Coffee with Aaron
☕️ A dose of life shared by yours truly, Aaron Aiken. As if we are sitting down and having a coffee together. Written and shared with the hope that something from my life may offer assistance in yours.

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bad day

Yesterday I started writing the would-be-nice-if-I-do-it-weekly blog post over at Back of the Napkin, my work/handcrafts/back of the napkin focused blog. In doing so I stumbled upon/remembered the website I put together back in 2020 for the woodworking I was doing at the time. Coming across this site again, with all of the various rabbit holes, was bitter-sweet. I've been poking around since remembering it, watching some of the videos (like this one), and overall feeling quite shitty while doing so. Bitter in that I remember very strongly that time of life. It was 2020, everything was locked down, it...
October 13th, 2024

nostalgic for the office

Part of my day-to-day is continuing to do some I.T. Consulting. I resigned last October so that I could focus on my leather business but have stayed on for a few hours each week to assist with routine type tasks. Part of what I do is handle the shipments to our remote new-hires. This involves going into the office, working with the workstation team to make sure we are shipping what the hiring manager requested, test a few things on the laptop to make sure it will work upon arrival, then ultimately take everything from there to FedEx to get...
September 24th, 2024

splinched

Haven’t felt like this in a while. And a bit of an apology in advance as this is more of a sad how-I’m-feeling-in-the-moment post, more negative in nature, and so too was part of the previous post. I don’t want you to think I’m constantly negative, I’m not. But writing is my reaction to some of the sad things, either that or pouring a drink at 3pm which I’d prefer to avoid doing. And so I’m going to make coffee instead and write about this stuff.  We’ve been divorced now for nearly 2 years. Separated for a year before that....
July 22nd, 2024

peace and quiet

Regarding the no-stress mindset that I've successfully maintained now for the past few weeks...I don't know, but man it is wonderful.   I just don't care.   That's an incomplete thought.   Of course I care about my family, friends, and so on. I care about relationships. I don't care about anything else. I don't care what strangers think or say or do (politicians being a part of this category, celebrities, the Internet, etc). I care about doing my best work and I do my best work every day, it is a part of my process and a part of...
July 11th, 2024

interactions

I need to write about my move from the apartment and into my townhouse. I’ll do that soon, I hope. That part of my life, the time that I just concluded back in May, feels like a lifetime ago already. I am so comfortable in my new home that it is hard for me to remember what it was like in the apartment. I’ll get to all of that later. I walked into the lake house weighed down with bags. Nice bags, bags that I make. Everyone ooo’d and ahh’d about my tan. “You must be traveling, you look so...
July 7th, 2024

today is my last day living and working where I have lived and worked for the past three years

I’m eager to put my apartment behind me, eager to move into a space where I will be more comfortable, as I have mentioned plenty of times recently, but I also want to be careful that I don’t look back at this time as all negative. It became a prison, but that’s not how it started. It started as an empty box. It started with my marriage being in limbo. When I moved here I was moving out of my parent’s house for the second time. The first time was when I was 21, just a few weeks before getting...
May 16th, 2024

a place for everything

I’m on the home stretch of moving out of the apartment. And I realize I have probably been writing about it too much lately. It has become a self-made prison and I am beyond excited to escape.  Prior to living here I took several things for granted: • A place for everything, and everything in its place (i.e. closets). • When opening one’s front door one sees the sky. • The option to open windows on opposite sides of a house in order to freshen the air with a cross-breeze. • Nature. • Walls and doors. Just to name a...
May 15th, 2024

Taking things apart

I never use glue when making something. Especially in my woodworking projects, and most of the time in my leather projects. I always have the future in mind: what if this bag comes back for repair? What if I need to disassemble this, move it, and put it back together again? Glue makes things mostly permanent and a pain to pull apart, if possible at all. A lot of the furniture I’ve gathered over the past three years of this late-stage bachelor life I’m living is from IKEA. I knew this apartment was not a forever place, just like I...
May 14th, 2024

Raining Dumpsters

There are two things I did not consider back in May of 2021 when I toured the apartment building I’ve lived in for the past 3 years, two things that I should have thought through a bit when I looked out of the windows of the apartment I would call “blank” for the next three years (instead of “home sweet home” I’ve always said “blank sweet blank” since this place was never intended to be a home). First, it is directly across the street from the loading dock of a very busy hospital. At this loading dock is a big...
May 13th, 2024

Been a while: some catching up on life, The Strathmere, and so on

Good evening...pour a glass or make some tea, or have some coffee while we catch up.  LifeI haven’t journaled in a while. I haven’t published here in a while. I haven’t had a minute to breathe in a while. I haven’t had a moment to stop and think...for a while. I think for a week or two it, life, has been absolute chaos. I’m outside of my normal routines (except for the morning walk and coffee) and am simply in survival mode. Make sure I do what needs to be done, show up where I need to show up, a...
May 13th, 2024

I’m not sure what to write - this is so personal

I’m with my family. My parents and my brother with his family. Mozzie is with me. We are currently in Strathmere, New Jersey. The beach house we are staying in is a connection through a connection through a connection. A weekend gift to my parents from the owners. This is my first time traveling since 2021. It is good to put Harrisburg behind me for a couple of days, Mozzie and I will be here all day tomorrow, returning late Sunday night. Something I am struggling with in my head at the moment is, well, I don’t really know what....
April 27th, 2024

popcorn

Driving home tonight I was hit with the desire for popcorn, and so I made some. Watching, actually _watching_, The Newsroom. Some quick thoughts: • I mentioned yesterday, last night, that I like self-imposed deadlines (in the context of the duffle bag I am hoping to create this week). Something else I like to do is minimize the number of materials I can use, especially when it comes to hardware and especially when it comes to zippers. I've never liked them, and so just about all of my leather designs design them out of the picture and not into it....
April 23rd, 2024

I’m looking forward to empty space

Another one of those nights where I’m tired but not tired enough to go to sleep. Well, that’s probably not true. I could absolutely go to sleep but I don’t want to. I have felt very frazzled, scattered, and overwhelmed all day and I think that writing about whatever comes out through my finger tips may help sleep to be more restful than if I were to keep things bottled up. And so here we are, an evening chat.I haven’t made much progress on my new workbench, certainly not enough progress to even begin to imagine making my first piece...
April 22nd, 2024

sunday list

Sunday napsThe past few Sunday’s I have had to take a nap just to push through the rest of the day. Usually around 2 or 3 in the afternoon and just for 30 minutes. I fall into a deep sleep, dreams and all, then wake up ready to go. Usually followed by a cup of coffee. making a list during churchSitting in a church service is one of the only times during the week when I am “forced” to sit and stay in once place. As such, my brain as time to wander to places it usually does not have...
April 21st, 2024

Playing checkers

Tuesday night we all went out for dinner to Cracker Barrel. Mozzie was in the mood for their pancakes, and Lindsay and I can always go for something there, so Cracker Barrel it was. After dinner Mozzie and I went outside on the porch where it was still relatively warm. We sat in their rocking chairs and played a game of checkers on the set they always have available for use. I think this may have been is first time playing it, which is terrible but true. Everything for his generation is screen-based and mostly single player only (multiplayer seems...
April 18th, 2024
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