Hey everyone, remember March? It was 10 days ago now. And so far April is making me long for the good ol' days of two weeks ago, despite March itself having been one of the more turbulent months in recent memory.

I'm going to take a breath and try to recount some March stuff:

• I made my and Aaron's TLDR gem an actually viable (dare I say, nice) testing framework for Ruby, declaring it 1.0 in the process (if you're not a programmer, did you know you can declare any software "1.0" for any reason or no reason at all? As with everything, nothing means anything.)
• I launched a new podcast called Merge Commits and dropped 36 episodes all at once, in response to a survey where respondents agreed I wasn't producing nearly enough content
• I committed myself to launching POSSE Party by the end of the year, then proceeded to spend the whole month doing anything other than work on it
• I figured out how to let my computer drive itself, but it was really bad at it, so I stopped
• I couldn't shut up about how much I was enjoying the game Avowed, and discussed it at length on my real podcast
• We got to see Tina Fey & Amy Poehler live and up close with our old friend Nicole and her husband (and our new friend) Nathan and that was a lot of fun. Nicole and Nathan combine to form a spiffy creative studio, who you should hire to create you things

Oh yeah, I also wasted several cumulative hours of my life staring mindlessly as OpenAI's new 4o image generation slowly poured vaseline all over my face and hair:

Of all these things, what inspired me to write to you today was, oddly enough, the videogame. See, what sets Avowed apart is the remarkable restraint Obsidian Entertainment showed by embracing an intentionally finite design. Avowed exists in an open world, but it is not an "open-world game", certainly not of the sort typified by the game it was destined/doomed to be compared to: Skyrim. (Itself produced by Obsidian's spiritual second cousin, Bethesda Game Studios.) Where Skyrim encourages you to explore its continent however you like, Avowed leads you along a particular path. In Skyrim, leveling up causes your enemies scale up in strength along with you, whereas Avowed's enemies are static—they'll smoke you if you're not ready for them, but you'll obliterate all who stand against you if you take the time to grind some XP first. And while countless gamers have played literal thousands of hours of Skyrim over thirteen years, you would have to carefully sip everything Avowed offers to reach even one hundred hours. When you reach the end of Avowed, that's it. Game over.

In 2011, a horizon-broadening game like Skyrim was what we needed. In 2025, a straightforward and focused game like Avowed is what the moment calls for.

Just one question: Why?

Spoiler alert: there's more to this…

Congratulations on beating Level 2 of 2025. Can't wait to see what March has in store for us. A couple new initiatives to share from Searls Industries this month:

• Becky started a podcast in conjunction with her Better with Becky enterprise, where she sells monthly strength-training programs via a curiously-slick web application
• I announced POSSE Party, my first solo product. It will launch later this year, and its goal is to help people escape the post-Twitter diaspora by cross-posting your content to your social accounts on your behalf

Yesterday, I returned from Vegas after attending Test Double's annual retreat and quarterly board meeting. I'm coming to grips with a couple things. First, that I'm entirely okay never going back to Vegas. And second, that I'm entirely okay never going back to who I was the last time I needed a Vegas trip to escape my life.

Speaking of Vegas, I couldn't find a single picture from the trip, so let's all pretend this shot with my longtime colleague and collaborator Dave Mosher wasn't taken at Disney World a week prior:

On a personal note, I've changed in some pretty fundamental ways over the past 18 months, and—in case you've noticed how my character arc is distressingly similar to a bunch of other tech villains—I figured I'd explore my transformation in today's note. Yes, I moved to Florida. Yes, I started caring less how my words make people feel. Yes, I'm prioritizing my own wants and needs over those of others.

In short, I've learned to embrace my inner asshole. And I'm frustrated to report that it's totally backfired. Instead, I'm somehow a kinder, more generous, and all-around better person today than the whole last ten years I spent trying to be good.

The birth and death of @searls

Growing up, I had a keen intuitive sense that living for the approval of others would be stifling and counter-productive. More than most, I desperately yearned for acceptance and validation—the corrosive impact of which I was forced to reckon with at a very young age. In second or third grade, I remember playing H-O-R-S-E at my friend John's house and, as he passed me the ball, he asked why I cared so much what others thought about me. I didn't know the answer.

Let's dive in and find out…

It's taken me a while to figure out what to write for you that would tie a bow around January 2025. My take on the cultural and political realignment we seem to be experiencing? A deep dive into the video workflows I've been developing as an outgrowth of my Breaking Change podcast? Reflections on the distinct misery of feeling like one's life has regressed in some way, and the counter-productive ways American men react to the sensation of going backwards?

None of those felt quite right.

So I sat on the newsletter and waited for inspiration to strike. Then, out of nowhere, an unextraordinary patch for a developer tool I don't use got merged and—through a convoluted series of coincidences—will likely stand as one of the biggest accomplishments of my life.

I'll explain what I mean by that, but first, here's a picture of my brother and me at brunch in a boat-themed restaurant literally named Boathouse and seated at a table built into an actual fucking boat:

What this patch has to do with me

If you're not a programmer, fear not: I don't intend to get too lost in the technical weeds here. That said, some amount of exposition is necessary to convey why the aforementioned pull request matters.

Content warning: more content…

Welp, we're finally done with 2024.

It was a busy year for Searls family of brands. A few highlights of what I'll remember this year for:

• Launching my first podcast, Breaking Change, and having an absolute blast doing it. Check out the latest episode, where Aaron "tenderlove" Patterson and I spend over two hours stack-ranking a year's worth of puns. (Also available in video!)
• Collaborating with Becky to help build her business's first software product, which I have been using myself as it offers a very good way to go about figuring out which weights to lift and when
• Retiring from conference speaking with one final talk (though I reserve the right to take another stab at public speaking in Japanese)
• Providing minor logistical (and literally no other) support for Jeremy as he continued to 3D print the change he wanted to see in the world, from theme park props to over-the-top character costumes

That said, give it a few decades and if 2024 ever comes up in conversation, the first thing to come to mind will almost certainly be December's passing of my father, Fred.

Rather than wandering around the house and cooking up one of my trademark insightful-but-totally-overwrought essays about life, I thought it'd be more appropriate to print the remarks I shared about Fred at his funeral. The pastor told me to keep it to 5-7 minutes. I did my best, but ultimately found it impossible compress his impact on me and the other people in his life within such a tight time constraint. (Says the guy with the 3-hour podcast, I know.)

The service's program called what follows a remembrance. Does that make it a eulogy? That word feels too strong, to be honest (I've been driving without a valid eulogy license for years). Anyway, here are the words I said.

You'll never guess what happens next…

I found myself in need of a post-election palate cleanser, which is how Becky and I found ourselves spending most of November traveling Japan again. As always, I learned a lot. Like that the rhythm game Chunithm is probably too difficult for me to ever become good at. And that the Kawasaki Brave Thunders have a tremendously loyal fanbase. And that driving cross-country in Japan wasn't quite as nerve-wracking as my fears had made it out to be. (Though it's hardly cheap.)

Oh yeah, I also learned that every room's TV in the Toy Story Hotel is set in an Etch A Sketch frame:

As it happens, my grandfather was an executive at Ohio Art and played no small part in bringing the Etch A Sketch to market. He sadly died before I was old enough to ask him for that story, so all I have are bits and pieces I learned from my dad. It's too bad that so many people who've touched my life in such profound ways remain complete mysteries to me. Writing this newsletter is one of a dozen ways I strive to avoid the same fate.

To be honest, this is perhaps the most personal essay I've published so far, if not the most emotionally vulnerable. It's certainly the most detailed account of "who I am", in a certain sense. I have no idea what you'll think or feel after reading this. If you find that it speaks to you, I'd be lying if I were to say that was intentional. The primary audience of every story I tell about myself is myself. And there's never just one story. And those stories always change upon retelling.

Here goes.

Content warning: more content…

I will forever remember October 2024 as the month I managed to clear a year's worth of personal to-do items only to come out the other end asking, "what am I supposed to do with my life when I have nothing left to do?"

Big "dog who just caught the car" energy.

I like to use this newsletter as a way to experiment with different modes of writing. Playful stuff. Put an interesting spin on an old memory. Send a meaningful message by telling a story. Write some jokes. So let's see what we have here…

Looks like you get a stream-of-consciousness essay on the challenges facing software developers in the current job market and ideas for what to do about it based on conversations I've had with various tech leaders. Weird, but here we are. I don't make the rules, I just type out what the voices tell me to.

Before we dive in, I'll take a moment to plug my podcast, Breaking Change, which I feel like is really hitting its stride when it comes to format, content, and audio quality. The best part is that because nothing I say matters, it's like one of those sightseeing buses you can hop on and hop off at any time. Listen here and there. Finish an episode or don't. Write in questions and comments and you'll keep getting free access to more episodes. I've had folks write in to say they take copious notes as they listen and one person who claims to use my semi-dulcet tones as a sleep aid for their newborn. I'm sure the podcast has other uses too, but those are two of them, apparently.

Okay, I'm interested…

Hey everyone, have a good September?

Apologies, as most of my top-of-mind thoughts are hurricane-adjacent as I write this:

• That we decided to escape the storm by driving from Orlando to Savannah on Wednesday morning
• That I spent Wednesday night tossing and turning in bed after Milton made landfall, wondering whether I'd be more upset if there was significant damage to the house (and with it, the hassle of months of insurance claims and repairs) or if there was zero impact at all (rendering my 10 hours in the car an unnecessary hedge)
• That, in college, I rented a house on Milton Street we all called "The Milton", and how disappointed I am that none of Orlando's local news affiliates thought to call me to discuss this fascinating human interest story
• That our house is absolutely fine. Didn't even lose power. And my predominant emotional reaction is, predictably, to feel like the drive was a waste of time

Anyway, that's October stuff. And I'm not here to talk about October stuff, because Searls of Wisdom is a publication that happens in arrears. It takes a full month for these insights to coalesce and maturate in the nacre of my self-indulged mind.

So, let's talk about September stuff.

The one thing I'll remember about September 2024 is that it was the month I gave my final conference presentation. After 15 years of speaking at user groups and software conferences, I've decided to hang up the presenter remote. End of an era.

Here's a pic of me and my friends Aaron and Eileen at the RailsConf: World Edition afterparty:

It's been strange developing so many impactful friendships over dozens of seasonal pseudo-vacations sprinkled sporadically throughout my adult life. I've rarely ever visited these friends where they live, or met their families, or seen how they operate outside the predictable plot beats of a conference event. Each relationship a vignette of awkward run-ins at baggage claim and hotel lobbies. Strained catch-ups at noisy speaker dinners and sponsor parties. Warm greetings crossing paths in convention center hallways. Hushed critiques shared from the back of other people's sessions.

I can happily live without attending another conference. But will that mean living without most of these friendships, too?

Yeah, probably.

Below, I'm going to discuss my decision to announce my retirement from public speaking, how people reacted to it, and what the resulting dissonance can tell us about weighing loss aversion against opportunity cost.

What happens next will shock you…

By reading this you have demonstrated two things: you have at least a passing interest in hearing from me and you know how to subscribe to a thing. That being the case, you might also enjoy subscribing to my podcast, Breaking Change. Right around 20 episodes, and it's settling into a biweekly format that reminds me of the drive time radio talk shows I listened to as a kid to pass the time. If you're interested in the kinds of things that surround me—independent software development, theme parks, Japan, tech news, games and movies, and hypercritical observations about everyday life—you might like it. You also definitely might not like it. No way to know until you try.

Spoiler alert: there's more to this…

Last month I talked about the power of pressuring yourself instead of letting the world do it for you. This month, I can report that I followed my own advice and managed to get a metric shitton of work done on the app I'm building. Sure, I fell behind on other goals, I only left the house a handful of times, my to-do list has become a stress-inducing mess, and I can't say I had much fun. And I'll admit, there were times I questioned what the hell I was doing with my life. But think of the productivity! I successfully stimulated my work ethic gland and I hustled hard.

Maybe a little too hard. This was the least blurry of all three pictures taken of me this month:

Turns out, there's more to it…

June was a busy month. Because Becky's business is in a sort of limbo until I finish and because I'm giving a talk at Rails World about how easy it was to finish, I am extremely heads-down finishing my work on her Better with Becky app. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, though. I think.

This moment in every project reminds me of one of my favorite tongue-in-cheek "laws" of computing:

The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.

One thing I will say is, while the ninety-ninety rule has rung true to me for nearly every team project I've been a part of in a corporate context, it doesn't resonate at all when it comes to my solo work. Maybe it's the acceleration one can build when the full context of the code resides entirely in one's own head. Maybe it's my particular "measure twice, cut once" ethos as applied to planning and testing. More likely, it's that when the person planning the work is the same person that's doing the work, scope creep becomes emotionally untenable once they reach the point of exhaustion. Reminds me of that quote often misattributed to Leonardo Da Vinci, "a work of art is never finished, merely abandoned."

Anyway, because I've been so busy building that app, I haven't gotten out much. Of course, I say that in Orlando-adjusted terms, as I did manage to find time to meet a beloved character actor from Raiders of the Lost Ark, attend a preview event to ride a new theme park attraction, and see the new neighborhood drone show in between pomodoro timers.

Today, we're going to talk about pressure.

Spoiler alert: there's more to this…

During his closing keynote at RubyKaigi, Matz joked that it's really confusing why people would want a picture with him. "Why would you want that?" So a couple hours later I made sure to explain that I don't know why I want it, but could I please have a picture anyway and he obliged after a mock protest:

I'll be honest, I struggled a bit over what to write this month. I spent the entirety of May traveling all over Japan and had so many novel experiences that the only thing more difficult than picking a few favorites to write about would be to arrive at some kind of overarching theme to summarize the entire trip. Searching for the right thing to discuss here put me in an uncomfortably contemplative state, for better or worse.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading this decidedly middle-aged edition of Searls of Wisdom.

To be continued…

We kicked April off right around here with a stay at the new Evermore resort's Conrad hotel, which saw fit to include yet another upscale tiki bar in a part of town that contains an order of magnitude more tiki bars than thai restaurants. And five times more tiki bars than pharmacies. Roughly as many tiki bars as schools, judging by a quick search. Anyway, here's me drinking an Oaxaca Colada out of a ceramic conch shell:

Not too much to report this month that I didn't already cover on my web site, as I was mostly heads-down writing software.

Oh, by the way, to all the folks who kindly wrote in to express sympathy about the back pain that I documented here last month: thank you. It was entirely uncalled for (as in, I did not call for it), but I appreciate the sentiment. For what it's worth, I got in to see my physical therapist and she patiently listened to me ramble about the dozen theories I'd been crafting before simply asking, "are you doing the hamstring stretches I showed you two years ago?" At which point, I melted into a pile of humiliated goo and slid away, escaping under the door.

Anyway, stretching my hamstrings every day is helping a lot. God, I hate doing them, though.

April was also defined by the various preparations needed for what's shaping up to be another epic Japan trip. (Incidentally, this is also what consumed a good chunk of last April.) After going to RubyKaigi as a foreign correspondent for Test Double, I've decided to return in a slightly more low-key fashion. Oh, and this time Becky's joining me!

After the conference, I'm hoping to spend a couple weeks wandering heretofore unexplored (by me) regions of the country on a solo language-learning and research expedition. To assist in documenting all the places I'll go, I added a mapping feature to my site that I call Spots.

As I check items off my packing list, I re-installed and logged into several of the apps I use whenever I'm in Japan. Switching my phone to my Japanese Apple ID for this purpose has become something of an annual ritual of mild frustration that nevertheless leaves me ponderous. Why does everyday life in Japan require a full home screen of only-available-in-the-Japanese-App-Store apps? And if we were to compare them to their counterparts in the West, what might they teach us?

When I first signed up for a study abroad program nearly 20 years ago, it was in large part because Japan seemed like such a radical departure from my upbringing in the states. When I took an elective on post-war Japanese industrial design, I was repeatedly awestruck by the number of tools and appliances that solved common problems in ways I hadn't seen before. That so many things are designed and produced independently in Japan made me realize how many facets of life I'd assumed to be constant were in fact variable. Knobs that twisted left when they "should" have twisted right. The tea kettle whose fully-concealed cord resulted in my not realizing it was electric and subsequently melting it over my gas range. The countless bathtub drains whose basic operation escaped me, leading to my checking out from more than one hotel with a tub full of water. But one thing I hadn't bargained for was the degree to which this profound differentness would also apply to Japanese software design.

Japan produces a lot of software intended primarily (if not exclusively) for domestic consumption. For almost every major function of our lives that's mediated by a popular app, it's likely some other app you've never heard of dominates the same market in Japan. The fact these apps often emerged in relative isolation provides a sort of natural experiment, offering us the opportunity to question features we thought were essential and appreciate alternate approaches we might not have arrived at ourselves.

In case it might whet your appetite for exploring these differences, today I'm going to give a quick run-down of a few of my favorite Japanese apps below.

But wait, there's more…

Don't tell March that it's a short month—we got a lot done!

For starters, we completed our first major home renovation since moving in. Apart from twisting my insides into knots from self-inflicted stress, everything went totally fine and all our contractors were awesome.

I also found occasion to extract my first new open source library of 2024 while working on the new Better with Becky app. If you're a Rails developer and have ever felt uneasy about how easy it is to destroy models, check it out!

But I'm writing to you about something else that made my March especially memorable. An old friend came to visit that I hadn't seen in years. His name is chronic back pain, and he's a real son of a bitch.

To be continued…

As I teased and subsequently recounted on my podcast (Breaking Change, available where all fine podcasts are sold), I decided to be that piece of shit flying cross-country with Apple Vision Pro strapped to my face three days after it launched:

Of course, here I am a month later typing this with the same computer strapped to my face, but from the much more socially-acceptable confines of my home office.

Overall, I'm prepared to call February a success, if for no other reason than it was sunny and 83ºF yesterday, which allowed me to spend a few hours lounging at the pool. Probably not great news for the planet, but absolutely clutch for my 2024 base tan.

Speaking of planes and sunny destinations, this month I want to write a little bit about how and why my perspective on travel has changed over the years.

And then what happened?…

Greetings from me and my Persona^(BETA). In case you haven't met him, here's what he looks like:

If you'll allow January to leak into the first week of February (as I have), what a start to the year this month has been! I kicked off a brand new podcast and cut 4 episodes for a grand total of over 8 hours of explicit-rated, Searls-flavored content. Less importantly and after 7 years spent cooking in the R&D oven, Apple Vision Pro finally released, ushering in a mostly certain future amid a wildly uncertain present. And the world is finally fixated on a problem relevant to my life: how much of a time-consuming pain in the ass it is to fly between Japan and the US.

But today, we're not going to talk about any of that. We're going to talk about the nature of software and what it means to truly own an app.

To be continued…

I bought Becky a piano for Christmas so I've been brushing up on the only instrument I know how to play:

Congratulations on surviving 2023, everyone. Was touch and go there for a minute, but if you're reading this: you made it.

Don't worry, I'm not going to do a year-in-review for this month-in-review newsletter. One layer of retrospection is plenty. So let's just keep our heads down and focus on the month that was December.

To be continued…

I finished Starfield last month, which included this unsettling scene of my own avatar giving me some free advice:

Having a receding hairline is generally miserable, but the frustration is especially acute when futzing with a video game's character creator. As much as I'd love to grant my digital analog the curly mop of hair I shed long ago in my early 20s, I can never bring myself to so brazenly signal my dissatisfaction with my own appearance. I will admit, though, I usually consider selecting the hair I wish I had… before inevitably choosing whichever of the three balding scalps matches mine best.

To be continued…

This month in Disney World living, my brother Jeremy and I got to meet Aaron Paul and Brian Cranston at an event promoting their Dos Hombres mezcal:

Okay, I'm interested…

Wow, September came and went in a hurry.

Okay, I'm interested…

Each month, it's my goal to get these newsletters out on the first of the month, and each month I fail. But in fairness to me, I took two overseas vacations in August and neither time did I bring anything to write with. Add to that, I just got home from Greece with that hip new variant of Covid everyone's talking about. So this month's newsletter is now a third of a month late as a result.

To be continued…