Doing Things for You

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April 18, 2026

Last month, I was speaking with a dear friend and mentor. He let me know he embarked on a PhD program. Now, this person is one to often post news and important happenings on LinkedIn, but this PhD program had nothing to do with his profession; it was not for career progression, rather personal enrichment.

This led us to a conversation about the importance of doing things just for you.

The past couple of months, I have joined and become involved in a community organization. It has nothing to do with my career; it is something I do for me as an extracurricular with only my immediate family and a few close friends in the know. It takes up an amount of time I would normally set aside for writing, hence the lack of blog posts since the new year, but I love that I have something just for me.

I have still been able to do things for my career I share publicly. I was a panelist on a kids data visualization webinar, and will also serve as a jury member for a kids data visualization competition. I was a guest on the VoxPopcast podcast, where I spoke about my Tommy Westphall Universe project while also discussing fictional shared universes. I will also be a commencement speaker at my alma mater, Northampton Community College, where I also currently teach as an adjunct.

Doing things just for ourselves is good, it reminds us not every activity or outing must be documented online or used as social or professional currency. It allows us to exist in the moment more, without thinking about how we want to share this with everyone we know; it makes it all more meaningful.