The Column

Motto: Hamburgers are Fun on a Bun

File this Column under "Aaron tells other people what they should be doing", which I realize is too common of a theme.

You know what's fun? You know what's rewarding? Honing a skill. Creating something new. Doing a craft. Working on something just because you want to. It's a lot more fun than enjoying someone else's work. It's a lot more lasting fun than enjoying someone else's work.

Creating things brings a sort of whole-brain engagement that only happens with the absolute best of storytelling. I wrote this Life Tracker thing to keep track of all sorts of different aspects of my life so I might be able to read through the data what makes me most happy... what I found out was that what made me most happy was actually BUILDING the thing. Doing the data work. I was more than just coding - I was creating. I was generating a thing that had never existed before and the possibilities were endless. That's really exciting. …

In Column #97 I wrote about "The Taxonomy of Human Attractiveness". In that post, I analyzed the perceived differences between "cute", "pretty", "hot", and "beautiful". Today's post is a continued analysis on human attractiveness, but more focused on what it is and less focused on our nomenclature for it. I started writing today's post back in November of 2016... so this has been a long time coming. Since this is already a Column out of time, I'm going to correct my accidental skipping of Column #344, too.

Also I feel the need to through out a necessary PREFACE CAVEAT!

I'm an American white male. I'm a member of just about every majority class that exists in my region. Attractiveness is heavily influenced by culture. Everything I'm about to say is coming from a place of "I Googled this", but my Google searches, even in Incognito Mode, will inherently be geared towards the American majority sentiment. S…

Motto: Make Happy

I write the first half of this Column from a position of privilege. Actually I write every Column from that position, now that I think about it. Regardless, this is all very personal and I can say up front that I know it's not this simple, this is all very easy for me to say, and what good does it do? Part of me thought about just deleting this, but heck I wrote it so here it is.

I don't really understand smart people who aren't happy.

If you're smart, you should be able to identify cause and effect relationships. You should be good at noticing patterns and trends. You should have a good idea about what toolsets are available to you and how to use them to create effective change. 

Happiness, to me, seems like a key metric that most people are trying to maximize in their lives... and smart people are supposed to be good at tweaking dials to solve problems. Combining those two strongly-held beliefs, it doesn't seem like smart, unhappy people should be …

As a Father: THE THERMOSTAT IS NOT TO BE TOUCHED  

On 8/8/18, Griffin was born. 
I was born on 8/1/88, which is his birthday backwards. I think that's pretty neat.

It feels weird to say "I became a dad", because it feels weird to be a dad. The whole thing feels weird. Weird and good. Griffin is the first baby I've spent more than 5 minutes around. The first baby that I've held while he cried. The first baby I've soothed. The first baby whose diaper I've changed. The only baby I've ever wanted to hold.

I always wanted a kid because I have some romantic feelings about life and love and purpose and our biological imperatives and existence and stuff... but it turns out that having a kid also comes with some other neat things. The prospect of getting to shape an entire person as he grows up is really exciting. I really look forward to each of his individual stages of development. I can't wait for it to have "all gone too fast", as they say. I wan…

Motto: Life, One Second a Time

I had a kid. I'll write about that next time. It's tough to try to get everything I want to say about that together and typed and whatnot - so I'm going to postpone that one and throw out this one. I've got several Columns already in mind right now. Actually that gives me the Top 5 topic. 



Here's the playlist of all of six videos.

I'm not writing any more on this topic. That video marked the end of the longest-running creative project I've ever done. This is a cathartic Column.

Top 5: Titles of Columns that I've been Trying to Write for the Past Few Days
5. "Sixth Second-A-Day"
4. "Feature: Analysis of Human Attractiveness"
3. "Make Stuff"
2. "Self Help (Yourself)"
1. "Griffin"

Quote:
"You said you were moving onto something better - and I thought 'I bet I know what that means'."
- Ed -

Motto: Let's Get It Started In Here

Our baby is going to be induced two days from now. Tomorrow we go in for pre-induction medical magic. That means basically everything I do right now I'm doing for the last time as an individual without any children. This is the last Column I will write as a non-father. This is the last time I'll write the word "ambidextrous". This is the last time I'll go on a nice little Sunday outing. It makes everything seem arbitrarily important. Every thought is good enough to write about. Every little thing is worthy of savor. That's probably why I'm on a hot streak of Column writing.

Next time I write something in here, I'll have to start each of my opinions with "As a father..." 

Melissa says I should proof read these Columns before I actually post them. She's noticed a number of times where I start somet

It's amazing how much the weather affects everything and everybody. If it's a nice day I am almost…