Highlights: Morning coffee, sitting window side while roasting & bagging coffee beans. Going dark (roast) this time. 15.5 @ 444° to be precise. It's an easily remembered routine that allows for consistency. I have enjoyed a few episodes of the "Strangers on a Bench" podcast. I found them grounding and inspirational. Like so many things that pass before me, I want to do that too, and I have a few ideas yet no real sense of drive and resolve to go down a rabbit hole when I'm already committed to something more in need of my attention. Still, it's another item added to my "someday" list of desires. En route to have lunch with Jack (coincidentally at Jack London Square), my mom called. PGE's scheduled outage was causing the smoke alarm that I just replaced the batteries in only a month ago to beep. I was able to divert my route to help while explaining that a battery-operated device wasn't impacted by a power outage. Yet I could hear it in the background, and when I dropped by, I took it off the wall and heard it beep as I did from the other room. It was the carbon monoxide detector. Problem solved. Lunch was great. Jack's been a guiding influence for decades, and I'm grateful we've maintained a connection for almost 40 years. We swapped stories about wives, kids, the election and our love of driving a Tesla. Good times! I just made it back to SJ and my eye appointment with 2 minutes to spare, allowing a bio break before getting an updated prescription and placing an order for new glasses. My AirPod Pro 2 arrived, and I tinkered with the hearing aid feature. It's on my older model, but I got these on Black Friday at a great price, and I think they sound better. I'm looking forward to having an opportunity to put them to the noise test of a crowded space in the near future.
Insights: My mindset right now is somewhere between confidence and concern. The focus on being present and mindful, grateful and connected to all of life's daily ups and downs, can be as draining as it can be fulfilling. In that, there remains a need to be fully reconciled with relative insignificance. Why? I think answering that is life's challenge. "Why" is where enlightenment hides.
