Last updated Wednesday, January 14, 2026.
Early Retirement
Over the last couple months, I've been feeling myself trending in this direction. Was hoping to get confirmation from God when I took a silent retreat to Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky back in December. Alas, I didn't get any clarity so moving forward nonetheless with an open hand.
It could be a temporary thing. It could be long term.
Regardless, it's been awkward telling people.
Mostly because of my own personal insecurities and feelings of weirdness around it. I'm slowly working through it and hope it'll be easier over time. I'll make a dedicated post about it at some point.
Deep Work
With more margin now, this year's focus is on "playing." Building, creating, experimenting, and engaging with things that spark joy. And without the burden that they have to lead to anything meaningful or productive.
In my sabbatical season, I've re-discovered my passion for building useful tools like:
- Just the Points: Facilitate watching pickleball matches without the dead time between points.
- YouTube Chapter Player: Easily share game footage processed by Just the Points using YouTube.
- Mahjong Scorekeeper: Replaces a complicated spreadsheet my uncle was using.
- VerseTagger: Experimenting with the YouVersion API.
I plan on open-sourcing (releasing for free) a short-term rental web app I've developed (and have been using) over the last few months to automate my smart lock and thermostat whenever it detects new reservations.
It's about 80% ready to release.
I'm also working through a backlog of things I want to write about from my sabbatical.
35+ Pro Pickleball
I recently got sponsored by Selkirk to their Emerging Pro Team. 💪🏻
It comes at a good time since I'm competing in my first pro event at a combine (January 17-18) for a new league targeting 35-year-old players and older.
If I play well and the team owner(s) like what they see, I'll get drafted to one of the inaugural teams and will compete in tournaments in Virgina, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey between February and May.
Website Overhaul
I migrated the design of my site from Eleventy Excellent to a bespoke design I built with Claude Code.
I'm SOOOO happy with it. I think I'm in love. 😍
While the big buckets are done, I like digging into the details and am a recovering over polisher. Which means there's a lot more fine tuning I'd like to do.