Time off August 2025 - Meta Recharge

I’m incredibly fortunate to be able to take 6 weeks off this summer! After 5 years of service at Meta, you get 30 days (about 5 week) off!

It’s a special year since Zach will be going into grade 10, and Amelia into Middle school

To get the most out of my time off, I’m going to follow my best practice of pre-writing what I want to get done, and adjust it as I go. This is a combination of time off, and all the stuff for happiness, which I guess gets tangled up with half of my evergreen notes.

Topic

Tori is organizing again

Tori and I spent a lot of time on our relationship this year, and she’s organized the whole trip! It’s gonna be great having a planner to make sure everything happens.

From 12 months to 6 weeks

Five years ago, I dreamed of taking a year off of work - a gap year if you will. I spent a lot of time thinking through a gap year, and it’s more important then ever now that the kids are running out of time. But that’s a separate blog post

Loading (/gap-year-igor)

The Great Monday Cat Visitation Protocol (Or: How We Became Slaves to Our Feline Overlords)

Here’s our travel hack: the Monday Cat Check-In System™. Instead of pet sitters, we return every Monday to prevent feline coups and unauthorized DoorDash orders.

Perfect timing since we booked Monday improv classes with Matt Smith, who helped establish Seattle’s comedy scene in the ’90s. Our routine: check on judgmental cats (“Oh, you’re back AGAIN?”), then learn to be funny on command.

The cats have caught on, scheduling Sunday night drama for maximum Monday impact. But instead of shoe logistics operations, we’re more likely to find nature’s surprises: a desiccated hummingbird artfully displayed on the welcome mat, or a beheaded rabbit positioned like modern art in the hallway. I’m pretty sure they’re testing our commitment to this arrangement.

But honestly? Weekly guaranteed animal discovery AND comedy training while road-tripping? Pure genius.

By Week

Week Dates Activities Notes
July 28-Aug 3 l1 Decompression week
Aug 4-10 l2 Home activities & adventures
Aug 11-17 l3 Crater Lake trip
Aug 18-24 l4 Long Beach vacation
Aug 25-31 l5 Yellowstone & Grand Teton
Sept 1-7 l6 Back to work/school prep

  • l1
  • Decompression and transition to time off
    • Working Monday/Tuesday to wrap up
    • Social connections and catching up
      • Meet lots of friends
      • Zach + Amelia to lunch together
    • Creative content exploration
      • Found 360 camera
      • Made LOTS of TikToks
      • Experimenting with new video formats
    • Gentle transition from work mode to vacation mode
  • l2
  • Home activities and local adventures
    • Played Frisbee with Amelia
    • Went to Japanese Garden with Amelia
    • Redid stickers on the Tesla
    • FUNNY STORY: 100 point turn to get Tesla in garage to charge, then found out the car doesn’t work since ungrounded plug
    • Did TGU’s outside!
  • l3
  • Crater Lake National Park trip
    • Drive to Crater Lake
    • Day in Ashland (Maybe catch a play)
    • Come back up the coast.
  • l4
  • Long Beach vacation
    • Beach relaxation and activities
    • Coastal hotel or apartment stay
    • Beach walks and ocean time
    • Local dining and exploration
    • Family time by the water
    • Photography and content creation
  • l5
  • Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks
    • Drive to Wyoming/Montana region
    • Yellowstone geysers and hot springs
    • Old Faithful and geyser basins
    • Grand Teton mountain views
    • Wildlife watching (bison, elk, bears)
    • Family hiking and photography
    • Lodge or camping accommodations
  • l6
  • Back to work and school transition
    • Labor Day weekend relaxation
    • Back-to-school preparation for kids
    • Work transition and planning
    • Final documentation of summer memories

Week 3 - Crater Lake

AGENT: Make this image right aligned Map of week 3 trip

  • Highlights:

    • Zach got Covid
    • Amelia got Covid
    • OMG so hot, like 100 degrees!

  • Thorp/Ellensburg/Yakima

    • A pretty cool part of the country
    • We got a 2$ Iced Americano! Wow!
    • They were selling cherries that they were loading into bag right off the back of the cherry truck
    • We took 821 which was cool winding river roads, if it wasn’t 100 degrees, I should have gone rafting.

  • Bend Orgeon

    • Wow, so much beauty
    • Tried to book wizard island book tour, sold out in in like 2 minutes
    • Restarted giving out balloons!!
    • Very Yummy Mexican Food

  • Drive to Crater Lake

    • Wind farms are awesome - so big!

  • Crater Lake

    • Poor Zach was in the back groaning and moaning going through hot flashes and ice chills
    • Amelia and I hiked to the tippy top and saw an amazing view
    • That is a super cool place

  • Grants Pass

    • Beautiful, but I didn’t spend it well. I just spent like 6 hours trying to setup a vibe coding environment.

  • Thor’s Hammer/Cooks Casm

    • Amazing as usual

  • The great alsi hotel - The weirest hotel ever

    • Getting a hotel on the coast is like impossible on a Friday or Saturday
    • But this place was huge, like 200 rooms, and we were the only car there.
    • WHAT:mindblown: This was the old cult suicide hotel
    • And the guy working the desk was like really kind and the only guy there
    • Many mixed reviews on the internet … my favorite is the responses they get from the owner

  • Final Leg home - Tony forgot how to drive

    • Igor had to drive instead.
    • BUT, Igor forgot how to drive!
    • Took the 405 as i5 was closed, but then forgot I need to follow directions and didn’t take 520 exist,
    • Driving is a lost skill for me.
    • But on the bright side, I learned about the service menu, pretty cool to see all the backup systems and monitoring in there.

  • Physical Health

    • Realized I can just carry my heavy club around everywhere.

  • Meetups

Week 4 - Long Beach

  • Meetups
    • Met up with an old work colleague who lives in Edmonds, and since I was there, took a ferry to kingston and back for fun.

Stuff happening

Candidates

My top priorities

I have memories that last a lifetime

  • Photos, documentation
  • Peak End Rule
  • Moments

Back to generating artifacts

  • Bang out some blog posts
  • Write 4 family journal entries (!!)
  • Finish my talk on AI

Health and Habits

  • Diet - I should be pretty close to steady state goal (165 ish). I guess don’t go up more than 5 lbs

    • Go to grocery store and load up on healthy food
    • Bring my travel scale

  • Sleep - Up every day at 5.

    • When drifting cut caffeine
    • Bring earplugs and sleep mask
    • Nap while charging the Tesla

  • Exercise - This will probably be the hardest.

    • When out of town, bring a portable kit
    • Figure out an outdoor setup

Moments

Loading (/moments)

First night:

Things to do:

  • Go to Cranberry museum

Success Stories

Top Learnings

  • I started off with daily walks with folks, and doing stuff with kids. Honestly I didn’t do enough for myself and was getting stir crazy

Relationships

Friends

  • ☑ Walk with Bob

Tori

  • ☑ Private, nothing to say here Tori is amazing, I’m incredibly lucky to have her.

Zach

  • ☑ Super fun getting to do an improv class together.
  • ☐ Take him driving in the tesla
  • ☐ Need to think through tech projects

Amelia

  • ☐ Take her somewhere to go for a bike ride on the car
  • ☐ See if we can co-write a choose your own adventure
  • ☐ Use AI for illustrations
  • ☑ So nice to see her giving away beads.

Identity Health

Magic

  • ☐ Practice Daily
  • ☐ Find a place to work on Tamiriz
  • ☐ Find a place to practice card to ceiling

Biking

  • ☐ Look at bubble bike setup
  • ☐ Figure out if can repair or dump my other ebike.

Bubbles

  • ☐ Figure out a portable setup
  • ☐ Bring one in the tesla

Content Creator

  • ☐ Monetization Post
  • ☑ Post on capital gains and diversification
  • ☐ Build more affirmation videos
    • ☑ First one: Do it anyways
    • ☐ Essentialist - TBD
    • ☐ Class Act - Show photos of stuff I’ve posted, and cool responses with images
    • ☐ Calm like water - Me in half lotus

Tech Guru (X/5)

Enabling Environment

  • Figure out how to use more AI.
  • ☐ Figure out using voice more with super whisper.

AI Coding

  • Got 200$ claude code and using it.

AI Writing/Thinking

  • Blog work flow is different

Tony

  • ☐ Update toni to include memory/todo tracking
  • ☐ Think about what else to do here.

Other AI

  • ☑ Retrained AmmontGPT on GPT-o mini, so far seems worse
  • ☑ Upgraded to newer langchain things (look up model)
  • ☑ Play with AI Coding helpers (aider) - crap!
  • ☐ CUT: Look at more Agent Tools (Crew, and AgentZero)

Video publishing

  • Got an insta360 and have been banging these out.
  • Learned how to do split shot
  • Learned how to do face blur

  • Learned how to do captions

  • So many might need it’s own post.

  • Find all the stuff I’ve posted on LinkedIn

Cognitive Health (X/5)

Blog posts

  • 1 or 2 / week.

Videos

Emotional Health (4/5)

Meditation

  • ☐ Daily meditation!

750 words/Gratefulness

  • ☐ Daily Gratefulness journal/750 words!

Motivation (X/5)

-

Physical Habits (X/5)

Statistics

Weight Start: 180 Weight End: Gym Days: -

Diet

  • Even though I’m on Terzepatide weight has been sneaking up. Need to pay attention, or up dosage.
  • First time bringing terzepatide with me, I have a travel container
  • Bring a cooler
  • I really like cauliflower rice
  • Feel free to skip meals
  • Be happy going to bakery and looking at the tasty things and not eating them.
  • Be happy throwing away junk food - nothing wrong with that.
  • Success Stories:
    • I split some meals with Tori.
    • I got vegetables at the

Sleep

  • It’s been super hot latly, has made it hard
  • Real key here is to get to bed early, and not get stuck on the phone.
  • Bring and use a sleeping mask
  • Sometimes tape my mouth shut.

Exercise

  • GROAN: I just tore open my callous right before. Lets see what i can do.
  • Focus on hip and back mobility
  • Bring 28KG KB in the car, and 20/25 lbs heavy club. Lets see how it goes
  • Working on Pistols and pullups easy at the park.
  • Kettleback rack 1 sided squats feel good, and don’t need to flip into the goblet position
  • Got 5lbs indian clubs - super heavy

Inner Peace (X/5)

General Inner Peace

  • Should be pretty high
  • Need to remember mood is a heuristic, and my subjective well being will be super strong

Work

  • I should be spending 0 time on this
  • Except maybe doing EM training material is a bit like work, but it’s work I enjoy so we don’t count it.

Family

  • Lets focus on compassion and the sublime states
  • I can get angry, but I need to apologize after I’m done.
  • I get really triggered when kids copy parent behvior that I don’t love.

House and goods

  • ☐ Deal with AC recall
  • ☑ Return AC that was supposed to replace the recalled AC but was actually the same recalled model
  • Use CSScanner to scan all my old paper journals and chuck them.
    • ☑ First ones dones
    • ☑ Mr. Plumbbean done
    • Do the rest of my 750 words
    • Do my next journals

Tesla

  • ☐ Solo camp night.
  • ☐ Figure out all the stuff and organize it (See my notes on 8/5)
  • ☐ Figure out bubble machine setup
  • ☐ Try Electrify America
  • ☐ Get Un grounded NC-30 needs to plug into house ground too (so weird)
  • ☑ Figure out sleeping bag setup
  • ☑ Fix chips in Tony’s windshield