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Today I read a quote in my PathwayConnect curriculum that really hit me hard.

The Lord knows that you have more to do than you have time for. The real test in this life is what we choose to spend our time on. It’s a question of priorities.

I don’t know that I had ever thought of this life as a test of how we spend our time. Of course everyone knows our time is limited. We all will die. But I think we almost always, for those of us who believe, say that this life is a test of whether we will choose to follow the commandments of God, or choose to make and keep covenants.

And there is nothing wrong with that phrasing.

I just realized that phrasing it differently helps me to think of it differently. When I get home today I will be hot and sweaty from the bike ride home. It is about 4 miles straight uphill. The ride to work is pleasant, the ride home less so.

And that is another thing I spend less time on than I should – physical health. A 4 mile bike ride uphill shouldn’t wipe me out.

But I digress – I will be hot and sweaty and I will walk around for about 20 minutes while my body cools down, then take a shower, and then lay down in my bed. I am scheduled to cook tonight, so I won’t lay down long, but I will lay down, then cook, then eat, then lay down for the rest of the night.

Or at least that would be what I normally do. Tonight I will be productive until I go to sleep.

Because the real test of this life is what we choose to spend our time on.

This weekend I threw away our 2012 iMac. I bought this mac for Märia in 2012 when it was brand new, top of the line. It cost $2,381 including tax. It replaced a 2005 Mac Mini G4. That computer cost less than half what the iMac cost, but only lasted us 7 years. It is really hard for me to throw away computers for some reason. Even now, I am kicking myself for throwing this one away. For a while I put Ubuntu on it and let Finnick use it, but it just wasn’t stable. I don’t know what was up, maybe some bad ram or an SSD that was going out. In any case, it just didn’t work like it should.

We got a solid 13 years of use out of it. That is enough, right? Throwing away things should make me so sad, but it does. Before we moved here in January of 2024 I threw away some other computers. I threw away a 2010 MacBook Air that I bought to take to Afghanistan with me. Pretty sure it cost exactly $1000 plus tax, but I couldn’t find the receipt for that one. It was this tiny little 11″ laptop and I really liked it a lot. I wish someone still made tiny laptops. And tiny phones. I want my gadgets tiny.

When we moved here to Italy Märia and I had this mantra we would say multiple times a day. “I can throw things away.” We threw away so much. I think I threw out 2/3s of my electronics stuff, including my closet rack with switches and routers and servers, minus one server which I migrated everything to and now sits in Jason’s closet. Thank you Jason! I still have boxes of cables and old stuff, and it is overwhelming. What do I throw away? I **know** there is stuff in there I will never use again, but I just can’t make myself throw it away.

Just an example – I have almost all the little mini consoles that were all the rage during Covid. The tiny little NES, SNES, Genesis, Comodore, Atari, and more. They are tiny and cute and totally functional. But I have all those games and thousands more on my Steamdeck and a couple other Retroid and Anbernic handhelds and I hardly play them there. I haven’t hooked up any of my mini consoles in the years that I have lived here, and I don’t know if I ever will. But I can’t let them go. I also have a Dreamcast, Gamecube, Wii, WiiU, and probably some other consoles all shrinkwrapped in boxes that may or may not ever get played again, and I just can’t let them go.

Broken in the head. But hey, I’ve got cool stuff. =)

During Finnick’s well-child checkup we learned he needed surgery. It was a surprise but we had plenty of time to prepare him for it. Finnick had surgery on the 17th of June in Vicenza. It went well and he did a great job! It is never easy to have surgery, but it’s especially difficult when you’re only 7 and only a few of the hospital staff speak your language.

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