July was a super-productive month where the 101 Things in 1001 Days was concerned. Given that the the finish line is in late September of next year, that’s a good thing. This month, I wanted to keep crushing it, so I made it my only focus, without getting stupid about letting other things fall by the wayside. I assembled a list of things that would make sense to nail down, and I got busy. I wasn’t necessarily looking to finish specific tasks, but I wanted to make progress as a whole.
About Those 101 Things
So despite a crazy month (kids going back to school, fall cleaning, and a bunch of other shit) here’s what I completed in August:
27. Develop a set of Gutenberg/Todoist blocks for WordPress. You can see those in the left column of this site, going forward. Gutenberg blocks are a monster pain in the ass to build, but I went ahead and did it anyway. This time around, I used Claude Code to help me vibe code it and I’m very happy with the results.
97. Get a 3D printer up and running. So I bought an Elegoo Saturn 4 Ultra 12K with some money I’d been saving. Getting it calibrated was a little tough — resin printing is not at all like ABS printing, which is my entire experience before this. Had a few squibs, had some headaches, but all in all, it went pretty well. As I write this update, I’m in the middle of printing some of the parts for Eddy’s Halloween costume.
If that were all I’d gotten done in August, I’d be a bit peeved with myself. That said, I made a ton of progress elsewhere. I reached out to a local painter about getting my Surly Steamroller repainted (#18), made plans for riding Ray’s Bike Park in February (#19), made progress with the Scoutreads site (#20), studied for my certification test (#21), worked on danbailey.dev (#23), budgeted for buying the Avengers Tower lego set in September (#30), made huge strides in getting the D&D campaign going (#32), and figured out what I’m going to submit to Lego Ideas (#33).
That wasn’t all. I also made huge strides in Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and that will help get me closer to completing all three games (#37). I figured out what I’m going to do for my next tattoo (#43), and I ordered the new rear sight for the Glock (#99).
So all in all, a pretty goddamned productive month. This is going to go down as my most-productive quarter ever, doing one of these crazy lists. WIN.
Minor/Other Accomplishments
- Got my training locked-down and going again. Living the dream!
- Read a shit-ton of books in August.
- Made some serious progress in Tears of the Kingdom this month. Hoping to wrap it up by mid-September and move on to Zelda: A Link to the Past next.
Reading
Blockers
- Eddy’s BFF was in-town (after moving to Seattle at the beginning of the summer) and stayed with us for a few days. Given the way timing fell together, this resulted in Didi and I having to clean his room, and a big part of that was spending half a day just cleaning up and organizing all his Magic: The Gathering cards.
Lessons Learned
- Just making bite-sized progress has been fucking amazeballs for my motivation. I’ve started chewing on things, even in little chunks every day. Marked progress = happier, more motivated Dan.
- Approaching things like therapy proactively is a massively beneficial habit. I started back at therapy this month, and pre-prepping between sessions has been really good for me.
