Bryan Robb

9/365 📷

To be seen by others is the core of being. Perhaps this is why humans are driven to create minds besides our own: We want to be seen. We want to be found. We want to be discovered by another. In the structured loneliness of this modern world, so many of us are passed over by our fellow humans, never given a second glance.

Excerpt from The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler

A vast green field stretches under a blue sky, accented by wispy clouds and distant hills.

What does it mean to be a self? I think, more than anything else, it means the ability to select between different possible outcomes in order to direct oneself toward a desired outcome: to be future-oriented. When every day is the same, when we are not presented with the necessity to choose between different possibilities, we say we don’t “feel alive”—and here I think we guess at what being alive actually is. It is the ability to choose. We live in choices. —Dr. Ha Nguyen, How Oceans Think

Excerpt from The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler

Photo from a few weeks ago of a dragon made of Christmas lights and spitting flames in downtown Caldwell.

Auto-generated description: A nighttime scene shows festive lights, people gathered by a pond, and a fire performer creating a dramatic burst of flame.

Kids are under the weather this morning and my wife put on Murder, She Wrote. The kids are actually getting into it 😆

Shocked a younger millennial today by affirming that I, too, am a millennial and turn 44 in about a month.

Killin Wetlands

I needed to get away from my desk today, so I drove out to Metro’s Killen Wetlands near Banks. I’d never been there and sort of stumbled across it by accident. Usually I drive south on my lunch break, but today I decided to go west. Washington County is some of the most beautiful countryside anywhere, dotted with farms and nurseries and awesome vistas. It made me wish I had $5 million to buy a couple acres.

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7/365 📷

The sky is on fire this morning. We don’t get many of these this time of year.

A serene sunset with a purple and pink sky is silhouetted by trees in the foreground. #pdx

My wife and I are at the point in our marriage where she intentionally puts the paper towel and TP rolls on backwards just to annoy me.

I’ve discovered that I prefer listening to nonfiction audiobooks over fiction. For me, fiction is for relaxing, nonfiction is just processing information.

We went out to eat last night with a few good friends and their kids. Had a great time. After we put the kids to bed, we watched Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. I’m not one for writing reviews, but it was entertaining. I was skeptical at first, but it was fun and I needed something that wasn’t too serious.

A Slow Start to the Productively Mundane

Today started off pretty slow. While my wife was out for a workout this morning, I stayed home with the kids, and we watched The Mitchells vs. The Machines. Not bad! My son liked it a lot, but my daughter was a little scared by the robots at times. For lunch, we finished off some leftover tacos from last night’s dinner. After lunch, I tackled decluttering our bedroom/office. One of my goals for 2025 was to get our house in order, and this was as good of a place as any to start.

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Completely forgot, but I recently passed 8 years as a nonsmoker. Unfortunately that’s about the time my weight gain started. Not sure what’s worse, being despised for being a smoker, or being treated so differently as a heavier person. At least I have my lungs, I guess.