Summer Reflections and Setting Sail

"Ha, I'll never be a 5th grader, they're so old and I-"

Now I'm 18. But what does that mean?

Throughout school, spending time with my cat, blankly staring out a train window on a cloudy afternoon, driving through a forest, or sitting on a beach towel with friends enjoying the breeze...

There is something about living in a given moment which gives it value outside what you can normally convey. For example, you can study beach postcards, but it's very different from being at a real beach.

"Life is what happens while you're making other plans"

Knowing this was my last summer before university, I was hoping to make the most of it but quickly found myself split in four directions. I could... I ended up picking a balance of these, getting back into Piano and Guitar, traveling to see my friends and loved ones across the coast while focusing on making smaller improvements to my website. It's been quite busy, but it's been a lovely way to reconnect with people before moving away to college.

Where has the newsletter been?

Wow, I'm so glad you asked! So, funny little silly fact, as it turns out, adding user authentication, protected routes, database management via a CRUD interface, and then writing a custom email drafting system connected to the prior database is slightly harder than what I can do in a few hours. The main bottleneck in programming has been traveling, so while it's been a while to get things working, I'm glad I chose to spend time with the people I care about rather than just focusing on code.

Other updates

The San Fransisco city flag is comical.

The yellow-on-white text makes it much easier to read. I took a few photos of it out in the wild, and I'm not sure they even printed it on the physical versions of the flag.



I've been spending time with my Dad in the bay area for the last week or so, which has been nice. Growing up, I loved to ride the trains into the city, and sharing that with visiting friends has been even better. Here are some spots and tips for anyone reading this who plans to visit.
Places!
  1. Exploratorium, a great museum with extraordinary hands-on physics demonstrations, optical illusions, social experiments, and studies of nature. I highly recommend the 18+ after-dark exhibit since, during the day, it's a popular spot for field trips and gets pretty busy. There are also more complex demonstrations and alcohol for those who drink.


  2. Golden Gate Park + the Japanese Tea Garden, which is a beautiful place to walk around and enjoy tea. They also host the California Academy of Sciences, which has a simulated rain forest in a dome, planetarium, and living garden on the roof! There's less overall to do than at the Exploratorium. Still, it's also great for a relaxing afternoon.
  3. Cablecars! (but smart)
    If you go to Powell to board the Powell and Hyde cable car, you're probably going to be met with a massive line. How do you get around it? Head down the stairs behind you into Powell station and follow signs for the T Third line. Head to Union Square Market Street Station and take the Chinatown bound train one stop up; exit the station, turn left, and head up the hill two blocks. you should see the cable car, then make a left and wait at the sign. No line.

    Next, while fisherman's wharf is cool there are a few things worth seeing on the way, I recommend getting off the Powell and Hyde cable car at Lombard street to enjoy that, then when you get to the bottom of Lombard turn left. There's a beautiful garden down the street.

    From there, I would use a navigator to get to Ghiradelli Square for some chocolate, then you can make a right to get to fisherman's wharf.
  4. ACME Bread inside the ferry terminal, I'm not spoiling any details. It's perfect.
Just for fun, I will end this segment by stating that there are seven rail operators in the Bay Area, not to mention buses, ferries, street cars, and cable cars. The main systems are BART, Muni (SFMTA), Caltrain, VTA, SMART, Capital Corridor (Amtrak), and Ace. I would avoid taking a car as much as possible unless it's a Waymo, which you can ditch anytime to take a train. Now that is having aBRAT BART summer.

For students starting community college!

If you're registering for classes, I cannot recommend taking a health and management class enough.
  1. Men's / Women's health can help you take care of yourself, ensure you're getting the nutrition you need, and help you avoid risk factors for disease.
  2. Management teaches you what to look for and where to start for learning soft skills, which covers everything from communicating effectively to time management and learning to navigate vocational social structures.

Give life back to music!

When I was younger, I couldn't stick to one instrument; I bounced from piano to recorder to flute to choir and at some point dance...

Over the last few weeks I've been jamming again with my Dad and a few of his friends, learning chords and patterns on piano, and now guitar! I'm still less than a week into it, though, so I will be sparing you any actual sounds until I get a bit more practice in; I'm currently learning to play Weird Fishes / Arpeggi, which, in fun fact, is called Arpeggi, because it's entirely comprised of arpeggios, or playing chords one note at a time.

One last thought...

As much as I can explore the world and learn about it, picking what to explore and who to learn about it with will likely be the main things I try to sort out over the coming months because it is the people who make it meaningful. I might be 18 now, but one newsletter later, I still have no clue what that means other than taxes and voting... Eh, I'll figure it out next year. If you aren't doing anything today or have some time in the next few days, go to a park, the beach, or anywhere in nature, and spend some time there with the world around you. I can't describe it, but the experience will be real.
Thank you so much for reading, I hope you will take a moment to reply with how you're doing, what you're up to, the music you're listening to, etc.

Catch you on the flip side,
-Autumn

Media Recommendations!