Journal Entry: Thursday, February 27, 2025

Today began with a challenge; chaperoning a field trip for Isaac and Lucas’ school. The gym didn’t happen - children duties required my attention early on. But despite the shift in the routine, I felt good.

In the morning reflection, I noted that a chunk of my day looked set to be taken up by this. I expected this would test my ability to maintain focus on my own tasks amidst the commotion of a field trip.

The field trip ended up being much more than just a responsibility. It was a joyous opportunity to get to know the kids in Isaac’s class, to understand his social milieu, and to see him in his element. It was a timely reminder of how fantastic Isaac is - something I need to reinforce more often. This experience led to more than just gratitude for the day. It created a need for personal growth - to be more appreciative of the wonderful young man Isaac is becoming.

Breaking from the regular routine of getting to the gym did come with its challenges, particularly regarding my productivity. But I was still able to carve out a good chunk of time for work, especially on the developing Cheshire and website updates - tasks I had earmarked for today.

It was invigorating to complete the Jekyll plugin with aid from anthropic claude. Chatting with generative text AI to create code and learning how to use this tool effectively was an exhilarating process! Striking the balance between autonomy and supervision was educational. The tool couldn’t do it all, but it surely made the process easier, especially with a language I haven’t touched in years.

Despite the unexpected children duties and getting sidetracked away from my initial goals for the week, there is an overwhelming sense of fulfillment in both the progress and the learning. The week has not yet ended, and there’s ample time to concentrate on the tasks still pending.

A pleasant surprise came in the form of architect meetings for our home addition project. The new designs are showing promise and it’s exciting to see our dream home taking shape.

The icing on the cake was an evening of little reading, wrapping up a day that was busy, productive, and thoroughly enjoyable.

Looking forward to tomorrow, I intend to focus on weeknotes. It will be a vital part of presenting Cheshire as useful and mature. It’s an achievable challenge and one that will mark a great end to a fulfilling week.

In hindsight, the choice to choose kids over work in my day’s schedule seems like the right one. It was a balance well-managed - a tightrope successfully walked. Today was a testament to the idea that sometimes, unforeseen commitments can morph into memorable experiences, and surprises could turn into achievements. Today was, despite its challenges, a day of joy, learning, and growth.

In the words of Robert Loui Stevenson, “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds you plant.” Today, many seeds were planted indeed. Gratitude abounds for such an enjoyable and growth-oriented day.