Azirona Drift - Mom&Dad

Brisket

2020-11-30T04:09:16.553Z

This wasn’t my first brisket. But this was BY FAR my best brisket.

Smoking brisket is kind of the holy grail of grilling. It’s a big, expensive cut of meat. There’s only two on a cow. You don’t wanna mess it up. You cringe at the thought of babysitting this thing for 12 hours. You regret setting your alarm for 12:00 A.M. so that it’s ready to put on two hours later; and pulled, rested, and edible at 5:00 P.M.

It’s a lot of labor for one – maybe two – meals.

I shouldn’t’ve started out with brisket. The couple times I did, reminded me to go back to the drawing board.

I started with chicken. Cheap meat. Easy to work with. Simple seasonings.

I did chuck steak. A lot of chuck steak. Again, easy to work with. Quick cook times. Practice beef seasoning.

New York strips and ribeyes were next. Thicker pieces. Higher costs. Longer cook times. Need more care here.

Then I ventured into pork. Roasts and ribs – mostly ribs. Ribs helped me a ton: I got used to methodically sticking to a routine, controlling variables, keeping constant what did work. It’s also a several- hour ordeal; more than once, I found out too late that dinner would be after 7:00 P.M….

In the meantime, I researched. I watched videos. I learned from others’ mistakes. I made a plan.

Finally. The morning came. I stuck to my plan. I messed up once. Whoops. But it didn’t ruin the whole thing. The overcooked part, just gets used as dog treats. The remainder, the good bits, turned out AMAZING. I’ve sampled a few really good briskets at decent restaurants before. They’re very good. They’re great.

This… this turned out better.

And the best part about it is, I earned it.

It just felt right as we bit into it. The bark, the fat, the spices, the meat itself: everything complemented everything else. I could see the pure satisfaction on my wife’s face. I knew it was a job well done.

That’s the payoff you should look for with your work. That’s the pride you should strive for in your daily labor. That’s the passion you should pursue. Boy, is that mountain peak high, and what a high you get once you reach it!

Bench(mark)

2020-11-30T03:54:51.183Z

We took down the “TV shrine” the other weekend. With its wood, we constructed a little bench thingy for the boy. My intent was to make it a sort of very small, very safe, very stable climbing thing. Though it turned out looking more like a miniature picnic table instead.

No matter. It looks acceptable. It required sawing, drilling, inserting screws, a little after-the-fact planning, sanding, and treating: all basic skills I haven’t used in years, and never rigorously at that.

Again, no matter. I did it. We did it.

I have already hatched plans for something requiring much more time, money, and work. That’s staying on the backburner for now. That’s fine. What’s important is taking the step at all, getting a small project totally completed, feeling the accomplishment of a job acceptably done.

Do you have a million projects and zero completion? Do something small. Set a small goal, something you can finish in a day, or a weekend. Then GET IT DONE.

Is it going to last? Is it going to redirect and enhance all my future work? Well not directly, but yes, it's going to improve the next work. Because this work got done in the first place.

Sometimes, the best practice is to just practice. Just show up, go through the motions, and call it a day. The point is to keep doing it.

The great thing about Inktober, for example, is it encourages daily practice. I cheat a little. I get multiple days done at a time. Because I’ll forget or something otherwise. I also don’t put more than a few minutes into each drawing. I spit out the first idea that pops into my head and move on. Sure. They suck compared to a pro’s. No matter. I have completed a thing. That was my bench, or rather benchmark, for that day.

What’s your bench(mark)?

First Bite

2020-11-10T04:20:35.538Z

I was listening to Jocko Podcast – as one normally does – and he and Echo talked about how discipline is gained or lost with the initial decision. Take a bite of that donut, you’re very likely to finish the whole thing. Refuse to take a bit out of that donut, you’re very likely to not eat the whole thing.

My mind quickly darted to original sin, the scene where Eve then Adam partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. I didn’t have to think too hard about it. The connection is very strong; I’d just never bothered to look for it.

I struggle with getting up in the morning. What, you too? The alarm goes off, you are tempted to hit Snooze, go back to bed. Do you do it? Do you get up? Same principle applies completely. If you resettle in your bed, you’re very unlikely to get up till the alarm chirps at you once more. If you get up right away, you are very unlikely to crawl back under the covers. Indeed, you no longer feel able to sleep!

It really always comes down to that one decision. I suck at making the right one, so believe me, my finger’s pointing at me first. But making that first choice leads to more choices along the same line. From C.S. Lewis:

“Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible.”

Don’t take that first bite of temptation.

Circus

2020-11-08T05:02:32.487Z

The circus I'm referring to here isn't the one with clowns and small cars and elephants dancing on large balls. This circus does visit you from time to time, but doesn't directly ask you for your money. Instead, it courts your allegiance, your vote in an event once every four years we call an election.

Why do I call it a circus? Our most powerful, ultimate executive political office, reduced to a traveling freak show? I dunno, worded like that, the more cynical of readers will likely agree lol.

The pundits are all actors, performing their roles for the audience of millions. Flashy, colorful headlines hook our attention. Explosive, perhaps facetious dialogue reels us in. Commercial break cuts in too early to conclude satisfactorily. Time to let everyone know what you thought of the show on social media.

An ounce of this time, energy, and money - applied more productively - would yield results rivaling humanity's greatest leaps in advancement.

It's harder to do in this day and age. Everyone's connected. Social media presence is a must for marketing one's project/products. If you're not online, you're way behind. It's arguably harder as game devs, since we necessarily have to be on a computer to: study, practice, implement, find bugs, fix bugs, coordinate, take feedback, market, etc. But stray a few seconds away from a loading bar, say as your model renders, and boom - you're locked in with some 0-follower troll pulling your leg about how this or that is wrong and that's what makes you so absolutely stupid, you dunderhead, you fool. Time wasted, opportunity gone.

What's to be done?

Firstly, one must recognize that the internet is not the problem. The internet is a tool with many, many creative outlets, along with many, many more destructive ones. You can let popular results auto-fill your favorite search engine, but at the end of the day, it's YOU who clicks Go or hits Enter. Escaping your work by opening a new tab to obsessively check up on that word war you've been waging with the 18 year old about foreign policy is on YOU.

So it's up to us. Bummer. That being said, it only requires US.

A motivational video or musical score will get your blood pumping for at least 32 seconds. Afterwards, your attention is a ticking time bomb waiting for an opportunity to divert at a right angle. You have to implement the discipline - consciously - to overcome the urge.

If that loading bar doesn't go fast enough for your liking, resist the temptation to triple check social media. Instead, stand up and stretch out for a few seconds. Have a piece of applicable reading material as backup. Check in on another team member.

I'm really, really guilty of falling for this circus every four (I guess two) years it arrives. But our plans - our team's plans - don't rely on which bumbling idiot inhabits the White House. OUR house is busy crushing at life. Ain't no one can take that away.