Less Productive

I had ambitious plans for yesterday afternoon, but instead spent hours building a virtual Home Depot in Minecraft. The day divided into three acts: productive blog migration in the morning, shameless digital construction in the afternoon, and beer with friends in the evening. Sometimes productivity isn't about accomplishing everything intended—it's recognizing that building imaginary warehouses can be exactly what a day needs. This morning's meditation delivered wisdom: worry steals today's peace without preventing tomorrow's pain.

The Architecture of Acceptable Days

September 30, 2025

Yesterday morning brought real momentum to the blog migration project. Moving entries from Patreon to Blogger, adjusting the format to make it more approachable—these are the unglamorous tasks that eventually lead somewhere meaningful. Blogger represents an improvement over Patreon, but it's clearly not the final destination. WordPress looms in the future as the probable endpoint of this journey, another migration requiring substantial effort. But there's value in the exercise itself, in understanding what works and what doesn't, in refining the vision through iteration. Sometimes you need to pass through imperfect solutions to understand what perfection looks like.

Then afternoon arrived and my grand plans evaporated into pixels and blocks. Minecraft swallowed the hours with its seductive promise of perfect control. I'm creating the Home Depot for Casia—a warehouse project that's hilariously overkill for most needs, but fascinating in its comprehensiveness. Every material type catalogued, every resource organized, a monument to the peculiar satisfaction of systems thinking applied to imaginary logistics. The stone and masonry section nears completion, representing hours of careful placement and organization. There's something deeply satisfying about creating order in virtual space, especially when the real world feels increasingly chaotic.

The walk to Suds brought Tim and Brian into the evening's equation. Casual conversation circling familiar topics—the kind of easy social interaction that requires no heavy lifting. But the exchange sparked a realization: I should invite them over to experience my new view, to share the transformed landscape that's become such a significant part of my daily reality. Sometimes maintaining friendships is as simple as extending invitations, creating opportunities for connection.

The space disasters documentary provided the perfect evening companion—tales of Apollo 1's fire and other catastrophic failures in humanity's attempt to escape gravity's embrace. The episode explored the engineering failures, the decision-making processes, the accumulated small mistakes that cascade into tragedy. Space is hard and risky, the documentary reminded me, but the risks come from knowable causes, from problems that can be understood and addressed. There's something oddly comforting about examining disasters through the lens of engineering rather than fate.

This morning's meditation brought unexpected clarity about coping with our current political nightmare. The ugliness feels overwhelming, the temptation toward constant worry and anxiety nearly irresistible. But meditation offered a better framework: "Worry doesn't take away the pain of tomorrow, but it does take away the peace of today." The wisdom feels both simple and profound. Stay grounded in your values. Make each decision in support of those values. Futures can be engineered through deliberate action rather than anxious hand-wringing. Engineering requires clear thinking, careful planning, intentional effort—none of which are compatible with panic.

Impotent worry accomplishes nothing except making the situation worse. It steals the present moment without improving future outcomes. Better to focus on what can be controlled, what actions align with deeply held values, what small engineered steps move toward better futures. The space disasters documentary inadvertently reinforced this lesson: problems get solved through systematic analysis and deliberate action, not through panic and despair.

Yesterday may have been less productive than planned in conventional terms, but it delivered something valuable nonetheless—the reminder that sometimes you need to build imaginary warehouses and contemplate space disasters to arrive at the clarity required for facing actual challenges. Not every day needs to be an accomplishment marathon. Some days just need to teach you something about balance, about letting go of rigid expectations, about finding wisdom in unexpected places.

The warehouse continues to take shape, block by careful block. The blog migration inches forward. The political situation remains hideous. But today I have peace instead of worry, values instead of panic, and the understanding that futures are built one deliberate decision at a time—whether those futures are virtual warehouses or more livable societies.

Random picture from my recent trip