past holiday greetings | gallery | portfolio | email Jeff Dieffenbach

Stratton Mountain | summit gondola station interior | broken glass

Happy New Year!

Three ideas are top of mind for me as 2022 kicks off: attention, meaning, and happiness.

ATTENTION

My resolution for the new year--take back my ability to focus of my attention. It's bad enough when distractions pull me away from things I *have* to do (mundane work tasks, I'm looking at you), but what's up with being distracted away from things I *want* to do? That great new series on Netflix isn't good enough--hmm, maybe there's something interesting on my phone that I can check out in between scenes. I put together ideas on managing attention here ... what seems to be working for me--being aware of when my attention starts to wander and taking pleasure in bringing it back on task.
Pay Attention 		 
MEANING

Conventional wisdom tells us we should find meaning in work. But work doesn't always offer meaning and people aren't always wired for work (some thoughts on the latter here). Work more reliably provides the financial foundation on which to build meaning--perhaps through work, but more likely through the relationships in our lives and the pursuits on which we spend our personal time. Bonus: it's less common to get let go from a relationship than a job!
Find Meaning 		 
HAPPINESS

It will surprise exactly no one to hear that I find happiness in family, friends, ... and bikes. Bikes gave me this nerve-wracking story from Leadville in 2021. Add photography to that list--I combined bikes and photography in submitting these entries to the annual Mark Gunter cycling photography contest (none were selected as finalists; winners here). Add learning to the list as well--I'm fortunate that my work focuses on learning, and allowed me the opportunity to take Yale professor Laurie Santos' fantastic and highly-recommended online course, The Science of Well-Being.
Be Happy


What I paid attention to, where I found meaning, what made me happy
... 2021 by the numbers
  • The tracking app Strava shows that I notched 264 days of activity (cycling, skiing, running, kayaking, and hiking) including 35 days in a row spanning Aug and Sep ... those activities totalled 3,949 miles over 402 hours and up (and down) 211,527 feet ... usually in the fine company of Betsy, other family, and friends
  • I triggered the shutter of my Sony a6000 camera almost exactly 10,000 times
  • PocketCasts informs that I listened to on the order of 700 podcasts for 22 solid days of listening (and boosting the playback speed saved me 16 hours)
  • I earned completion credentials for 5 online learning courses (and a total of 10 over the last 3 years)


Over the years, I've enjoyed the December/January activity of pulling something together and extending holiday greetings. For many years, those greetings took the form of physical Hallmarkesque cards. Around the turn of the century, we made the shift to photo cards. The year 2000 is the first* I have record of. That surprises me a bit--Taylor was born in 1993, Zachary in 1996, and I had imagined that they would have made their holiday photo debut much earlier.
*If you're the type of person--like I am--who saves cards from the past, and you happen to have one from me from 2002 or prior, please snap a photo of it and send it along.
I don't recall if we sent a physical card in 2008 or 2009, but those years marked the beginning of a shift to digital, and by 2010 it was all bits, no atoms. Fast forward to the end of 2020, and it was, well, nothing. Which is odd, as I couldn't have had much else to do. The full history going back as far as I have it is here.


Happy New Year!