AaronRose.blog

  King Cake New Orleans. Café du Monde. Even late at night, it never really sleeps. The air carries sugar, coffee, and the low hum of voices drifting through the open square. The iron tables are cool to the touch, the marble tabletops faintly sticky with powdered sugar from earlier in the evening. Marie LeClare. Twenty-six years old. A happy, vivacious brunette with warm brown eyes. French ancestry on both sides of her family. Her family had been in New Orleans since 1860. Born and bred in New Orleans. This cafe wasn’t a destination for her. It was background. It was home. A software developer by profession. The kind who works late and thinks in systems and patterns. The kind who finds comfort in structure—but who still needs nights like this to feel balanced again. Late-night coffee at Café du Monde. Cash only. She folded a few bills onto the saucer without thinking. The ritual mattered. The continuity mattered. Dark French roast coffee steamed in the white cup, bitter and strong,...

  My Ongoing Experiment With Personal Projects Lately I’ve been noticing something I’m already doing, but not really thinking about. I’ve been running a quiet set of self-experiments around self-leadership — not by declaring goals or optimizing routines, but by paying attention to what actually survives day-to-day life. What keeps going when things are busy. What keeps going when things slow down. What doesn’t require motivation, permission, or coordination. That’s where  personal projects  come in. By personal projects, I mean activities over which I have  complete control . They’re: self-directed fun durable sustainable They work when life is hectic. They still work when life opens up a bit. And the interesting part is this: I already have references for this in my life — I just tend to take them for granted. Sleep, for example. The duration changes, but it doesn’t disappear. Eating. Walking around my living area. Brushing my teeth. Feeding the cats. These aren’t p...

  The Hiding Place “Chaim. Over here.” Rivka took his hand and led him to the wall behind the  bimah , the altar. She stopped, studying the stone as if it were a page she had read before. “It’s somewhere here.” She raised her hands and began to feel along the wall. Slowly. Carefully. The wood was old and uneven. Her fingers moved until they found it—a seam, thin but deliberate. “The light fixture,” she said. “On the right.” She pressed it inward. Just like Papa described. The thick wooden wall responded with a low creak. Then it shifted. A narrow opening appeared—a secret door. Beyond it, old stone steps descended into darkness. “Let’s go.” They stepped through. The door swung shut behind them with a heavy sound that echoed longer than it should have. “Rivka… I’m scared.” She squeezed his hand. “It’s okay, Chaim. I’m right here.” They went down slowly, one step at a time, feeling their way in the dark. Far ahead, a light. “What is this place?” Chaim asked. A narrow stone hallw...

As Simple As Possible...But Not Simpler I read this quote from Pavel Tsatsouline, the famous kettlebell teacher, which he attributes to Einstein: Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. Whether Einstein actually said it that way almost doesn’t matter. The idea itself is everywhere. An old idea. A durable idea. It got me poking at something I keep coming back to in my own work and routines—self-leadership, projects, habits, all of it. Is there a way to make this simpler? Is this already as simple as it can be? Or have I quietly added stuff that doesn’t really need to be here? I’m not talking about dumbing things down. I’m talking about removing the extra knobs and levers that don’t actually move the needle. Because when things start to feel fragile, it’s usually not because they’re too simple. It’s usually because they’ve gotten too clever. Complexity seems attractive at first. It feels sophisticated. It feels like progress. But complexity also opens the door t...

  Find Her "Fraulein Heller is missing." With her brother, Chaim. The SS Kommandant in Prague stood at the tall windows of the former royal palace, now repurposed. Rebranded. An SS headquarters. Behind him, Müller, one of his trusted officers, waited. “Fraulein Heller,” the Kommandant said. A pause. Then, quieter—more dangerous. “Find her.  Jetzt. " Rivka Heller was the key. Or so Berlin believed. The project had stalled. Engineering. Physics. Mathematics. Every available mind in the Reich had tried—and failed. Now it was her turn. She would build the weapon. Or she would be deported to the East. With her brother. The officer cleared his throat. “Her parents?” “Gone,” the Kommandant said. “Three months. Whereabouts unknown.” “Last sighting?” “She slipped away from a roundup at the university. Then the ghetto.” “And now?” The officer hesitated. “ Ich weiß nicht. ” The Kommandant turned slowly. “Her extended family in Berlin?” “Already deported.” A nod. “The Führer wants h...

  I'm Hiring Myself as My Own Quality Czar A recent announcement caught my attention. Microsoft  appointed a senior executive to focus explicitly on engineering quality. Not delivery speed. Not innovation theater. Not  move fast and hope for the best. Quality. Corporations create this role for a simple reason: when quality is everyone’s job, it’s often no one’s job. Reading that, I had a quiet but unsettling thought: Why don’t I do the same thing—for myself? So, I've come to a decision. I’m hiring myself as my own  Quality Czar . What This Means for Me For me, this isn’t about micromanagement. It’s self leadership. It means I have to define what “good” actually means in my own life. It means creating feedback loops so I notice when things slip. It means being willing to slow down on purpose when the cost of rushing is high. Saying no to the shortcuts that always create downstream chaos. The analogy clicked because I’ve been running my own life like an under-resourced...

  For Now Rivka Heller. Eighteen years old. Born and raised in Prague. She had always been quick with numbers—faster than the chalk, faster than the men who taught her. At the Charlesstadt Institute of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, professors learned to step aside and let her finish the proof. In 1938, one of them—an old man who smelled of dust and ink—had closed the door to his office and lowered his voice. “You have been noticed,” he said. By Berlin. He did not say why. He did not have to. Rivka understood before the sentence ended. Her parents disappeared soon after. No letters. No notice. Whereabouts unknown. Now she hid in the Alt Neu Shul with her younger brother, Chaim. Counting breaths instead of equations. Footsteps outside. This time they were not soft. The doors opened hard. Dogs entered first—two of them—low to the ground, muscles tight, noses working too quickly. Their handlers followed, boots scraping stone. An officer stepped in last, slower, deliberate. The do...