Phil's Superpower of Enthusiasm

($150/year billed annually, $14.99/month billed monthly, $829 lifetime, plus costs of a server, controllers, and endpoints)

[Tl;dr: This system is not without its flaws, and there are certainly cheaper/free options in the market that accomplish at least some of the same functionality, but for someone like me that values the ability to quickly and easily stream music to different rooms (or transfer an active stream from one room to another), the convenience factor is real. I can’t imagine not re-upping this service, and if Roon ever goes out of business I’m going to be really bummed. Particularly, I love the Roon Radio functionality and the recommendations it makes for new tracks and albums, and how seamless it makes moving around my house while listening to music.]

Scores:

Cost-agnostic: 9 out of 10 Denalis

Cost-sensitive: 8 out of 10 Denalis

[Caveats/tech details: This is probably the most niche and bougie review I’ve done (or will likely do). Please keep in mind that I’ve been seriously collecting audiophile-grade hi-fi gear for five or six years now, and I’m a HUGE music nerd, so I’m coming to this from a place of already having a closet full of unused speakers, amps, etc. just waiting to get slapped into a system. Your mileage (and costs!) may vary.

I’ve tested this through my own personal implementation of Roon, which consists of a server in my office (a ROCK built with an Intel NUC 8) hardwired to my router, with external hard drives for local music storage, around a dozen endpoints (ranging from the expensive Devialet Expert 140 Pro super-integrated amp driving KEF LS50 speakers in my office, to the Apple TV at the heart of my living room 7.4.2 ATMOS system, to the cheap paired Sonos Ones in my basement, etc.), and controller apps on most of the computers and all of the tablets/iOS devices around my house. I have Roon endpoints in every room in my house, and my back porch. (Full setup details below.)

Early on I had some difficulty with wifi connectivity in my (plaster-walled) house when I was using a Google Mesh network, but since I switched to an enterprise-grade Ubiquiti router it hasn’t been an issue. I also owned most of this equipment before I played with Roon, and as a result my system investment is MUCH more than the minimum to have an effective implementation. ]

Intro: Roon is a music system designed to provide music across an entire space connected by a single network ¹ (either wifi or ethernet). The system consists of three pieces: 

1. A server/hub (the device that talks to the internet, catches streams, and forwards them to endpoints);

2. One or more endpoints (amps/speakers/etc.); and 

3. One or more controllers (devices that let you select music, adjust volume, etc.). 

Within that broad framework, there’s a lot of variability and flexibility. The basic idea is this: you should be able to listen to any music or audio content in any room you’ve set up with a Roon endpoint with essentially no friction, logging in, or messing about. You can seamlessly move streams from room to room as you move around your space, and you can sync audio playback across multiple rooms so that you’re getting the same content perfectly in time across those systems.² The streams are not reliant on the device you use to start the stream; the server feeds the audio directly to the endpoint and removes your controller from the loop, meaning that watching a video or getting a call on your phone won’t disrupt playback on another system.

Server/hub: This can be as simple as a computer running a modern version of Windows or MacOS with the Roon software running in the OS, or as expensive as the truly elegant but extravagant Nucleus device that Roon manufactures itself and which runs a custom operating system (RoonOS). The middle ground is a custom built mini-PC aka a “Roon Optimized Core Kit” (“ROCK”).3 

I started with my server running on the old iMac that’s now in my guest room, and pretty quickly decided to upgrade to a dedicated ROCK. I bought the recommended components and put it together following Roon’s instructions in about an hour with no special tools or pre-existing skills.4 I built mine at the peak of computer component price gouging during COVID, but with current prices and supply chains it’d run you a little less than $400. Unless you’re super picky about fan noise (or you relish the idea of assembling a mini-PC), you might be better off starting with either an existing PC or snagging a cheap Mac Mini for $100 or $150 off of Craigslist.

If you’re running a dedicated server (a Nucleus or a ROCK), all it will do is run Roon; you can’t use that machine for anything else. If you’re running the software on a machine running Windows or MacOS, it uses only a small fraction of the computer’s processing power and you can use the machine for anything else you might want to (though anything that affects system resources can potentially interfere with music playback).

[My honest read is that unless you’re super finicky about sound, or a giant nerd like me, run it on an existing machine. The NUC is cool, but well past the point of diminishing returns for sound quality.]

Endpoints: Man, I could do a dissertation on this topic. At heart, an endpoint is just a speaker or pair of speakers, an amplifier, and a streaming device transmitting Roon’s audio signals to the amplifer (these can be separates like a traditional hi-fi system, or all built into one device like a powered smart speaker). You can spend literally as much money as you want on endpoints (any hi-fi system can be used as an endpoint), or you can go really inexpensive and build a Raspberry Pi streamer or buy a $30 Chromecast stick and connect it to a cheap Lepai amp and speakers from Goodwill. 5

Roon connects pretty easily with anything using the following protocols: 1) RoonReady (duh); 2) Airplay and Airplay 2; 3) Tidal Connect; 4) Chromecast; 5) universal plug ‘n’ play (via ethernet or wifi); or 6) BluOS. They can also be physically connected to any computer on your network; I currently have a PS Audio Sprout100 (driving passive monitors on my desk) and two different headphone amp/DAC combos connected to my Mac Studio; each is individually considered a separately-selectable endpoint for Roon (and the computer shows up in Roon as an additional endpoint which streams to whatever happens to be the computer’s default audio output at any given moment—handy for A/B testing):

Because of its compatibility, Roon plays nicely with anything made by a number of consumer brands like Sonos, prosumer brands like Bluesound, and high-end audiophile brands like Cambridge Audio and Devialet. When you add in Chromecast and Airplay, the universe of potential endpoints is pretty extensive and varied in price and quality. For me and my (admittedly bougie) ears, the sweet spot is in the Bluesound category (the Node or Powernode Edge, though I also have used a cheap-ish Arylic amp for my bathroom/back porch and I like the old Sonos Ones all-in-ones in my basement). Also any computer, tablet, or phone with the Roon app can be used as an endpoint via audio outputs, and there’s a way to rig any Alexa device or Homepod to work as an endpoint.

Many of the endpoints I’ve used have been things that were already sitting around my house gathering dust, because I’m a packrat who has a hard time getting rid of anything.

Controllers: All of the computers in my house (save my Foundation-issued one) have the Roon client running most of the time. So do both of my phones, and a couple of old iPads I have rigged in my house for media controllers or for recipe lookup. As of about a year ago, the Roon iOS app added Apple Watch connectivity, so once Roon is playing something in any given room I can use my watch to control volume and playback. I mostly use the app on my gaming PC in my office, and my phone everywhere else in the house. [Some day I want to rig a RoonDial for my bathroom, but that ends up being weirdly complicated and requires a dedicated computer.]

Setup: Depending on how you are handling the server requirement, setup can vary a lot. All will require largely the same set of configurations for the software, though the interface for the Roon client running on an existing machine is much more intuitive than installing and configuring a dedicated server.

Roon client on an existing computer: When I was just running the Roon client on a Mac in my office, setup was maybe ten minutes of installation, configuration, logging into various streaming services, and connecting endpoints via the native app. 

Nucleus: If you are buying a Nucleus, I’ve heard the setup is incredibly simple: just a little bit of configuration, but I have no first-hand experience.

ROCK: If you’re building a ROCK, you need to assemble the device (which really just consists of opening up the NUC case, snapping in the RAM and the hard drive, screwing a couple of screws, and then closing the case), and flash the operating system (which just involves loading it on an SD card like the ones digital cameras use and pressing a couple of the right buttons in sequence). 

[Note: the ROCK doesn’t need any output (monitors) or input (keyboards/mice) devices once they’re set up, 6 but you’ll 100% want a monitor and keyboard/mouse connected just for the setup process. I unplugged all inputs and outputs shortly after I was satisfied things were running smoothly.]

[Installation suggestions: given the relative costs of NVMe SSDs and spinning hard drives, I’d strongly recommend not trying to use an internal hard drive for the NUC to store local music files. I have a couple of 1TB external spinning drives attached to the NUC for local storage and backup. Internal hard drives for the NUC seem like overkill to me.]

Playback Connectivity: The biggest advantage of a system like Roon over directly streaming from your devices is the data path. When I start playing music on one of the endpoints in my house, I select it on any of my controller devices, the server reaches out to the internet to grab the stream, and directs that stream to the appropriate end point. Once the stream has started, the controller is removed from the process unless and until you want to change what you’re listening to, change volumes (assuming that your endpoint is set up to give Roon volume control), etc. This means that unlike using, say, Airplay, my phone isn’t a conduit between the internet and the server. I can do other things on it, put it away, charge it, turn it off, etc. without affecting my ability to stream. And if I leave my phone in the basement and want to change tracks in my office, I can just open up any of my computers or other devices and make the changes that I want to. This also means that music isn’t interrupted by notifications from other apps, text dings, volume attenuation when a new e-mail comes in, etc.; all of the potential flaws of playback on a cellular-connected device. 

Options: Roon supports a limited number of streaming music services (Tidal, Qboz, and KKBOX, as well as a number of internet radio stations) and will both organize and play locally stored files in a variety of formats and qualities. There has been talk over the years of bringing some more common services (like Amazon or Apple) to the system, but I’m not holding my breath. Apple has been pretty vocal about not allowing any services access to their APIs/playback (other than SONOS, a legacy system), and because Roon is focused on the higher-end market they’ve tended to focus on the streaming services that did higher-quality streaming early on. I happen to really like Tidal, though I am annoyed about paying for two different streaming services: Tidal for my home, and Apple Music for everywhere else. 

It’s also worth noting that most Roon endpoints can double as Airplay and/or Chromecast endpoints. So if you really want to listen to something on Apple Music or another non-supported streaming service, you can do an end run around Roon and stream directly to endpoints. But that sort of defeats the purpose of having Roon. 

Connection: Connecting these systems is pretty easy to set up, though Tidal occasionally prompts me to re-log-in to the system (probably every three to six months). Local storage is also pretty easy; you just point the server to your locally-attached storage (or theoretically, to network storage on your own network), and through the miracle of universal plug ‘n’ play, it’s pretty good about importing and sorting automatically (and it constantly checks the targeted folders to see if anything new has been added). 

Imports: Roon has a nifty feature built it; if you plug a CD-R or DVD-R drive into your server, it will automatically rip CD-quality files from any music CD you insert into the drive, and it does a pretty good job of finding and applying the appropriate metadata (track lists, credits, art, etc.). I spent a couple of weeks ripping most of my CDs and those I inherited from my dad. [Note: if you do this, make sure to read some of the forums to get some pro-tips on how to make it most efficient. By default Roon rips to a single folder and doesn’t name the files helpfully, and it’s worth taking some time to export files to individual artist and album folders; it’s mostly easy and intuitive, but does require a few manual processes.]

Bougie info: Roon gives you a lot of information about signal path, audio quality, and where transformations/conversions are being made. This won’t matter for 99% of users (including, mostly, me), but Roon is really good at showing you where issues are cropping up or where your signal is being degraded:

Useability: The interface is really quite intuitive. You select which speaker or zone you want in the lower right, and then pick the media you want to listen to:

You can get pretty detailed information about file path and quality, and automatically provides a list of all versions of a particular piece of media (for example, if I look at Massive Attack’s “Mezzanine,” I’m offered at least three versions: the high-quality .FLAC version I ripped from a CD, the low quality .mp4 version that has somehow migrated itself into my Roon server, and the high-quality MQA .FLAC version streaming from Tidal: 

Roon Radio: Roon Radio is honestly my favorite thing about Roon. Unless you turn the functionality off, by default when your current queue (album, playlist, artist, etc.) completes, Roon will pull something it thinks is similar out of your library. This includes both local files as well as the full catalog of streaming services you have connected. 

I have a fair amount of experience with recommendation algorithms, from Pandora’s early implementation of the Music Genome project, to Youtube Music’s strange and aggressive algorithm, to Amazon Music HD’s recommendations, to Apple Music (nee iTunes)’s version. For me, Roon stands head and shoulders above the rest. There’s an option to skip a track, which triggers a simple question about why you’re skipping it. The algorithm learns from what you listen to, what you skip, and what you repeat, and I have been really impressed by how good it is. I almost never skip recommended tracks, and while some of the recommendations are somewhat baffling (not sure how it goes from a Portland-based prog rock artist to mid-century French jazz), I almost always enjoy them. I’d guess about half of the new albums I added to my system in 2023 were Roon recommendations. It’s particularly strong with ambient and electronica recommendations, but it also does a great job of introducing me to albums that I’ve missed over the last couple of decades that I really enjoy. 

Updates: The software gets updated pretty regularly (and it automatically asks you if want to update all of your upgradable endpoints each time). None of the updates have broken the system (something I wish I could say about Apple or Microsoft), and they’ve got a long list of new functionalities they want to add. Right now they’re working on a way to essentially build your own streaming service based off of your local and streaming libraries, but I haven’t spent much time with it because I don’t love the idea of having a perpetually open connection between my network and the internet. It’s been more stable than I expected; currently my ROCK has been running for 172 days, and I haven’t restarted in seven days (since the last update).

Pricing: It ain’t cheap. It’s $150 a year,7 plus whatever you need to pay to get access to the streaming services you want to add. For example, the version of Tidal I use (the individual Hi-Fi plan) costs me $10.99/month on top of the effectively $12.50 month I pay for Roon itself.8 I spent around $500 on building my ROCK music server, but that was at the peak of COVID price-gouging for tech. I think you could build one for around $400 now  or just use an old existing computer for free; also, Facebook Marketplace is full of old iMacs and Mac Mini’s for less than $200 and they’d do perfectly well running a Roon server as well as functioning like a normal PC). 

Endpoints are as cheap or expensive as you want them to be. One of the endpoints I’m running in my house cost me less than $100 (cheap Goodwill speakers, a $20 Lepai amp), and an old iPhone that was collecting dust on my shelves). If you have an existing hi-fi system you want to integrate, you can do it for less than $100, or spend as much as you want on an audiophile-grade streamer. One of the fun things about being an audiophile is that there are a lot of people (especially techbruhs in Seattle) that always have to have the new hotness, which means that there’s a lot of good audiophile equipment available at decent used prices most of the time, if you know what to look for or find a shop that’s willing to work with you. 

All in, you could set up a good system for substantially less than $1000, or you could spend tens of thousands of dollars if you’re bougie like that. (While I am bougie as hell, I am not *that* bougie).

I really wish I’d bought the lifetime subscription back when I first set up the system, and it was less than $500.

Competitors: There are a lot of these kinds of systems in place, though few are as well developed or supported. Squeezebox was the first one that I became aware of, and while I don’t think they’ve made hardware supporting it in at least a few decades, the software is freely accessible and community supported. I know a number of people who use Plex (which I dabbled with briefly), but I find the endpoint support lacking for anything other than a full Windows or MacOS machine. Before I upgraded to Roon, I used Foobar2000 running on my computer with cables hardwired to an integrated amplifier, and it was … fine, but limiting. All of these options are either free or close to.

There are also a number of streaming protocols (many of them free) that will let you send music from a device like a phone, tablet, or computer to an appropriately connected speaker system. Airplay, Chromecast, Spotify Connect, now Tidal Connect, etc., are all systems that are pretty widely available on relatively inexpensive devices (Chromecast dongles start around $30, and virtually all Apple devices have one or both of the Airplay protocols built in). They do, however, require using the intermediary device to catch the streams and direct them to the endpoint, instead of passing off the stream directly to the device, which means your music is subject to interference from the controlling device. I have my phone set up to give me notifications when they come in, which makes this a much less appealing choice. 

I’ve also dabbled quite a bit with Sonos and BluOS as multi-room systems. Both require using only their hardware, with limited or no compatibility with anything else, which is fine if you’re starting from scratch but annoying if you have existing systems you’d like to integrate, or if you like shopping used. Personally, I generally find Sonos’ sound to be a little lacking, though more affordable, and while I like most of the BluOS hardware I’ve listened to (Node, Node 2, Powernode N150, Powernode Edge, Pulse, etc.), their all-in-ones are relatively expensive for what you get. I’d rather use BlueSound’s streaming devices to connect to amplifiers and speakers that I have selected based on my preferred profile. Both have the distinct advantage of being free, and of being more broadly compatible with streaming services outside Tidal and Qboz. 

Finally, a number of companies make decent smart speaker systems that can provide reasonable quality music with a single device in each space9 and minimal setup. Amazon’s Echo/Alexa line offers some reasonably compelling, reasonably inexpensive options. The basic Amazon Echo Dot (the old puck, not the globe) has middling sound quality, but for the size and price they’re not bad (I’ve setup a half dozen in my mom’s house). The original Amazon Echo (which is no longer available from Amazon, but cheap second-hand) provided a much better audio experience in a not-a-lot-larger footprint, and I’m genuinely pretty impressed by the quality of sound from the Echo Show 8 I bought my mom for Christmas last year (mostly so it could display photos that I upload). I have a lot less experience with the Google range of products (only used the basic one long enough to figure out I preferred the Apple Siri experience enough to justify the much higher price tag of the HomePod), but some of the higher end options have pretty good reputations. And I’m an unabashed fan of both the HomePod and HomePod Mini (I really ought to do a joint review of them at some point); I have two HomePods and a couple of Minis in my house to fill gaps in my Roon system where I either didn’t want to do a full hi-fi system or where I had a use for a non-phone Siri device to control lights or locks. All of these systems, however, lock you into the amplifier and speaker choices that their manufacturers have made, and give you no room for upgrades and minimal ability to customize the sound. For a person like me with a closet full of unused hi-fi gear, they weren’t really a good fit. Your mileage may vary, and at least with the Apple system, you can do some interesting and sophisticated things with multi-room Homepod (mini or otherwise) systems. I think if I were to move to a house with a substantially larger number of rooms, I would probably throw Homepod Minis (Homepods Mini?) into any room I didn’t want a full hi-fi system in, because they can be integrated with Roon via Airplay.

Conclusion: Roon is a well-thought through system with decent support and an active user community. It serves my particular purpose much better than any of the alternatives I’ve explored, but it isn’t the cheapest or simplest way to get sound in multiple rooms in a particular location.  I love the way it works and it’s super weird to me when I’m in a location where I can’t casually kick music on in any given room with little effort. 

Is it overkill? Yeah, probably. But that’s half the fun of it!

[Full setup as of January 2024:

1. Server: Intel NUC 8 running ROCK, with a 2TB external SSD attached for local storage with a 1TB backup, and a cheap Samsung CD-R drive for ripping new physical media. 

2. Controllers: Various PCs and iOS devices scattered around my house.

3. Endpoints:

1. Office main (streaming via Roon-Ready Devialet): 

1. Devialet Expert 140 Pro (super-integrated amplifer)

2. Kef LS50 (not Meta) stand mount speakers

2. Office secondary (hardwired to Mac Studio): 

1. PS Audio Sprout100

2. Dali Spektor 2 standmount speakers

3. Schiit Hel2 Gaming DAC/amp

3. Office tertiary (hardwired to gaming PC):

1. Schiit Bifrost DAC

2. Schiit Asgard 2 headphone amplifier

4. Office quaternary (hardwired to gaming PC):

1. Schiit Modius DAC

2. Schiit Magnius headphone amplifier

5. Master Bedroom (streaming via Bluesound Node):

1. NAD 3020 integrated amplifier

2. Bluesound Node 2

3. Pioneer Andrew Jones tower speakers

4. Apple HomePod

6. Back deck/Master bath (streaming via Powernode Edge):

1. Bluesound Powernode Edge super-integrated

2. Mirage outdoor speakers from Goodwill (bathroom)

3. Klipsch KHO-7 outdoor speakers (deck)

7. Living room (streaming via Airplay, either via receiver or Apple TV): 

1. Onkyo TX-RZ50 Receiver

2. Canton Ergo 90 DC Tower speakers

3. 4 x KEF T-301 flatmount speakers

4. 4 x KEF Q50a ATMOS speakers

5. Apple TV 4K

6. Apple HomePod

8. Basement: 2 x Sonos ONE speakers (shadow edition)

9. Guest room: Amazon Echo

10. Kitchen: 

1. Bluesound Powernode N150

2. Boston Acoustics bar speakers

3. HomePod Mini

4. Apple TV 4k

11. Roaming system in a box (whenever I want a temp system, particularly where I’m doing a project in a location not covered by an existing zone).

1. Lepai amp

2. Pioneer Andrew Jones standmount speakers

3. Old iPhone 6

4. Dragonfly Red USB DAC/amp]

___________________________________


1 There’s a caveat here with some kinds of wifi systems that allow multiple networks through a single router; because of the way my server is set up, my ROCK can see my main network, my guest network, and my limited IoT network. I don’t actually want this to happen, but I haven’t bothered to dig into the Unify app to fix it.

When I was 19 or 20, Subaru brought its rally team to the Gorge Games. This meant that there were a number of the new 2002 “bug-eye” Impreza WRXs running around Hood River, all in the World Rally Classic Blue (what I think of as Subaru blue):

I … fell in love. This was the first car that I really, truly coveted. A colleague at the restaurant I was working at went out and bought one that summer, and I got to ride around in it when we went shooting. Man, I loved that car. The color. The power. The cool. [Eds note: I stand by my position that the gold wheels are dumb. It’s my only note on the whole car.]

I’ve wanted one ever since. Every time I’ve gone to buy a car, I’ve looked at and test driven and seriously considered a WRX (and later, an STI). Each time, I’ve talked myself out of it. (I don’t always make the BEST financial choices, but when it comes to big things like cars, I’m more pragmatic and practical than y’all might expect.) 

See, the thing is, it’s not a great daily driver for a person like me. The hatchback version was pretty small, and once they shifted over fully to the sedan body in 2015, the day-to-day utility dropped off a lot. I wanted a manual transmission, and driving a stick in regular traffic (*cough* Seattle *cough*) or on steep hills (*cough* Hood River *cough*) sucks, even in a car without the short clutch and somewhat temperamental transmission that comes with a turbo Subaru engine. 

• The first car I helped purchase in 2005 was a ‘98 Subaru Outback Legacy, aka “Serenity”. I was a poor law student, and only could afford a car at all because of help from my parents. A WRX was absolutely NOT an option.

• I eventually traded my Outback legacy to my dad for his 2001 Outback, because it was a manual (which I loved and did not like). I never named that car, weirdly enough. I didn’t pick it out, though I loved it dearly until dad blew the headgasket on it. 

• In 2012, I decided it was time for my first real, adult, grown up car, and I decided I wanted a little bit of luxury. I drove the WRX and was really unimpressed with that generation; it was loud, and uncomfortable, the stereo was bad (and you couldn’t really hear it anyway over the engine), and the fuel economy sucked. This was also the era in which most non-sedan body Subarus looked unfortunately similar to a minivan (no minivan hate; it’s just not what 30 year old Phil was at all interested in). I ended up with a land-yacht 2012 Chrysler 300S aka “Big Government,” as named by my friends, or “Iris” as named by me (it was the first car I had with a voice assistant, which was essentially a terrible, ass-backwards imitation of Apple’s Siri). 

• After a terrible sprint down the Gorge in a December 2018 rainstorm to see Dad when he wasn’t doing well that left me white-knuckled and required a stop at Andrew’s Pizza for a beer before I could go home, I realized I needed all-wheel drive, particularly with my dad not in great health. I also knew I was going to be getting a golden retriever puppy in March, and I wasn’t keen on trying to manage a large dog in the back of a sedan. There are really two options when it comes to good all-wheel drive for Hood River-type weather: Subaru and Audi. I was used to a luxury car (thanks, Big Government!) and I was really unimpressed with that generation of Subarus (road noise, style, etc.), so I ended up with a used Audi Q5 aka “Denali’s Ride.” [In retrospect, I should have looked at a used high-level trim of the Forester, which fixes most of the road noise and ride issues of Subarus. I helped my folks buy one in 2019, which I’ve driven a lot and REALLY enjoy for a substantially underpowered vehicle.]

• In 2022, I got my job with the Foundation and I knew I’d be driving to Seattle a couple days a week for the foreseeable future. The Audi required premium gas, and it was stupidly expensive (like $5-6/gallon). It was time for an electric car. Elon Musk is a jackass and I didn’t want to support him, Subaru didn’t make an electric vehicle at the time (and they sort of still don’t; the Solterra is effectively a Toyota except for the badging), and everyone and their brother was raving about how good the Kia EV6/Ioniq 5 were (and they were right; the EV6 is a great car). I wanted an electric car, so no WRX/STI for Phil (though I took the opportunity to go drive a couple of them just in case). 

The EV6 is a great commuter car. It’s comfortable, fuel- and cost-efficient (yay electricity in a state with a lot of hydropower), has a good single-pedal mode for traffic, and is easy to charge at home and at my office. Unfortunately, the way in which it’s fun to drive (read: bat-out-of-hell acceleration) is not the safest or most socially-acceptable way to drive, especially in the I-5 corridor. I like driving, but I started finding it a little frustrating to drive it when 90% of my driving is on I-5, with people using the left lane as a HOV slow lane.

This brings us to 2023. A year in which I made a lot of changes to my life, and a lot of commitments to myself in terms of my health, my priorities, and unabashedly seeking joy where I find it. In May and June, I had a series of conversations with a couple of friends about the fact that I was starting to feel less motivated to keep on my healthy path and that I was looking for something to help keep me focused on maintaining the changes I’d made (a “little treat,” if you will). A good friend of mine had also just bought her dream car; a mostly impractical-in-regular-life-but-super-fun-to-do-Raptor-runs-in Ford F-150 Raptor, and she’d kept her older Honda for daily commuting. Another friend of mine showed up to my house to pick up a bottle of bourbon I’d bought for him in his fun car, a 2019 Subaru WRX STI that he only drives on the weekends (he’s a contractor and been driving a full-sized work pickup every time I’d seen him out in the world). It was … a revelation. It hadn’t really occurred to me, but I am privileged enough to live a life where I can afford to have two reasonable cars to fit my two very different use cases. I don’t need to compromise on one. 

So I set myself some goals. If I hit my weight goal,¹ some financial goals, and proved to myself that it wouldn’t be a financial issue, I’d get to buy myself a fun car based on some criteria. I set a couple of interim rewards (the half-day Dirtfish Rally class I took in September, a full-day one that I can take at some point). I wrote up a contract with myself, roped my friend Robin into being my accountabili-buddy, and got to work.

And it worked. 

There were days I wanted to blow off my diet and bake a cake. Days when I really didn’t want to work out, or wanted to ignore my intermittent fasting and have a bowl of ice cream or a beer at 10:00. But, for the most part, I didn’t do those things. I lived within the framework I’d defined. I stuck with those goals. And two weeks ago Friday, I hit that goal weight. I hit it again this Friday, despite some real temptation in the last week to indulge myself. 

So yesterday, I got to go to Subaru of Puyallup, test drive a car that checked all of my mandatory boxes and all but two of my desirable boxes,² and after a couple of hours of negotiation, paperwork, and detailing, I drove away in my beautiful new (to me) 2021 Subaru WRX STI. 

Some details:

• 2021 Subaru WRX STI Base

• Stock condition and with no meaningful damage (which are surprisingly rare; this is a car that encourages owners to make dumb choices, both in terms of modifications and how they drive it). 

• 24,003 miles

• Two owners, in Hawaii and Washington (and it’s been in a garage most of the last two years)

• Magnetite grey (WRC blue was my preferred color, but 1) they’re often thousands of dollars more, 2) there aren’t any available within 150 miles that aren’t heavily modified), and 3) this may be less likely to stand out to State Patrol Troopers on the freeway).

• The only modifications two this car are cosmetic; the prior owner swapped out all the pink external STI badging for yellow. I like the yellow, but I’m thinking about going back to the original pink. 

I’ve named her Kaylee, because she’s shiny, slightly unrefined, and hopefully going to teach me a lot about the care and maintenance of high-performance engines. I took her for a shakedown cruise this morning up to Port Gamble for lunch at Baker & Butcher Provisions, and I had a shit-eating grin on my face pretty much the whole time. 

So here’s to unbridled joy and making questionable decisions in 2024.

1 Yes, weight is a stupid metric for most people. For me, it is a convenient quick measure of progress, but I also do body mass analysis and track a bunch of other things that I care a lot more about; this is just something I can check in 30 seconds every week and get a macro view of how I’m doing with my diet and my activity level. ^↩

2 No WRC blue, and no sunroof.^↩

Introduction

 [Editor’s note: this is something I drafted in 2023, reflecting on my 2022 listening habits after seeing a bunch of my friends uploading their Spotify Wrapped packages. I built my own. I’m not sure I ever posted it anywhere, particularly based on the missing information re: Roon which I can’t really access after the fact (Roon’s interface gives you pretty robust information for the last year, and all time, but not for defined periods beyond a year). I’m uploading these here as part of my effort to get the things I occasionally have to spend time scouring FB for in a single place.]

No narrative, just data for this one apparently.

[Editor’s note: this is something I wrote in 2022, reflecting on my 2021 listening habits after seeing a bunch of my friends uploading their Spotify Wrapped packages. I built my own. I’m uploading these here as part of my effort to get the things I occasionally have to spend time scouring FB for in a single place.]

I’ve been really enjoying the 2021 Spotify recaps, but I don’t use Spotify,* and my usage is split across three apps:

• Roon (for use around the house)
• Apple Music (for lossy streaming: walking the dog, driving, anytime I don’t have wifi or I’m using Bluetooth for playback)
• Tidal (for lossless and HD streaming/local playback, i.e. whenever I have wifi + good headphones, no cell service, or I’m at my office)

Tidal doesn’t track statistics beyond top tracks, but between Roon and Apple Music I have more than 1280 hours of listening in 2021. Which means I’m listening to music more than 14% of the time, and almost 44% of the time I’m awake. This doesn’t count any time listening to Tidal or vinyl, which is a substantially-non-zero amount of my time too. And in that time, I haven’t listened to any one artist for more than 14 hours, which tells you how eclectic and varied my taste is!

Weird to see how my usage varies between services, too. Roon is mostly stuff I really like; Apple is a combination of things I hear on TV, Shazam out in the world, or think of randomly and tell Siri to play; and Tidal is mostly stuff I like and happen to have downloaded on my phone when I get stuck somewhere without cell service or wifi. And it’s HILARIOUS to me that Taylor Swift is the only artist on all three lists. Super weird too that Massive Attack and the xx don’t appear on the list … apparently I mostly listen to them on vinyl at this point?

It’s not a schmancy, animated, social media-friendly analysis, but it tickled me to do it.

*They pay artists very poorly, and I don’t think they have a viable long-term business model, so I’m reluctant to give them my data or rely on their service.

 M2 Macbook Air 13” Review [$1100 MSRP, always $1049.99 at Costco, occasionally on sale around $900 or $950]

[Tl;dr: This laptop is nuts. It’s the first computer I’ve ever owned where I have essentially no notes other than a slight complaint about USB-C ports and reliance on Bluetooth. And the fact that it’s surprisingly affordable, especially for a Mac … yeah, I’m a fan. I have genuine concerns about how this computer is going to undercut Apple sales of higher-end models going forward. When on sale, it’s also roughly the price point of some of Microsoft’s Surface models, and … this is a MUCH better machine.

At long last, Apple’s remade a fanboi out of me.]

Scores:

Cost-agnostic: 10 out of 10 Denalis

Cost-sensitive: 11 out of 10 Denalis

[Caveats: the model reviewed is the July 2022 MacBook M2 Air 13” with 8 GB unified memory, and a 256 GB SSD hard disk, in midnight. This is the lowest-priced model generally available wit the M2 (a number of retailers still have the M1 generation available, albeit sometimes at a higher price point). Purchased at Costco in April 2023 for $1150, and price matched down to $950 in June 2023, recently seen there at $899.99.]

Intro. Back in May of 2023 I wrote about my no-good, very bad technology day in September 2022 that resulted in me buying a beautiful, but ultimately poorly-suited MacBook Pro, my first Mac laptop in a decade and a half. In April 2023, having figured out how few times the Pro had left my house (twice? Maybe three times?), with a bunch of travel coming up for work and personal business and having watched a couple of stellar reviews of the new M2 MacBook Air, I decided to grab one at Costco on my way back from Hood River. I’ve carried it in my work bag basically since that first week, and I’ve taken it on a half dozen trips including two weeks in Europe in December 2023.

The machine: I probably wouldn’t use this machine if I were trying to edit or render 4k video, but not because it couldn’t handle it. I primarily use this machine as a word processor and internet browser, but I’ve also used it to play some reasonably demanding video games (Borderlands 2, Baldur’s Gate 2, etc.) and it’s both worked perfectly and not gotten particularly warm. It’s never hung up or struggled to do anything I’ve asked it to do, but to be fair I also have both a dedicated gaming machine and a M2 Ultra Mac Studio that I would use for anything particularly intensive; this machine is definitely primarily intended for use case 2.

The battery is really impressive. Running in airplane mode with just music and a word processor running, I got about 8 hours of work done on like … a third of the battery? I’ve had to plug it in while working on it maybe twice in a little less than a year. The one challenge has been leaving it in my bag sleeping rather than shut down—if I do that for a couple of weeks, my battery will be pretty low when I open it back up but that may be an artifact of my settings (generally I don’t have laptops set to sleep when I close the lid because I expect to use them docked a lot. I really should change that setting for this machine given how little I use it docked …).

The keyboard is a full-sized QWERTY keyboard. I do miss having a ten-key but it’s mostly not important for the kinds of things I do on this machine, and I can always get an external one if it becomes a problem.

TouchID is also surprisingly nice; I’d gotten used to my work laptop recognizing my face and unlocking, and this is basically as easy; I just press the upper right key with the correct finger and the laptop unlocks.

Monitor: The current generation Liquid Retina display is gorgeous. Mac figured laptop and all-in-one screens out years ago and this is a worthy successor. The screen on my MacBook Pro was a little brighter and richer than this, but it definitely will get painfully bright even in a well-lit room. It’s bright enough and shiny enough to make me uncomfortably aware of how dirty my screen gets, and maybe the one knock against it is that it looks like it *should* be a touch screen, but is *not* actually a touchscreen.

The one downside is the size; compared to a 15” laptop screen like my work laptop or the 49”/27” monitors I use for desktops, it’s definitely a bit small. It took some getting used to; for example, I have had to change my workflow for using Gmail on it because I can’t have the sidebar, inbox, and reading pane side-by-side-by-side without losing the ability read a lot of e-mail. If you’re someone who needs more than a 13” monitor, this machine is probably not for you (though Apple is now offering a 15” version of this machine starting at $1299). The bezel at the top of the screen may also be disruptive for some people; you end up losing 2” by .5” of your menu bar to the forward-facing camera. I don’t currently use any software that has enough menu bars to be affected, but other people’s mileage may vary.  

That said, I used it as my only machine for several weeks over the holidays and I got used to the size really quickly. And the smaller size translates to a lighter weight and ease of carrying/using it out and about in the world.

Audio: Headphone jack. This is one of the more surprising aspects of current Mac models. Apple has long been pretty dedicated to not accommodating audiophiles with their gear.[1] Because of that, I was stunned when I learned that Apple has built high-impedance, low-noise amplifiers into all of their modern models. This laptop drives high impedance headphones like the Drop x Sennheiser 6XX (300 ohms) (review planned for last week, but coming eventually) and Beyerdynamic DT 990 (250 ohms) (review here) really beautifully, but also is able to drive really sensitive IEMs like my Chi-fi Campfire Audio knockoffs without a ton of noise. Even some pretty decent desktop headphone amplifiers struggle with one or the other; most amps that I like with high-impedance headphones are super noisy for sensitive IEMs and amps that are good with sensitive IEMs often struggle to drive high-impedance cans at reasonable volumes.

Do I have desktop amps that I think provide better, clearer sound? Sure. But they’re not the cheap ones, nor the transportable ones. I end up relying on the on-board sound instead of plugging in the Dragonfly Red dongle DAC I carry most of the time, which tells me that I really like the sound profile.

Bluetooth. Bluetooth sucks for music, as always, but it’s a pretty decent implementation that plays well with other devices in the Apple ecosystem. It automatically detects AirPods and Beats associated with my Apple account and asks me if I want to connect them, and provides information about battery charge etc. The .alac codec is fine, and the laptop does a good job of converting everything into it to pipe to Apple-capable headphones.

Speakers: They’re reasonably loud. They’re fine. I don’t really use them much, as the universe of situations where I am working on a laptop AND want/can courteously play music out loud is pretty damned small.

Airplay: This is one of the weirder things about this laptop, just because I haven’t really encountered it before: the MacBook Air automatically lists active Airplay speakers on your wifi network as options for audio out. I can’t imagine I’d ever deliberately use this because I have an entire Roon network set up around my house using a music protocol that’s a lot better than Airplay, but it is kind of cool especially when you have HomePods in several rooms in your house (and Airplay-capable Bluesound amplifiers in most of the others).

Connectivity: The ports are limited, which has been true of almost all of the Macs I’ve owned other than the Mac Studio. One modern Magsafe port and two Thunderbolt/USB-4 ports on the left side of the keyboard, and one 1/8” audio jack on the right side, and that’s it. No USB-A, no HDMI (mini or otherwise) or any other video out. As someone who dislikes Bluetooth (especially for mice) it’s a little annoying, and I end up carrying a USB-A hub and a few USB-C to A adapters in my bag all of the time. It’ll get less annoying over time as more and more of my devices end up being USB-C (my iPhone and new AirPods case are both USB-C finally, and I’m gradually cutting over all of my peripherals). In a pinch, you can charge via the USB-C ports too, if you damage, lose, or forget the Magsafe adapter.  It charges fine with the 65W USB-C charger for my Lenovo Carbon X1; it doesn’t require the expensive, bespoke Apple charger, fortunately.

[Also the Magsafe is amazing and I’m so glad Apple brought them back. Anyone who lives with a large dog with an active tail can appreciate how important they are, and it’s legitimately one of the reasons I didn’t buy any of the Apple models that didn’t include them.]

Wifi is good. Bluetooth is as good as Bluetooth gets. Airdop is actually REALLY well implemented and useful for moving files back and forth.

Design/Aesthetics: It’s pretty. It’s an Apple product. I appreciate that they’re giving us more options than white and brushed aluminum. I’ve long been a fan of Apple’s version of Space Grey, but for this one the midnight called to me. It’s a very clean looking device, though I’ve (for the first time) gone and covered it in stickers. I’ve also thrown on a case, just because I’d read enough reviews about people inadvertently scratching them, or realizing how many fingerprints ended up on the aluminum case.

Upgradability: Upgradability? What upgradability? You think you should get to question what Apple has so generously provided to you?!?!

Macs are all now system-on-chip[2], which means that whatever configuration you pick, you will forever be stuck with it. No ability to upgrade the processor, memory, hard drive, etc. So make your decision wisely! (Seriously though, this is the base model and it’s perfect for everything I want to use it for so I doubt I’ll have any regret about the configuration I chose. Also I have different machines for other uses.)

Pricing: It’s not cheap-cheap, but by computer standards (and particularly by Apple standards) it’s an absolute steal at MSRP, let alone at $899.99 I saw it for at Costco last weekend. It’s about the same price as a comparable Microsoft Surface and cheaper than the Carbon X1 line from Lenovo. It’s the kind of price where it would really suck to have to replace it, but it’s also totally doable. And that means that I’m willing to carry it with me and actually use it, something I couldn’t or wouldn’t do with the $2400 MacBook pro.

Conclusion: Apple is running into an issue where their new line of machines (with Apple silicon instead of Intel chips) are so good that people aren’t bothering to upgrade to the new hotness each year, and this machine seems like it will inevitably cause the same problem. They could announce the M3 version of the MacBook Air tomorrow and I wouldn’t even bother to look because this machine is so perfect for what I need it to do. With the introduction of the 15” version of the Air, I can’t imagine recommending the M3 MacBook Pro (either 14” or 16”) to anyone but a true power user (*waves at Robin*), and even most of them would probably benefit more from one of the other models unless they’re doing their power-user work primarily out and about in the world.

Apple may have screwed themselves with this one; when you’ve lost even me from the MOAR POWER crew ….

 

It’s a great device. I recommend it without any reservations to anyone who needs a new machine for anything less than serious video editing or similarly intensive work (or anyone who wants a gaming machine; you don’t buy a Mac for gaming at this point. Ever.). Get it on sale. Use it. Love it. Replace it if it breaks or gets stolen.

[1] See e.g. removal of the headphone jack on iPhones, no USB ports and a questionable implementation of Bluetooth and no support for actual lossless codecs on most iOS devices, stripping the optical audio out of 4k Apple TVs, the way Airplay 2 handles streams, etc.

[2] Except the $7k+ MacPro/Cheese Grater, and even that is mostly system-on-chip.

41 (aka 2023) was a hell of a year, and I think it’s worth taking some time to reflect on and be grateful for the many ways in which 41 was the best year of my adult life, and why I think 42 might be even better. It really boils down to two things: 1) a care team that works as a team, and 2) an employer who both encourages me to make healthier choices AND creates an environment where I can actually do so.

41 Crushed 40

As a lot of you know, I’ve been on a real health journey over the last eighteen months or so. One of the shitty things about changing jobs in the United States is that it too often means that you have to change health insurance, and that too often necessitates changing your medical providers and starting over with new doctors, specialists, etc., unless you’re willing to pay considerably more out of pocket to keep your old ones, or you get really, really lucky. My shift from the state to the Gates Foundation was no different; I went from an HMO (Kaiser Permanente/zombie Group Health) that I’d been using for almost 14 years to a more traditional health care insurance plan (Regent Group Administrators, a flavor of Blue Cross). I was apprehensive; I’m a creature of habit, and I’d grown up hearing about how frustrating private insurance could be (mom bearing the brunt of that particular labor, and Blue Cross being a particularly fun version of it), and I’d gotten pretty used to an HMO system that worked … well, worked-ish, at least in terms of getting things actually paid for with minimal fighting. My KP provider would refer me to a KP specialist, and everything went smoothly. I also really liked my primary provider at KP, a fellow former swimmer, Duck, and video gamer who I could commiserate with over swimmer shoulder pain, the lack of availability of the Xbox Series X that first year (when they were going for a 200-400% markup online), the latest bad coaching call, etc.

So, when I showed up at the Foundation, I was really uncertain about how it would go. I hadn’t had to find providers in more than a decade, because with KP they’re mostly just picked for you. As part of orientation, they told us something that I sort of thought had to be a joke, about how there was a full-service health clinic in our parking garage (“There’s an Olympic-sized swimming pool on the roof.”[1]) A couple weeks in, it became clear that they were actually serious, and we really did have a clinic with actual doctors/nurse practitioners on the third floor of the Seattle Center parking garage. It also turned out that the Foundation would (as a matter of policy) pay the clinic any costs that weren’t covered by our (admittedly platinum-plated) health insurance. To sweeten the deal, Vera Whole Health (the clinic) even offered a small financial incentive for us to come see them: if we did a physical, a basic biometric screening, and a 30-minute consultation with a health coach, they’d send us a $100 gift card each year. That seemed like a no-brainer to me; I’d started commuting to Seattle a couple of days a week anyway, so it was reasonably convenient. Besides, I needed a new GP and I might as well try the free option that I could literally walk down the stairs to get to, right?

So I did it. I did the biometric screening, and met with one of the staff nurse practitioners, a guy named Joe Gardner. We talked about my general health, and some reoccurring issues that I’d been having, and my desire to finally lose some weight and get in better shape. I’d watched how much the last few years of Dad’s life had been complicated by his health, and I didn’t want that to be me in twenty years. I also had a thirty-minute video call with one of their personal coaches, though through a hilarious mix-up I ended up talking to a very nice woman who worked out of their Anchorage office, and it took us both a little too long to figure out that we were in different states and different time zones. I went back to the clinic the next week to talk through my blood work with Joe, and he asked if I’d ever considered medical weight-loss interventions. Ozempic had just started hitting the news, and with my blood sugar getting perilously close to pre-diabetes, he thought I might be a good candidate to give it a try. He did warn me that the supplies were really limited and that it might be six or seven months (the beginning of 2023) before I could find a pharmacy that could actually supply it, but also that he’d start poking around and seeing if he could find someone who had it available. I mostly wrote it off as a cool idea, and figured I’d bring it up again in the new year when I did my 2023 physical.

To my surprise, Joe followed through. He did a remarkable amount of leg work to find a pharmacy that stocked Ozempic and could get me the right dosage, and the week of Thanksgiving I got my first dry-ice packed shipment of injector pens.

On Ozempic, and a Care Team that … Cares

I’ll say up front that Ozempic is a hell of a drug. It’s NOT a miracle drug. It doesn’t make weight loss easy, as much as I worried early on that it would feel like cheating. It doesn’t make you lose weight on its own, and it won’t work without substantial lifestyle changes and personal effort. But what it DID do was fundamentally change my relationship with food.

I’ve never had a particularly healthy relationship with food. I’ve always had a lot of internalized shame and stigma around my weight and my health in general, and frankly I should probably have sought therapy to talk about it years ago. I remember the first time my folks left me home when they were going out of town: the first thing I did was take the money that they’d left for me to eat for the weekend to Rosauers, and I bought a can of whipped cream, a frozen pizza, and a roll of cookie dough and ate myself sick. I’d guess that a lot of people I went to high school with will remember me mostly with an omnipresent 20 oz Coca-Cola in my hand (it was the first time in my life I had regular access to soda with sugar), and I’m pretty sure that anyone I spent time with in college will remember the frankly terrifying amount of Coke I drank each day once I had my own mini-fridge and no one watching my intake. College also meant essentially unlimited access to fried food at the cafeteria, which was paired with a real crash in the amount of exercise I was getting.

While I’ve been *mostly* better since college when it comes to soda, I’ve continued to be the guy who is painfully and chronically aware of food in my general vicinity. If there were donuts in the breakroom, I knew it and would walk by every chance I got to see if there were any left. If there was a piece of cake in my fridge, I’d constantly think about it. At DFI, my window looked out at the 7/11 in the parking lot next door, and I constantly wanted to walk over for a Slurpee and a hot dog. And when I started at the Foundation and realized that the kitchen had a snack column (which included things like Oreos and Doritos, or a large container of peanut M&Ms), and that there were soda fountains on every other floor in both buildings, I knew how much of a problem it was going to be because those facts were always going to be somewhere in the back of my mind.

[A dear friend visited me last summer on her way through town and offered a great metaphor for my experience. I never knew that she struggled with food the same way that I did, but she the way she talked about food really hit the nail on the head for me. It’s as if any food in the area is calling our names all of the time. (Not literally. We’re not ACTUALLY hallucinating desserts shouting come-hither lines.) Talking about the omnipresent and overwhelming AWARENESS of tasty things nearby was a revelation for me; I really had thought it was just me. I didn’t know that anyone else felt that way. And it was incredibly validating and important to hear.]

Ozempic … quiets that voice in the back of my head. The one telling me every ten minutes that I should go get a coke, or a bag of Doritos, because who knows if they’ll still be there if you don’t? (Spoiler: they, in fact, always were still there.) Like, I still knew that those things existed and were easily available. I still knew that there was a donut shop a few blocks from my house. It just … didn’t matter as much? The freedom was and is incredible. It really hit home a few months after my 41st birthday when I realized that I’d had a gallon of super premium Tillamook ice cream (raspberry and white chocolate chunk!) and leftover cake in my freezer for months and I hadn’t thought to have either even once.

Just like that, this demon that I’ve been fighting since I was a teenager, that had derailed me every time I tried to focus on improving my health, that was slowly killing me by inches, was … well, not gone, but rendered mostly impotent and small. Manageable. And combined with improvement in the quality and quantity of my diet[2], and regular exercise, the weight started to come off. Without a crash diet. Without feeling like I was depriving myself. Without feeling hungry all the time, without food journaling, and without the incessant voice whispering or shouting at me that I could sneak a piece of cake or a bowl of ice cream.

[I mean, the sheer absurdity of SNEAKING a piece of cake at 40 years old, in my own home, that I share with only with the world’s least judge-y golden retriever. Sneaking it from whom? Denali? Denali doesn’t care as long as I share OR give her pets while I eat it. Preferably both.

When I say unhealthy relationship with food, I mean UNHEALTHY relationship with food.]

Ozempic didn’t make it easy, but it did make it possible. And it’s a self-perpetuating cycle; as I’ve lost weight and improved by fitness, I walk more, and ride more, and lift weights more. More exercise has lead to more sleep, and increased need to eat better fuel, which has resulted in substantial shifts in my diet (increased protein and fiber, decreased fatty foods and carbs).

I feel so much better now than I did. And it’s both quantitative and qualitative:

–   Blood sugar: 6.3 4.2

–   Blood pressure: 140/100 115/75, even after dropping one medication and cutting the dose of the other in half

–   Resting heart rate: 80 bpm 55 bpm

–   367 lbs 283 lbs and falling (weight is usually a dumb metric for health and people should mostly spend less time obsessing about it, but in my case this is legitimately life-changing shift and it’s a handy short-hand)

–   All of my blood test values in normal range, when they’d almost all been in unhealthy or borderline unhealthy places

–   Average sleep from 5 hours a night to 8, and substantially higher quality sleep (this is even compared to how much better it got after I started using an APAP in 2017).

–   My AppleWatch used to think I was exercising every time I took Denali for a walk. The first time I did a serious Peloton ride my heartrate hit 160 and my hands started shaking, and I had to sit down for a half hour to try not to throw up. Now I routinely get my heart rate above 160 bpm in workouts, and I both feel fine and recover back to a normal resting heart rate in a matter of minutes.

I’m not saying it’s easy. Ozempic has a variety of pretty awful side effects. For me, it’s mostly been occasionally unrelenting nausea and a variety of unpleasant gastrointestinal issues. With Ozempic you start with small doses and work your way up to the full dose. The theory is that your body will adjust along the way and the side effects will abate. For me, they mostly haven’t, though the nausea is growing slightly less intense and frequent. I’ve mostly just learned to manage it; for example, it turns out that exercise is really good at taking the edge off of nausea for me. Changing my diet to include a lot more fruits, vegetables, and fiber and substantially less fatty food has been a life-saver. Reducing my alcohol intake (which was never particularly high, to be clear, despite my slightly ridiculous whiskey and wine collection) and starting intermittent fasting has been really helpful too, and I’ve discovered that my injection site matters a lot in terms of both effectiveness of the drug and the amplitude/frequency of the side effects.

All of this is possible in part because I finally got a practitioner who didn’t just tell me that I need to lose weight, but who took the time and attention to ask more questions, to admit when he didn’t know something and needed to do the research, and who followed up and worked with me to find a solution that works for me.[3],[4]

And it’s not just Joe. When I go back to work in January, I will have my 70th or so weekly meeting with Lou Anne, my Vera-provided personal coach. We’ll talk through the goals I set for this vacation (divided into three groups: eating[5], moving,[6] and miscellaneous[7]), we’ll talk about what went well, what I learned from it, and what my goals will be for my first week back at work. That accountability is part of why I’ve been successful in turning my health (physical and mental) around. It’s also why I’ve done Duolinguo Spanish basically every day for more than 400 days at this point, why I’m buying a lot fewer mochas, and taking time every week to reflect on the prior week: I know that if I don’t accomplish any of the goals I set for myself each week, I will have to tell Lou Anne about it on Tuesday. And while she’s not particularly judgmental (and honestly gives me more slack than I give myself most of the time), knowing that I have to tell her where I’ve ‘failed’ is good motivation. At the end of January, I’ll have my monthly meeting with my Vera-provided registered dietician/nutritionist to talk about how my diet worked while I was on vacation and not in total control of my schedule. I’m also pretty sure that something I tell one of them will end up in my chart, and I’ll get a follow-up e-mail from Joe about some question that I asked.

This is what a health care team should look like. I’m incredibly privileged that I get this access, and that I don’t have to work particularly hard or make complex arrangements to get it. Joe and Lou Anne are in my parking lot, and while Megan (the dietician) is located in Kansas City, she’s only ever a video call or an e-mail away).

As always, your mileage may vary. Every person is different, and you can’t change unless you really want to. For me, Ozempic isn’t a cure-all. But it genuinely makes it possible for me to succeed where I’ve always failed before. And no one really knows what the long-term plan is for folks taking Ozempic; it might be that I take an injection every week for the rest of my life. I can live with that, but also I’m thinking about what I can do to lock these new habits in place and maybe be able to wean down or off it.

The other thing that has contributed so meaningfully to my health journey is my employer and an actual commitment to work-life balance, something the state pays a lot of lip service but rarely lives up to.

On Respect in the Workplace

I’m sure y’all are sick by now of hearing about all of the great benefits provided by the Foundation. This post has not been devoid of it, certainly. But honestly, a huge part of why I’m able to work on my own health is that for the first time in my life, I work for an employer who genuinely prioritizes my health and well-being, both at the macro level and the microlevel.

First, the macro. I’m going back in January to do my first 4Cs conversation. (4Cs is the Foundation’s personnel review/evaluation process.) I’m pretty sure that one of the things that my boss is going to talk to me about is the fact that while I was expected to take three weeks of vacation in the second half of 2023 (after I was converted from an LTE to an FTE), I took a grand total of … one day off. (Maybe two?) [The Foundation closure from 12/15 to 1/2 doesn’t count.] For many organizations, unlimited PTO is a trap; they know that employees with unlimited PTO will use less than they would if there were a defined amount. That may well be true of other parts of the Foundation, but at least within my division we’re serious about staff taking at least six weeks (again, not counting the closure or any observed holidays). They’re also quite serious about us actually being on vacation when we’re on vacation; if I were to send an e-mail the first week of January when the Foundation is open and I’m still on leave, that would also end up being a part of my 4Cs conversation later in the month. [Taking a vacation without my work phone and without checking my e-mail every couple of hours? Preposterous!] This is going to be a challenge for me in 2024. When I left the state, they paid out almost a month of unused leave (and this after 1) I lost some during the pandemic due to inability to use it, and 2) I used a full month of leave between my last day in the office and my actual last official day on AOC’s payroll). When the Foundation converted me from an LTE to an FTE, they paid me out almost three weeks of unused leave that I’d accrued over less than a year (I’d earned a total of like four weeks of leave in that period). I’m going to try to get ahead of this challenge by planning trips for 2024 that will force me to take chunks of vacation. (I know, I know. Life is super hard. I know how silly it is to complain about this. Only the most first-world-y, sparkly problems for me.)

And then the micro: I’ve never worked for an employer so committed to day-to-day quality of life for its employees. (Again, this may not be universal to the Foundation, but it absolutely is true for my Division). My colleagues frequently duck out during the day to get a workout in at the Foundation gym. Or to take their dog for a walk. Or to hang out with their kids. Hell, I ducked out for an hour the other day for a coffee date. The first time I told my boss that I was going to take a long lunch to get a Peloton ride in, she looked at me quizzically and asked why I was telling her that. I still usually try to let my teammates know if I’m going to be out for a bit just in case they need something from me, and universally the response is “is there anything you need me to cover for you?” I had at least a half dozen conversations the week before the closure/my trip with colleagues about whether there was anything they needed to cover to while I was out the first week of January, because we’re all committed to making sure that we really lean into and enjoy our vacations.

Respect in the workplace. It’s a trip, right?

On The Perils of being a Living Single Point of Failure

At the state, with the exception of like … six months, I was the only person in each of my positions and had a relatively unique skill set that no one else was able to cover without substantial training and preparation in advance. As a result, for fourteen years, every time I was out of the office I was painfully aware that work was accumulating that I would have to somehow balance with new work when I got back. This was a reoccurring problem for both me and for my staff in each job. Because of that, no one could really disengage and enjoy time off. One of my line staff had been in her (entry level!) job for most of a decade, and had basically never taken a vacation because she felt like she couldn’t. That horrified me and I did my best to cover for her and let her take time off, but that’s not sustainable.

It’s really wild to not be a single point of failure anymore. Like, I know my value to the Foundation. I know the quality and quantity of work I accomplish. I’m really good at my job.[8] I’m certain that if I left (or won the lottery, or got hit by a bus[9]), I’d be missed and it would be a hardship for my colleagues to pick up the load. But I also know that they could absolutely do it. And that knowledge means that when I’m out of the office, the work isn’t just piling up. I know that when I get back next week, I’ll have a one or two hundred e-mails to triage, but I also know that nothing important got missed or was waiting for my return, and that’s incredibly freeing. This upcoming week will be my third consecutive week out of the office, and while I’ve got some important projects that I’m excited to dive into when I get back, I can also honestly say that I have spent zero time or bandwidth on a single one of them over the last two weeks.

And then there’s the day-to-day workload. I genuinely work a 40-hour work week. (Okay, maybe a 45-hour work week because I’m not great at actually logging out at 4:00 when I’m working on something.) I think I’ve worked two or three evenings and zero weekends in 18 months (compared to at least three evenings a week and two or three weekends a month for years for the state). And that 40-45 hours is PRODUCTIVE. Even as I’ve added a bunch of new responsibilities that come with meetings over the last few months, I’m still spending waaaaay more time actually doing the work during the week compared to any job I had at the state over fourteen years. My group sometimes jokes about our overly-fond attitude towards meetings, but we ain’t got nothing on the State of Washington.

Free time? What’s Free Time?

The end result of all of these wonderful things is mental and emotional bandwidth to do things that aren’t work. I can meaningfully disengage from work and spend time with family and friends. I can take time every day to study Spanish. I can spend more time with Denali and take her for higher-quality walks and give higher-quality snuggles. I plan my week out ahead of time, not because I have to just to keep my head above water, but as a way to make sure that I build in time for exercise, stretching, study, relaxation, and cooking/eating cleaner instead of stopping at McDonalds on my way home because I know I’ve got to log back in for a couple hours. I’ve got an inch-thick stack of the menus and goals I’ve set every week since last August, and more often than not the goals are all checked off and the menus completed. Feeling like I accomplished something with my week means I wake up on Mondays feeling energized and ready for new challenges, not dreading the coming week and the stress it will bring. And I have time the time and inclination for self-reflection and goal setting; first thing each Monday morning, I sit down and reflect on what I’ve accomplished and what lessons I can take away from past week, and then I figure out what I want to accomplish in the coming week, what I want to cook, and what things I need to plan for or around. As a result, I don’t spend a lot of time during the week worrying about what I’m forgetting, or what I won’t have time for … because I know. And because I’m trying to learn from my mistakes, I make sure to build in enough flexibility for the unexpected.

2023 was a great year. I’m happier and healthier than I have been as an adult, and I feel like I’ve rebuilt my life around a structure that encourages me to figure out (and seek) what I really want, rather than what I think I should want, or what others think that I want, or what society tells me I should want. And that’s not nothing.

Why 42 is Going to Kick 41’s Butt

As a lawyer, my work is often serious with serious consequences for screwups. I think it’s natural and maybe even inevitable that all-too-frequently, I take myself too seriously as a result. One of the things I love most about Denali is how utterly shameless she is. She has virtually no artifice. If she likes something, she loves it and she doesn’t hide it. I think we can all learn a little from the guileless, child-like glee of a golden retriever. So here’s to a 2024 of personal growth, pursuit of bliss, a healthy portion of childlike glee, and a surfeit of quality time with the people (and dogs!) that we love.

Some goals for 2024:

–   At least four trips with some portion just for fun.

o   I’m already spending March in Hawaii, two weeks working and two weeks playing.

o   I’m supposed to go to DC and Beijing for work, and I’d like to potentially extend both a bit to get some fun time in as well.

o   I would love to go see Dylan and Ruty in Singapore again, preferably this time without the whole getting-COVID-on-the-plane-and-then-infecting-them thing.

o   I did a long weekend in Victoria like five years ago over V-Day weekend. I want to do that again this year (well, maybe not over V-Day this time); catch the Seattle ferry up for three or four days of hanging out.

o   I really enjoyed my ridiculous all-inclusive resort trip to Playa Del Carmen last year, and it’d be fun to do one of those every couple of years.

–   ACTUALLY USE SIX WEEKS OF PERSONAL LEAVE.

–   Some fun, fast (and safe!) driving, preferably with a suitable mid-life crisis car. I’ve got a three-day rally driving class scheduled and paid for in early September 2024. I need to spend enough time driving a stick in the meantime to make the highest and best use of that opportunity.

–   A 5-mile hike with Denali. (We can both totally do this distance; it’s just a matter of balancing our enthusiasm for sniffing ALL OF THE THINGS with a desire to complete the hike in a timely manner. I’ll let you guess which of us is primarily responsible for each of these conflicting desires.)

–   A triathalon. I did the Aluminum Man in The Dalles every year with dad for quite a while, but it’s been a long time, and I think I’m in decent enough shape now that I can safely train for and compete in a sprint tri.

o   This means acquiring a bike that I can safely ride at this size.

–   Figure out some metrics to decide if I can safely try skiing again in the winter of 2024. Skiing used to be one of my blisses, and while I’d sort of given up hope of being able to do so safely, this year was a real revelation in terms of what I can accomplish when I dedicate myself to something. I already had a conversation with Joe around the kinds of things I need to be able to do for skiing to be a real option, and the Spring of 2024 is going to be for figuring out exactly what that go/no go looks like. I don’t need to get back to black diamonds, but it’d be great to be able to go up a couple of times a year and have some fun seeking the pow. [Also I’m pretty sure Denali would be obsessed if I tried cross country again.]

–   Continue my health journey, physical and mental.

–   (Maybe find a therapist for my relationship with food.)

–   Go on some awesome dates.

–   Do things like this more often. I genuinely don’t expect anyone is reading this at this point. It’s an exercise in self-indulgence. But that’s okay, and it’s fun, and I like thinking about and engaging with this kind of stuff. Here’s to a 2024 of leaning in on seeking bliss.

Cheers, y’all. Here’s to a 2024 of bliss.

[1] https://twitter.com/Hackers_bot/status/1597522284717248512

[2] More on this in a later post.

[3] [It’s not just weight, btw. I’d had trigger fingers on both my middle fingers for five or six years (not from overuse, I swear!), and Kaiser’s solution had just been to do cortisone injections that would work for a few months and then go back to being really painful. When I mentioned to Joe that I needed another injection, he immediately asked me if I wanted to go see a specialist and talk about surgical intervention. Two weeks later I was at Seattle Hand talking to Dr. Jimmy Daruwalla, and a month (and five minutes of surgery) later I was pain free.

[4] HOLY SHIT IT MATTERS TO HAVE A PRIMARY CARE PROVIDER WHO LISTENS AND CARES AND IS EMPOWERED BY THEIR EMPLOYER TO DO SO.

[5] Mostly this revolves around preparing and following a menu each week (with limited meals out).

[6] Usually a number of cardio and weights sessions, stretching sessions, and planks each week.

[7] Duolinguo, weigh-ins, weekly reflections, checking in with accountability buddies, etc.

[8] And super modest, obvi.

[9] I call this the “hit by a bus problem,” but my boss prefers to call it the “powerball problem.” Pota-toe, potah-toh.