Mundane
Musings

I tend to prioritize tasks in a last in, first out method. It is extremely inefficient and leads to a lack of proper prioritization, and work sliding out of memory. Sometimes I'll remember to do part of something but never get around to finish it. A task half remembered is half forgotten, and that's the half that gets you in trouble. I have spent a long time looking for something to organize my day in a simple manner, but a combination of busyness and distraction has kept me from finding the ideal solution. I had given up and started tracking things in Microsoft OneNote, which works for task lists if you are diligent, but it's also tied to either my work laptop or to signing in to Microsoft accounts on any device that I want to sync to. Anything that requires mixing work and personal schedules under a single work account, that I don't control, is untenable.

So I came up with a solution that combines my new interest in AI for creating personal webapps, and my urge to keep my brain moving by learning new things. The phrase vibe coding has taken on a negative connotation but, at least for simple tools, it has opened a skillset for me that I didn't have before. There are also people creating far more complicated things with it than I have or will. Despite what seems to be the prevailing opinion, it still isn't just pushing buttons and boom, website made and done. Sure, there is the time-saving aspect of prompting AI (Claude in my case) to create the code and structure, but there's also hosting and domain registration to worry about.

Picking a host and knowing how to get your files up there, working through DNS and routing issues, and coming out the other end with a properly styled and functioning site, with a real .com TLD no less, is not point and click. Neither is all of the troubleshooting and making up for AI shortcomings along the way. One good example is when I used Claude to restyle this very blog you're reading.

It dutifully spit out the new code, and named it something other than index.html. That's simple for a lot of us to spot and fix, but with no experience, truly working off of vibes, it would be yet another task to spend brain and cpu cycles figuring out. Both this blog update, and the following time management tool, were doable enough with my previous experience. I still wouldn't say it's even close to the point where I could tell my dad to make a website and he'd bang it out without issue.

I've included a few pictures below. I call it Meridian Planner. Honestly didn't even think of the name. It was all just kind of out of the ether. Or given the relative opaqueness of most LLM responses, maybe out of the Silent Hill fog. What I have found though is that I was able to spin up a web app, securely log in with Google OAuth 2.0, enable persistence with a database on the backend with all user and GCal information encrypted at rest. That is a big deal for someone who would never call himself a software engineer or even web developer.

What it has allowed me to do is pull in my daily calendar, rank and schedule all tasks and goals for the day, and even ask the app to include things that aren't in any schedule, and it dutifully plans a full day based off of my working hours. I've even asked it to plan me a horror movie to watch at 8pm to wind down and it picked one for me and added it to the schedule. The color coding was really liked by a friend with ADHD that said it really added to the readability. And the THEMES! I love the themes. Even the secret themes made to celebrate a shared time in the service myself and another friend had. I love customization and building it just how I like it, in a tool built to fit my exact needs has been a revelation as far as usability goes.

So what's next? I have a few things I'd still like to implement now that I have persistent storage on the DB. I would like searchability for goals and tasks, history, and checklists to mark when I've done a task. I might also add the ability to leave notes about where I left off on a task, but maybe not because I would like to avoid clutter. At the end of the day, are there other tools that do the same job? Most likely yes, but I enjoy knowing that I got to stretch my brain, access a little bit of creativity, and have something made just the way I wanted it.

For most of my adult life I have lamented my perceived waste of my earlier years. I joined the Marines directly out of high school and had a great time, making lifelong friends along the way, and yet when I looked back after separation all I could see was the 5 years that everyone else was ahead in their careers. Meanwhile I was making minimum wage and at the time trying to decide if I could still do school at the "old" age of 25. I did not at the time account for the inactivity of post high school in many people and was in no way left behind — but 25 year old me didn't know this. In time I met my wife and finished school. In doing so I learned a lot, got a footing in a career and learned more about my personality and what worked and didn't work in the business world.

To explain how I got to this conclusion, and a good name to describe it, I should describe the catalyst. A lot of this introspection cropped up when my wife sent me one of her favorite pictures from when we were first dating, circa 2012. At the time I was a young 26 year old — an age I would have killed to go back to at times. I just felt like things were so much simpler then, and while I was right, that wasn't the winning statement it sounded like. The picture shows a much younger me in what I would generally think of as the prime of my life. The problem with this romantic remembrance is I know who I really was back then. I lacked self confidence, business knowledge, and had only the most basic technical skills compared to those which would carry me through my now decade-plus career.

So what are rose colored blinders? Put simply, they're the negative side of what we call rose colored glasses. Looking back fondly on days gone is not a bad thing — it is what reminds us of where we are from, and the friendships and memories we've made along the way. My mistake was letting glasses become blinders. I blocked out all positive aspects of the past and saw only the negative. The slow trudging times where I felt hopeless, where I felt behind. In seeing my shortcomings I failed to see my growth.

I carried that forward and let myself be influenced by it in a way that was not representative of my current reality. I still have to remind myself that while hard times shaped me into who I am, they aren't and shouldn't be my defining trait. I have worked great jobs, had outstanding mentors, and progressed in work and life in a way that 2012 me would be proud of. So now that is how I measure myself — not against some misperceived life of a notional high school peer, but by how happy past me would be with where my life is right now. I can honestly say that by those criteria I am doing quite well.

I've been struggling a lot lately with a feeling that was hard to explain. I felt unfulfilled but knew that with a new job and recent promotion that wasn't right. It wasn't a lack of satisfaction about the work I was doing or my current title or trajectory. It took me months to figure this out and given the issue I'm about to explain, I have decided to write it down for anyone that cares to see. After a good deal of thinking and asking myself questions I have come to one conclusion: I just don't have an equal. I invite you to unroll your eyes from the back of your head while I explain what that really means to me.

I will preface my explanation by saying that I am currently a regional IT manager at a manufacturing company. In this instance, not having an equal means that I don't have anyone in my professional or personal circle that is where I am at in my career. I know many people far more advanced in their careers, and I know plenty who are still working their way up the ladder in their chosen fields. And that is where my problem comes in — I have nobody to talk to about where I am right now. Nobody that has the same struggles or same decisions coming up about their career.

My largest issue stems from the fact that I am by nature a very social person. When combined with the fact that my job supports a family and therefore takes up a large portion of my waking hours, it stands to reason that it will frequently be a topic of conversation. My wife is very willing to listen but it's just not something that she understands on a level of someone who has done it. My friends are all outside of management careers, or sufficiently early or further along to be disqualified.

So what is the answer? I think it is networking. I am currently near Pittsburgh and have to imagine that there are meetups and social gatherings where businessmen and managers go to mingle. It just seems daunting to go out and find something, and then to interject myself into it and hope to actually make meaningful connections. I know it sounds defeatist, but as a middle-aged man that has a total of roughly five solid friends, I am well aware of the work and effort making and cultivating relationships takes.

So what to do. Well I've taken the first step — I've put the few thoughts I've managed to piece together in my mind down on paper. With luck I'll share this around and possibly someone that can relate will see it. If that person is you, please feel free to reach out. I always welcome a chance to connect with like-minded professionals. Here's to finding real connections. Until next time remember: if the sky was the limit, there wouldn't be footprints on the moon.