A celebration in my head

Elena would have been 27 today.

That just blows my mind.

She’s been dead a little over twenty years and there are days that I think of her and smile.

I just told someone the story of the lady who came up to Elena while we were in Heinens just before Christmas and told her that she should get her dad to buy her some of those beautiful strawberries.

“Oh no,” Elena said, “we don’t buy fruit out of season.”

I’m sure I’ve told you that story before and I’m sure I change the details every time I tell it - but it was something like that and it still makes me smile.

Being a dad

In my mind Elena is still six.

“Daddy,” the voice in my head says.

“What, baby?” I prompt.

“I’m almost seven,” she says with her hands on her hips.

I smile and look up at her on the landing and put my cup of coffee down on a nearby table.

I know what’s coming. I don’t always, but when she’s on the fourth or fifth step she calls out, “catch me” and leaps in my direction.

I hold her in my arms and feel complete. Nothing makes me feel more like a dad than when I’m carrying one of my girls.

Even the memory brings it all back.

I feel so good.

And then the smile fades from my face. It’s been twenty years since I saw her last.

“I’m almost seven,” she said and it was indeed a little over a week away.

I remember then that she never made it to seven.

You never know

Before Kim and I became parents we were visiting friends talking to their six year old.

We were already well into the process of adopting our first child and here we were visiting a family with three adopted kids and one not adopted.

Kim smiled and told him that he had helped convince her.

“Well,” he said, “that’s true. But you never know what you’re going to get.”

We looked at him looking all serious and full of wisdom and knew that he was right.

You never know what you’re going to get whether your child is adopted or not.

We were lucky.

Maggie is my favorite adult in the whole world.

I’m certain, if Elena was with us, it would have been a tie.

Of course, if Kim was with us, it would have been a three way photo finish perhaps with one pulling ahead now and then but all running neck and neck, day after day.

But Elena never made it to seven.

I have no regrets on the things we did during her short life, only sadness that it wasn’t longer.

I wonder what sort of twenty-seven year old she would have become.

Happy Birthday, Baby.

“Daddy,” the voice in my head says, still with the timbre of a six year old, “I’m not a baby anymore.”

I know baby. You’re forever six.

Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 310. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe

Green Eggs

In math we use x, y and other letters to stand in for the thing we don’t know - the thing that can change - the thing that is variable.

Don’t worry, this isn’t an essay about math.

But maybe you remember the point-slope equation of a line: y = mx + b. In this equation m stands for the slope and b stands for the value where the line intersects the y-axis. x can be anything.

“But Daniel,” you ask, “when am I ever going to use math in real life.”

I don’t know, but in the classic book on coming to grips with internal biases, x is replaced by “Green Eggs and Ham.”

Green Eggs and Ham aren’t really Green Eggs and Ham. It’s a variable that can stand for anything.

You know people who are sure they object to something – “Those people shouldn’t be allowed to …”.

“Those people” are the m and b, the thing they shouldn’t be allowed to do is x - or if you like - Green Eggs and Ham.

And that’s why, Sam I am, I do not like Green Eggs and Ham.

But, what if they do it way over there? It doesn’t affect you, why do you care?

It does not affect me and yet I care Even if they do it way over there I do not want them doing it any where I do not like Green Eggs and Ham And I don’t care for libs like you Sam I am.

Dr. Seuss, it turns out, was way ahead of his time. He was Orwell but constrained to using 100 or less.

Jesse

With the passing of Jesse Jackson, many of us took a moment to think back on our memories of his life.

One of the things that popped into my head was his appearance on Saturday Night Live after Dr. Seuss died to read “Sam I Am”.

He read it with the same cadence as his poem “I am … Somebody.”

It was a parody of himself and he was all in.

Dr. Seuss wrote about those who would not, could not in a boat, with a goat, in a box, or with a fox.

In the childrens’ book the illustrations show the boat and goat, but they’re variables. Any adult reading it night after night realizes they could be replaced by anything.

Sam’s companion doesn’t like Green Eggs and Ham and there are things that their child doesn’t like.

Spoiler alert - the book ends when the hold-out tries Green Eggs and Ham and finds that it’s pretty good.

The parent with depth looks inside of themselves at the things they’re sure they don’t like but have never tried.

How have they convinced themselves that they don’t like this thing?

Somebody

In the early 70’s, long before his two runs for president, Jesse Jackson worked with communities to change the lives of many.

He frequently recited the poem, “I am … Somebody.”

We all spend so much of our days berating ourselves putting ourselves down and believing what we tell ourselves.

The poem reminds each of us, “I am…Somebody”.

It’s sad that we need to remind ourselves that “I am … Somebody”.

It’s sad that we look at others without seeing that they are … Somebody.

It’s not just us that beat up on ourselves. Our leaders and others spend much of the day elevating themselves by convincing us that we aren’t somebody.

As my friend Mark noted, telling us we’re second or third class so often that we’re conditioned to believe it.

And so the poem turns to those who may be poor, young, or small. It speaks to those who may have made mistakes. It calls out those whose clothes, face, or hair is different.

To each of those Jesse would say “I am…” and wait for them to reply “Somebody.”

Say

Dr. Seuss drew characters that weren’t a particular race or color. Often the characters were genderless.

We could see ourselves in those characters. We could see the people around us in those characters.

What happens when someone who is different from you realizes they are somebody?

Like the reluctant Green Egg and Ham eater in that book, we pause and smile and say,

It DOES affect me and I care Even if they do it way over there I want them to know they are somebody Yes I do I want them doing it everywhere

I like this Green Eggs and Ham I wonder what else I like - Sam I am.

Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 309. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe

Ham and Eggs

In the book I just finished, the detective was also a great cook. She spends much of the mystery cooking for her chief suspects who tell her that she should open a restaurant.

Of course restaurant cooking is different from home cooking. Sure, someone from either world could be successful in the other but they are really different things.

I’ve brought lessons from restaurant cooking back into my kitchen. It’s important to know that many of the ideas are the same but the implementations are necessarily different.

So when a guest tells a serious home cook that they should open a restaurant, the home cook should smile and say thank you. The home cook should not consider opening a restaurant. The well-meaning guest has nothing invested in this suggestion.

This is the classic example from Scrum of the chicken and pig planning to open a breakfast restaurant named “Ham and Eggs”.

The point of the story is that the chicken is involved but the pig is committed.

Restaurant cooking isn’t about preparing a single dish or two that you plan and execute on your own time table at home. You need to create a solid menu where each dish is cooked the same night after night while food costs are kept down.

You need to have timing down so that all of the courses ordered by a table are properly spaced and all of the dishes in a course come out at the same time.

The stress level is high and the margins are slim. In other words, there’s no space for chickens in the restaurant business.

Home cooking

As a serious home cook and baker, I’m more interested in the other direction.

When I meet a friend for an outstanding meal, I want to know how I can achieve something like that in my own kitchen.

A waiter at the Barbary in London spent quite a bit of time writing out the specialty spices they use. And then he pointed out some of the equipment they were using to produce these amazing dishes.

Even if I could source the ingredients, I don’t have the specialty equipment or the expertise to use them.

They can spend hours prepping a sauce that is added to a plate because they’re going to sell hundreds of that item this week. It makes no sense for me to put that kind of time into one of many components in a complicated dish.

And yet sometimes I do.

I recently was invited over to help cook a dish with a fair number of ingredients.

I arrived on time at six o’clock and we immediately started the prep.

Tomatoes were boiled briefly and then peeled and de-seeded. Spices were blended and warmed over a gentle flame.

Chicken was browned, onions were diced and sweated along with microplaned ginger and minced garlic.

There were preserved lemons, cauliflower, tomato paste, chicken stock, and ingredients I’m not remembering.

By the time that everything had been cut, and prepped, and assembled, the final dish went in at eight.

Can you imagine getting to a restaurant at six and being told at eight that the dish is just going in.

Twenty minutes later something had to be added to the dish and another twenty minutes later it was supposed to be ready.

But it wasn’t.

Some of the ingredients weren’t quite done and the sauce hadn’t developed.

In for another twenty minutes.

At that point, we’d snacked a bit and agreed that neither of us were that hungry.

This would never fly in a restaurant and yet it was absolutely fine in the context of a home kitchen where we were just cooking for ourselves.

Longevity

As much as I try to bring my experience cooking in restaurants home, restaurant cooking and home cooking are very different.

Last week I took an online pull-noodle class to learn biang-biang noodles and lamien noodles.

I’ve been obsessed with pull noodles for twenty years since I first saw a demonstration in Las Vegas. Last year I took a class on biang-biang noodles but I resolved that this was the year I’d learn to make lamien noodles.

The master takes a rope of dough, stretches it, doubles it over, stretches it some more, and so on. Before you know it, there are 1024 spaghetti thin strands of dough.

I know this takes years of practice and knew we weren’t going to make that. But I thought we were going to get close.

A day before class, the teacher sent us the materials for the two hour class and there was no dramatic pulling.

Sigh. This class is going to be a waste of time. There’s none of that dramatic pulling I’m looking forward to. Even the biang-biang doesn’t have the part where you bang the noodle on the counter.

Man was I wrong.

The teacher was amazing. She had completely thought out the process from the perspective of the home cook.

In a restaurant it makes total sense to use those flashier methods because the process must be repeated.

Not in the home. Our teacher said, oil gets everywhere. There’s no sense in making a mess like that.

The class began on time at seven. We made the dough, rested it, and rolled it into a long log. We oiled the dough, coiled it up on a plate, and went off to make some of the other ingredients for our dinner.

Then we went back to the dough. As we picked up the coil you could feel the dough start to stretch.

The teacher had us pull it in sections until it was about finger width. Maybe it was three feet long at that point.

We folded the dough back and forth on itself in six inch sections.

“Don’t worry,” our teacher said, “the oil will keep the strands separate.”

We pulled at each end of the six inch blob until it was about a foot, doubled it over and pulled again.

We repeated this process several times and then eased the blob into boiling water.

A quick stir with a pair of chopsticks and the noodles separated into one really long noodle. It wasn’t spaghetti shaped and it was thicker than the professionals but it was perfectly engineered for the home cook.

The class ended exactly on time at nine and we had two sets of noodle dishes. The lamien was served in a soup and the biang-biang were coated with a chili sauce.

It was such a great lesson in adapting techniques from one setting to work well in another.

Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 308. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe

The studio

When I was in LA, my brother and sister-in-law took me along to visit with a photographer whose work they admired.

His work was stunning. You’d find yourself captivated - lost in thought - almost meditating as you looked at each one.

He’d thoughtfully answer questions about the scenes and what he was doing and what he was thinking.

Often there was a person in the scene but the scene wasn’t about that person. It’s hard to describe because the person often changed the way you saw the scene around them.

He’d gone to a location that interested him and waited. He waited for the light to hit it a certain way or for a person and their story to enter the scene.

As always, what made each image great were the thousands of pictures he hadn’t taken, the hundreds he hadn’t printed, and the decisions he made when editing and printing.

The wait

Kim and I got married in 1993. There were digital cameras then but most of us were still shooting on film.

We took two cameras with us on our honeymoon. One was loaded with color film and the other with black and white.

Isn’t that something.

In those days you had to decide ahead of time whether you were taking color or black and white.

Oh, also, if you wanted this picture to be color then all of the pictures you took on this roll of film (24 or 36) were also in color.

If that surprises you, you’re never going to believe this. You would take a picture and have no idea if it was any good or not for quite a while.

You had to wait until you’d used up all of the film in the camera and left it somewhere to be developed.

In those days, people would come back from vacation with a couple of pictures left on their roll and take more pictures to use up the film so they could get it developed.

Distance

The photographer I went to visit takes advantage of all of the new tools while inserting time in the process.

It’s still as long or longer between the time that he takes the pictures and when we see the pictures.

He gets immediate feedback on what he’s shot and decides to make adjustments or keep shooting and so he is able to capture what he thinks he wants.

And then he puts them away and doesn’t look at them.

I do this when writing my books. Suppose I write a sentence like this:

“It’s been a long since I wrote these words.”

I meant to write “It’s been a long time…”. If I look at that sentence too soon, I will subconsciously insert the word “time” in my head while reading it back. The word still won’t be on the page and the reader will be puzzled (“one star - he only writes down some of the words”).

If I let it sit for a while, then when I come back to that sentence I’m more likely to see the missing word and fix it.

That’s what the photographer does.

The in between

The photographer creates the picture and edits the picture.

He knows that these are activities that must be separated by time - almost performed by two sides of himself.

After creating, he lets the pictures sit.

And then he goes back and looks at them with fresh eyes.

When he finds one that speaks to him, he stops and looks at it and makes decisions about how to print it.

He has a huge printer just for this purpose.

Once he’s printed it he studies it some more. How it looks on a screen and how it looks on paper can be different.

Adjustments - adjustments - adjustments.

I loved the afternoon we spent in his studio.

I’ll never be able to take the pictures that he takes. I don’t have the eye.

But we all can take way more pictures than we think we need, glance at them and make adjustments.

We can come back to them much later and save some and delete others.

We can decide which ones to edit and what to apply.

We can and should curate more of our lives.

Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 307. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe

The dog

On my way back from grocery shopping Sunday - no meat and eggs were on manager’s special for 99 cents/dozen and still the bill was over $100. Weren’t people mad about the price of groceries during the last administration.

You can’t let me interrupt myself like that; I’ll never finish.

I turned onto my street and there was a large white car stopped about halfway down the block with the driver side door open.

I signalled left to turn into my driveway and a woman got out of the car holding a dog and waved at me.

I stopped, rolled my window down - well, we don’t roll windows down any more. I pressed the button and the window went down.

She was saying something that I didn’t hear so I stopped the engine and stepped out of my car.

“Do you know whose dog this is?” she asked.

I told her I thought I did and started towards a neighbor’s house when two people came out looking for the dog and were relieved to be reunited with it.

We each walked back to our cars and waved at each other.

I wondered if I would have stopped if I’d seen a dog walking around on a street I didn’t live on and go to that effort to reunite it with its owner.

The driveway

I should have told you that Sunday it was 15 degrees F / -9.5 degrees C with over a foot of snow on the ground.

This woman was well dressed, in a nice coat, holding a dog that wasn’t hers.

I turned into my driveway and tapped the garage door opener.

I should have told you that I’d been gone for two weeks. I was in Singapore for a week and then LA for a week.

The foot of snow had fallen in Cleveland a week earlier as I spent the weekend in Anaheim.

“Hmmm,” I thought, “I don’t get home for a week. I hope the snow melts by then.”

Nope. The temperatures stayed well below freezing for that week and are likely to stay there this week and part of next.

I flew home this past Saturday.

Before boarding the plane I checked the light rail schedule and saw that because of the cold, some of the rail service was replaced by buses.

I texted Gary. He runs a car hire. “Sorry,” he texted back, “I can’t help you this time.”

I installed the Uber app in my phone and set a price limit. If it’s more than this I’ll take the bus and Rapid.

It wasn’t. The price was $33 and came with a $12 discount so for a little over $20 I rode home in the comfort of Emanuel’s car.

“You won’t be able to pull in the driveway,” I said. “I’ve been gone since it snowed - I’ll be shoveling all day tomorrow.”

When we pulled up in front of my house, my driveway was cleared. Someone had also cleared a path to my front door from the driveway.

I can’t say that I would have done this for a neighbor.

Good things

It’s probably more accurate to say, with the dog and the driveway, I don’t know that it would have occurred to me to do this for a neighbor.

I love doing things for other people.

Part of it is I appreciate how much other people do for me.

I was on a bus in LA last week and it turned left when it should have gone straight and it pulled over and everyone got out.

I was confused. The driver stood up and came back to tell me, “sorry friend but this is as far as I go. This bus is out of service.”

I clearly looked confused so he pointed across the street and told me where to pick up the bus that went the rest of the way.

It wasn’t just him.

My brother and I had gotten on the bus headed the other way. We each had money and contactless credit cards but only I had the special TAP card they want you to use on buses.

“Should I tap twice,” I asked.

“Just once,” he answered, “both of you can ride.”

Before you think I’ve gone all soft on you, let me say that I know there are jerks in this world. The news is filled with stories of people doing awful things.

But mostly there are good people doing good things. And there are good people who would do more good things if it occurred to them. The way we help these things occur to them is we do good things for them.

I learned a new word this week on the Scriptnotes podcast. One of the hosts read from a piece by Kevin Kelly that contained the word “pronoia”.

It’s the opposite of paranoia. With pronoia you have a feeling that other people are out to help you.

That’s the world I want to encourage and live in.

Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 306. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe

Our moral crisis

When Elena died nearly twenty years ago -

I know. It’s unbelievable that it’s been that long.

Anyway, we had to wait for the coroner’s office to examine her body before it was released to us to be buried.

It was a horror on top of the other horrors that Kim and I were dealing with but we took a breath and we understood.

When a child dies suddenly and unexpectedly, the authorities want to make sure that the parents were not abusing or otherwise mistreating the child - particularly if those parents are responsible for other children.

So, as much as it shook us to think about officials examining this child’s body or that we could be suspected of such a thing, it made sense to us that this was the proper thing to do.

I can’t, on the other hand, understand in the wake of the killing of Renee Good that officials decided to investigate her widow and not the man who shot her to death or the circumstances that surrounded the shooting.

How could her widow’s political leanings have led to her being shot?

Let me be clear here - if you think you have an answer to that question, or, despite the video evidence to the contrary believe she was trying to run over the officers, we will never understand each other.

If you think, “well both sides…”, please understand we won’t be able to have a civil discussion.

As Bernice King reminded us this week, “What we are witnessing now (masked raids, people taken without due process, vigilante, Gestapo, and slave patrol-like tactics normalized under the color of law) is a moral crisis.”

“Daniel,” you say, “you’re bumming me out.”

Yeah. It’s a moral crisis.

Kyle

Five and a half years ago, Kyle Rittenhouse travelled from Antioch, Illinois to Kenosha, Wisconsin with an AR-15 style assault rifle to “protect local businesses.”

Across state lines.

He shot three people and killed two of them.

He was acquitted for self defense.

None of the people who are today asking what Renee Good was doing there were then asking what Kyle Rittenhouse was doing where he was.

He wouldn’t have had to argue self-defense if he hadn’t travelled to patrol the streets of someone else’s town - unbidden - with an assault rifle.

I remember the images of him carrying a gun walking the streets.

When I asked what he was doing driving towards trouble and carrying a gun, I was told it’s our second amendment rights to do so.

It could be time for a well-regulated militia but Pam Bondi tells Governor Walz that it’s not.

My mind is everywhere. It hardly knows where to be.

Alex

Somehow the image of Kyle carrying his gun is linked in my mind to the government complaining that Alex was carrying a gun.

Alex?

Alex Pretti, the nurse who stepped forward to help a woman who was being pepper sprayed this week. He had his phone in one hand and nothing in the other hand.

Despite video evidence of this, the government claims he was brandishing a gun - not an assault weapon like Kyle Rittenhouse - a pistol. They claim he was threatening the officers.

They wrestled him to the ground. They subdued him. They took his gun. And then, when he was no threat to anyone, he was shot to death.

Well he was never a threat to anyone.

What about the officer who shot him? What happened to him?

Action

The man who killed Kim nearly ten years ago -

I know. It’s unbelievable that it’s been that long.

Anyway, he spent three days in jail and his insurance paid some money in a settlement.

I’m told that it meant he had trouble getting work driving trucks after he ran her over. That felt appropriate given that he hit her when taking his eyes off the road to reach for the mobile phone that he’d dropped on the floor.

The man who killed Renee Good won’t spend that long in jail and didn’t miss work. He looked at the woman he killed and called her a “fucking bitch.”

I felt that slap in the face six hundred miles away.

The man who killed Alex Pretti walked away from the scene without even preserving evidence so it could be properly investigated.

In her statement Bernice King reminds us that “Nonviolence demands more than outrage; it demands action.”

Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 305. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe

The wandering mind

I’ve been trying meditation again lately.

Man, do I suck at it.

It turns out, we all suck at it.

Our mind is going to wander. The process of meditation is noticing when your mind wanders and returning to your home base. For many people, the home base is the breath.

What a lot of us do is we notice our mind has wandered and then we berate ourselves for that. So more time is spent away from our breath. Five minutes of this can go by quite quickly. The time you’ve decided to spend meditating can be both short and valuable. Don’t waste it thinking about stuff like this.

I’m writing this essay on a flight to Singapore.

I flew from Cleveland to Chicago and then Chicago to San Francisco.

I was supposed to land in San Francisco at one terminal and then have forty-five minutes to get to the international terminal before the Singapore bound plane stopped boarding.

More than that, I looked at the history of the flight and 30% of the time the Chicago to San Francisco flight was 45 minutes or more late.

I worried about making my connection off and on for a week.

The plane took off from Chicago late after stopping for de-icing.

We landed and the pilot said we were ten minutes early and our gate had changed.

I was the second person off the plane and the flight to Singapore was a three minute walk.

All that time spent worrying about something I couldn’t do anything about.

All that time spent worrying about something that never happened.

Returning

Meditation is like a microcosm of this. We sit and deliberately notice when the mind wanders.

What should we do when it does?

Notice and bring it back.

Your mind will wander. That’s what it does.

You are asking it to do something extraordinary when you sit to meditate.

People use all sorts of words to describe the practice. The one that seems to have stuck is mindfulness.

I think of it as paying attention.

I’ve been listening to meditations led by Joseph Goldstein lately and I’ve noticed a couple of things.

First, he talks about “the body”. Notice the body. Not “your” body. Despite everything I’ve learned about writing, he uses the passive voice and takes “you” out of it.

When I (there I am again) heed his advice, I notice a big difference. Keeping me out of it and just passively noting things keeps me from going down rabbit holes in which I’m essentially imagining stories about me.

The second thing he recommends is to quickly label your diversions and get back to the breath.

When you notice that your mind has wandered and you are getting caught up in your thoughts, have your internal voice whisper the word “Thinking” and return to the breath.

That one word is amazing. There’s no saying to yourself, “I’m so stupid, why can’t I focus, why am I…”. You whisper “Thinking” and it’s like popping that thought. You are free to return to the breath. Literally secods later when your mind wanders again, you notice, you say “Thinking”, and you return.

Sometimes there’s am underlying reason for your wandering. In that case, if it’s obvious, you can give it a name. You can whisper “Feeling sad” or “Feeling anxious” or whatever.

You don’t take time to analyze it. You just notice, speak it’s name, and return to the breath.

Reconcile

My third word this year is “attention” and it’s short for “Pay attention to what you pay attention to.”

Notice when your mind has these thoughts. Maybe I can’t stop myself from worrying about a tight connection but I can notice when I am worrying and say to myself, “Nonproductive worrying” and let it go.

I knew that I could have rebooked so that I was taking an earlier flight so that I’d have longer in San Francisco. When I decided not to do that, I needed to also make the decision that I wouldn’t worry about it.

The point is not that we shouldn’t worry - we’re going to worry. But do something about it or don’t.

We had a neighbor whose toilet broke while they were gone and the water ran out of the toilet on the third floor and caused damage to their whole house.

I worried about that. So when I travel, I turn off the water main to my house. Now I don’t worry about that anymore.

I’ve been keeping a daily log that’s based a bit on the process of selling, scheduling, and running ads on the radio. I’ve wanted to build this app for twenty years.

Maybe I will.

For now, I’m using a variant of something Mike Rohde demonstrated as a variant of the bullet journal.

On the left page he lists the things he hopes to accomplish in several categories. This past week my categories were Dim Sum (things I need to do for my company), Travel (getting ready for this trip), Projects (courses I’m preparing and books I’m writing), and Personal (stuff I do for myself).

On the left page I have a vertical timeline and I rough out when I think I will do some of the big items.

On the left page is my Log. There’s a vertical timeline and I note what I actually did at every moment of the day.

At the end of each week I look back and notice which items tended to get pushed off or not done and which items sort of appeared out of no where and took up time in my day.

This is called reconciling the log where I compare what I planned to what I actually did.

This is where I pay attention to what I pay attention to.

I note it and I return to living my life.

Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 304. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe

Breaking an old one

Last week about midway through my essay I wrote, “And so, my first word for 2025 is ‘Happiness’.”

Right away - like within ten minutes of pressing “Send”, three people had written to tell me about it.

I look at that as both good news and bad news.

The good news is - people are reading this and care about what I have to say.

The bad news is, once I’ve pressed “Send” I have no way to fix a mistake.

It’s like the old days when you’d be a week into the new year and you’re still writing last year’s date on your checks.

“Daniel,” no one writes checks anymore.

Anyway, I’d been writing or typing 2025 for a year and it had become a habit.

Little did they know, my second word for 2026 (HA - got it), is “Habit.”

Like teeth

It wouldn’t occur to me to go to bed at night without brushing my teeth. I also brush my teeth first thing in the morning.

I never think to myself, “Oh, I’m too tired, I’ll just skip it.” It would be unthinkable to get into bed without brushing my teeth.

I know I wasn’t born that way. People don’t begin life conditioned to brushing their teeth. So how do I incorporate other things with the same almost autonomic commitment?

In a recent podcast episode on habits, Andrew Huberman talked about breaking the day up into three parts. You should tackle the habits that have the greatest friction in the first eight hours after you wake up. Put the “nice to do” ones in the second eight hours.

Everything falls apart for me in the third eight hours. More honestly about midway through that second eight hours, I’m sitting on the couch pretending to do some work with the television on in the background.

It’s become as much of a habit as brushing my teeth. It’s sits there along side with taking my phone out of my pocket every three minutes. These are habits I’m looking to break this year.

So could anyone

For the most part I’ve taken my phone out and am looking at the screen without having anything particular in mind. It wasn’t purposeful.

As for TV, I’m mostly letting some algorithm or another set my playlist. It’s mainly british mysteries and panel shows, but lately whoever is programming my life seems to have found every version or cover of Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten” and decided I need to listen to it.

Before that it was every version or cover of the Pogues “Fairytale of New York.”

Even if I’m not paying attention, I become aware of the song as the male character sings, “I could have been someone.”

I look up at the screen as the female character responds, “Well, so could anyone.”

So could anyone.

Step one is probably to turn this thing off. Well stay for the rest of the song - the end of that stanza will tear out your heart.

Now turn it off.

It’s like writing 2025 - breaking habits is hard.

The habit habit

Huberman suggest you choose six new habits you want to adopt and do them all.

Every day for the next twenty-one day, do four of your habits.

Which one should you do? I’ll say more about that next week when I tell you word number three - but the answer is, it doesn’t really matter.

Here are the habits I’ve been working on this year.

Keep a daily journal where I plan out my day and track what I’ve done. Also, keep a sketch journal where I draw one or more sketches and write some words down on a page every day.

I’ve been meditating in between my last two trips from my bed to the bathroom each morning and then doing Yoga or Tai Chi.

I’ve been working on my drawing and handwriting and I’ve been taking a walk everyday.

Well - that’s what I meant to do. We’re more than half of the way to twenty-one days and I haven’t gone on a walk once.

I’ve done most of the rest of them every day. Many of them feel as if they’re becoming habits.

Six habits? That’s nuts.

Maybe.

But Huberman says the habit we’re working on is the habit of habits.

So far, I’m liking it enough that it’s my second word of the year.

Will I keep any of these habits up? I don’t know. I think so, but I don’t know.

The current earworm from Natasha tells me that “Today is where your book begins, the rest is still unwritten.”

Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 303. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe

New Year’s Eve

I woke up on New Year’s Eve, came downstairs, made coffee and face-timed with Kevin.

Kevin and I met in college more than 45 years ago and started face-timing when we’re both available a few times a week.

His wife doesn’t understand how we have anything to talk about. I can’t remember a time when it’s been a problem. It makes me happy to have this friendship that spans nearly half a century.

After we finished, I made a second cup of coffee decided to start work on my next book.

I’ve been giving workshops on App Intents for a year and so the basic shape of the book and the example I would use was already pretty well thought out. By now I knew which pieces of the sample project weren’t important to what I was teaching and so I took them out.

It would take me days to get the code into shape, but I really enjoy the process of writing something, figuring out what I did wrong, and then writing some more.

I can’t be sure, but I think I was smiling while typing. That kind of puzzle solving makes me happy.

Josh called - we have a bi-weekly phone call just to catch up. I’ve probably only known him for a decade or so, but again, there’s nothing better than catching up with a friend.

I went to the gym. You know that makes me happy. Not going there - but being there.

I came home and tried a new recipe for a Rhode Island Strip. It’s a cheese-less pizza - a tomato pie. I saw the recipe on King Arthur Flour’s YouTube channel and it looked good.

I let it cool, wrapped it in tin foil and brought it and some Cinnamon/Star Anise Beef Soup to my friend Rick and Laurie’s house. We’ve been sharing a New Year’s Eve meal most years for decades. I’ve known him for more than forty years - I’ve known her for sixty-four years.

We watched our college football team lose a painful game and then I drove home in a blizzard on roads so treacherous that my speed sometimes dipped to below fifteen miles an hour and the car still slid a bit back and forth.

Still, if you ask me, despite the weather and the game - when I went upstairs to bed well before midnight I was happy.

Words

You know by now that I don’t make resolutions. Instead I follow a practice that Chris Brogan created in which I choose three words to guide me through the year.

They are little reminders of things I want to pay attention to and to use to attenuate my behavior.

And so, my first word for 2025 is “Happiness.”

“Daniel,” you say, “are you out of your ever-loving mind? Have you read the news?”

I have to admit, I almost changed this word after the US attack on Venezuela.

It was one of those lines that was crossed where I stopped and looked at my government differently.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t seen how awful they’ve been since the start. But this was my Wiley E. Coyote moment when I’m hanging in mid air with my legs spinning and I look down.

I started to drop.

I’d been looking at stoves. My ANOVA oven is dying and I’ve been experimenting with induction burners so I thought I would replace my old gas range with an induction range and had picked one out.

But Venezuela.

What if I have to flee? I don’t want to spend all that money on a new stove and then leave it in my house.

From me to you

My friend Johanna had sent me an email on New Year’s Eve that ended, “Let’s try to make 2026 even better for us, and then for the world.”

It reminded of those airline safety instructions I’ve mentioned before.

If the oxygen masks drop, you’re to put yours on and then help your child or others around you.

You have to take care of yourself in order to take care of others.

So - happiness.

I was taking a walk with a friend on my 65th birthday and he mentioned that he was trying to sell me on hedonism.

That’s not what I mean by happiness.

I don’t plan to prioritize the pursuit of pleasure - although there’s an argument in favor of that if things are coming to an end.

I mean that I should take more time to do the simple things that make me happy and I should note those moments.

I shouldn’t worry if the Buckeyes lose again. Once I’m home safely, I should shake off that awful ride. I should hold on to the memories of a wonderful evening with friends.

I still don’t like going places but I do like being there. I need to focus on the “there” part. Time with friends, walks, bike rides, and time at the gym, cooking and baking, reading a book (yes listening to an audio book counts), traveling to new places, and revisiting familiar ones.

I need to remember the things that make me happy - and make sure I include time in my day, my week, my year, for all of them.

To paraphrase Johanna, I will try to make 2026 happier for me, for us, and then for the world.

Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 302. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe

Things change

Yesterday the temperature dropped from 59 degrees to 23 degrees. It was negative 7 with the wind chill from the high winds that accompanied the drop.

Using numbers everyone but americans understand, that’s 15 to -5 with a wind chill of -21.7.

Some changes are forced on us by things outside of our control. Believe me, if I were in charge of the weather, we’d be in the 55 - 75 degree range (12.8 - 24) most of the year.

When things change - for the better, for the worse, or just change - we can choose to view it as a fresh start.

Last year I turned 65 and qualified for Medicare. Along with my particular plan came a free membership in a fancy gym that was way too expensive for me to join otherwise.

Fresh start.

I started going five or six times a week. I lifted weights, I took yoga classes, and best of all, I finished many workouts lying back in the hydro-massage chairs.

If I wasn’t afraid of being kicked out of the gym, I would have flipped over when I was done with my back and done my front too.

I ended this year lighter and stronger than I’ve been in years.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m neither light nor strong. But I’ve moved in the right direction.

It’s not just the new start, it’s that more than a year later I’m still going to the gym five or six times a week.

I would be lighter and perhaps stronger if I hadn’t eaten my way through my seven weeks in Europe this fall - but who are we kidding.

Medicare provided a fresh start and I maintained the habit for more than a year.

Fresh starts

Katie Milkman has studied this phenomenon of fresh starts. She’s looked at why we choose to make resolutions at the beginning of the year.

In a paper she co-authored, The Fresh Start Effect: Temporal Landmarks Motivate Aspirational Behavior they say that these temporal landmarks “open new accounting periods.”

You can put your past “failures” in the past and start with a fresh slate. Also, an occasion such as a job change, a birth, a death, or a significant birthday can focus you on the big picture where you can commit to bigger changes.

They list events that include, “beginning of a new week, month, year, and school semester, as well as immediately following a public holiday, a school break, or a birthday.”

Beginning of a new week.

I like that.

Each week we get to look back at the previous week and resolve to do better next week.

We don’t have to wait for a new year.

Kim used to have one of those calendars that showed a week at a time. When she turned the page to see what the new week had in store for her, it was a fresh start.

Check the pantry

Last week, before it got warm and rainy here, it was so, so cold.

Maggie requested I make a cinnamon beef soup so I went to the store to pick up ingredients. I decided to make a chicken ramen as well.

When I got home I realized I should have checked my cupboard before shopping. I now have three bags of star anise and two jars of beef “Better than Bouillon”.

I looked at the old jar of the beef base and saw that it expired in 2020. I’m not very strict about expiration dates but this one seemed to be long enough ago that I pitched the old jar and used the new one.

Fresh start.

I used up one of the old bags of star anise and soon the kitchen was filled with amazing smells.

Next time I need to check what I have before heading to the store.

Start again

The days are getting longer. They’re still too short, but every day is longer than the day before.

Now that my gym routine is settled, I need to vary it.

My friend James described a workout routine he is trying and so I’ve modified mine to match.

I don’t think his is better or worse than mine - but different means that I’m paying more attention and that makes it better. In a few months I’ll shake it up again.

I didn’t wait til a new year, new month, or new week to make the change. I talked to him on FaceTime about it and went to the gym the next day and tried it.

I need to add cardio and maybe spend some time in the steam room or sauna.

There’s a new year coming up but every day is an opportunity to make a change.

I think I’ll make a fresh start today.

Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 301. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe