Category: Personal Reflections

Lessons learned about life; pearls of wisdom I’ve gleaned through pain, failure and honest reflection

Reflecting on The Half-Life of Magic

Carl Setzer
person doing card trick

I make it a point to read Seth Godin blog posts every day (well, I try my best). Today, he wrote “The half-life of magic“.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Arthur C. Clarke

In this post, Mr. Godin points out how quickly magic wears off. And, by magic, I ascribe the appreciation and wonder. The rate of change has increased so dramatically that one of our challenges is to find wonder in life.

It is hard when we externalize this. When we’re waiting to find wonder, delight, joy, it becomes so much harder to find. Let me propose another alternative: to actively seek it. Take a moment and consider how amazing our lives our. With my cellphone I can look up almost anything humanity has ever learned. Almost all knowledge is, literally, at our fingertips. but these technological marvels are only a small piece. Look out the window, watch the rain, see the hummingbirds drift amongst the blossoms, or the juncos dark amongst the tree branches. Or the eagle drifting overhead, over this suburban human habitat.

Life is full of wonder if you choose to look for it. And that’s the pathway to a joy-filled life: searching for wonder.

A Meditation: Avoiding Bitterness

Carl Setzer
achievement confident free freedom

Nadia Bolz-Weber, one my favorite theologians/pastors, received this question recently:

How do I guard against being a bitter and mean old lady?

I love her response (and highly recommend reading it), but let grab a few lines that hold the essence:

‘Could you maybe, even though it’s super cringy, place your hand on your heart and ask it “What hurt you? And how can we move on together?”’

“But reader, I am hopeful. Defiantly so. There are a million forms of shit out there, it’s true. But what is also true is that there are always more forms of love.”

As a boy I often heard the refrain “you are what you eat”. Eating better might be the goal, but I hold this true for mind, body, and soul. Therefore, to avoid bitterness, seek the beautiful, seek out love and joy. Also, write down those findings. That cements them into your soul.

Gratitude is the most powerful medicine against bitterness. Seeking out the good in the world is the only antidote to the world’s bitter cynicism. And it’s just an arm’s reach away.

A Seattle Native Born In Rhode Island?

Carl Setzer
tower under blue sky

What do I mean by this? Well, I have a unique background. My father was in the Navy when I was born, which is the root of this situation. I was born in Newport Naval Hospital. My father was stationed there, however briefly. Thus, “born in Rhode Island”.

Native Seattleite, though. Well, my parents were both born in Washington. My dad was born in Seattle. His mom was born in Seattle. All my grandparents were born in Washington…you get the drift. Fun tidbit: I was supposed to be born in Seattle, but I opted to crash my mom’s trip to visit my dad. I like to be early.

My first and second birthdays were celebrated at my grandparent’s place in Edmonds (my mom was finishing up grad school at UW). That same place was “home”, as in “we’re going home for Christmas”.

So, yeah, my early childhood was spent living all over the world. Besides “greater Seattle”, I lived in Rhode Island, California, Virginia/Greater Washington DC, San Miguel and Subic Bay, Philippines, before we moved to Lynnwood when I was not-quite 10. A little over-complicated, but a key factor in becoming who I am.

Unexpected Dad Jokes

Carl Setzer2 Comments

One of my favorite online comics, Lunarbaboon, featured this dad joke today:

Click on the image to be taken to the post

In the comments, Derek S. left this gem of a dad joke:

I went to see my new doctor today, and I have to admit, I was a little shocked. He was from Madrid, and he had sleeve tattoos and tattoos on both hands. My surprise must have been obvious because he said “it’s okay, you’re not the first. No one expects the Spanish inked physician.”

It hints at this classic Monty Python sketch, which I’ve added below for the edification of those unfamiliar with Monty Python.

You Can’t Have It All

Carl Setzer1 Comment

One of my digital friends, Bernie, wrote this blog post featuring Maria Popova, a writer I admire greatly. In the article, Popova writes about the grief feels upon the passing of her beloved friend Emily Levine. She explores how poetry impacted that journey, and how it can help us all manage the finitude of our lives. I love her line “[N]ow that Emily has returned her stardust to the universe…” as a descriptor of death. Makes me think of Carl Sagan’s line that we’re all made of “star stuff”. There’s infinity within our finite nature. So very Zen, I guess.

Anyway, I highly recommend Maria’s post, and all of her work.

“You Can’t Have It All”, the Marginalian

A Haiku For The Day

Carl Setzer4 Comments 
gazing to the west
petals dancing in the breeze
as the sunlight fades

It’s been a hot minute since I last posted a haiku, so here’s one for you today. This photo is from my walk along the Edmonds Waterfront. It was a lovely day; started sunny and slowly clouds drifted in. It stayed dry, fortunately for me.

I adore writing haiku, though I’ve been trying to write about my explorations into tech. More professional, I guess. I’ve been told to focus on your brand with your social media. But, what is my brand? I mean, I’ve written tons of haiku, and they’re some of my most popular content. But, they don’t bring in the money, do they? Maybe I need to work to monetize them. Oooohhh…I can be an influencer?

Anyway, I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do with myself next. I’ve been focused on IT, web design, and other technology “things” for the past few years. With that, though, I’ve received constant feedback that I should look at Project Management. Instructors, supervisors, family…constant stuff. And by the same people who then ping me to fix their printers.

I guess I’m still trying to “find my way”. Maybe my way is to take pictures and write haiku? Not gonna get rich at that, but it’s fun. Who knows?

Let me know what you think! Anyway, talk to you soon.

Anyone Remember OS/2?

Carl Setzer

Ah, OS/2! In the early 90s, I worked on a project for a Seattle stock brokerage, where we were digitizing key records. And, to be clearer, scanning them. This project’s systems needed OS/2, and it was my first introduction to this operating system.

It wasn’t well known at the point, but I was aware of it’s existence. I was intrigued and interested in exploring it. As I think back, my main takeaway: the system was quite stable. I spent very little time dealing with issues, blue screens, or other bugs. It seemed, in retrospect, to be a solid OS.

I have no recollection of using it anywhere else, even though I spent the 90s working myriad projects with many Seattle area companies. Odd, looking back. Odd.

YouTube’s algorithm served this video up today: “The Fall of OS/2”.

It provides lots of insights into how the product failed. And, the story doesn’t paint IBM of the 90s in a good light. It seems the main factors are marketing and leadership incompetence, exacerbated by some petty internal politics. These seem to have been larger factors that Microsoft’s efforts.

I haven’t thought about OS/2 in years. After watching this video, I lament its loss. What would the modern OS environment look like if we’d had a viable non-Microsoft OS on x86 systems? Sadly, we’ll never know.

Spam Job “Opportunity” of the Day

Carl Setzer1 Comment
young woman in front of the entrance to the building

Fandango, a fellow WordPress blogger I follow, regularly posts “Spam Comments of the Week” (his most recent as of this post is here). I was reminded of that by this job “offer”:

My first thought was “do people STILL do this”? Does any company want the liability considering how people have been shot going to the wrong house? I mean, look at this list (3 of 495,000,000 results from Google).

So, no…NO I’m not going door-knocking…even here in Seattle. Even forgoing the tales of violence, I’m an introvert. The thought of knocking on stranger’s doors is pretty close to my vision of the deepest pits of hell.

Stepping back a bit, I also wonder about the efficacy of this as a marketing strategy. What sort of conversion rate do you see with this work? I doubt it’s out of the single digits. Perhaps it’s not actually “sales” but political doorbelling (tis the season, after all). But that should be clearly disclosed.

Anyway, I’m lucky that all I need to do in this situation is spend a few minutes puzzling, then move along. I’m OPEN to new opportunities, but do not NEED a new job at the moment. And, with that, it’s time for me to move along.

Cougars on my Vacation

Carl Setzer
nature animal wilderness head

Ok, my headline here is a bit clickbaity, but stick with me. So, I just got back from a family trip to the delightful town of Manzanita on the Oregon coast. It was a lovely time, which I’ll try to explore more in depth shortly. But there was a recurring element that was…weird: Cougars. Not as in WSU grads, but in the American Mountain Lion kind.

When we got in to town, we started exploring things we wanted to do. One of them was hike Nehalem Bay State Park. When I Googled the park the first thing to come up was this news article:

Cougar sightings on the Oregon Coast prompt trail closure at Nehalem Bay State Park

It was mildly alarming, but the State Parks folks closed off a few trails, and we put off that endeavor for a few days to let our furry friend move on to other locales.

But this wasn’t the end of cougars. Another place we wanted to explore was the famous Haystack Rock in Cannon Beach. While there, Haystack Rock was blocked off by parks folks, the police, and emergency personnel. Turns out, yep, a cougar.

Cougar sighting closes Cannon Beach at Haystack Rock

Ok, cool enough. But it gets better still. Once I got home, I logged into Instagram. A photographer I follow had the following images at the TOP of my feed.

For me, what was particularly wild about Andy Woo’s post, beside the wild timing, was the synchronicity of us being that close, as Mr. Woo is a globally travelled photographer. Lastly, he did get some really cool photos of the cougar while there, though he was after puffins. But we take what we can get.
Fortunately for Mr. Woo, he was able to get some puffin shots after all. You can see why I enjoy his work.

So, that’s it for cougars at this point. Maybe there’s some greater, mystical significance. If so, I’ll need to discover it. Otherwise, it’s just a lot of fun coincidences.

Sidenote: the cougar in the “featured image” is a random photo from Pexels, not related to the Cannon Beach kitty.