How I See It: Reflections on spirituality, technology, and the art of everyday life

This week's Weekly Update covers some thoughts on honesty, the loss of my mother, an unexpected coincidence involving my parents' interment dates, and a few updates on family and work.

There has been a lot going on in my life recently, and it has made me think more about my personal relationship with honesty. For me, I think this relationship started back when I was in second grade, and I was diagnosed with minimal brain damage. I talk more about that in other writing, but this diagnosis had an interesting and very unsettling effect on my life. Like Adam and Eve taking a bite of the apple, I learned shame. I learned to be ashamed of who I was, and the fact that I could not read as well as others my age was a secret everyone knew but that I needed to hide. Each year, as I started a new semester with a new teacher, my parents would go and have a secret meeting with them, explaining my shameful truth. I always felt that I was a burden, a problem to be dealt with. Even when I was dreaming of attending the Air Force Academy and becoming an astronaut, I still felt that I had to hide. Later on, new words would come to change my diagnosis from minimal brain dama...

This week's Weekly Update is a personal one. My mother passed away on October 15, 2026, her 85th birthday, following a long struggle with frontotemporal dementia (FTD). I reflect on her final days, the unusual coincidence of her passing on her birthday, and the challenges of dealing with grief while continuing with everyday life. The sky was clear, the air was cool, and the sun would not rise for another hour and a half. It was 5:30 a.m. on October 15, 2026, my mother's 85th birthday, in Ventura, California.

This week's Weekly Update covers a difficult week for my family, delays at work, progress on the office remodel, an observation about eye contact during Zoom meetings, and some personal reflections on the 40th anniversary of The Phantom of the Opera .

This week's Weekly Update covers progress on my new office floor and woodwork, watching Starship Flight 14, dealing with a leaking washing machine, and discovering just how much passive income I am getting each month.

This week's Weekly Update covers preparing to install the new floor in my office, why time seems to pass faster as we get older, the slow arrival of fall, problems getting back to my morning walks, and deciding to repair an aging washing machine.