Jul 05, 2024 News 5 min read

Weekly Update - Breakdancing, Cycling, and Productivity Edition

Jeff here, I hope you've had a good week. It's Finley Fridays! Today I want to share what I've been up to and all the cool links I've found. Let's get into it!

Website Re-Build Updates

👨‍💻 Trying to Focus: I spent some time at the library working on my website redesign. It's been good but sometimes it feels like I'm fighting against myself when it comes to focus and procrastination. I want to get into deep work and make dents into the important tasks, but get lost in the weeds on tiny details.

I used ChatGPT and Todoist to help me break down my vision into manageable chunks and tasks. I tried FigJam and Relume for mind mapping, which was kinda useful, but ultimately I had more success with picking one page to start with and going from there. I tried out Brain.FM for focus music that's supposed to help with ADHD. Enjoying it so far.

I also tried this new browser called Stack, which is a lot like Arc. I want to like these new approached to the web browser, but ultimately find it hard to adjust to their proposed workflow while also trying to actually get my work done.

website wireframe of a blog header — A rough wireframe of my blog header design, built in Bricks with ACSS

🧱 When in Doubt, BEM it Out: I asked myself what would be most fun to start with and decided to lay out a basic blog template. I'm using Bricks and ACSS. While it’s been a learning curve, I'm developing good habits using BEM (Block, Element, Modifier) methodology and DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) principles. Basically, using a class-first workflow with a standardized structure and naming convention for HTML and CSS. It keeps things organized. This is what Kevin Geary teaches and it fits with how I like to work.

To learn more about BEM methodology, here's a good video to start with:

I also saw Ollie Pro was released this week, which was tempting to abandon my current direction and just buy that awesome "done for me" theme. Mike McAlister, the designer of Ollie, is doing an amazing job with it. But right now I'm gonna stick it out with Bricks and ACSS. I'm already starting to get the hang of it and beginning to feel like I can build anything (eventually).

Learning Curve and Setbacks: It hasn’t all been smooth sailing—I had a bit of a setback when my InstaWP staging site expired unexpectedly. I failed to recognize I was on a 7-day trial. It turned out okay though, as it pushed me to set up everything on my Cloudways host, giving me more practice reps.

Server Upgrades: Speaking of Cloudways, I was chatting with their support over an annoying slowdown issue on my site. Clicking on any link in my WordPress dashboard would take 5-6 seconds to load. So frustrating. It turned out to be a DNS resolver issue, which they promptly fixed and my site was fast again. Yay! I also took the opportunity to upgrade my server to PHP 8.3 (I was on 7.4, which is on "end of life" stage) and the latest MariaDB version for improved performance—I'm sure these will help!

Free Subscription Tracker: I found this handy subscription tracker in Notion to keep tabs on all the apps and plugins I'm using for my business. Really helpful!

Personal Stuff

🍄 Microdosing Shrooms Update: I did doses #7 and #8 this week. I find each session to be very humbling and grounding. Reminding me that I'm a physical being in a physical body (not just a mind or spirit) and that it's safe to be here. It tends to push unresolved emotions, old patterns, triggers, and anxieties to the surface. They have a great energetic charge associated with them, making it feel more obvious and harder to ignore. It helps me FEEL them and puts me in a better state to process them through without rumination or analysis. Click here to learn more about my microdosing practice.

🚴‍♀️ Cincy Trip: Cara and I took a trip down to Cincinnati, revisiting our favorite spots when we were first dating. We got coffee and lunch at The Madison Place, my go-to coffee shop in Cincy.

Me with my fav Nitro Cold Brew at The Madison Place

We had our bi-weekly "couple's meeting" and shared our gratitude for each other talked about our goals. We also stocked up on tea at Churchill's, Cara's fav, before stumbling into a live bicycle race in Hyde Park. This was a nice synchronicity for her because she literally just got into a rabbit hole learning about Lance Armstrong, the Tour de France, and competitive cycling in general. It was so cool to see.

Cara bemused by her cycling synchronicity

More Cycling Content: Oh get this, we had no idea, but the Tour de France is going on RIGHT NOW. And we learned about this dude named Mark Cavendish. He just broke the world record with 35 stage wins. It's kind of a crazy time to just now get hip to the Tour de France and then this record gets broken. We later found there's a Netflix doc about him that came out last year chronicling his dramatic rise and fall and eventual comeback. Fascinating.

Cara and I are also getting hyped for the Olympics coming up next month. We've been catching up on random qualifier competitions on YouTube and watching stuff on Netflix. Exciting!

And watching every Indiana Fever game as we watch Caitlin Clark in her rookie year in the WNBA. Yes, we bought WNBA league pass for this!

Breakdancing in the Olympics?

Oh and guess what, breakdancing is now an Olympic sport, which I'm stoked about. I was really into breaking in college and into my 30s. I started taking classes at 28 to learn from some actual b-boys and my skills improved dramatically. But I was never as good as even the mid-tier dancers in my area, let alone anywhere else. I think I participated in one battle at an event in Austin in 2016 and lost in the first round. Hah! I was never in it for the serious competition, I just loved the dance.

Here's an old video of me breaking from 2015:

Here's another which includes my teachers Swift Ali and BZ Broox:

While I've been out of it for awhile, it's been fun to catch up on who's who in the modern breaking scene. Incredible talent out there these days. I don't care if people say breakdancing was an 80s fad, it's always got a place in my heart.

Not everyone agrees that breaking should even be in the Olympics, as it's more of an art than a sport. But I'm still looking forward to checking it out. Check out b-boy Victor and b-girl Sunny representing the USA!