The title really says it all. I can’t imagine a world where I don’t have a dog in my life. There’s just something about dogs that only bring joy and happiness. Not many things in the world are like that. Even the most annoying of mutts will bring a smile to my face, and that joy is priceless.

I know there are cat people out there, and I love cats too, but dogs are different. They offer companionship when you’d otherwise have none. They offer love and compassion when you need it most. When you’re sad or when you’re happy, your dog is there for you.

I am a somewhat productive person. I do my job, I do it well. But I’m also a procrastinator of the highest order. If it can wait, then I will wait to do it. But I’m also very interested in not being such a person. I’d love to one day be one of those people who have a todo list that actually gets done every single day, that has a system (probably on a Trello board or in Notion) so that they can get the most done.

Honestly, this title is a lie. This has been a horrible reading year. I’ve read 15 books, reread 3 books, and that’s it. That’s about half of what I usually do. I’m a little ahead of last year, which was also a down year. So, I guess that’s good?

It’s not as if I have to meet my goals of reading so many books, but it feels like I’ve been going for a long period of time between books. I finished 11/22/63 by Stephen King back in the end days of August, read a smutty harem book, and then nothing since then. Oh, I got about 90 pages read of the next Dresden Files book, but nothing significant. I just can’t seem to keep my interest on anything lately.

I’m a man of habit. I do the same things every day, I eat the same things every week, I wear the same three colors all the time. I also have bad habits, like everyone does, and my bad habits are just as entrenched into my lifestyle as the good ones. I definitely get caught up in my habits. I tend to get very grumpy if things don’t go my way.

A few months ago, I talked about my note-taking problem. In that post, I talked about my new solution: QuillPad and Obsidian connected via Nextcloud. A few days after that, I talked about how much I was loving Obsidian and the setup in general. That was June.

Now, I wrote in that first blog post about how I have trouble sticking with a note taking solution. I like trying new things and I’m very picky when it comes to how this all works. I want it to work exactly like I want it to work, and if something doesn’t… well that shiz has to go.

I have talked a lot about regrets on this blog since I started out. Nobody wants them, everyone has them. One regret I didn’t think I had was about LastFM of all things. First off, I didn’t even know that LastFM was still a thing. I thought that died along with FourSquare and MySpace (to add to the list: Digg and Stumbleupon). But nope, it’s still around (even if the website is kinda broken and never gets updates).

I admit that I do a lot more doom scrolling than a healthy person should. I enjoy other people’s drama and opinions, and there is no shortage of that on social media, and I’m a little addicted to it. I also like good things too, and that is my excuse for staying. Things like BookTok and BookTube are usually great places to find some good books (though they do seem to all get attached to the same books, so you have to be choosy on who you follow), so at least it’s not all politics and hating on other people and people who want to constantly predict the end of the world.

I haven’t always had a clear opinion on this question. Back when I worked in the real world or even further back when I was at school, laptops were really the best way to go. It’s hard to heft a desktop, monitor, keyboard, and mouse to the library on campus so you can write that paper that’s due at midnight. Obvious when you think about it.

Of course, it’s easy to choose laptop when, in my case, the Michigan State University Computer Store had “sales” on those white MacBooks almost every week. They nearly threw those things at us students, everyone had one and nobody paid more than $500 bucks, and if there was a way to get your financial aid to pay for it? Free laptop. I don’t know if MSU still does this with MacBooks, but I wouldn’t doubt it.