sounds familiar

Someone asked me, maybe even in a slightly challenging way, what hobbies I have. Before answering, I knew there was more behind the question than just what was asked. What was asked was, “What hobbies do you have?” The part that I felt was implied, but not voiced, was, “What hobbies do you have that keep your body active?” Perhaps I’m wrong, and the question wasn’t intended to be challenging nor qualified in such an unspoken way, but regardless it’s worth thinking about.

I answered the question honestly: I like reading, writing, doing crossword puzzles, listening to music, going to concerts, traveling, playing around with technology, cooking. I perceived, however, that the poser of the question was not satisfied. I had not named what they consider to be “hobbies,” which, to them, are things that keep one physically active. The best “hobby,” in fact, in 2026, would of course be pickleball. I do not play plickleball. I don’t ride horses, or lift weights, run, snow or water ski, swim, or rock climb. Most of my hobbies are sedentary activities.

This conversation has been stuck in my head ever since, if I’m being honest. My body has new aches and pains I’ve never had, and I’ve heard my whole life that the key to a long happy life is staying active. I do not accept the idea that sedentary hobbies are not real hobbies, but I would allow that some mix of physical/sedentary is a better balance. I like walking, I like riding a bike, I like hiking, I occasionally like yardwork… but I wouldn’t call them “hobbies.”

I’m not going to take up pickleball, or any other competitive sport/exercise. Just not me. I also don’t care much if someone thinks my hobbies aren’t real. I do care, however, about meeting the obligation I feel I have to be around for my kids, and maybe one day their kids.

I think turning 50 is messing with me.

I don’t consider myself someone who has trouble enjoying their “now,” but I do know myself as someone who thinks often about their “next.” I have moments where I’m saturated in nowness, and I think sometimes I think the final next is going to be all-time that; all-time in-the-moment mindfulness. But I think that’s probably impossible for me, every new now will have its new nexts for me to think about. It’s how I’m wired, I think.

I sometimes wish I was better at finding/ascribing meaning/value to real-time things, because I think I tend to assign meaning more in retrospect. Occasionally I’ll recognize the gravity of a just-happened thing, but I feel like it’s something I do more upon reflection than instantaneously. I bet this is a thing, like in some psychology handbook or whatever, and that I have that thing.

50 is the beginning of some stuff I think; the end of some stuff, too; also probably just some stuff. I want to try to see all three with equal clarity. The stuff of this very minute and second, the stuff that came before, and that stuff that hasn’t happened yet.

You ever take odd-sized steps because you want your ending step to land in a specific place? I do.

Want to end up at the coffee machine but the distance is odd? Make that last step one awkward double-wide one instead of several silly baby-step-shuffle ones. There, perfect; you’re right were you wanted to be with admirable economy of effort.

I think about this, like consciously.

I stole the title from this post from a post I saw the other day online.

Last year I spent more than six months extracting myself from the modern big-tech hegemony, rejecting the rapidly expanding surveillance state, its growing weaponization against citizens, and the commodification of our identities.

I took my time; allowed myself to try multiple solutions in pursuit of a finalized stack. I wanted something I could expand to our entire family, something polished, a worthy replacement for the consumer-sticky coordinated offerings from the big service providers, but free from their ownership and oversight.

I succeeded. I exceeded my expectations.

Because I had so heavily invested in the Google ecosystem, my kill-list reads as a bit targeted, but it’s just by virtue that investment. I got rid of our Google smart-speaker/home-assistant devices, our Google home security cameras, Google’s closed-source mobile operating system. I switched nearly every single one of my cloud-services from corporate owned/hosted to self-hosted, nearly every single mobile application to a free/open-source alternative. We aligned our shopping to places most aligned with our ideals, which led to a dramatic 40% decrease in overall shopping spend.

My motivations were manifold, and will no doubt feel conspiracy-thinking to many. At first I thought it was about personal privacy, about data/information autonomy, about putting our money where our hearts and mouths are. And it is about those things, very much about them. But I know now that it’s also about not “feeding the machine.” The reality is that systems we are increasingly incentivized and compelled to use are busy gathering and trading on information that’s being used to reduce us to datapoints, sales surfaces, and threat-assessment scores.

Yes, I know it sounds alarmist, doomy, paranoid. I’m not really here to convince, it’s OK if you don’t see it the way I do. Maybe I’m overreacting. Read this, though. And this, too. Some of what feels like a far away probability is truly a right-now certainty. But I’m going to stop there because it’s hard to not sound unhinged.

In perhaps a more palatable framing: we are saving $300 annually on SAAS and cloud subscriptions; we own our information again; we don’t get afternoon ads tailored to what we just spoke about this morning.

I have more to do, more strings to cut in 2026. But we are well down the road.

At the outset of the prior year I wrote down some goals I’d be pleased if I made progress towards before the beginning of this year. I thought it would be good to (1) check-in on how what progress I made, and (2) do the same for this new year we’re beginning now. Let’s assess how we did last year first.

Stretch: I failed entirely here. I did not stretch more, would would be stretching at all, ever. I did not even stretch a little, like not at all, ever. I kept right on not-stretching as I had(n’t) been. Poor showing, indeed, but I would like to keep at this one and have some small hope that I might make some progress on it this year, despite not taking it (again) as an explicit goal.

Read: Here I did better. According to BookWyrm, I read six books in 2025. Hardly record-setting, I know, but I feel good about reviving the habit with some regularity. I aim to continue this habit, and am currently reading.

Cook: Here is my personal best. My stated goal was to “Cook dinner for the family at least 3 days/month,” but in the end I’m confident I my per/month average would be around 4 dinners. Not only do I feel nice about meeting my goal with gusto, I had probably the most genuine fun with this goal.

Overall then, an F, a C+, and an A+. Probably averages out to average, which honestly feels pretty decent upon reflection. I’m happy I didn’t pick meaningless, softball type goals, and I’m happy I made some progress on a couple.

For 2026 then, here are my one-sentence goals:

• Serve those in my local community for at least one hour on at least six days each month
• Go for a walk outside for at least twenty minutes at least seven days each month
• Ride my bike to work and back at least ten days each month

Those feel good for now.

In my adult life, I’ve often been told that I have a high emotional intelligence. But, sometimes I wonder if that perception isn’t real; if it’s simply the result of my uncanny ability to learn a system’s mechanics and reproduce them convincingly. That I’m just acting. Making the right faces, saying the right words with the right inflection, taking notes & setting reminders… executing the mime vs. being genuinely moved. An empathy that’s more procedural than alive.

I wish things felt less ominous; less like the whole thing is slowly losing ground, slipping off the edge of a cliff inch by inch. This is different than some personally experienced depression, I’m talking some sort of “corporate humanity” thing; the aggregate “heart-vibe” of society. Thankfully, for me, most of the time, the looming dark clouds are just that – foreboding and menacing, but at worst a kind of slow leak in my positivity, not barring me from feeling the day’s joys (at least, not yet).

A very prominent public figure said recently that, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” To be fair to this figure, even though I’m not sure it’s deserved, the quote in full context was supposed to be about not letting people “exploit” your empathy response. This sentiment seems to be popular at the moment. What constitutes intolerance or selfishness isn’t something we all seem to agree on (was it ever, I wonder?); self-serving opportunism reigns and fomenting anger is an armchair sport. The “I got mine; fuck you” crowd is out and vocal and proud.

When empathy and meekness are weaknesses, what sort of society are we building? What sort of future adults are we raising?

So yeah, I wish it felt less like this. And to talk to some people, it’s the 100% exact opposite. They feel more optimism and positivity than they’ve felt in a while, and it’s hard for me to comprehend. I reject the idea that it’s a binary good and evil and we’ll never be able to get along again – that’s how you keep a populace powerless. But man… we got a lot of bridge-building to do.

Help.