Author: zachdotnet

If–

If– – Rudyard Kipling (1910

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Reading List

Currently Reading

Read

  • I Who Have Never Known Men – Jacqueline Harpman (finished Nov 2025)
    • This surprised me. I may do up a separate post on this one because I’m still thinking about it. Short read and kept me engaged (finished it in an afternoon)
  • That’s A Great Question, I’d Love to Tell You – Elyse Myers (finished Nov 2025)
    • Saw this at the library while dropping the kiddo off and picked it up on a whim – pretty fun read
  • You and Me – Scott Godwin (finished Oct 2025)
    • This really surprised me – local author. Definitely outside my usual comfort zone (character heavy retrospective?) but I was blown away. I was engaged. I laughed. I cried. It left me appreciating what I have. A solid punch in the emotional centers was the perfect accompaniment to the gloomy fall I read it during.

Abandoned

Sometimes I try books, but just can’t get into them or finish them. I’ve learned to accept that sometimes life throws wrenches in the way of my reading or that not every book is for me. Those go here.

  • The Silmarillion- J.R.R. Tolkien
    • As a big Tolkien fan, this one hurt to not be able to finish. I may revisit it in a bit and try to skip the first couple chapters – I struggle with things that aren’t plot heavy so I had a hard time waiting for this one to “get going.”

Test Post, Please Ignore

Here is my content.

I set out quickly slapping together an old, simple theme on a website I already had with big intentions of writing, blogging and sharing, but now that I’m here, I’ve forgotten all the ideas I had.

I’ve become disenfranchised with social media. I find it no longer makes me feel connected, and it’s not a place I feel confident that what I share will be seen by any audience. Instagram Stories were the closest I got recently to actually feeling engaged with the internet, but the disposability of them made it fleeting and impermanent. While that seemed nice at first, it offered no real reflection. And of course, I started chasing views.

I’ve heard the term “digital garden” tossed around a few times in the last few weeks. There’s a few interpretations I’ve seen, my least favourite being a “personal knowledge base.” I’m viewing it as a throwback to the internet of my youth – Piczo and Geocities – a space for me to keep, tend and maintain. To sow new seeds, prune and train growth and uproot that which no longer serves a purpose.

As a kid, that meant changing my “top 5 friends” list as the days changed or pseudo-intellectual ramblings on LiveJournal. I feel like I’ve grown a bit (tbd) and I won’t be posting about my “top 5 friends” but I think the ideas stand. Lists and ideas and memories for me to reflect on and evolve over time. I can’t promise that there won’t be pseudo-intellectual ramblings though, I mean, look at this post.

I’m currently working on grabbing and posting stuff that’s important to me out of various private tools I’ve used in the past for this sort of thing.

I don’t know where this will take me, but I’m excited to try.