Rise before dawn breaks,
Moonlight lingers, eyes still wide—
Clock strikes one eleven.

Late to bed struggle to rise.

I am now officially a AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner… I know it’s a foundational certification but it feels good being able to say I’m certified in something other than mental illness. Lol but no really lol.

Since my father passed away in February of ’22, my mind and heart have been screaming for me to slow down and take a break. Instead, I pushed harder and faster, thinking that I was okay, but as the end of ’23 approached, I realized that I had only fooled myself.

This year has been one of me constantly being sick and stressed; I’ve greyed more in this year than the previous 42. I’ve been in physical therapy for Posterior Tibial Tendonosis for the majority of the year after being in and out of the boot for over a year. I know what it feels like to literally break down.

I have it worse than some people and a lot better than many, and I try not to lose sight of that.

With all this being said, here is my end-of-2023 goals for these last couple of weeks:

1. Trim my podcasts down to a few daily/weekly podcasts and no more than one binge of a whole season at a time. I’ve gone from over 30 down to these 10, and while it’s still a lot, they tend to be spaced out nicely.

   • Accidental Tech Podcast (ATP) Bootleg Edition- Weekly
   • Acquired - Varies
   • CodeNewbie- Weekly (Seasonal)
   • Founders- Weekly
   • Hip Hop, Beats & Thangs w/ Fiesta & K-Hill- Varies
   • Radio Rental - Weekly (Seasonal)
   • Ratchet & Respectable - 2x Weekly
   • Revisionist History - Varies (Seasonal)
   • The Talk Show w/ John Gruber - Varies
   • Techmeme Ride Home - Daily

2. Do the same thing with my TV shows, but I’m not sure of the exact ratio yet. Mainly because shows vary in # of episodes and run at different times.

   • I started to list all of my shows out of Television Time App, and then I realized I have over 75 shows, so yeah, I’m trimming now.
   • Update: I’m down to 34, and most of these shows are coming up on their last seasons or have a long time between seasons. So I think I’m good here.

3. I’ve got 2 more months of free credits from Audible, and then I’m stopping my collection of audiobooks. I’m going to work through my list of unfinished books (32) in 2024, and I should have enough time with my podcast commitment limited.

4. The hardest thing is passing this AWS CCP Exam on Sunday, then diving right into learning all of SQL so I can pass Data Applications all before the last day of the year when my term ends at school. Then I’m taking a 3-month break to let life settle down before I jump back in and finish my IT Management BS and then do my MS.

We’ll see how this goes.

Spending a couple hours this morning organizing my Notion board and watching 6Underground.

There are great Ryan Reynolds films and equally subpar ones but he always brings that RR flair that even though you see it coming a mile away it still draws you in.

Now to go grab some breakfast and then jump headlong into prepping for this SQL exam.

I’ve been wanting to write for a while but I really haven’t had time and as I sit here going through training I got to thinking about how much of my good short writing time is when I’m using a Windows 11 machine.  While I’m waiting for tasks to run or pull data down from a database I can fire off quick thoughts.

Then I realized I needed an editor for micro.blog that I could use in Windows 11.  I couldn’t find any and then it hit me that a few weeks back I saw a web editor and without much effort, I located Scribe.

It’s a nice clean interface.

I’ll be back with more later.

Life has been crazy the last few weeks… I haven’t disappeared yet…

Quick Updates:

• Still in school… trying to knock out this UI/UX class before it knocks me out.
• Have 40 more episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation to go and then I’ll head over to Deep Space 9.
• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is very quickly overtaking the other series as my all-time favorite. The actors and especially the writers are on point with the show.
• Foundation is pretty solid so far… when this season is over with I may go back and watch Season 1 and 2 over binge style.
• I literally cried quietly at work today… nothing bad… actually really good. We had a food drive for the month of July and after thinking my team wasn’t going to show up they did at the last minute and crushed the goal (pulverized it really). A lot of individuals and families will get some help in the coming months. As someone who has been on the receiving end of charity organizations when I was young it definitely hit the spot. I’ve already set a goal for myself to set aside money from my paychecks to go to next year’s food drive (or sooner if a need pops up in the community).
• Won’t say much about my family’s health but it’s a shame how piss poor the medical system is in parts of North Carolina (specifically Eastern NC).

As I was sitting in church today at a Men’s Day service with Brothers from my Lodge I realized that as many valleys as I’ve walked through or been carried through by Him I never took time to look back.

People will tell you to not look back in life but I realized today that sometimes when you hit those peaks before heading into the next valley you gotta take a moment and look back to see how far you’ve come.

I know I’ve spent a lot of time in my life just trying to push through until I could catch a breather but as I look back on the last 43 years… I have to acknowledge the beauty in the struggle as well as the highs.

But then again that’s how it is in the physical peaks and valleys. You reach a peak and the contrast and depth between the peaks you see before you and the valleys that go between them create the beauty of the picture.