Happy Sunday!
I look up from my screen and out the window.
It’s 5:37. The light in the room has dimmed.
I’ve been at my desk since before 9am. A couple bathroom breaks. A trip to the kitchen for a banana.
Otherwise, right here. This chair. This room. These slippers.
This is what I wanted.
Two years ago, I was aiming for this. Work from home. Control over my time. Getting paid for ideas instead of hours.
I got what I asked for.
And now I’m sitting here realizing I haven’t left the house in three days. My posture is questionable. I’m parched. Haven’t said more than a few words all day.
I can work from anywhere. A coffee shop. A library. A park bench. But I don’t.
I work from this desk, every day, watching the light shift from morning to afternoon to evening. It’s where I work best. It’s where my systems live.
But some days it feels like I traded one kind of trapped for another.
The old version had a commute, a boss, a clock to punch. This version has none of that. But here I am, sitting in the same spot, with a more casual dress code.
Getting what you aimed for just means the target moves. The life I wanted is here.
Now, the work is figuring out what I want from it.
February in 3 snapshots
🛠️ Claude Code playground –This month I crossed the line from “using AI” to building with it. Spun up a website for Sarah. Then started building a video game. Very rudimentary, but the fact that it worked felt unreal. Connecting a wireless controller broke my brain. Truly magic.
💘 Low-key V-Day – Sarah and I went downtown. Coffees and a sandwich at Alforno. A walk through Prince’s Island Park. Beautiful day. Then we got crafts. Yarn for her. Lego for me. That evening, we built the Lego together. Neither of us cares about Valentine’s Day. This one was pretty good anyway.
🥇 Winter Olympic binge – Nothing makes the middle of winter better than watching sports you don’t understand. I’m invested in luge and biathlon and big air snowboarding. Loving the crashes and triumphs. I mean, have you seen this Klæbo guy cross-country ski uphill? Immaculate form. Also: Canada vs USA gold game pending. 😭
3 lessons learned in February
I. You won’t improve if you don’t share. There’s a persistent belief that you can refine something until it’s “ready”. That one more pass will make it “better”. But you’re a distorted mirror when you judge your own output. The moment you share, the world shows you what’s confusing, what works. The sharpest feedback loop is exposure.
II. Curiosity is the precursor to opportunity. Opportunities show up in conversations you almost skip, favors you don’t have time for, and problems that aren’t yours. They appear as detours. Follow them anyway. Curiosity puts you in rooms your plans never would have found. Meaningful shifts start by following what’s interesting. Care first, and the leverage will find you.
III. The work is never done, only put down. Some days, the work feels like a hamster wheel. The next email. The next idea. The next thing to ship. It makes you feel behind even when you’re producing. It’s the nature of the process. A carpenter doesn’t finish building. A writer doesn’t finish writing. The craft is learning how to set the tools down and return to being a person.
3 interesting things
- Why this Olympic sport bothers physicists – YouTube (16mins)
Scientists still can’t explain why the stone curves. Unsolved. Made me appreciate curling way more. - Will it get too hot for the Winter Olympics? – YouTube (15mins)
Climate math vs Olympic tradition. Why not just move them up a few weeks? - What the actual science says about “brain rot” – YouTube (25mins)
It’s not the videos, it’s the bottomless buffet.
I’ll leave you with a quote 🤔
“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”
— Thomas A. Edison
Until next time,
remember to live and let go,
Scotty
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