Now Archive: September 2022

Here is my Now page for September 1st, 2022. For my current Now page, go here.

It’s not a fun time for me, but it’s an important time.

1. Caregiver Strategizing
   The reason I live in the middle of Utah is my mother-in-law. She’s in her 80’s, and a few years ago after her husband passed, Denise and I realized we needed to be closer so that she could maintain her health and independence. That’s worked out fairly well, but…we recently received some news that let us know that we won’t need to live here for much longer. Now we’re looking at how to free up as much time as possible to provide care and quality of life for her remaining months. Fortunately, I was already thinking of leaving my job, now I just have some less pleasant reasons for doing so.

2. Dropping and Pausing Projects
   Given the above, the mountain of to-do’s that I’m always up to are in critical re-evaluation mode. As the Trustee for my Mom’s affairs, I’m still trying to close all that out. And I am still serving as an expert witness on a pending case, though that’s in a bit of a lull right now. But I’m hunting for the pause button on most everything else, and queuing up a massive Drop100 project for whenever I can get to it. Panama trip is cancelled, Private Pilot’s License trainings are stopped, putting pretty much everything on hold.

3. Evaluating Extreme Privacy
   In the evenings, I’ve recently been reading Michael Bazzell’s legendary book Extreme Privacy: What it takes to disappear (4th edition). Though I’ve heard about the book for years, I considered it too expensive and not really that relevant to me, personally. My Mom’s passing changed that. She was a strong defender of privacy, in part because of her work as a bookkeeper and her knowledge of technology, but also because for a few days in 1974 the FBI believed she had switched identities with Patty Hearst and made her life miserable. She never forgot how she was harassed even though she had done nothing wrong, and even after she was cleared she was so embarrassed and treated with such suspicion that she quit her job and moved to another city. She was ever-after defensive to anyone trying to accumulate too much of her information. While my Mom never had anything to hide, she knew firsthand that those with data don’t always use it well, and that even the authorities aren’t always right. Given this, I’ve been very surprised since her death just how much of her information is out there and how hard it is to claw back. This book has been very helpful to me in that regard, and it’s started me thinking more in the direction of privacy in my own life. I’m not doing anything differently at this point, just learning and thinking about what to do when I can think about doing things again.

Before you get too worried about me, I’m fine. I’m still on my 50 Days of Health kick, and sticking to that even in the midst of everything has been a good choice. It’s grounding, and I’m already feeling much healthier.