Oil, Agreements, and Apple Silicon: Journal for Jan 11th

Bookcase restoration is complete. I was able to sand and remove some of the surface blemishes and finished it with danish oil. It was pretty beat up before and the danish oil gave it a nice rustic look. It was the first time I've used danish oil and it was pretty easy to apply, I followed the directions on the can and after a day or so it was done.

The Four Agreements is a self-help book that is similar to some of the stoic books I've read. It's also pretty short (131 half pages). I started reading it this week and I'm about halfway through. There's not any new wisdom in it that hasn't been covered in other books I've read, but I've found it helpful to read books that say similar things in different ways.

Life is tough and it can be easy to get in a rut or get caught up in your thoughts.

I've read books on stoicism, meditation, religion (Christianity, Buddhism and Taoism) and psychology and it feels like they have some very similar concepts, but they express them in different ways.

For me, living a good life boils down to:

1. Loving people, helping them and wanting the best for them (yourself included)
2. Not getting caught up in what people (including yourself) think of you
3. Controlling your actions while experiencing emotions

Everything else is just noise and the machinations of hairless apes.

A couple of my friends, Will and Eric, have transitioned to a mostly plant-based diet and another friend, Mark, has been focusing on increasing his fiber.

After looking at my own diet I was a little light on fiber too. I also recently read that increasing fiber can help with gut biome health which is something I've struggled with since I turned 30. I've started eating oatmeal for breakfast and moving the piece of toast I had before to lunch. That adds 5g of fiber to my daily intake, which was ~22g @ 2k calories.

Andrea and I prepare and cook most of our own meals, including breakfast and lunch. We use mostly whole foods that we prepare ourselves and rarely buy any pre-made food. Working from home makes it easy to do and once you're in the habit it's pretty easy to keep it up.

I have a couple of older laptops that I haven't been using since I got my macbook air (m1). I put Asahi linux on it and it's been great. I get the mac build quality with the linux I'm familiar with.