Last year I downloaded a habit tracker app. I’ve used it faithfully. Checked boxes. Built streaks. Watched little digital fireworks go off when I hit milestones.

At first, I loved it.

Lately? Not so much.

It’s not that I want to stop the habits. It’s that I’m starting to feel like I’m doing them to appease the app instead of because I want to.

The whole point of habit tracking is obvious: you nudge yourself long enough that the behavior becomes automatic. Fair enough. Maybe that worked. Maybe a year is enough runway.

But something subtle shifted.

Two of my tracked tasks are Practice ASL and Play Instrument—each for a set amount of time. On paper, that sounds disciplined. In reality, some days it feels… compulsory.

When I sit down at the bass or the drum kit because I have to hit 15 minutes, it’s different than when I pick it up because I feel like playing along to a song. I’m not turning pro. I’m not starting a band of other 60-year-olds reliving 1987. I just like playing. I like fumbling through a groove. I like figuring out a fill.

The moment it becomes a box to check, the joy drains a bit.

Same with ASL. I do want to become proficient. But I have time. If I skip a day because I’m tired or just not feeling it, I’m still going to get there. Fifteen minutes less on a random Tuesday isn’t the difference between fluency and failure.

Other tracked habits? Taking vitamins. Drinking water when I wake up. Journaling.

Those are already baked in. If I miss journaling one day, I don’t want the app telling me my streak is broken. Maybe I just didn’t have much to say. Maybe silence was the point. The mental health benefit of journaling shouldn’t come with the mild shame of a red “0.”

That’s the part I’m pushing back on.

In this phase of life—this ongoing “less is more” experiment—I’m trying to strip away unnecessary scaffolding. If a thing is truly part of me now, maybe it doesn’t need gamification. Maybe it doesn’t need a nudge.

Maybe doing it because I want to is enough.

I know habit trackers are helpful for a lot of people. They probably were helpful for me. They got me started. They kept me consistent.

But I don’t want to live inside a scoreboard.

If I play, I’ll play because it’s fun.
If I practice ASL, it’ll be because I’m curious.
If I journal, it’ll be because something is stirring.

Not because my phone says it’s time.

Less tracking.
More living.

You do you.

Yesterday, my household received 17 pieces of U.S. mail. Fifteen were campaign mailers.

Fifteen.

Having been part of a few campaigns myself, I know exactly why we get them. We’re what the voter files call “Double-D’s” — voters who have pulled a Democratic ballot in the last two primaries. When a candidate wants to do a mailing, they don’t just blanket the city. They buy a voter list and target likely supporters: people who are registered, who actually vote, and who have voted in their party’s primaries before.

In Chicago, that’s the play.

There are no Republican primaries that matter here. If there are Republicans on the ballot, they’re often token candidates with no realistic path in a one-party town. Countywide judicial races? Zero Republicans. Why would I pull an R ballot when there’s literally no one to vote for?

So everyone — regardless of their actual politics — pulls a Democratic ballot. It’s the only place where the election is decided.

And because I’ve voted in every primary and general election since 1984, I’m prime real estate. Reliable. Predictable. Engaged. A campaign consultant’s dream.

Which is why my recycling bin is a campaign graveyard every two years.

The irony is that I mostly vote in primaries for judges. They’re often unopposed in the general election, so the primary is the only meaningful vote. If you care about who ends up on the bench, that’s the moment. Sometimes I’ve had friends on the ballot. Sometimes former colleagues. It’s hard not to show up.

But this year?

No election in my sub-circuit.
No meaningful countywide vacancies.
A crowded congressional field where the candidates seem to be competing to prove who can run the furthest left, the fastest.

My choices aren’t moderate vs. progressive. They’re progressive vs. more progressive vs. most progressive. There’s nobody even pretending to occupy the middle.

And so I find myself contemplating something I’ve never done in 42 years of voting: skipping a primary.

Not switching teams. I’m not taking a Republican ballot — that’s equally futile here, and it doesn’t solve the “no moderates” issue. Just… stepping off the bus for a cycle. Removing myself from the “Double-D” category. Quietly slipping off the mailing lists.

It feels oddly disloyal, even though it’s not. Voting is something I’ve always taken seriously. I’ve never missed. Ever. Through law school, through young kids, through brutal work schedules. Snowstorms. Busy seasons. I showed up.

But voting only matters when there’s something meaningful to decide.

If there isn’t — if the ballot doesn’t offer a real choice, if there’s no competitive race that affects my district — is showing up a civic virtue or just muscle memory?

I don’t know.

Part of me thinks I’ll cave. Some acquaintance will pop up on the ballot, and I’ll think, well, I should support them. Or I’ll tell myself that consistent participation matters, even when the choices are thin.

But part of me is tired of the performative mailers. The glossy cardstock promises. The environmental waste. The constant nudges from campaigns that already know exactly how I’ve voted for four decades.

Maybe for one cycle, I let them wonder.

Maybe I’ll retire my Double-D status.

After 42 straight years, I’ve probably earned a sabbatical.

I know this is a bit of catastrophizing, but for the first time in my life I’m really feeling my age. Fifty-nine. I’m sure my body complained when I was younger too, but I wasn’t aware of it in the same way. Back then I bounced back from injuries. A small cut healed in a day. I got out of bed and walked down stairs without a second thought.

Now? Not so much.

Everything hurts.

Some of this, I know, is temporary. I’ve had a cold for the last week. Nothing dramatic, but enough to knock me down. I took two days off work. I sat around. I didn’t exercise. And as always, not moving made everything worse. Weak, stiff, sluggish. The good news is I know how this part goes: next week I ease back into exercising, slowly rebuild, and claw my way back to baseline. It sucks, but it is what it is.

The broken arm is also mending. I’m just about a month out now. I still feel it, and I’m not eager to put weight on it, but I should be back in the pool next week just to keep the range of motion. That helps… except it also means that even though I feel weak, I can’t really do much strength training yet. So I wait. Another two or three weeks, then I start building strength again. Again, not permanent. Just annoying.

Then there are my wrists. Both of them. They’ve hurt like hell for a month. Some of it is clearly overuse — too many pull sets with paddles — but they don’t seem to be getting any better. It probably doesn’t help that I keep learning drums, playing bass, and generally refusing to ice anything or take NSAIDs like a responsible adult.

My knees have hurt for years. That’s not new. I walk down stairs one step at a time now — both feet on each step — which is a sentence I never imagined typing. The back of my right knee has been tinging for a while, and now the front of it has started popping. Because of course it has.

And to top it all off, I wake up in the morning and can’t fully straighten my arms.

That one is new.

It goes away after twenty minutes or so, but still. What the hell is that?

As if my body decided to pile on, my senses have joined the rebellion.

My hearing is going. I can’t really hear my wife unless she’s in the room and looking at me when she talks. If she says something from another room, it might as well be a different language. Half the time I respond based on context clues and hope for the best. This has not always gone well.

My eyes aren’t much better. I’ve had one cataract removed. That eye is still wonky, and the other one has a small cataract of its own, plus generally poor vision for good measure. My glasses help, of course, but most of the time I just wear cheaters — even when I’m not reading — so both eyes are equally fuzzy. I can’t see especially well, but it’s easier on my eyes. Low expectations, evenly distributed.

I know — none of this is catastrophic. I know a lot of it will pass. I know I’m still running, biking, swimming, working, living my life. This isn’t despair. It’s just… awareness. The slow, creeping realization that my body no longer quietly resets overnight. It negotiates. It complains. It needs warm-ups. And apparently, it now has opinions about sound and light.

Anyway. Pity party for one. No gifts, no RSVPs required. I’ll shut it down shortly and get back to doing what I always do: moving forward carefully, grumbling a bit, and pretending I’m still indestructible — just with more stretching, louder voices, and bigger fonts.

As I get older, I’ve adopted less is more as a mantra. It applies to most things, especially where I see dysfunction.

I know I said I wouldn’t talk politics, so this may be a slight violation, but if the U.S. government spent less money, we’d get better service. More money means more agencies and less oversight. You simply can’t follow all that money, and billions get stolen or wasted.

And it’s not that people along the chain don’t care—it’s that they like it this way. They are stealing or wasting the money. They’re getting money, votes, power, or influence, and the system protects them. The people at the bottom of the line don’t have the political acumen or leverage to complain, and even if they did, the answer would be to spend more money to fix the problem.

Spend a heck of a lot less. Make states pick up anything beyond the bare minimum, and I’ll bet a ton of that fraud disappears. This isn’t new. Twenty years ago I represented clients who ripped off Medicaid. Same behavior, different scale.

The same principle applies to schools.

Trying to push through the curriculum and doing more work doesn’t improve learning. It kills student motivation and achievement. I hear so many colleagues talk about being “behind” in the curriculum. Behind what, exactly? According to whose calendar?

I’ll work on a topic until students actually master it, then move on. Less coverage is more learning. Learning is a lifetime thing.  There’s plenty of time to “get through the curriculum,” and getting through it is far less important than students learning the underlying skills—how to read carefully, think clearly, ask good questions, and figure things out on their own. If they leave knowing how to learn, they’ll keep learning long after they’ve forgotten whatever unit we rushed through in March.

Political anxiety is another version of the same problem.

I wish there were a social movement to boycott social media, blogs, and 24/7 news. So much of it is click- and rage-bait. The authors don’t care. They want eyeballs, which lead to ad sales. Same with nonstop news channels. They have to fill the time even when there isn’t any news, and outrage keeps people watching. They’re selling soap.

If people stopped engaging—Twitter, BlueSky, Reddit, blogs—we’d deny them the eyeballs. Go outside. Get sun. Exercise. Play music. Make art. Read. Volunteer. There are endless things to do that don’t involve ramping yourself up over the outrage of the moment.

I’d make a horrible therapist. A friend mentioned how many clients she sees who are deeply anxious and depressed about the U.S. Really—Trump. (I live in a very liberal town.) If I were the therapist, I’d say: turn off the TV, delete the social media apps, and find one volunteer commitment a week. Tutor kids. Work at a soup kitchen. Whatever. Done.

I keep a daily habit tracker specifically to avoid doomscrolling: read for 30 minutes, play an instrument for 30 minutes, practice ASL. I’d tell them to do the same. Make brownies for a neighbor while listening to music instead of the news. Anything but feeding the beast.

Life isn’t that bad. The standard of living in the U.S. is fantastic. Access to medical care, technology, information—it’s not perfect and never will be, but too many people have a financial or political interest in keeping people outraged.

Honestly, when a friend shows full-blown Trump Derangement Syndrome—or the right-wing version—I tend to think they’re being used and don’t realize it. Especially since most of them are educated, upper-middle-class, employed white people who aren’t personally suffering any of it.  That doesn’t mean they can’t work for change, but the mental melt-downs seem both excessive, performative, and attention-seeking.

Less really is more.

Some of my pet peeves involve props in movies and TV shows. We all know about the leafy greens and the baguette that have to be sticking out of every paper grocery bag in every TV show/Movie. I think we all know how horribly inaccurate coffee cups are. Everyone is swinging the cup around like… gee, like it’s empty and not filled with hot liquid. No weight to it. No worry about spilling. I also can’t stand the partner always bringing coffee. A cop approaches a fellow cop already at the scene. “Here, I brought you a coffee.”  They’re constantly stopping to get coffee for themselves and another for their partner.

Another one I hate is the beer. Every time anyone comes to someone’s house in a show (mostly sitcoms), they get offered a beer. I don’t think I’ve ever offered a beer to someone just stopping by. They drink one or two sips and then leave. I tell ya, that’s a good reason NOT to offer my friend a beer. If he’s going to waste it like that, nope, at best I’ll ask if you need some water.

The latest one to annoy me occurred on the season two premiere of The Pitt, but it’s another long-standing peeve. Dr. Langdon was sitting in the waiting room, wearing a brand-new Penguins hat. Every time a show wants to show where it is or the die-hard city the character is in, they wear some sports team swag, but it’s always brand-new. Posers. How hard is it when you know the show is set in Pittsburgh to rough up the hat or sweatshirt a bit? Get some sun on it, stains, whatever. Nothing screams more that this character IS NOT an actual resident or fan of the city’s teams than a brand-new hat.  “Oh, man, I’m a lifelong Red Sox fan since I grew up in Southie,” yet they have a brand spanking new hat.  Uh, no.  Every die-hard’s hat is well-loved and well-worn.

Got any others?

I started replying to a friend about sneaking peeks at Playboy magazines in the recycling container behind the train station. You know, like a normal childhood memory. Somehow that turned into… this.

Because here’s the thing: life was better when you had to work for your smut.

Dad’s hidden stash.
The barber shop coffee table.
A suspiciously wrinkled centerfold found in a recycling trailer like it was contraband from a Cold War spy drop.

That was it. That was the internet.

Now? Kids can see everything. Instantly. In 4K. With algorithms. There’s no mystery, no effort, no story to tell later. Just, “Yeah, I saw that. And that. And that too.” Tragic.

Which brings me to my full transformation into Grumpy Old Man Who Needs to Sit Down.

Yo, Gen Z and Millennials: Shut Up for a Second

I say this with love. Sort of.

Less is more.
Slow down.
Stop declaring that everything sucks.

It doesn’t. It really, really doesn’t.

You are living with a higher standard of living than any generation before you, and it’s not even close.

You have phones with more computing power than the Apollo rockets that put humans on the moon. Meanwhile, I had the World Book Encyclopedia, 1977 edition, and if the volume you needed was missing, congratulations—you’re bullshitting that essay.

We had:

• Three TV networks (and I’m so old I still don’t count Fox)
• Shows that ended when the station literally went off the air at midnight
• Black-and-white TVs
• No computers
• No spellcheck
• No autocomplete
• No grammar checker
• Definitely no AI

If a paper had to be typed, it meant a typewriter. No backspace. No undo. One typo meant either Wite-Out or starting the entire thing over. Took hours. Character building hours.

Food, Travel, and the Audacity

I ate at McDonald’s maybe twice a year. That was a big deal.
Now people DoorDash daily and then complain about it.

My birthday dinner—if I got to choose—was pizza. Except I usually didn’t, because I shared a birthday with my grandmother and my dad decided she wouldn’t want pizza. To this day, we call this experience “getting Timber’d,” named after the restaurant I was forced to attend annually.

I didn’t leave the country on my own until my honeymoon.
Meanwhile, I’m watching people complain about student loans from a hike in Machu Picchu.

Make it make sense.

Also: Progress. Massive, Obvious Progress.

Let’s talk about the stuff that actually matters.

• People don’t drop dead from heart attacks at 55 like they used to
• AIDS is no longer a death sentence
• Early detection for cancer saves lives daily
• Mental health is talked about openly
• Gay rights and civil rights have advanced enormously
• There has literally never been a better time in U.S. history to be a minority (yes, still work to do—but perspective matters)

Medicine alone is a miracle compared to 30–40 years ago.  (yes, I know medical costs are up, but thanks to Medicare/Medicaid/Obamacare there are options)

But sure, tell me again how everything is terrible.

Starting Out Is Supposed to Suck

Yes, houses cost more.
Yes, student loans are brutal.

But those are choices, and choices used to come with consequences. Back in my day, that was kind of the deal.

I lived in a tiny apartment next to the L. No AC. Windows open.
It shook every 15 minutes like Elwood’s apartment in The Blues Brothers.

I didn’t complain.
I loved it.
It was independence. It was mine.  We didn’t bitch about “adulting” like it was a bad thing.  We WANTED to act like adults (paying bills and all)

Now people act like it’s an injustice that they aren’t Vice Presidents on Day One making six figures and doing meaningful work immediately.

You have to do grunt work.
You have to be bad at things.
You have to struggle a little.

Those are necessary conditions for achieving anything.

And Here’s the Irony (I Know)

I fully realize I’m complaining about people complaining.
I see the paradox. I accept it.

But I genuinely think we’d all be better off if we:

• Counted the wins
• Recognized how far we’ve come
• Practiced a little gratitude
• Understood that struggle ≠ oppression

Life doesn’t suck.
In fact, it’s pretty damn good.

Now excuse me while I go turn off a light someone left on and mutter about kids these days.