Six Months

My son turns six months old today, his half-birthday. How has it already been this long? Where has the time gone? When people told me it would go by too quickly, I knew it was true. I just couldn’t imagine how true it would be.

Seeing Noah grow, change, and learn these past six months has been the greatest pleasure. Nothing brings me more joy than knowing that he’s happy and thriving. He is such a blessing to me and to everyone he meets.

These first six months with my son have been the best of my life. Here’s to many more.

Ebbs and Flows

I’ll be honest: I’m still not over our announcement a couple of weeks ago that Magic Rays of Light has joined MacStories. It’s so exciting and a huge honor to be part of such a great team. I’ve had to pinch myself a few times just to make sure that it’s real.

The announcement came alongside a stream of creative output on my part. I published my first articles for MacStories and MacStories Weekly. We shared a huge episode of the podcast to coincide with the announcement. And I got to share a shortcut I’ve been working on for a while that I’m really happy with. It was a productive week—in the literal sense that I produced a lot of stuff I’m proud of—and it was awesome.

Since then, things have been quieter. I’ve gone a couple of weeks without posting here, which is longer than normal. I honestly haven’t written much of anything, aside from show notes and my daily journaling. It’s like that part of my brain took a break and my usual, “I have to blog about this!” impulses haven’t been as strong.

To be fair, I have been focused on making the podcast and adjusting to new ways of doing things on the backend. And work responsibilities have taken up a good deal of my time and energy, not to mention being present with my family. It’s not like I haven’t been doing anything. I just haven’t been writing, and that’s been bugging me.

But should it? Creative energy ebbs and flows, and it shifts to different focuses at different times. Other things have to take priority due to external commitments and, you know, needing to work so I can pay my bills.

I’ve done my best to remove any and all “should”s from this place and just let it be whatever I want it to be. No pressure, just something to enjoy, share, and hope that others enjoy as well. That’s what a personal blog is for.

So I guess I’m writing all of this (1) to explain why things have been quiet here for a bit and (2) to convince myself that that’s okay. It’s alright to take some time off, purposefully or otherwise. So long as I keep to the commitments I’ve made, I can go with the flow on the rest.

I get the feeling that the flow is pushing me back in this direction and that I’ll have more to share here soon. (Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve been tinkering with another shortcut.) Either way, I’m happy to be along for the ride, and I hope that you are, too.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to reach out anytime or say hi on social media. I’m usually around, even if I’m quiet, and I’d love to hear from you.

Watch History Journal

Alongside this week’s Magic Rays of Light—our first as part of MacStories—we debuted Watch History Journal, a shortcut I made for logging what you watch in your favorite journal app.

From my writeup in the latest edition of MacStories Weekly:

Watch History Journal uses your Trakt profile to generate images of titles you’ve watched on a given day and share them to your journaling app of choice. Run it once a day when you’re finished watching (or set it up as a personal automation that runs in the background before bed), and it will create a journal entry that includes everything you’ve watched. It integrates with Day One, Everlog, and the Journal app…

This shortcut rounds out Apple’s journaling suggestions system for me and turns my journal into a true one-stop shop for what I’m doing, experiencing, thinking, and making. I love journaling in this way.

If you’d like to try Watch History Journal for yourself, you can download it here. And for more details about how it works and how it was made, check out MacStories Weekly: Issue 401 featuring my article along with a lot of great writing from my new colleagues.

Thank you for following along with what has been just an incredible week. I’m so grateful to be where I am, and the best part is that this is only the beginning.

MacStories

Yours truly, writing at MacStories:

Today is an exciting day for Magic Rays of Light. We couldn’t be happier that our show is joining the MacStories family of podcasts. Before the first episode of this new era releases on Wednesday, we thought we’d take a moment to introduce ourselves and the show to you.

I am thrilled to be joining the MacStories team! It’s a site and a team that I’ve revered for years, so it’s an honor to come aboard. Sigmund and I will continue producing the podcast we love to make, now under the MacStories banner.

There are a lot more details up on MacStories now, including our new release schedule and the announcement that Federico and John are making a guest appearance on the show this week. We got to join in on the latest episode of AppStories as well, which still feels unreal.

It’s a great day and the start of an exciting new phase for Magic Rays of Light. My sincere thanks to everyone who’s supported the show thus far by listening, sharing, and offering feedback. It means the world. I’m so grateful for our wonderful listeners, and I’m hoping I’ll get to meet some newcomers to the show this week.

Our next episode comes out this Wednesday, and there’s plenty more to come after that, so stay tuned! This is going to be fun.

Streamlining Workouts with Apple Fitness+ Plans and Stacks

Apple Fitness+ is one of my favorite services the company offers. The classes are top-notch, the trainers are some of the most likable people you’ll ever meet, and most importantly, it actually motivates me to stick to a workout routine.

The service is also constantly improving. Not only are there new classes each week, but new features get added all the time. I’m honestly surprised how much Apple have invested in Fitness+ from a technological perspective over the three years it’s been around.

Two major additions that came last year were custom plans and stacks, two of my longstanding wishes for the service and features that make my experience with it better every day.

Custom plans take the work out of choosing workouts. Instead of picking individual classes, you set a schedule of how long you want to work out and on which days of the week. Then you pick what types of workouts you want to do, and the app does the rest for you. Each day you’re scheduled to work out, Fitness+ will present you with a series of classes custom-built to fit what you want to do.

You can customize your plan further by choosing which equipment you want to use, trainers you prefer to work with, and types of music you’d like to work out to. There’s so much variety on the service that you can knock out a lot of classes without hitting repeats. And the best part is that you don’t have to scroll through a long list to find what you want; the app does it for you!

I’ve been using a custom plan to do a combination of core, yoga, and meditation daily for the past couple of months, and it’s been so helpful. The plan removes that initial step of picking a workout so I can focus on what really matters: getting my body moving. With that mental hurdle out of the way, I find it much easier to get started.

Meanwhile, stacks allow you to do several workouts back-to-back by, well, stacking them on top of each other. To start a stack, you simply long-press on a workout and choose Add to Stack. Once all your workouts are added, you can press the stack button in the top right corner and get going.

When I’m doing multiple workouts in a row, it can be distracting to have to stop, choose the next workout, and then start again. With stacks, I can easily flow from one workout to the next without interruption. I don’t even have to touch my TV remote or iPad screen. The button to start the next workout shows up on my Apple Watch, so I can move on with a quick press of the wrist.

Both of these features are great additions to the service, and I’ve been using them for a while. But it was only recently that I had the idea of combining them. I opened my workout plan for the day, and instead of tapping the Let’s Go button, I long-pressed on each workout and added it to a stack. When I finished the stack of workouts, I returned to my plan to see that each one had been marked as complete. Perfect!

Now I have the convenience of not having to choose my workout classes or manually switch between them. I can run through my entire exercise routine for the day in one go. And when I’m done, I have the satisfaction of knowing I did something good for myself that day.

For me, it’s not about closing my rings or hitting a certain spot on the burn bar. It’s just about making a positive choice and getting my body moving. That’s enough, and that’s the satisfaction Apple Fitness+ brings to me day in and day out.

If you’re a Fitness+ user, I highly recommend trying out custom plans and stacks, especially in combination with one another. They’re really great enhancements to an already top-tier service.

And if you haven’t given Fitness+ a try, maybe now could be time. Apple offer a one-month free trial, and the service is approachable in a way I’ve never experienced with anything in the fitness world before. It truly does have something to offer for everyone.

Thanks for reading, friends, and remember: Stay active, close your rings (if that’s helpful for you), see you next time!