Life on Joachim Kennedy

Resolutions 2026

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 06:56:35 -0500

Last Year

2025 turned out to be a good year to not learn how to use em dashes though I sympathize with all the human em dash users out there. The other straightforward resolution was composting. Very easy.

Another big success was going to the Olympic Peninsula with my girlfriend. The line to get into Hoh Rainforest was too long, so we hiked along Rialto Beach and Lake Quinault instead. I would absolutely visit again for longer than a weekend.

Resolutions 2025

Mon, 27 Jan 2025 18:21:03 -0800

It can’t be healthy to think about resolutions for this long. It should be reserved for that lazy week at the end of the year when you’re just starting to feel shamefully well-rested. It’s harder to pretend the new year is so full of possibilities once you’re back in the rhythm of things. When you give yourself a month, you end up with whatever this is. All the recent hedging hasn’t excised all the optimism of early drafts (or any of the indulgence).

Marathon Postmortem 5: Honolulu

Sat, 11 Jan 2025 16:28:09 -0800

Five is a lot of marathons to write about. All the typing gets tiring after a while. Around the 4 or 5 mark they really start to blend together. If I were to keep running a marathon every year, this is probably where I’d quietly put down this postmortem habit. Then only the dozens of people I told in person would know that I ran the Honolulu Marathon last month. But for the first time in years, I don’t know when my next race will be, so I’ll get a break anyway. Then again, maybe the reason I’m less excited about writing this one is that there’s no “next race” to apply my takeaways from this one to.

On Daily Mood Tracking

Sun, 25 Aug 2024 07:24:06 -0700

The only reason I’m writing this is that I let slip to a friend¹ that I’ve been tracking my mood daily for the past 4 and a half years, and I couldn’t credibly argue that the practice hasn’t conveyed some kind of expert status despite the fact that all I did was tell my phone how my day was whenever it asked me.

Most of these ramblings have only come to me within the past month as I’ve tried to corral my experiences into thought. They boil down to this: It’s not good to optimize for daily mood, both because feeling good isn’t the most important thing, and, even if you think it is, greedily maximizing it² isn’t the best algorithm to improve it, and even if you’re bound and determined to do it anyway, mood tracking probably isn’t the best way.

Marathon Postmortem 4: Boston

Thu, 09 May 2024 07:16:49 -0700

Four years ago, I realized that my long runs weren’t much shorter than a half marathon, and that, since I had some free time, I might as well bump them up to an even 13.1 miles. I ran all of Warner Parks and the Harpeth River Greenway that I could. When I moved back to Boston, I explored every direction from Kendall Square in an 8 mile radius.

On one of these expeditions out past the Chestnut Hill Reservoir in September 2020, I was feeling so good after 8 miles that instead of turning around as planned, I kept going for 26.2. I don’t wear a GPS watch, but I had an idea based on pace when I was at 12 miles, and I followed signs to Babson for the extra bit.

Sundance 2024

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 07:56:26 -0800

I found myself at Sundance again this year. The same group from last year rented an even bigger house and invited more people. Last year, I was mostly excited by the exclusivity of it: the chance to see films before big releases, to go into each screening with no expectations.

I was on the fence about going again because that exclusivity holds less allure for me. I’ve already had “the Sundance experience”. It’s not like any of the movies I saw were widely seen. The Eternal Memory got an Oscar nomination, but it’s a documentary, so still no one has seen it. I will be years (sometimes decades) late to most of the movies I see, and I’m good enough at avoiding spoilers and reviews that being quick to see new movies doesn’t matter that much to me.

Resolutions 2024

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 12:24:16 -0800

Uncharacteristically, I started thinking about resolutions in early December. Maybe that sounds responsible, but actually I just looked at a bunch of hobbies and thought, wouldn’t it be cool if I got really good at that? And I left my January 1st self to sift through the impulses and chaff. I never commit to my resolutions until the end of January anyway, so the anticipation bought me a trial month to see which ones I could stick with.

Marathon Postmortem 3: North Bend

Tue, 15 Aug 2023 07:20:40 -0700

A couple weeks ago on July 30th, I ran the Jack & Jill’s Downhill Marathon which started in Hyak, and as the name suggests, descended 2000ft over 26.2 miles to North Bend, WA.

Training

I found the marathon early in the Spring advertized as one of the top qualifying races for Boston. I didn’t register for it until the beginning of July because I wasn’t sure if I was serious enough about training. Any time I tried to step up mileage or speed, I felt some twinge of knee pain and dialed it back down. My training never changed much from the usual: two or three 4-mile easy runs around Green Lake or up Phinney Ridge during the week and one 8-16-mile Saturday long run. In the end, I never convinced myself I was serious enough; I just told so many people I would do it that I couldn’t back out.

Improv 101

Fri, 09 Jun 2023 15:54:24 -0700

I recently finished taking an 8-week (+ 1 showcase) improv 101 class. The more I think about it, the less I believe there was one reason I did it. Ever since middle school drama class (which was essentially improv), I’ve had it in my mind that it would be fun to try. But the final push was my distinguished sister taking an improv class that “changed her life”. She and another friend told me they thought I’d be good at it. (And I can’t resist a chance to be good at something). Thus it became one of my resolutions for 2023.

EveryDollar Review

Sat, 04 Mar 2023 06:11:16 -0800

I’d like to preface this by saying I’m not a financial advisor. That’s something I say not only to cover myself legally but also because I’m genuinely not very good at this stuff and you shouldn’t listen to me.

Of all the stupid takes I’ve heard, one of the worst is my brother’s take on budgeting. According to him, budgeting doesn’t make sense because either his budget would say he had enough money to spend how he wanted in which case he wouldn’t change his behavior or his budget would tell him he didn’t have enough money in which case it would make him unhappy. It reminded me of someone a couple years ago who expressed to me that they didn’t want to take a Covid test because if it came back positive, they wouldn’t be able to go to a party.

Staying Out

Fri, 17 Feb 2023 06:19:59 -0800

This week, I played a game with myself called “pretend my apartment has been affected by an unpleasant, embarrassing, lingering sewage problem”. There’s only one rule: Don’t stay at home for more than an hour at a time (unless I’m sleeping or making a good-faith effort). And, like all proper curses, I’m not allowed to tell anyone (until this morning when I’m posting this blog post about it).

I thought about this as an exercise in change and acceptance. I’d like to form more, closer friendships, but I am naturally laid-back and introverted. There’s an inside joke in my family that the best way to make friends is to befriend one extrovert and then befriend all of their friends. I always feel it should be possible to become more gregarious myself, cut out the middleman, and make all my own friends, but that takes a lot of effort that I can’t always summon.

Sundance 2023

Fri, 03 Feb 2023 08:41:18 -0800

Last week, I went to Salt Lake City for the Sundance Film Festival.

I’m normally reticent about reviewing movies. I’m afraid that if I didn’t like a highly-acclaimed movie, it’s just because I didn’t get it. (Sometimes I also think that about movies I do like. Like I missed the point but by coincidence also liked it for another reason.) But these festival movies feel like they exist outside the realm of normal movies. Hardly anyone has seen them yet and can tell me I’m wrong. Even if, later on, I turn out to disagree with the consensus, I bet they’ll cut me some slack because I saw it before people had agreed what to think about it. That said, reviews of any kind are a new format to me, so bear with me. I probably overrated everything since I was so jazzed to be there. Spoilers abound.

Resolutions 2023

Fri, 27 Jan 2023 08:02:37 -0800

By popular demand, I am publishing my birthday resolutions. I know there’s lots of advice about what makes for good goals, but I’m not so concerned with the quality of my goals. My strategy is to imagine how I want my life to be next year, make it like that, and iterate.

Decide whether to go to grad school

At a New Years party, an old acquaintance at a party asked what I would do in an ideal world. I said I wasn’t sure because I was drawn to writing, teaching, and cognitive science research, but they all had their pros and cons. Almost immediately after I said it, it hit me that there’s a place where you do all of those things. This year, I want to figure out whether that very large commitment is something I want to make or if it’s just something I say to acquaintances at parties. I’m actually happy with my job right now which is why I feel like I have the luxury to spend a lot of time figuring out what I want to do next. It’s not like I’m even in a position to apply to grad school on a whim. General application strength aside, I don’t even have a research direction in mind. I plan to throw a mini grad school for myself where I read lots of papers and do a small AI project or two.

Marathon Postmortem 2: Seattle

Sat, 17 Dec 2022 14:10:57 -0800

A few weeks ago, on the anniversary of my first marathon postmortem, I ran my second marathon. This is my experience and analysis.

Training

After my last marathon, I didn’t run much at all for the rest of the Winter. The race itself was exhausting, and it took a lot of effort to face the cold. I probably averaged once or twice a week. I always tried to go out at least once when it was snowing. That’s the most fun and magical even if it’s not great for training.

Dream Library

Fri, 15 Apr 2022 08:43:51 -0800

(Programming note: I’m planning to focus my energies on some other projects for the next few weeks. To keep posting weekly, I’m going to post a few lists that will live on the Home page and which I’ll try to keep updated.)

I am a big proponent of public libraries. I have shamelessly stolen my friend’s philosophy that you don’t live somewhere until you have a library card. Simultaneously, I am an opponent of owning things and will avoid buying anything I don’t need. Which essentially just means that if I can get away without owning a book, I won’t, and with library access, I can get away without owning many books.

Where Should I Live?

Fri, 14 Jan 2022 07:01:00 -0800

In college, I got some career advice about that I really like. I don’t know if it’s good advice (I have yet to take it), but it sounds like good advice. I was whining to a post-doc that I no idea what I wanted to do with my life. She told me that if I didn’t know what I wanted to do, I should focus on a city I wanted to live in, and find a job that would allow me to live there. Of course all advice is autobiographical, and in this case, the autobio followed free-of-charge. After working for a while out of college, she decided she wanted to live in London, so she went and got a Masters in Political Science at UCL. And that decision would eventually lead her to getting a PhD and giving life advice to aimless Sophomores. So I guess it worked out for her.

Marathon Postmortem

Fri, 26 Nov 2021 13:11:55 -0800

This is my analysis of my experience running my first official marathon, the Madison Marathon, on November 14th.

Prior Experience

I say first official marathon because technically I completed the marathon distance on my own last September. My training that Summer and Fall was essentially to do two or three 4-5 mile runs during the week, then one long 16-20 miler on Saturday. I had been planning to make my attempt in October, but during one 16 mile run, I felt so good at the turn-around point that I decided to keep going. I ended up running from MIT to Babson and back. Well, around mile 22 my legs suddenly stopped working, and I had to walk the 4 miles back home and stop in Darwin’s Coffee to ask for a cup of water. I wasn’t timing is precisely, but, as I recall, the whole ordeal took around 4 hours.