Make time and experiment

3 scribbles, 2 references, and 1 question this week

One of my themes for 2025 is doing more experiments. Here’s one of them: Will I enjoy writing the same weekly pattern?

3 scribbles from my pages

Everything can be an experiment

For the past three months, I've been baking the same cottage cheese raspberry muffins inspired by this recipe my fiance's sister sent me, tweaking it a bit each time. Different flavors. Less calories. More aesthetic. I’m finally happy with the recipe, and I made it just in time for our New Year’s Eve celebration. I've added my version of the recipe below for anyone interested.

Make time for what matters

For a Personal Cartography class with Micheal Sklar, I wrote 100 atomic essays about my accomplishments, failures, and everything in between. It's actually what inspired this series. To do this, I started waking up 2 hours earlier than usual, not because I needed 2 hours to write, but because I needed two hours to enjoy writing.

With the additional two hours, I can calmly sit with my fiance at the coffee shop, enjoy our drinks, and read and write before I start my work day.

Obsidian dataview query for recently added notes

If you’re an Obsidian user AND you use the dataview plugin AND you want to surface all your latest notes like I do, here’s my query:

```dataview
TABLE file.folder AS "Folder", dateformat(file.ctime, "yy.LL.dd") AS "Created"
SORT file.ctime DESC
LIMIT 10
```

With the file name, I like to see the folder it’s in and when I created it so I have more context on the note. Make sure to sort the files first before limiting them, otherwise, you’ll just get a limited list of all your files, most likely from your first folder.

I used this query to brainstorm ideas for this piece.

2 references worth sharing

Henrik Karlson's Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process

The traditional advice I’ve heard growing up is to pick a goal and relentlessly pursue it. And while that process has a lot of merits, I really like how Karlson advocates for iterating on what works over blindly following a vision. In the past, I've created big grand visions for myself in my career and have found that once I had achieved them, they weren't what I actually wanted. I had to learn how and when to pivot.

This year, I'm following Karlson’s advice: doing what I love and iterating on that. I’m researching heel strikes or toe strikes, not trying to debate dance theory. I’m figuring out if baking powder is better than baking soda, not trying to build a bakery. I’m sharing what I’ve learned, not trying to win an Oscar.

One foot spins in West Coast Swing

One foot spins are a staple for competitive West Coast Swing dancers and since I haven't really had a chance to learn them from anyone in person yet, I've just gone down the rabbit hole on YouTube to figure it out.

This isn't my first time going down the rabbit hole with West Coast Swing though. I've done and written about it before in I have an obsession with feet.

1 question for you to answer

What’s your favorite end-of-year tradition?

Every year, I flip through my planner, pick my favorite quotes and events, and move them to my next year's planner. The result is a planner filled with my favorite quotes and events from years gone by. Most pages now have a quote or event I can look back on.

Bonus Cottage Cheese Raspberry Muffin recipe

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup coconut oil

• 1/2 cup Splenda

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• 1 cup 2% milkfat cottage cheese

• 1/4 cup almond milk

• 2 eggs

• 1.5 cups flour

• 3 tsp baking powder

• 1/4 tsp salt

• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

• 1 cup raspberries

• Kosher salt to sprinkle

Directions:

1. Prepare muffin pan with Pam

2. Melt 1/4 cup coconut oil in a bowl

3. Add 1 tsp vanilla, 1/4 cup almond milk, 2 eggs. Whisk.

4. Mix in cottage cheese

5. In a separate bowl, mix 1/2 cup Splenda, 1.5 cups flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 1/4 tsp salt, and 1/2 tsp cinnamon

6. Mix wet and dry ingredients with spatula

7. Cut raspberries in half and coat with flour

8. Add them to the batter and gently fold

9. Preheat oven to 375F

10. Spoon batter to muffin pan. One full spoon works for each muffin in mine.

11. Top off with kosher salt

Thanks to

Matt Cyr

,

Karena de Souza

,

Becky Isjwara

,

Stephen Olson

for providing early feedback on this.