The Chosen is a television show about the life of Jesus, that I never knew I've always wanted. Until this show was created, I didn't even know I would have an appetite for this kind of show. There have been a lot of depictions of Jesus in movies and films, but none tell His story like this show does. The twist here is that the life of Jesus is told from His' followers point of view; that's why it's titled The Chosen.

In this show, you get to see what Jesus was like in the eyes of Simon Peter, James and John (sons of Zebedee), Matthew the tax collector, even from the eyes of Mary Magdala.

In fact, the first episode of Season 1 revolves around Mary Magdala. And it is a beautiful, heart-warming episode. If you've ever felt lost, alone, abandoned, with nowhere else to go, Episode 1 might resonate with you very deeply. Episode 1 is what got me hooked on this show. The ending brought tears to my eyes.

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?

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. ♪ ♫ ♪

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?

This is a list of rules that I'm going to follow for the remainder of Lent. In hindsight I should have started this as soon as Lent started, but oh well. Better late than never.

These rules are based off v2.0. There's not much modifications from the previous rules I had. The biggest change in this set of rules, is that I'm not allowing myself to do any blogging whatsoever. I already feel anxious and excited about that one. It will be a good challenge.

And so without further ado, my Lent digital declutter starts now. You can find the rules below. See y'all online on Easter Sunday.

The biggest development from last week, was that after weeks of thinking about it and talking about it on this journal, I finally published my digital garden online. You can find it here.

It's a work in progress, so there will be changes. In fact, the nature of it means it will probably be forever under construction. When you go through it, don't think of it as a blog. It is not. There are no published dates. There's no RSS feed. There's no email subscription. The URLs to specific notes will probably change every week. It is really a digital garden/personal knowledge-base.

Matt shared this wonderful website on Mastodon. What an amazing find! It allows you to watch, what looks like dashcam videos, from all over the world. In an age where travel and road trips are put on-hold, this website lets you experience virtually driving in another country. It's a mesmerizing and very interesting way to see what other countries/cities look like.

Power outages and water shut-offs all across Texas. People have died in accidents on the road and at their own homes because of the cold. It's extremely disheartening. We've been extremely lucky to not have lost power or water at all. But that wasn't the case for everyone else. Last week's winter storm really showed how the state of Texas is just not ready for this kind of weather. I'm hoping that the state can learn from this and be better prepared for the next one.

Last week I intentionally decreased the amount of stuff I've been reading. This is to give my brain a chance to digest what I've just read.

I've also taken to adding articles/posts that I want to read, into my Are.na Bookmarks/Reading List bucket. This seems to help decrease the unease that I feel, from not being able to immediately read interesting articles/posts. Since I know that I will eventually get to them someday in the future, it allows my brain to relax and focus on the current task at hand.

Since I have been trying to read less, a problem that I'm running into is what to do with my free time when I can't read. I would prefer to work on my digital garden, but I cannot do so when I'm not at home. This is because my notes in Obsidian, while synced to a Github repo, are not easy to work with via my phone. So, I now have a lot more time to think through things because I'm trying to read less, but during those times I can't work on my digital garden. That's one big limitation with my Obsidian setup.

That said, maybe I should look at it as a benefit in some way. I shouldn't be using my phone that much anyway.

Just a week after officially declaring that I will stop posting on my dev blog and instead publish software developments posts on this journal, I am starting to see a problem with this setup. The problem mainly revolves around retrieving software development content.

I actually use my dev blog to store answers to problems I've encountered before. And every once in a while, I use it to retrieve scripts or pieces of code that I need to re-use. That's easy to do with a dedicated software development blog. It's not so easy to do with this journal. And that's because these bits and pieces of software development content, are buried inside one big Weeknotes post. And that makes it hard for me to quickly get to the information I need. It is inefficient as far as searching for information goes.

For instance, to retrieve the notes I had about the basics of using Git from a command line. I have to sift through the content of Weeknotes-011.