Jonathan Snook's Blog

Recent Morsels

As I am on the cusp of considering another culinary quest, I’ve been wondering how I want to present the experience. I could do something similar to the Fifty site, which felt more documentary. Here’s where I was and this is what I ate.

I had an Instagram account where I’d post photos of the food but their post format felt a bit constraining, being limited to 10 photos and a description. It amounted to little more than to say I was here.

Am I trying to tell a story? Am I trying to begin a dialogue? Am I trying to inspire interest in others to begin or continue their own fine dining journeys? Or do I just like eating and want to remember where and what I ate?

Matthew Smith has started blogging his trip to Japan. What’s interesting to me is following him on Instagram and seeing this layered approach to the experience. It’s like watching a TV show and then getting to watch behind-the-scenes footage. It’s been fun to see the coffee shops and restaurants he visits.

Last night, the girlfriend and I watched Tampopo, a Japanese film that was released in 1985 and dubbed a “ramen western,” a play on the term spaghetti western. It was, to say the least, a movie with something to say about the love of food—at times, literally.

One scene featured a homeless person breaking into a restaurant kitchen to make omurice. Due to the popularity of it on social media, I imagined it a more recent invention of the last decade or two, but upon reading up on it, the dish has been around for over 100 years. However, the popular version of the dish—with the omelette sliced open on top of the rice—was created for the movie. That’s still 40 years ago. That was neat to learn.

I signed up for a food writing course. My goal going into it is to develop some new techniques and ideas for how I write about food. Perhaps I’ll develop a stronger sense of direction in my writing, food or otherwise.

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Friday.

His mom came to pick him up while he frantically tried to get tasks done that should’ve been done the night before, a night spent being out until the wee hours of the morning, soaking in every last minute possible with friends.

As he was about to leave, I noticed tears start to form in his eyes and then they start for me, in turn. A deep long hug and then he’s off. This’ll be the last time he’ll be in this house.

I descend into his room—a room that looked like a tornado might have rolled through—with piles of clothes, toys, empty cans, and half-empty bags of chips. The tears for me come more quickly and more abundantly. His leaving was predicted and known and yet it feels sudden and emotional.

I have a long road ahead of me: a drive to his school, six hours away, to meet up with him and his mom and get him settled into college. I also have a short road ahead of me: cleaning out his room. It’s the last step to closing this chapter of parenthood and starting a new one. The house, at one time filled with people, is now empty and ready for others to fill it with joy, heartache, and personality.

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Thursday.

Tomorrow, my kid heads off to college. It’ll take a few days to really sink in—likely in the process of cleaning up what’s left of his room after he’s left.

I am taking moments to be present. We had dinner last night on the back porch. It’ll be the last time we have dinner together in this house. The weather was pleasant. I could see a plane contrail left in the mostly clear but now darkening sky. Autumn feels like it’s creeping its way in.

But first, today.

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Sundials

As a kid, I’d lie in a sea of green grass, looking up at the ocean of blue sky, watching the clouds pass overhead, a chinook wind blowing over me.

Today, as I sit on my balcony, as I do many days during the warm (or blistering hot) summer days, the ever-changing clouds continue their swift pass while the shadows of buildings seem firmly planted against the ground. The concrete and brick towers act like sundials against the asphalt. Any given moment feels motionless but stay still long enough and it is like I can feel the rotation of the earth. I can pinpoint my immaterial place in the solar system. It is in this stillness that I feel the passage of time—more than I ever did lying in that quiet grass. The shadows aren’t still—they’re just taking their time.

The sun grabs hold of the horizon and pulls its way out of view, seemingly more quickly than it has dancing through the day, more eager to shine its light elsewhere for a time. The Earth pulls a blanket of shadows over me as I head to sleep.

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Birthday Widgets

I can’t remember birthdays all that well. They do only happen once a year, after all. But I like to reach out to some people to wish them a happy birthday.

In the Apple ecosystem, adding a birthdate to a contact will show their birthday in Apple Calendar. Personally, though, I find it can be a bit noisy. Between my own calendar, kids’ calendars, garbage pickup calendar, my mom’s calendar, and my girlfriend’s calendar, things can easily get lost in the mix.

I’ll turn a lot of these calendars off, including the birthday calendar, so that I only see the most important stuff. The default Calendar Up Next widget will mirror Apple Calendar and only show events for calendars that are visible.

I’ve set up a secondary “Up Next” calendar widget on both my iPhone and my Mac. I edit the widget and turn off “Mirror Calendar App” and then choose to only have the Birthdays calendar selected. The small widget will show any birthdays for today. The medium widget will show upcoming birthdays. The large and extra large widgets are kinda pointless because they’re meant to show hourly views. Birthdays are all-day events.

And that’s it. Now I can remember to wish people a happy birthday.

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I’m Still July

July had originally looked to be a quiet month but as June was coming to a close, I got invited by friends to a restaurant in Italy: Lido 84. I had considered going to Lido 84 years ago but logistics never quite worked out so I quickly said yes to this opportunity.

After all the planning and execution of June events, I half-assed invitations to host Canada Day and was secretly delighted when most people cancelled the day of. My son and his girlfriend still came over and we watched the Snowbirds perform. The day ended with fireworks.

Then I switched into planning mode. Flights booked. Friends booked an Airbnb a walk away from the restaurant. My girlfriend was able to get the time off work so we decided to tack on a few extra days in Venice.

Lake Garda

We flew into Milan and said friends picked us up from the airport, driving us to Lake Garda. We stopped in Brescia along the way to grab coffee and lunch. The coffee shop, Caffè Bar Squisito, ended up being a gem with the guy who worked there being a coffee nerd. Totally worth a stop.

Afterwards, we made our way to the Airbnb—this lovely house on the hillside, looking out over the lake. That evening, we went to dinner in Salò, at Osteria Felter alle Rose, with a smaller group of the ten people who would be joining us for dinner the following evening at Lido 84. I had the spaghetti basilico, which was fantastic.

The following evening, we walked down to Lido 84 and sat outside on the edge of the lake. I made sure to order their signature dish, the cacio e pepe, which is served in a pig’s bladder. It was good but a couple pieces of penne seemed a little undercooked. It was still tasty, regardless. The restaurant was a wonderful experience and worthy of their one Michelin star: plenty of good food and great service but nothing blew me away and the wine pairing was underwhelming.

We spent an extra day at the Airbnb where there was some consideration of activities but it was much too hot. In the evening, we went to a pizza restaurant that was farther up the hill. Once again, sat outside with an even higher look-out over the lake, we enjoyed some decent thin crust pizza.

Venice

The next day, we were driven to Verona and split ways with our friends to make our own way onto Venice where we would have a mostly relaxed few days walking around the city, exploring the busy streets and canals… and, of course, enjoying good food.

I couldn’t resist and booked a couple Michelin-starred restaurants to try. There was 2-star Glam for lunch, and 1-star Quadri for dinner the following evening. Both were lovely experiences and worth trying.

Glam is a somewhat small restaurant with only a handful of tables. We tried to listen in on the neighbouring table as their conversation weaved in between English and Italian. They were dressed in a way that felt stylish but still casual. I should’ve followed suit because I was drenched in sweat from the walk over. We made up for it by catching a water taxi back to the hotel. This felt very extravagant, very James Bond. And considering how stuffed full I was from that meal, I appreciated the relaxed ride back instead of trying to walk a half hour back in the heat.

At Quadri, they offer a “feast” with four courses of four dishes each. This was probably my favourite of the Michelin-starred meals on this trip, with a number of dishes really hitting the spot and given the sizeable portions across 16 plates, it felt like just the right amount of food.

Italians (and Venetians) are very proud of their culinary history and that was very much reflected in all of the meals we had in Italy.

Back Home

Back in Ottawa, I saw my mom off on her way to Europe to visit my brother.

Already a week in, August is looking to be an odd month with my son heading off to college at the end of it. In the meantime, I’m in preparation mode, cleaning out what I can for now and being there for him as he needs me.

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A Life in Three Acts

When asked what advice he had for actors, Denzel Washington pulled out an interesting quote:

First part of your life you learn, second part of your life you earn, third part of your life you return.

I had considered including this quote in my Enough post because the quote feels good. It rhymes and it follows the Rule of Three. But the more I kept analyzing and over-analyzing the quote, the more I took issue with it.

We should always be learning, regardless of stage of life.
Denzel, now at the age of 70, is still earning. Many of us will be earning well into the third part of our life.
Returning can also happen at multiple stages. Many, like myself, earn through return. That is, we get paid to share our knowledge.

I like a pithy aphorism as much as the next person but they can easily become thought-terminating clichés.

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Enough

“What if I actually have already achieved everything I’m going to achieve in my life,” Dan Mall asks. “What does it feel like to live like someone where everything new is a bonus, not a desire and certainly not a need?”

At fifty-one, I have most likely passed the mid-point of my life. Given the older generation within my family have passed away in their 80s and 90s, I likely have three to four decades ahead of me. That’s still a lot of time.

And yet I’ve already reached a point where every day feels like a bonus—every day is gravy on top of what has felt like a very successful first half (or two-thirds).

The wall

For the longest time, I felt like web development was my life. Not only was it my life, it was part of my identity. As such, I thought I’d never stop.

Instead, I hit a wall—mostly from depression, possibly some trauma, but also a heaping pile of burnout as well. Professionally, it felt like I was “solving” the same problems over and over again. As a developer, I would come into a new organization and be working on feeds, sidebars, buttons, list views, and detail views, over and over again. Take a look at any site or tool and none of them are breaking any new ground from an interface perspective. Nor should they. People don’t want to learn cryptic interfaces. They want predictable.

As a result, I started stepping back. I stopped speaking at conferences. I stopped writing about technical topics. I stopped marketing myself.

This might sound depressing but as it turns out, it has been both humbling and liberating. It has meant examining my life and approaching it from a position of gratitude.

Well lived

To look back over my professional career, I am grateful for the opportunities I was given and the success I have achieved. I’ve written books. I’ve spoken at conferences around the world. I’ve helped build products that have reached hundreds of millions of people. Yes, there are plenty of people out there that have achieved more but I have no desire to compare myself to them.

Even in my personal life, I’ve achieved the goals I set out for myself. I’ve checked off all the things on my bucket list. The house, the car, the travel, the restaurants.

It’s been surreal to review my life and marvel at all of the experiences I’ve had the opportunity to participate in. Those opportunities don’t happen in a vacuum, of course, and I’m grateful for all the people who have helped along the way. A lot of those opportunities have felt like being in the right place at the right time—sheer luck. When I graduated high school in 1993, the World Wide Web was only just starting out. While I dabbled in HTML, I never considered it a career option, just as I had never considered Usenet or IRC as a career option. They were simply mediums on which to discuss academic or hobby interests. It wasn’t until 1998 when I realized that there was a possible career here and I started to pursue it aggressively. I could’ve easily had a career as an accountant instead. But as they say, luck is when preparation meets opportunity.

What comes next

“I need a reverse bucket list. My goal for each year of the rest of my life should be to throw out things, obligations, and relationships,” Arthur C. Brooks writes in his essay about professional decline.

While Brooks says this as an approach to “clearly see my refined self in its best form,” that feels a bit too self-aggrandizing—like there is some ideal self that we need to continue pursuing in our later years, as if we’re not already good enough.

I do like the idea of it as a form of simplifying my life, though. After all, if I die tomorrow, do I want my kids to have to sort through all of the crap I’ve accumulated? Do I want them to be burdened with cleaning up my things and obligations?

What comes next for me is, I guess, not a refinement of the self but a refinement of learning of the self, to know myself better.

Brooks goes on to say that he’ll be focusing on serving others and nurturing deeper relationships.

“Throughout this essay, I have focused on the effect that the waning of my work prowess will have on my happiness. But an abundance of research strongly suggests that happiness—not just in later years but across the life span—is tied directly to the health and plentifulness of one’s relationships. Pushing work out of its position of preeminence—sooner rather than later—to make space for deeper relationships can provide a bulwark against the angst of professional decline.”

(He seems to contradict himself by saying he’ll get rid of relationships only to say happiness is tied to the plentifulness of relationships. But I digress.)

This is the headspace I’ve been in these days. How can I improve the relationships I have? How do I support them? I don’t mean that in a “do whatever other people want” kind of way. I mean it in a “how can I support others, in a way that doesn’t compromise myself” kind of way. I don’t want to just be an ATM for my kids or just a handyman for my mom. I want fulfilling relationships with them.

Whether it be my kids, my mom, my friends, or my partner, I want healthy relationships. My time in therapy these days has been spent learning how to approach those relationships with more trust and openness.

But that can be done regardless of whatever my professional direction may take. It shouldn’t be a full time job to foster relationships and on the flip side, work shouldn’t inhibit relationships, either. That’s not an either/or proposition.

Satisfied

If I have already achieved everything I’m going to achieve in my life, I am satisfied.

That doesn’t mean I’ll sit in a recliner, waiting for the hand of death to carry me across the threshold. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be something else that invigorates me in the next 10, 20, or 50 years.

So I lost some wind in the professional sails. Do I need a new headwind? Do I turn the boat towards exciting new waters, or enjoy floating along in a still and relaxing harbour? Both have their appeal.

Either way, I have enough. Whatever comes next will be met with gratitude and delight, even if nothing comes next.

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June, Baby

I don’t think I expected this month to be as busy as it was.

The month was bookended with birthday parties. I did lunch with my high school friends, lunch with my first roommate when I moved out at 18, and then a group birthday party to celebrate my son’s girlfriend’s kids.

At the end was my mom’s 80th birthday which had me organizing nearly 50 people to hang out at my uncle’s farm with catering and cake. Everything went off without a hitch and the weather was perfect.

In between it all was helping my youngest son graduate high school and attend his graduation. It still hasn’t sunk in that he’ll be off to college in the fall.

Ever since my eldest son moved out last year, I’ve been slowly divesting the house of everything in anticipation of selling the place. This month, the bbq, dining room table, and my bed frame made their way to friends. Over the summer, I’ll slowly find homes for the remainder of large items like the couch and chairs. The last step will be after my son heads to college where the house will get a full refresh in preparation for going on the market. After that, I’ll be living downtown full time.

Perhaps by then, the effect of this new phase of my life will have fully set in and I’ll figure out what my new routine will look like.

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The Setting Sun

The sun had just set with its rays getting cut by the hills and creating outlines on clouds. There is a soft layering to the horizon as details appear hazy in its own shadow. The city lights speckle the landscape and the tops of buildings are aglow.

It was a magical moment to sit there, stunned by the beauty of it. I’d have taken a picture of it if I had my phone on me. I could’ve gone to get my phone but I didn’t. I didn’t want to miss a moment of this. I wanted to be present. And so I sat there watching the blues and purples darken into blacks—and I am left with nothing but the memory.

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