Magnolia Park, Olive Ave., Burbank and SB79

After years of everyone saying "something must be done somewhere else" SB79 was just signed into law, taking zoning control out of the hands of local cities. 

Magnolia Park and the Studio District along Olive Avenue south of the 5 freeway and north of the 134 freeway would be served by four tier 2 transit stops. (There would be one additional stop near Warner Bros. below the 134 and one additional stop near downtown Burbank above the 5.)

The tier 2 designation comes from the type of transit (bus rapid transit or quality of rail service) and the number of stops per day. Clustering is considered, so while the two train stations at the Hollywood Burbank airport don't qualify individually, they qualify together as tier 2. If HSR ever gets built, the airport would become tier 1. Of course, it's problematic building around the airport for noise and heigh restrictions, though we're seeing places like the former Frys property give it a go.

Tier 2 allows for housing of up to 65 feet (5-6 stories) within 1/2 mile of stations and up to 55 feet (about 4-5 stories) in the next quarter mile. 

Four story example (Ventura)

Six story example (San Pedro)

Of course, this doesn't mean there's automatically going to be a massive build-out to the fully allowed, but it could also mean more ADUs and more secret four-plexes. (If you walk along Keystone south of the high school and look carefully, a number of the houses have fourplexes hidden behind them. You won't see them from the street, but they help add places to live. And more places to live means lower housing costs. 

And considering Burbank has a night-time population of 100k and a daytime population of over 200k, more people living here and working here would mean less traffic. Of course, the idea is more housing near these mass transit also implies people might live here and work elsewhere. 

We've also heard the Burbank School District lament a lack of students (due to Burbank's high housing costs) and lack of funding (due to prop 13 discouraging downsizing and discouraging selling). New zoning and new housing might have a positive impact on that.

As a Magnolia Park Burbank homeowner, obviously I wanted to know if my neighbors to either side are going to sell to developers. Glendale has done this poorly in the past, you'll find neighborhoods with apartments intermixed with houses in such a way that the remaining houses will never sell for much (too small to build an apartment, trapped forever between apartments).  I hope Burbank does better. It does end up looking like my house is "safe" from upzoning, but if the new apartments are cool and maybe have retail or studio-support ground floor uses, we could see more businesses, more jobs and maybe more things open past 9-stinking-30 at night. Of course, I'd also like to see Magnolia upzoned. If they allowed for 2-3 story buildings with apartments above retail, it would be much more lively and more reason for businesses to be open longer and the existing 3-story buildings on Magnolia prove it doesn't hurt the surrounding neighborhoods.  

Anyhow, here's my map of the impacts to Magnolia park of SB79. I used the L.A. City map because they had all the circles already which was helpful and the Metro video for the station locations.

unclutter (the pocket computer)

 

This is what I see now when I pull my phone out of my pocket. I recently came across one of those "apps that will change your life" posts. I always find those interesting, and Google knows this because it's always serving them up in my endless scroll of articles that was previously just a swipe away.

But it told me about a few apps I already had, plus a new launcher and a new background maker and I decided to give them a try as they sounded like they might be useful in my pursuit to simplify.

tapet is a series of "concepts" (for lack of a better word) - like "bricks" or "swirls" or, as I have currently, "hexagons". It creates a unique design based on that concept. Separately it colorizes the image. If you like the design, you can swipe in one direction to try different colors, swipe in another to change designs while keeping the color pattern, or swipe in another direction to call up a new design and a new color scheme. It makes it very easy to pick a new design each day just for a little bit of simple variety.

niagara is an android launcher that is really focused on simplicity. Apps are arranged in a line and they recommend around 8 max. When I connect my Bluetooth headphones, Audible and Pandora automatically appear at the top of the list. When I tap on the right side of the screen with my thumb, a list of letters and your full list of apps appear. As you wipe your thumb over the letters, it moves up and down in your list of apps. You can hide apps and rename apps. You can also place apps in folders on your desktop or in the apps list. You put widgets inside your folders. So I have a Fitness folder with a bunch of apps and when I open it, I see my step counter. When I open my Work folder, I see the my time tracker widget.

When a visible app (or an app in a folder on the desktop) has a new notification, it appears on the screen. For instance, when my our Roomba finishes its morning run, under "Home" a second line appears that says "iRobot - successfully completed...." and I can tap to see the notification or swipe to dismiss. 

All of your long-press options are also available with a swipe, so if I swipe Lose-It, all the logging optiosn appear before the app even opens. 

There's a lot of customization to the launcher and they also make it really easy to switch back to the normal launcher when needed. I found myself doing that some the first few days, but now I'm just really appreciating the simplicity and will probably pay the $14/year for the pro version.

task frustration

task frustration continues to be the enemy of simplify. I boil down to what I think if a manageable list of things to do and then when I go to do them, there's something in my way.

I go down my list - nope, nope, nope, nope, can't do - usually blocked by someone in the way or someone in the space I need. Eventually I get to a point where I'm like like "f it" and then I do nothing. 

It doesn't feel great. I don't have a solution for it. Any high I had hoped to get from being able to cross stuff off is gone and instead I just wander around aimless waiting for bed. Or death. 

Well, waiting for everyone else to go to bed. Then I can leave the house and go on a long walk and listen to my audiobook or music and no one bothers me. 

And then I can come home and go to sleep and maybe try again tomorrow. 

But I've got about two hours before that can happen. It would be nice to do something useful and feel productive in the meantime.

unangry

In my last post I talked about what made me unhappy or that "unhappy" felt like a good catch-all for negative feelings.  I tried to look out for them over the next few days and I realized that often the emotion that surfaced was anger. Not like every-except-Hal on Malcolm in the Middle or Paul on Breeders level of anger, but anger none-the-less. I wondered if focusing on what made me unhappy might have the wrong effect as I tried to return to life after vacation.  

The reasons aren't new, they've been explored. Task interruption, task disruption, higher priorities and responsibilities, the times when I'm no longer in control. And that leads to frustration and anger. Or when I'm physically attacked or spit on by my child. Or even frustrations with work which don't exactly manifest as anger most of the time, but definitely frustration, anxiety and worry. 

I thought maybe to watch for the times when I felt unhappy might lead me to be able to start seeing when control is no longer mine, to figure out if there were specific things I needed to handle. (One thing I've learned but not always put into practice is attempting to write while others in the household are still up. This has been a huge source of frustration in the past - I can't always control when I'm inspired to write, but then when I get ripped away while I'm feeling creative or introspective can be so maddening. I'm being dumb trying to write right now, but I want to write. But, I'm at the keyboard fully aware that I could be pulled away at any moment, and I'm prepared for it and know it's a possibility I accepted by trying to write right now. If it happens, I can't get mad about it.)

I also went on vacation facing a perplexing problem. It was recently determined at work that what they need me to do now is not what I was hired to do. Needs have changed. That happens. It's believed that I'm still capable to do what's needed and they've expressed a desire to still work with me, but it's a change. I've been struggling with what that means.  

Thing is, I've been here before. I wasn't able to see it while it was happening before, but now that I've been through this at least once before, I now can recognize what's happening sooner, I can understand why and I can better prepare and examine my options and even more important: realizing that I have options.

In the most immediate terms, it's been things like:

• signing out of the optional messaging system (Slack) and only being available on the official messaging system (Teams)
• focusing only on tickets assigned to me
• not looking at Teams or Outlook outside of work hours
• not trying to think up or propose new projects

I was worried that it was going to feel like I was giving up or not being true to my nature but it has turned out to be quite freeing. And if it turns out I've taken it too far, they'll let me know that they do what more from me and that'll be nice validation to what else I can and have offered beyond. It's not quiet-quitting, it's not slacking-off, it's not doing my work, it's just not trying to lead from beyond my role. It's not fun, but if I'm doing what I've been told is needed, if I've been told I was doing more than they wanted, I guess it's freeing to be expected to do less. That's kind of rare in the workplace, but I still make sure that whatever I do is with excellence, even if it's less that I'd like, if it's what they want, perfect.

But I've also tried to look at home as well. I have a massive to do list which is never-ending. I sat down and looked at all the recurring stuff and where possible, I extended out the length of time between repeats, and I looked at if there was some stuff on my list I was never actually going to ever do and removed it, and in other cases, I realized there was stuff I was mentally carrying that wasn't even on the list, so I threw it onto the list. I also realized there's a lot of time that is truly mine and time I spend on entertainment or fun and that sometimes that's more important than chores, so I tried to start looking at what's really important and what I can reasonably get done in any given day. It's been freeing to preemptively admit there is stuff I won't get to and not even allow it to be on today's (or this weeks - or this month's) list.

And then there's my diet. I didn't follow it while on vacation, but it is absolutely within my control. And I'm making great progress. And it feels good. I did need that push from my wife also restarting her diet, but now we're both making progress and I'm going to crush this. Also a few weeks ago I was out for my nightly walk and came across a home gym someone had left on the curb. I went home, grabbed my furniture dolly, wheeled it home, left it in the front of the driveway for a week and after no one came by and accused me of stealing it, I moved it into the backyard and while I haven't started using it again since coming back from vacation, it's only a matter of time before I pick it up again and move beyond just dropping weight but also adding muscle. 

And sure there's still stuff outside of my control... the weather, rude neighbors, the glacial pace of this attempt at home renovations, the end of our country, bad behavior by my kid, but there's so much that is within my control that a lot of the anger, frustration and anxiety (the "unhappiness") just didn't come back after my vacation. And it's been phenomenal. 

Did I have to stop during this post to go and help a family member with something while I was writing this? Absolutely. Did it cause me negative feelings? Nope. I was prepared for it to happen.

simplify. (again)

 It's the last day of vacation which started the day after a weekend out of town on business. So it's been two weeks since I really spend much time in the chaos that is our life back home. And whenever I get away from it, I long to hold on to what I experienced away. There's a sense of calmness - even with the entire family in tow - we have less stuff, the Airbnb is always cleaner and more streamlined - we have fewer chores and we just run a load of laundry and dishes every night no matter what. And so in the calm morning today I had a chance to do some reflection and realized it was time to restart simplify. This is my regular attempts to make my life simpler. It usually lasts for awhile and then goes by the wayside. 

So, this is just my latest attempt. Let's see how well it lasts this time. I took quite a while trying to figure out the typeface I wanted and then I just started writing down thoughts and it came out pretty quickly. Over time I'll see if what I wrote down makes sense or if it's nonsense. One thing that came really quickly was that I need a way to quickly identify what's wrong when something's wrong. I wondered about some sort of think like they have in airport bathrooms where you press the frowny face or the smiley face to tell if you think the bathroom is clean. (How clean are those little devices?) I didn't have the patience to find an app to do exactly that, but it did help me realize that I needed some method to stop and evaluate when something's going wrong, before I get angry, anxious, depressed or overwhelmed. And this kind of popped into being: 

So... what made me unhappy today?

My computer wouldn't start. We were on vacation, but we had nothing planned, and it was noisy in the house and when I went out on the deck the sound of the waves were interrupted by people doing construction on a nearby house. I was unhappy. But, this was something I could control. I decided to take a drive. I made an appointment at a Genius Bar in the nearest large city and then I drove my Mac over and they fixed it. (Note: If your Mac won't turn on after a software update and you've just recently had the screen replaced, they can probably fix it for free at your nearest Apple Store by doing a "revive" on it. If you have two Macs with modern OS, you can Google the directions and probably do it yourself.)

They fixed my computer. Unhappiness solved.  

What else? I was a little bummed because we haven't done a whole lot this trip - we didn't really have any programmed events, didn't order food from a local restaurant, didn't really do anything. My wife made a trek to a nearly bookstore that was recommended in her author group earlier this week, and yesterday I had ventured out looking for wild zebras and returned home without any success, but otherwise, we'd pretty much just stayed in and enjoyed food and TV and sitting on the patio listening to the waves. 

I headed back after I got my computer fixed and called ahead to see if anyone wanted to go with my out to try to find zebras again. It turned out everyone did. So we all got in the car, headed up the coast, saw zebras, got a few photos and then the walked into a copse of trees and we never saw them again even though we waited a long time. But, I saw them, and I got my photo. That's what I wanted. (Why zebras? They were part of a rich guy zoo. After he died, they closed the zoo and the zebras were released into the wild. His family still owns an insane amount of land in the area and the climate here is suitable for the zebras, so now they just live on the land, as wild as an animal can be when allowed to roam on an 83,000 acre plot of land.)

We talked about getting food from a local restaurant, but we were pretty tired and not very hungry so we got a small treat from a local shop and then went back to our Airbnb to get everything cleaned and packed up for tomorrow's departure. 

Is happiness the right thing to aim for? What about not-depressed? Or content? Or calm? Or enriched? Or not-bored? Or satisfied? It feels like a good shorthand, especially for the reverse "I'm not happy." So it is what it is for now. We'll just see how long this lasts this time.