Typically, I write some sort of end-of-year reflection here on the blog — or some sort of beginning-of-year trajectory for my writing world. To wrap up 2022 — an amazing yet extraordinarily challenging year — I just decided to write all that stuff in my journal, rather than post things publicly.

It's funny because Kin is saying great things about Mastodon, about some people's talk of a resurgence of blogging and a renewed interest in the kind of networked researching/writing/learning that made my work on Hack Education really possible.

But now I'm not sure what I'm doing — or what I want to be doing — in terms of that sort of sharing. Here I am, toying with some new career choices too — I'm working on a personal training and a nutritional coaching certification — and I really loathe the thought of performing the sort of "influencer" persona I see so many people adopting online.

Anyway, I'll hash all this out in my journal, I reckon. For here / for now, let's focus on what was good this past week:

• The RV road trip to Death Valley: I'd never been to Death Valley before and damn, it was incredible. Also it was packed on Christmas Day with all sort of folks who, like us, seemed to be non-celebrators.
• Thanks to a suggestion from SFGate on the best places to eat along I5, we stopped in Buttonwillow and ate at a taco truck on our way home. Shout out to the abuela at Tacos El Paraiso, who cooked our breakfast burritos from scratch and who understood my very bad Spanish.
• We tried a new pizza joint in the neighborhood when we got home. Mostly, I think that NY pizza is overrated. I mean, you can get good pizza there, sure. But you can also get some really shitty pizza there soo. The NY-style pizza place that opened up around the corner — Bloom Pizza — was really good. I mean they nailed the margarita pizza. (Kin ordered a bacon ranch chicken one that was ok — not terrible, but it didn't wow me. Then again, the whole bacon chicken ranch combo thing isn't really my jam.)
• I meant to write about this last week and perhaps the week before, but I bought some OpenShokz headphones so that I can run and listen to things — music, audiobooks, etc — and also hear what's going on. They're bone conduction headphones rather than ear buds. And I sort of love them. I knew that my hearing (or rather, my perception) was altered by the in-ear ones, but damn, it makes a huge difference to be able to hear both the inner and outer worlds.
• I was asked to lead the donut run on Friday. It was so great to run with people again. And to eat a donut.
• Saturday was the kickoff for the LMJS Half Marathon Training Program. And holy shit, the weather was terrible — flood warning, gale warning, rain rain rain. But we did it — 81 people showed up, and many ran the full 14 miles for the marathon program. Me, I only did 6 miles — to Yerba Buena and back along the Bay Bridge. There's more rain predicted for this past week, and I don't want to get cocky about running in bad weather. But I have run in bad weather and I survived, so I'm sure that the 5 miles I am doing on Wednesday and the 7 I'm doing on Saturday will be fine regardless.