Dabbler in many things

My defense next month will mark the end(ish) of a period in my life when I chose to do a smaller set of things. Partly me getting older and needing fewer parallel projects, partly out of respect for the process of getting a doctorate.

This reflection is driven in part by the big digital footprint migration I mentioned in the previous post, transferring my old blogs and microsites from abhardwaj.net to anandb.net, making sure all the old links forward correctly. Made me go through traces of paused interests. 

I'm looking forward to doing more things again. 

1. Art. My medium of the moment is calligraphy. I'm working on the text for a tattoo. I havent decided exactly what its going to be, but do know it'll be around this verse from the Gita that's been on my mind for a while.

Sailor Manyo Nekoyanagi in a Pilot Parallel 6mm and Parker Quink Black in a Pilot Parallel 2.4mm 

2. Fountain Pens. Well, this one never really stopped, but the last few new pens I have are all gifts, and that should tell you something. I've always wanted to write about pens, my pens in particular. I have several cases where I have the same pen in a number of materials, and I'd love to reflect on that. 

Current EDC

3. Movies. I miss movies. I miss going to the movies, I miss watching good movies at home. I miss being able to listen to Filmcast episodes spoiler segments. I might resume the action cinemarathon. 

4. Music. Another one of those things that never really went away but how I do it has changed. Updating playlist reminded me that new music daily and top40 type lists are 90% of what I listen to. I want to diversify, and more live music too.

5. Making. I want to making something substantial, with my hands. Pottery or ceramics perhaps? Pick up the old whittling tools? Depends on what our next apartment/home looks like.

6. Coffee. Been drinking a lot of pre-roasted bean brews, to my shame. Need to get back to roasting. I also want to upgrade to a Flair 58 perhaps, keep the manual lever espresso thing going. 

7. Codebase.  I really paused codebase the last couple years. Big plans, more notebooks, some github integration, some vibe coding support. Ironically, it might have played a role in me being favoured in the job app that ends up mattering. In retrospect however, no regrets on toning down the computation and focusing on credible qualitative fieldwork.