Life Update

Hey there! I haven't posted in a while.

I find myself contemplating the state of my life compared to where I was a year ago. Considering that my 30th birthday was earlier this month, you might say these sorts of thoughts are ordinary. However, my birthday doesn't hold much significance to me, and the similarities (and differences) between now and then have more to do with my circumstances than with me personally.

A year ago, I was visiting my wife (at the time, my fiancé) in Switzerland shortly before cohost would toggle its read-only mode in preparation for its eventual shutdown at the end of 2024. In addition to the usual long-distance relationship woes, we both felt swallowed by our (admittedly rather cushy) jobs, and the only news worth paying attention to consisted of the U.S. presidential election and the genocide in Gaza.

Today, a year later, I am once again abroad with my wife (on our honeymoon!), watching the acceleration of fascism in America from a temporary remove. There is a bit of relief to be found in no longer planning a wedding, but we still feel our share of isolation and despair. Our D&D group has yet to recover from all of our 2025 life events. I had a wonderful time running a one-shot campaign back in May, but the main campaign is still paused mid-combat for over six months now. Our DM and our Sorceress have a baby now, and our Cleric is getting married in November.

I'm also lurking on Twitter again. It's nice to see updates from my college friends and the authors and journalists that I follow, but I feel like I'm regressing by scrolling so much. I also feel like I already spend way too much time scrolling on YouTube and that I have an unhealthy dependency on video content. I'm trying to replace that with music.

I'd like to write some more technical blog posts and catch up on my personal projects, but I know that the self-imposed pressure would cause me to burn out again. I think I can find a decent balance by leaning into non-technical posts like this. I'm playing through all of Kingdom Hearts. I just finished Jo Firestone's book Murder on Sex Island. I'm emboldened by the general strike in Italy in solidarity with Palestine. Any of these things are as worth posting about as some random Neovim configuration or snippet of JavaScript.

Until next time,

-Nick

The picture above was taken by our wonderful wedding photographer, Caitlin. If you live in Austin and are looking for those services, I highly recommend her! You can find her website at https://caitlinmcweeney.com