large margin in its protein content, and I’m honestly not sure how much I trust the companies when they make claims about the protein content of their flour. After all, a difference of one to two percent is around what I remember the FDA regulations control, and is often also the difference between bread flour and AP flour.

Even more importantly, though, the relative water content of the flour can vary by such large amounts, primarily from the ambient humidity.9

If measuring by weight, as so many people recommend for some reason, then the higher moisture flour will mislead about how much water needs to be added. After all, if 100 grams of dry flour is instead reading as 110 from the moisture it absorbed, then a mass or weight based measure will imply not just that the ten g of water need to be added, but also the water to make up the 10g. If using a standard hydration of 100 percent10, that means that the hydration will, instead of being 110 g water and flour, as desired, 120 g water and 100 g flour, a twenty percent difference of hydration!

So, with that information as justification, I made my bagels the way I make most of my breads: by heart.

This year, rather than using potato starch,11 I decided to try adding some dark rye flour to the dough. In general, I love the way that rye tastes, and I adore the depth of flavor it adds to a basic flour loaf. Given the response from people who ate this year’s batch, I’m not alone in the judgement.

My brother did comment on the fact that the raw dough had some strange looking flecks in it, which were quickly explained away as rye.

So, despite not measuring any of the ingredients with anything but my heart, I think that the final dough had about twenty pounds of flour, six ounces of gluten, and a pound of dark rye. How much water?

fantastic question.

Once the dough was able to rise, I divided it carefully into what appeared to be a dozen evenly sized balls. As luck would have it, they were not evenly sized, but that’s the nature of life sometimes. Each of those balls12 was then divided into a dozen balls, which I tried to have be about evenly sized. Once the 144 balls were shaped and13 flavored, I punched a hole in each and then started to boil.

I did find it somewhat humorous that I was so carefully breaking the dough into even balls, despite not measuring what went into the dough. My father commented on the fact that I tore off chunks of dough at a time, rather than subdividing the ball of dough in quarters and then thirds.14 Realistically, I generally have tried that approach before. For whatever reason, it ends up working out much worse for me.

I think it’s because I internally decide that if I’m going to be subdividing multiple times, I might as well just go for prime factorization. I’d divide the dough in twain15 and then half again, then split each of those into thirds. When considering how much correction I tend to need to do, I do find that I need less when I’m just grabbing hunks of dough off, especially by the end of the process. After shaping about fifty dough balls, after all, one tends to get a pretty good impression of what size to make them.

Ok so that’s enough about bagels for now.

On to the rest of Thanksgiving.

Upon finishing the bagels at the objectively ridiculous time of 1147, I went and had a nice nap. From there, we went to two different Thanksgiving parties, both of which were fun and lovely in different ways.

The first was with a close family friend’s family, who had us and two or three other families over. We played what they call “the bag game”, which they claim is a game of luck, even though I know better. I’m still not sure I loved the method for sorting between rounds, but it was as good a method as any other.

In the end, I won what was called the best gift16 which did also come with two shooters.17 I was told I had to do both shooters at once, but was then judged for doing so.18

We then ate a nice meal, and then the brother father and I transported to the second party.19

At the second event, we saw what I imagine are my father and brother’s students.20 The food was delicious there, but I was fading incredibly quickly, and so took the fall to say I wanted to go home.21 From here, we’re now asleep, awake, and once more giving out bagels.

At party number one, people were shocked to learn that it is not my father who’s the bagelmeister in the home. I think that there are likely two explanations. First, my father made them bagels recently. Second, before I was born, my father apparently made bagels often.

I’m not sure which reason is the main one for the people’s surprise that they came from me, but regardless.

Reviews from the bagels were generally positive. My first comment was “dang, it’s really hard to complain and go ‘my bread is too fluffy and light and delicious’”. My family agreed, commenting that there was not enough chew to the dough. There are apparently two things that can lead to a chewier dough22, more water and more kneading. I do always fear that I underknead my bagels, but they were higher hydration than I normally make them, so I don’t think that the water is a real answer. Also, I did much more kneading of the small balls than I normally do, so I don’t know that I think that it’s that either. Who can say.

From the non-my family people, I got much better reviews. Many said it was the best bagel that they’d ever had, which may be true but is likely just a kind thing to say. Given the excitement in people’s eyes when we told them they were welcome to come by today to take more bagels, I think that at least some of the joy was real.

Some, almost two thousand words into a story of crafting bagels, might wonder what I made.

I made seven dozen un-adulterated dough bagels. Of these, three dozen then were covered in everything bagel seasoning.23 Because I once saw a post about how some place’s bagels were much better because they had seasonings on both sides, I seasoned both sides of the bagels. The thirty six everything bagels did use almost half a container of Costco everything bagel seasoning, so it’s possible I did more than was expected. Then again, thirty six bagels is a lot of bagels!

After the thirty six everything, I made four dozen plains.24

From there, two dozen rosemary and sage bagels, where I mixed the two ingredients into the bagel dough. It wasn’t the most even mixing I’ve ever done, but honestly they may be the best bagels I have had in ages. Something about the Thanksgiving spices in a warm circlet of bread is just unbeatable.25

Two dozen cranberry bagels, which didn’t go super well. I don’t think that I realized how much craisins can rehydrate, and I didn’t put as much effort as I often did in the past to incorporate the dried fruits. Still, cranberry bagel isn’t a hard sell.26

Those who know me might know that I recently had a fairly intense falling out with a friend over the concept of a jalepeno bagel. I said and still say that they feel like an abomination. Unfortunately, I am too much of a pushover. Just as if the friend was there that day, my brother looked with pleading eyes as he asked if I would make jalepeno cheddar bagels. And so, despite feeling like I was committing a crime through every stage of making them, I finished the day with a dozen of those abominations. They were well received, which almost hurts more.

Of the 144 bagels, I no longer know how many we have left. What’s important, though, is that I got to share joy with others.

When looking to see what I’ve written about bagels in the past, I learned that I’ve apparently only made one post about bagels before. It’s likely that I commented on their output in a future posting, but I love the brevity in that one. I’ve also reflected about morning baking before.

At the end of that post, I mention that my recipe of adding flour and water until an appropriate amount of dough exists was not helpful. That’s fair.

OH!

For the people in my life who comment on the salting I 27 do in my doughs, the bagels were salted, and no one commented on the lack of salt. Tasting them, there’s perhaps less salt than some might put in the dough, but I often find that people love very salted toppings for bagels.

And now to the sad part of the musing.

It’s hard to think about Thanksgiving without thinking about my mom. She and I were the ones who did most of the Thanksgiving cooking for the past few years. It’s her side of the family where our mashed potatoes28 and butter mushrooms29 arise.

More than that, though, I remembered yesterday how she was always the one who remembered the little things that mean so much. I’ve never been a huge fan of cream cheese, but I’ve generally always liked flavored cream cheese.30 Every Thanksgiving, she was sure to stock at least a few flavors of berry cream cheeses. Yesterday, when I asked, I learned that we had not picked any up. Of course, that’s also on me; I was going through lists of ingredients for Thanksgiving bagels and never once mentioned it. But, there’s something really nice in not needing to ask for something because someone who knows and loves you remembers it without asking.

It’s just one of the little pains from the life.

At the first Thanksgiving party, someone I had never met before and I ended up talking about something that led to another person at the party commenting on my mom. It’s always so lovely to hear the memories that others associate with her. It’s a little strange that she is remembered so identically in the minds of so many people, if only because I feel like normally people are crystallized into a single role in others’ minds. The fact that more than a year out, though, people still comment on how much some medical thing my mom did meant to them is lovely.

I’ve been thinking about a post for a little while now about many things, but primarily the idea of greatness and how it is or isn’t somewhat of a curse. In thinking about that post, I realized that mostly, I’m trying to justify to myself whether or not I need to strive for greatness. It’s hard, seeing the incredible impacts my parents have and had on so many people, to not think that I need to do the same. Every time I try to tell myself that their impacts are probably exaggerated, though, I am faced with people who actively dismantle that thought. My mother was a great woman. My father is a great man. I will think more on greatness in that post.

Thanksgiving bagels were fantastic. It’s lovely having a family tradition, and I hope that someday soon I’m able to share that tradition with my own children. It would be somewhat beautiful if I also had to stop it because taking care of children is hard, only for my own son to bring it back as a teenager.

Current Pen List31

  1. who’s about my current height↩

  2. for the purpose of this post, at least↩

  3. my family’s affectionate name for the way we consume leftovers, which is to just put some turkey, dressing (or stuffing, if you’re a strange kind of pedant), green bean casserole, gravy, and potato (or whatever other ingredients are calling out at the moment) into a pan and stir around over heat until at a temperature desired↩

  4. which for whatever reason was really my job the past few years↩

  5. read: didn’t wake up for first rise until 5 am, as opposed to my historic (three??) am↩

  6. and impossible for me to count, apparently. I thought I had twenty four cranberry bagels and actually had 26. Not at all sure why I was completely unable to count↩

  7. cruelly, if you are to ask my brother↩

  8. preferment?↩

  9. I think↩

  10. a relatively normal one, as I understand it↩

  11. as is the norm, now that we’ve moved from using potato water (the water from boiling potato)↩

  12. being totally honest, usually in combination with another ball or two↩

  13. as needed↩

  14. I think he suggested thirds and quarters, but the effect is the same↩

  15. mmmm old word↩

  16. chocolate, naturally,↩

  17. I’m pretty sure everyone there is of age↩

  18. to be fair, jager and fireball apple honestly go pretty well together↩

  19. obviously I didn’t drive↩

  20. given that all four of them said as much↩

  21. people are shocked to hear that the chef, a man who now spends his weekends providing free (delicious and nutritious) meals to local people in need called me a wimp for wanting to go to sleep. It comes from a place of love↩

  22. according to a quick search↩

  23. an intense amount, if my father is to be believed↩

  24. seven dozen, for those keeping score at home↩

  25. nine dozen↩

  26. eleven dozen↩

  27. allegedly don’t↩

  28. a common food in the home, strange for being peeled red potatoes↩

  29. a Thanksgiving exclusive. Apparently not a normal food, but mushrooms simmered in butter for hours on end. Makes a delicious compound butter and a, perhaps unsurprisingly, buttery mushroom↩

  30. berry flavors, to be clear↩

  31. for my own posterity, mostly↩

The Inks I’ve Loved

First Published: 2025 November 28 (I keep forgetting to post)

Draft 1: 24 November 2025

I have been playing around with fountain pens for a little while now,and something I’m beginning to realize is that I want to have a record somewhere of what pens have worked well for me, what inks I love, and the like. With that in mind, today’s post is just going to be the start of the list of inks I love.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I also want to be doing some writing, so let’s talk about ink going forward.

Every month, I’m taking in five five mL samples of ink.1 That means that ideally I’d go through twenty five milliliters of ink monthly, if not a little more to start working through the backlog. I know that’s not true, but I’m not entirely sure how untrue.

I also have the issue that by inking each pen with a different ink, I don’t get the chance to see the way that it behaves with different nibs and feeds. With that in mind, I think that going forward I’d like to start using up each bottle of ink as it comes in, filling all my pens with the same color. Downsides of this are of course that I have only one color of ink at a time. However, I’m really not finding that there are many times in my day to day where I actually want to have multiple colors.

This also comes with the secondary benefit that I am going to be working through the number of inks that I have. Even if the rate of usage doesn’t change, I’m still getting each bottle of ink done with one at a time, and so there’s no chance that the ink can dry.

While I’m here, may as well give a quick review of the two new inks I have in pens.

Shimmer Lilac is a relatively translucent lilac color That is, with the fude pen, I can use it to highlight other text. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially because it’s still perfectly clear and readable.

It also nominally has a gold shimmer to it (little flecks). For whatever reason, I’m not getting a lot of that in the pen so far. Instead, the occasional word is just perfectly golden. If that was an effect I could control, I would absolutely adore it. As it is, though, I find it a little disheartening. Looking at a review of the ink, seems like the color palate I’m seeing is about what they saw as well. It’s also got a fair amount of shading, at least on the notebook paper I’m using right now. Fair amount of what feels like feathering, even though the words themselves aren’t smeared out. Moreso it seems like the ink is clumped around individual fibers?

Zeus Purple is the other color. It’s definitely much closer to red than purple, at least to me. That being said, it does very much read as a sort of greco-roman imperial color. In the pen I have and writing only on printer paper, doesn’t seem to have much by way of shading. Looking at the review, there’s apparently a bronze shimmer/sheen that can show up as well.

It feels at least mostly professional, which is a plus in my book. The lilac, less so.

Inks I’ve Loved

Emerald of Chivor: it’s been a while since I used this ink, but I remember absolutely adoring it every time that I’ve used it.

Monteverde Ocean Noir. I’ve only used this in the fude tip before, but it was just such a beautiful color. Definitely the sort of ink that someone who’s #professional might be using too, which is always nice. A kind of low saturation dark blue.

Current Pen List2

  1. before anyone suggests the obvious solution of stop doing that... no↩

  2. for my own posterity, mostly↩

On Returning to Composing

First Published: 2025 November 23

Draft 1: 23 November 2025

I’m not entirely sure why, but for some reason I cannot seem to remember how to compose. Looking at the timelines, I don’t think that it’s been so long since the last time that I wrote something relatively large. I suppose that I have not been writing any other music lately, so that could be part of it. Still, it seems like there’s got to be more to it.

Since I have no idea what’s going on with composing and the absence of it, I figure now is as good a time as any to consider other composition and analysis tricks I have heard of1. Luckily, the commissioner for the piece has a few pieces that she wanted as inspiration, so I can look at them to hopefully get ideas. Even better, she sent me the text that she wants me to set.

Perhaps I’m struggling because I’m not writing for unaccompanied choir or for myself with whatever instrumentation I feel like on the given day. Instead, I’m writing for solo female voice over pipe organ. I’ve never been good at writing for pipe organ, or really any keyboard. That’s another thing that this score study might help with.

So, what score study am I planning to do?

First, I want to try doing a visualization of the vocal line. My main idea is to have two lines, one for the highest and lowest note that the singer sings. From there, vaguely trace the melodic contour, with space for breath and whatnot. At the end, I’d love to go through and figure out if there is some middle point that the singer hangs out near.

I’m going to do the normal chordal analysis. Luckily, because the pieces I was told to use as reference were originally scored for a full orchestra, I have the advantage that someone else has already done a chord analysis, so I just have to look at the chords they’ve named, and then use that to figure out what the overall structure is. Tbh, I’m kind of hopeful that it won’t be too painful, because I would love to be able to figure out exactly what the chord structure is during this writing time right now.

Given how overwhelmed I felt during mass today, maybe the reason I feel so tired is not just because I generally feel tired or anything like that. It’s entirely possible that I do actually need to be resting more than I have, and that for whatever reason I have not been recovering from overwhelm before going forth again. I have a whole book about that, and I should really like to finish it.

So, when we consider the list of things to do2, I have the draft of the piece that I nominally promised a draft of today. That’s priority one.

I have the book I would like to read about dealing with overwhelm. That realistically belongs as priority two.

I have the general desire to do some more creative writing again. That may be something worth considering, but that’s also probably a low down the priority list item.

I’m going home soon to visit family, so worth making sure my home is in a good state for that. Otherwise, I think that I’m really just good to keep reading through the stack of books I checked out from the library.

...

I was planning to write with a friend, but they’re running very late. I’ve already journaled almost an entire hand written page, and this is far from useful about the concept of composing, which I don’t really feel deserves much more exploration.

Oh!

I have been thinking a lot about this site.

Especially over the summer and early fall, I did a fair amount of relatively in depth/intellectual posts. I don’t think that’s sustainable, both because I don’t have the mental time or energy to devote to considering deep issues daily, and also because there aren’t that many things to consider.

If my current readers (sound off) don’t hate this format, I might consider doing more blog style posts, and then hopefully the constant writing will encourage me to explore the deeper thoughts3 that I want to work through.

Oh!4

I want to generally get into composing again. I’ve been listening to a lot of minimalism lately, especially Reich and different covers5 of Piano Phase. In the weekly album club my family is now doing, I have commented a few times on the fact that older music6 is often much more willing to sit with an idea for a long time than newer music. I don’t generally think that either approach is better, but it’s making me think about Musicking again.7

Small points out that the modern experience of being able to listen to a piece countless times is an anachronism. If I’m going to listen to the same song 100 times, I think that it makes sense to explore any given idea less. In a way, listening to the same song over and over is itself a form of exploring the idea more? Hmm, thinking about listening to a song on repeat as a form of minimalism is something worth thinking about. Especially when I consider the embodied nature of listening to music, the fact that definitionally an environment is changing around me as i listen to a song on loop is something interesting.

also, i’m considering whether doing no caps is a form of writing that appeals to me. it comes up because I didn’t capitalize the i in the last sentence of the above paragraph, and something about it felt right. great question whether or not it will continue as a phase i suppose the other question comes in the form of punctuation

just listend8 to a video this morning about what it means to be a successful writer. in general the answer was writing is successful when it affects others. having a more unique affect is certainly one way to effect things.

Ok but going back to Small

Listening to pieces on loop is a relatively modern idea. Listening to disparate pieces together is incredibly modern. I think about the stories that my dad tells9 about making mix tapes. There’s something fundamentally different, in my experience, in even burning a playlist to a CD compared to just having the playlist on a digital medium. I can’t imagine how much more different it felt before music was all digital and easily shifted onto a mix.

The fact that it’s almost easier10 to listen to different parts of an album separated than together these days perhaps does something to explain why the album is dying. By that, I mean that like rock operas are clearly a story told through an album. Even non-rock opera, though, tended to have a clear thematic through line. A video essayist I really appreciate11 somewhat bemoaned the death of the album.

Something I’m thinking about, too, is the soccer web novel I’m reading.12 One of the chapters focuses on our MC, a brash twenty-something, interacting with an older musician. They meet in a record shop, and there are a few pages13 of discussion about the way that listening to a vinyl is a fundamentally different experience to streaming. The embodied nature of putting a record into the player, and then having to carefully place the needle, is used very briefly as a metaphor.

Sorry, where was I going with this?

Uhhhh...

Records don’t exist anymore. Don’t listen to songs how they were composed. Exploring an idea.

Oh!

So yeah, as I’m listening to a lot of early minimalism and really loving the slow nature of the change they use, I’m considering what that could mean for me as a person composing my own music. The VST for choral words I got seems like it’s going to be a bit of a pain to figure out, but part of that may also be the composition workflow I use and that they assume I’ll use. My issue yesterday14 centered around the fact that if a single syllable was wrong, it’s really hard to fix it in context. I’m sure that as I use the software more, I’ll be better at knowing how what I type translates into what I hear. It’s also possible that they expect me to be generating the piece word by word, rather than having all the notes and words, and only then putting them together.

I’m also now thinking about the ways that I can sample with these. It’s trivial, as it turns out, to have a virtual choir sing at any arbitrary tempo. Something that’s fun to explore in minimalism is two voices with slightly different tempi. The way that they phase in and out of sync with each other causes some fun things to appear.

Ok so that’s a thing I can do.

I can also try finally getting a recording of the pieces I wrote. If the VST ends up any good, I can recommend it to my college director, who a few years ago now sent me the best bet he had for doing auto-singing. If it becomes something I can do with any real speed, it’s worth considering doing it as a side hustle; I know that at least one of the choirs I sing for spends money to get practice tapes15 for people to practice with on their own. It feels rational that I would be able to undercut whatever price they pay, but then we get into the fun conversation about morality and ethics and taking work from performers by using machines.

Anyways.

Friend has arrived, so this draft is done.

Current Pen List16

  1. or, at least, think that I have heard of↩

  2. which maybe should go somewhere not archived into eternity↩

  3. I promise that I have↩

  4. I do appreciate that I jump scare myself when I page back and forth between this post and other pages↩

  5. versions? recordings? great q↩

  6. in specific, David Bowie’s Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust↩

  7. I will become insufferable about this book, I can already tell. If only I was sorry↩

  8. and spelling, i guess↩

  9. told? it’s been a while since the last time I recall him mentioning them↩

  10. most streaming services default into some variation of a shuffle with other artists↩

  11. lmk if you want the link, I think that I mostly have him from some social commentary, but he does a lot with rap and R&B and the general Black music scene. He’s old enough to have lived through these changes that I write about, and he also comments on some of them, from the obviously older perspective↩

  12. hmmm maybe sitting down for hours at a time to just let my thoughts percolate is actually a good thing for me. Who could have ever imagined??↩

  13. note: the fact that the way I read this book is as text posts on Patreon doesn’t affect me calling them pages. Embodiment is real, but so is analogy↩

  14. post blog↩

  15. though, I doubt it’s ever instantiated onto physical media↩

  16. for my own posterity, mostly↩

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