Dino’s Journal 📖

Excellent Sunday homily from Bishop Barron. He's drawing attention to yesterday's reading from Ezekiel Chapter 2. Every baptized Christian and that includes me, is called to be a Prophet.

Each one of us who have been baptized in the Christian faith, are all prophets in a way, because we are expected to spread the word of God.

I have tried doing that on this journal. Every once in awhile, I talk about God, I talk about my faith, I share some Christian music, I share some interesting homilies like this one. And whenever I do, I notice that I would lose readers and subscribers. It has been a stumbling block for me. Sometimes, I ask myself, what's the point of doing so, if no one is listening?

Don't force yourself to blog when you don't want to.

This is a rule or tip I've seen from other bloggers in the past. But I didn't really internalize it, until I made blogging less of a priority in my life.

I always had something to say. In fact, I kept writing down thoughts and ideas into my journal, so that I would always have something to say. But soon enough it became like work to me. More of a chore instead of a fun hobby.

I'll try to make this quick. Me and the wife finished Season 1 and we love it. Can't wait for Season 2. The wife is already digging into the first book. And she's not normally one to read a book just because of a show or movie she watched. But she was really interested in this one. And so am I.

Yes, this show is based off a book, the Grisha Trilogy of books to be exact.

I particularly love the world that was introduced to me in this show. I love the Russian inspired world and lore of the story. I love the language and the words/terminology they use. I love the setting. I love the plot.

I came across this music video a long time ago, back in 2013 or 2014 maybe. I remember getting teary eyed at reading the fan letters in the music video. Anyway, I was still an avid Facebook user then. I shared it on Facebook and that was it, I just forgot about it. Not even sure it garnered a Like on Facebook. It disappeared into the feed, never to be seen again.

And so imagine my delight when I rediscovered it a few weeks ago. I found it while going through my music log posts, trying to replace the Spotify embeds with YouTube music videos. I discovered that the music video has the same effect on me now, as it did then. It's a beautiful song, one where I feel like God is talking to me. And the music video shows how much comfort and peace it brought to other people.

I already shared this song in a previous music log, but I feel like it deserves to be shared again. Hopefully, this time around, it will reach a lot more people and not simply fade away into an algorithmic feed.

To anyone who needs to hear this message today, know that you are not alone. Look up and see, love has a face. ♪ ♫ ♪

At the start of this year, I decided to stop writing to my dev blog and instead start publishing software development posts on this journal.

I loved the ease of publishing new software development content to this journal using write.as. But I didn't really like how it all turned out. Specifically, I thought it was jarring to be reading a post on SQL Server, then hit the homepage to find posts on video games and God. It felt awkward to me.

So, I decided to once again start publishing software development posts to a dedicated software development blog. This time around, instead of going back to a static site generator, I spun up a new dev blog on write.as. I'm hoping that the ease of publishing new content outweighs the drawbacks of having yet another website to maintain. We'll see how it goes.

I've had this YouTube video open on a browser tab on my phone for a few weeks now. I thought the question was interesting, but I never actually viewed the video until today. This 1 minute video gives a concise answer to the very interesting question of, “How do we know Jesus rose from the dead?”

In case you didn't watch the video, the answer is, the presence of the church today.

Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead, as the story goes, 2,000 years ago. Again, 2,000 years ago. Had the story of resurrection been fake, had it been fabricated, how come the church still exists today?

I think the reason I’m always critical of my time when writing posts for this site, is because the time I spend writing blog posts, is time not spent with my family. I may be in the same house as them, at times even in the same room, but during those moments when I'm writing, I’m not really with them.

You might be wondering, where is this coming from? It’s coming from the realization that my kids are growing up so fast. My eldest son for instance, is going to start school this year.

I fear that I'm losing my time with them. That window where they think it’s still cool to play with dad, I feel like that window of time is shrinking every day.

Twenty, thirty, forty years from now, I don’t want to regret not spending enough time with my kids. And let’s be honest, time spent with your kids is never going to be enough. They will grow up and eventually leave to have their own families. You can't hang on to them forever.

Trying out a new format for my Weeknotes post. One thing I discovered during my latest digital declutter was that I did not look forward to writing my Weeknotes posts. It's not because I don't have content to put out. It's because sometimes, there's too many to choose from. It then becomes exhausting to me, to decide what gets included and what doesn't. Then there's the editing part which sometimes takes over an hour to complete.

So, my aim with the new format is to make writing Weeknotes posts quicker. I want to spend no more than 30 minutes writing one. — This post still took close to an hour to finish, damn.

The new format is simple. I start with the highlight or highlights of the week. Followed by at least one thing I've learned during the week. Then lastly, at least one interesting read during the week. And that's it.

Let's see how this goes then.

Highlight(s) Of The Week

The main highlight last week was getting our 2nd dose of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine.

I had to take a sick day the day after, because I was not feeling well. The side-effects of the 2nd dose of the Moderna vaccine are pretty rough. It felt like I had the flu, minus the fever. I felt really tired. I had body aches everywhere. I had chills all day. I felt hot and cold at the same time. It was tough.