Zach's PEN #36: Fully-Vaccinated Easter

2021 Week 13: Baby haircuts, streak milestones, and scanning Gumps's old journals

Apr 04, 2021

Happy Easter/Chag Sameach/Blessed Spring Equinox PENpals,

I'm now fully recovered from my very-unbearable-to-Allison mancold after my second Moderna vaccine on Tuesday.

Another thing that made it a notable week is that Wendell got his first haircut, which I wrote about:

https://little.zachphillips.blog/2021/03/28/baby-wendells-first.html

Zach Phillips (100/100 posts) @zachphillips

Today was like a lot of recent days when I've been preoccupied with BIG DEAL things that cause me anxiety but are probably fine and will totally be fine. Also today: My son got his first haircut. I stumbled out the door in pajamas already ten minutes late to the appointment. 👇

And another reason it was a big week is that I hit the magic 100 days in a row writing and publishing every day (also 100 days in a row of exercise). I wrote about that too, of course.

https://little.zachphillips.blog/2021/04/01/days-posts.html

Zach Phillips (100/100 posts) @zachphillips

This is my 101st thread in as many days. I started on December 22nd, 2020 and have not missed a day. If you knew anything about me, you would know that this outcome is terribly unlikely. In fact, it would be impossible under any previous framework I might use to attempt it. 👇

So yeah, big week.

Gumps’s Journals

A really cool project I'm doing right now is digitizing/scanning all of my grandfather's journals with some cool technology and a very helpful assist from Annaliese (who also babysits Louisa and Wendell a lot). For those who didn't know my grandfather, he was called Gumps and he was a force of nature, pretty much universally beloved by all (because he universally loved all).

He's the guy who taught me it's okay/totally cool to be interested in all kinds of different things. He was a psychiatrist by trade but he self-published books of poetry, kept bees and raised goats, and a lot a lot a lot of other things. I'm sure as I start to go through these (thanks for sending them up, Aunt Val!), Gumps will show up a lot in the coming months.

With varying levels of meticulousness, Gumps journaled and saved letters from 1941 when I believe he was being fast-tracked as a doctor in the navy for WWII until he died suddenly in 2000. I will find out more details by reading. Stay tuned, as they say.

This Week's Other Posts

I wrote about how much I love ping-pong and one of the reasons why.

https://little.zachphillips.blog/2021/03/29/pingpong.html

Zach Phillips (100/100 posts) @zachphillips

I could play ping-pong for a whole day, and with some opponents the game gets straight-up physical and sweaty, with shouts of triumph and anguish... But the thing I like most about ping-pong is how sharply it exposes the thinking mind in all its ineffectiveness. 👇

After getting my second vaccine today, I wrote about the way I conceptualized medicine working as a child.

https://little.zachphillips.blog/2021/03/30/childrens-medicine.html

Zach Phillips (100/100 posts) @zachphillips

I got my second vaccine this morning. There's a part of me that still thinks of medicine the way I did as a child. When I was little and sick, I would visualize medicine I took as elven armies rushing into my body unleashing hails of arrows on the pathogenic orc hordes. 👇

I wrote about self-centeredness and how it relates to my well-being.

https://little.zachphillips.blog/2021/03/31/when-i-know.html

Zach Phillips (100/100 posts) @zachphillips

I've spent most of my life with an extreme attitude toward myself: Either I'm the greatest or I'm the worst, and since I'm very rarely the greatest, I've mostly been pretty mean to myself. When I'm at my best is when I don't have an opinion about myself one way or another. 👇

My experiment of publishing 100 posts in 100 days was successful, so I wrote about why I've decided to continue indefinitely.

I wrote about the trap of designing workflows before you have any output from them.

https://little.zachphillips.blog/2021/04/02/workflow-second.html

Zach Phillips (100/100 posts) @zachphillips

Building a system before you have the stuff to go into the system can be fun but it's not an efficient way to design. I love an optimal workflow but it's much better to first make a bunch of stuff with a sub-optimal workflow than to design an optimal one without any stuff. 👇

I wrote about a few very Philadelphia examples of where we all communally agree to ignore the rules. This last one is a reprint from an early PEN. Since I decided to write daily the way I used to write the PENs, I've gone back and wanted to take some of those pieces and put them on the little blog.

https://little.zachphillips.blog/2021/04/03/gently-ignoring-the.html

Zach Phillips (100/100 posts) @zachphillips

The drive from Center City to Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia is one of the prettiest drives in any city in America, up the Schuylkill River (pronounced "skookle") down Kelly Drive to Lincoln Drive… I want to talk about Lincoln Drive. 👇

Babies

Another one of those situations where Allison "will never see them in these outfits again" so here are the pictures. My film processing capabilities can't come soon enough (ordered months and months ago, will arrive in a couple weeks). These were shot on the Fuji digital (X100V):

Is it just us or did Wendell’s haircut instantly age him like 11-16 years.

He’s still cute but it makes us really sad. No more true babies in this house.

Hope everyone is getting their shots and feeling very safe soon.

Happy spring, PENpals,

Zach