Category: Monthly Updates

The Beastwood Files: November 2025

A very odd gingerbread house
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Coming to you at that lovely time of year when companies are either already hibernating until January or scrambling to finish things before Santa arrives. Meanwhile, I’m trying to operate somewhere in between – keeping busy yet attempting to shut things down roughly one week before Christmas. In that spirit, I’m writing this while wolfing down a sandwich at my desk

Stuff I Wrote

Stuff I Did

  • Spend a good chunk of the first week of November napping thanks to some viral thing that wasn’t serious enough to warrant taking time off but was nonetheless enough to make it hard to look at the ol’ computer screen for too long
  • Listened to my first holiday song of the season – Christmas Eve / Sarajevo from the Trans Siberian Orchestra, of course
  • Somehow – SOMEHOW – listened to The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald for the first time
  • Cooked a 12-pound turkey for seven people, two of whom didn’t eat any (one for dietary reasons, one because he’s a very picky 4-year-old), which left plenty for turkey soup (which is really what I’m here for, let’s be honest)
  • Bought a Christmas tree and immediately decorated it, because said 4-year-old is also not the best at waiting
  • Entered the season of “do the tires *really* need air, or is it just that the temperature dropped?”

Adventures in Fatherhood

  • We continued our annual tradition of making gingerbread houses. I fulfilled my patriarchal duties of taste-testing the candy. My son managed to decorate his house all by himself, coming up with his own ideas and drawing inspiration from Mommy as well as our friend who joined us for the evening. For some reason, my contribution – pictured here – didn’t inspire him. I don’t understand why.
  • After largely ignoring our balance bike for the better part of two years, we randomly decided to try it out again. We got the hang of it but also seemed a bit frustrated as to why we had to ride on quiet paths and not one of the most well-trafficked rail trails in the nation.
  • We’ve started to play a game where, when Daddy leans forward in his seat, we sneak behind him and yell, “Squish me!” I respond to this by saying, “Son, the first thing they told us in all the First-Time Parent classes was that you shouldn’t squish your baby.” I now use this to explain other, not-fun things that I do – e.g., “Another thing they told me in First-Time Parent class is that you have to make sure your kid wears socks.”
  • We have discovered the Magic School Bus. This is great, except that we’re ALL IN like a poker player who just wants to leave the table. We’ve checked close to 20 out of the library – apologies to anyone in Eastern Massachusetts who hasn’t been able to put them on hold – and read them I’d say an average of five times apiece. I’ve gone hoarse more than once.

Happy holidays, everyone! May you get exactly what you wish out of the season. Talk to you in 2026.

The Beastwood Files: October 2025

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Writing this one amid recovery from my first colonoscopy. As a few people told me, the prep was the most difficult part – in particular, trying to function without eating for close to 30 hours. I don’t know how people do this routinely. (I was ready to fight someone for a sandwich within seven hours of fasting, but it wouldn’t have been a very good fight because I had no energy.) All the more reason to 1) make less invasive options for cancer screening more readily available and 2) make sure people get the food they need.

Stuff I Wrote

Stuff I Did

  • Got my COVID and flu vaccines
  • Ran the BayState Marathon in 3:24:31 – the fifth marathon I’ve done since the spring of 2022 within a 2-minute range around 3:25, which if nothing else apparently means I’m consistent
  • Finally finished reading Barbara Tuchman’s The Proud Tower, which I started roughly a year ago
  • Started wearing a hat and gloves outside in the morning, which I’ll likely be doing until mid-April
  • Decorated several pumpkins, none of which stayed on our stoop for more than 48 hours because there are hungry rats in our neighborhood
  • Dressed as a car for Halloween to complement my son the crossing guard and my wife the crosswalk

Adventures in Fatherhood

  • The current phrase of the moment is A December to Remember. I initially said this in jest while fruitfully listing the months of the year, as I have no intention of ever buying my wife a Lexus for Christmas (nor does she), but it has since prompted serious conversations about what is and is not practical to give to someone as a holiday gift.
  • We have resumed the annual cool weather tradition of Family Star Pants, which is when we all wear navy blue pajama pants with white stars. (They’re from Primary; I’d add a link, but they don’t sell these specific pants any more). In an added wrinkle, I was asked to wear them to preschool drop-off. We walked. Did I mention these pants have no pockets?
  • We made it around the block for trick-or-treating. We’re still young enough to only pick one treat per house – and at half the houses, he picked either toys or candy that he knows other members of the family like. (Papa, for example, likes Peanut M&M’s.)
  • I made a group of tweens very happy on Halloween night at about 7:30 when I said, “I need your help. It’s time to put my kid to bed, and I want to turn off the porch light. Can you please just take the rest of the candy out of this bowl for me?”

The Beastwood Files: September 2025

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September was about puttin’ the nose to the ol’ grindstone after four weeks of being off more than I was on. I also intentionally worked half days every Monday last month, mostly to ensure I’d have time for my long runs and partly to help ease my way into the work week. (Garfield was right; no one likes Mondays.) Anyway, I have no lovely bylines to share, though I promise I was, in fact, working.

Also … as you may or may not have seen, I decided to start a monthly news roundup. The first post should go live in mid-October. As a result, I’ve decided to switch from Stuff I Read (which will be covered in said newsletter) to Stuff I Did. Is it as exciting? Probably not. Does it matter? Definitely not.

Stuff I Wrote

  • Custom content for clients in digital health, healthcare data management, enterprise resource planning, and more

Stuff I Did

  • I’m running the BayState Marathon in a couple weeks, so I devoted a good chunk of my non-working and non-catering-to-every-need-of-a-preschooler time to getting through the most important part of the training cycle. Now it’s taper time, which is when marathon runners rest their bodies and do their best to avoid every germ their children bring home from school.
  • I started writing to voters in California through Vote Forward. I did a lot of letter-writing while watching playoff baseball, because these days even when the Red Sox are playing I still have brain space left to do other things.
  • We have already done most of the stereotypical Fall New England Things: Go apple picking, buy several pumpkins, and run the heat and the air conditioning on the same day. (This is equal parts because of the weather and the insulation limitations of a 100-year-old house.) My wife had a pumpkin spice latte. I’ll break out the flannel soon enough.

Adventures in Fatherhood

  • Speaking of the Red Sox, my son and I went to our first game at Fenway Park back in August. It was roughly 90 degrees, and we lasted an hour. Highlights included the bus ride (we’re lucky enough to not need to take the very crowded Green Line), seeing Wally the Green Monster, and going to Ben & Jerry’s on Brookline Avenue once we decided we were too hot for the ballpark.
  • The other day, afternoon snack at school was pretzels, which my son doesn’t like. But instead of rejecting it, he asked to save it for me, since he knows I like pretzels. Kids, amirite?
  • I’ve been able to apply an important lesson in parenting to working with clients. Whenever my son is asking me to get him some milk and also read him a book and oh by the way throw away a soggy tissue, I tell him, “Daddy can only do one thing at a time.” This has helped me make sure I set priorities at work, too.

Happy fall. Happy Halloween. Happy conference season to my health IT friends. Until next time.

The Beastwood Files: August 2025

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Summer vacation is officially over. The Beastwoods have returned from a week in Portland, Maine and Acadia National Park, which came just a few days after our inaugural camping trip that wasn’t in Granny and Papa’s backyard. Both trips were indeed a success. Kiddo’s back in school and Mom and Dad are back to work. The cat, meanwhile, celebrated her 17th birthday with quite possibly the best gift we could have given her: A quiet, empty house.

Stuff I Wrote

Things I Read

I neglected to bring a book on vacation, assuming incorrectly I’d not have the energy to read after bedtime. As my wife likes to say, “We all make choices.” Instead, I treated myself to a few Wikipedia rabbit holes. What did I learn?

  • The northernmost point in Maine, Estcourt Station, is basically a sliver of a town in Quebec that was cut off when the international boundary was properly surveyed. The border crossing closes at 5 p.m. on Friday; after that, if you want to go to the “other” side of town before Monday morning, you apparently need to drive on hundreds of miles of gravel logging roads through the North Maine Woods. Plan accordingly.
  • Acadia is on Mount Desert Island, which is the second-largest island on the Eastern seaboard (to Long Island). It’s just a big bigger than Martha’s Vineyard, which is in Dukes County, Massachusetts. The county includes the Elizabeth Islands – most of which are owned by the Forbes family.
  • The largest park in the Lower 48 is actually a state park, Adirondack Park in upstate New York. It apparently has more than 100 villages inside it, as more than half the park is actually private owned. Most villages lack cellphone coverage. (The park’s actually held up as a good example of public-private partnership for the sake of conservation.)

Adventures in Fatherhood

  • To answer a question I posed on LinkedIn, I believe we have determined that Vermont (Ben & Jerry’s) has the best ice cream in Northern New England – or at least the most recognizable. That said, we did find a Friendly’s in South Portland. Everyone in the family enjoyed the nostalgia, though my son was a bit confused about why his sundae had a face.
  • Every once in a while, I talk to my son about Very Dad Things to Do. One is turning off all the lights before we leave the house. Another is telling a Dad Story, which is a lot like a Dad Joke in the sense that it’s not very interesting. On this vacation, the Very Dad Thing to Do to which I introduced my son was getting a giant wad of napkins from McDonald’s, putting them in the glove compartment of the car, and then forgetting all about them.
  • If you’re ever in Waterville, Maine, and it’s not Monday or Tuesday, stop by the Children’s Discovery Museum. I only learned of its existence while perusing Google Maps from the aforementioned nearby McDonald’s during our 10:15 lunch stop, and we ended up spending two and a half hours there. Highlights included the “pizza oven,” the “rooftop garden,” and the $2 globe stress ball that we may or may not have misplaced since we got home.

The Beastwood Files: July 2025

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Starting this one off with Stuff I Read because Matthew Holt, a longtime observer of the healthcare technology landscape, encapsulated a lot of feelings I’ve had (but hadn’t put to paper) about last week’s interoperability glad-handing in DC. Signing a pledge to make tech tools talk to each other is admirable; doing so in the direct presence of men who are quite open about their disdain for proven medicine, healthcare’s safety net, medical research, and the needs of others is not – to say nothing of their very public targeting of the communities that all too often make computer engineering and healthcare delivery possible in the United States. For days, I’ve had a line from They Might Be Giants’ “Your Racist Friend” floating through my head: You can’t shake the devil’s hand and say you’re only kidding. Thank you, Matthew, for saying the quiet part out loud.

Stuff I Wrote

Adventures in Fatherhood

  • Our street’s in the process of being repaved, along with a stretch of the main road through town. We’re also getting new sidewalks. What this means: My camera roll is full of videos of construction vehicles hard at work to appease my son’s truck obsession.
  • We recently invested in a foldable wagon. It’s bulkier than a stroller but apparently like 123% more fun. I lay even odds we actually use the stroller again.

Have had a busy few weeks on a big custom project for a client. Hoping to emerge from that soon. Happy August.

The Beastwood Files: Spring 2025

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I’ve had an interesting few months. I finally bit the bullet, upgrading my website and selecting a hosting provider. The former was a good idea, and long overdue, as it let me set up a store where I could get rich selling digital content. The latter turned out not to be such a good idea since 1) it somehow managed to create a second WordPress log-in for me and 2) said log-in was linked to me staging site, not my actual website.

This meant the blog posts I created on what I thought was my existing website were in fact on the new version, which is also were I happened to create the product page for my eBook (which I also happened to edit and design over the course of the spring).

For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to get the new blog posts – namely, the April and May roundups you’ve come to know and love, or at the very least tolerate – to appear on the page that listed all the blog posts. That seemed like kind of a big deal. There were also some quirky tweaks to my new (or maybe existing?) website that weren’t the best, and it wasn’t clear whether they were the result of the site migration or user error.

As a result, I scrapped the hosting plan and stuck with a Business version of my old WordPress site. I didn’t lose any necessary functionality, and I didn’t end up spending more. What I’d been paying for the hosting service basically now pays for a business email address, with the added bonus that it’s not Webmail, which as far as I can tell no one actually likes.

The issue – and this is where it gets interesting, folks – is that I decided to do this a few days after I launched my eBook, which meant to link to it was dead. It also meant the April and May roundups disappeared, along with my heartfelt look back at five years of full-time freelancing. I was able to repost the eBook product page (which was easy enough to rewrite) and the career retrospective (which I’d drafted in Word), and I managed to rewrite the blog post introducing the eBook to the world.

That said, I didn’t bother redoing the roundups. To be blunt, I didn’t feel like it. Plus, the list of Stuff I Read was a bit short, and my Adventures in Fatherhood were a bit repetitive, redundant, and repetitive.

So, instead, I present to you, my loving audience, a quarterly roundup. This includes links to everything published in the last three months, along with some fun tales of raising a child that I may or may not have shared with you already.

Stuff I Wrote

Dang, this list looks a lot more impressive when it covers three months instead of one, doesn’t it?

Adventures in Fatherhood

  • Over Memorial Day weekend, I ran a marathon in Burlington, Vermont. The course was two Figure-8 loops. All told, I went through downtown Burlington four times. This meant I ran up the hill on Main Street four times. My wife told my son this was a mean thing to make the runners do. She wasn’t wrong – and for the next two weeks, my son, who has entered the phase of asking so, so many questions – humored me a few times a day by asking, “Why did the marathon do a mean thing to the runners?”
  • Meanwhile, over Fourth of July weekend in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, my son was introduced to the idea that Daddy attracts mosquitos almost immediately upon going outside. (Don’t ask me why. They always have.) He then proceeded to humor us by repeatedly saying, “The bugs love Daddy.”
  • We’ve recently discovered store-bought frozen water- and fruit-based confections. This is lovely – but, as my son prefers to eat approximately three bites of things before declaring, “All done,” it also means at any given time there are at least two unfinished treats in the freezer. That also means there are often at least two child-sized bowls or plates in the freezer, which is a challenge when, say, we arbitrarily decide the Cheerios need their own bowl.

With any luck, I’ll get back to monthly posts starting in August, just in time for everyone to stop caring about work until Labor Day.

The Beastwood Files: March 2025

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Look at me, everyone – I’m not posting this a week and a half late this time! Most credit goes to the iced coffee I got myself after grocery shopping this morning and subsequently poured into the iced coffee that I brought with me grocery shopping.

Stuff I Wrote

Stuff I Read

  • Lot of content related to telehealth, as I put the finishing touches on v2 of the eBook and left it in the hands of my reviewers. The most interesting stuff: A brief history of the first chatbot in medicine, which was developed in the 1960s (!!), and two posts from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in which veterans said telehealth quite literally saved their lives. The latter offered some perspective and helped me feel like the eBook would hopefully be of value as healthcare tries to figure out how to make telehealth truly work.
  • A recent Accenture survey found 83% of C-level executives in healthcare are piloting generative AI – but fewer than 10% are investing in the infrastructure to scale up use. Much like an early 2000s romcom, something’s gotta give. I’m of the belief, echoed by others, that generative AI will be most useful for documentation and revenue cycle automation but not much else, at least for a few years.

Adventures in Sandwich Generation Caregiving

  • Bit of a departure from the usual structure y’all have come to know and love, as I spent a good amount of time in March helping my mother move into independent living. The hardest thing wasn’t necessarily getting her to part with things of sentimental value; it was encouraging her to get rid of things she had never really needed in the first place. After one day of packing and throwing things in the trash, for example, I packed 6 rolls of paper towels and an unopened box of baby wipes into my car; so did my brother. There were two slow cookers, more casserole dishes than I could count and – to be fair – a pile of largely unused cookbooks I’d gotten her over the years to help guide her to better eating habits. It’s tough at the very end when things are either going straight into the trash or into a pile for someone else (in our case, fortunately, the moving company) to deal with and inevitably throw into the trash later.
  • With the onset of False Spring in the Boston area, we’ve commenced our annual tradition of planting seeds indoors, watching them grow, bringing them outside, feeding the local population of feral bunnies, and then making batch after batch of red sauce with our tomatoes because I’m the only one in the house who will otherwise eat them prepared any other way.
  • We are increasingly learning that different grocery stores have different advantages. Stop & Shop has little mini frozen chocolate chip pancakes that can be microwaved in 30 seconds. Trader Joe’s has child-sized baguettes and stickers. Market Basket has sensory overload and too many stories about how Daddy used to work there.

Happy April, everyone. With any luck, I’ll have exciting eBook news to share soon. In the meantime, I’m realizing it’s been five years of full-time freelancing – so stay tuned for some reflections on that.

The Beastwood Files: February(ish) 2025

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We’re going to pretend I’m posting this one-third of the way into March because last month’s post was also late and not, you know, because I got sidetracked. The fun snowball effect of needing to make up for lost time earlier in February, coupled with finally moving forward with helping my 80-year-old mother get into independent living, left me with little free time. I finally have a moment – and I’m devoting it to you, dear reader. You’d better be happy. (I kid. Mostly.)

Stuff I Wrote

  • MIT Sloan Ideas Made to Matter: A framework on the four paths to success for entrepreneurs
  • Custom content for clients in digital health, health data analysis, technology infrastructure, cybersecurity, and more
  • The finishing touches on the first draft of that Telehealth eBook I keep talking about but am sitting on until we figure out whether flexibilities get extended beyond the end of March
  • …and, coming soon, content from a new freelance client! (Not a new client per se, as I worked there for several years when I had a lot less gray hair. A handful of you may know what I’m talking about. Please don’t spoil the surprise for everyone else.)

Stuff I Read

  • Press Ganey published some survey results about consumer experiences in healthcare. Not a knock on the report or its findings, but it’s sad haha that half of patients are willing to wait three weeks to see their PCP and three months to see a specialist.
  • For one of my clients, Healthcare IT Today, I spent some time poring over press releases from ViVE and HIMSS. (Did you see my LinkedIn diatribe on why having those two events in a three-week span is a terrible, terrible idea? If not, you should read it, if for no other reason than to be acquainted with the phrase “bananapants.”) I found it odd that, for all the momentum ViVE purportedly has, the most interesting press releases all came from HIMSS. Curious if folks waited two weeks as a strategic move or simply to buy themselves a bit more time to get stuff approved. Who’s to say?

Adventures in Fatherhood

  • We have recently discovered the Museum of Science and Boston Children’s Museum. I’ve lost track of the number of hours we’ve spent there, the dollars spent on parking, or the steps taken chasing my curious, independent, and speedy son from one exhibit to another. Boy, has it been fun, though.
  • I have a habit of injecting song lyrics into the books I read to my son, if for no other reason than to amuse myself and my wife. (Especially if it’s something we’re reading for the 123rd time.) I have to be careful, though. In the last couple weeks, my son has 1) randomly belted out “Take these broken wings and learn to fly again!” and 2) said to one of his toys, “Move! Get out the way!”
  • I was having a conversation with one of my son’s friends at school at pickup one day. I made a bad joke, and my son immediately yelled, “That’s a Dad Joke!” His friend was confused, so I explained the concept and then asked if her dad told Dad Jokes. Evidently, he did not. I was flummoxed.

Have a happy March. May your bracket not get busted, if you’re into that sort of thing. I watch for the upsets, which can be a bit, well, upsetting for my wife, who attended that bucolic private university in the ACC that no one likes. (Wait, I have to mention that it’s not the one founded by the railroad magnate. I mean, I *suppose* Stanford is on the Atlantic Coast if you have a boat with a lot of fuel. Ah, big-time college athletics!)

The Beastwood Files: January(ish) 2025

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Well, the New Year kicked off without much of a hitch, and then some sort of lovely crud hit our household at the end of January. Luckily, none of us were sick for more than a couple days – apparently vaccines work??!? – though it was enough to throw off the ol’ schedule I made up for myself to publish these posts and keep the masses happy. So it goes.

Things I Wrote

Updates on Goals

  • Still working on the eBook, though the first draft is finished now. Haven’t gotten started on the new website. Did book a sitting for new headshots. Now need to get a haircut – and the cash to pay for it.
  • Running was going quite well until first my son and then I came down with whatever cold/flu we had. Hot sauce consumption has sadly levelled of, though I imagine it might help with the congestion. Or hurt. On second thought…

Stuff I Read

  • When I wasn’t getting equal parts frustrated and sad about the state of our country, I came across a not-terribly-scientific “study” suggesting Boston is the best U.S. city for introverts. This is based on our proliferation of libraries, coffee shops, and hybrid jobs. Add to that my favorite hobbies (running and hiking) and I don’t think I’ve ever felt more closely aligned to a stereotype or a place.

Adventures in Fatherhood

  • Lately, my son has gotten into just randomly saying “potty,” as one does. My response is to pretend he said “party,” loudly ask “IS IT PARTY TIME?” and then dance like the awkward middle-aged white man that I am. He does not like that.
  • Also, he would like you to know I am a Bad Dad. Why? On three (3) successive evenings, I got the temperature of the bath water wrong. On the upside, we now have a new favorite funny word: Lukewarm. “It’s when your friend Luke isn’t hot.”
  • We have discovered the Museum of Science in Boston – specifically, the room with the rotating exhibit. For the holidays, there was a model train, which of course we went to see more than once. Our aim in going back? “I want to see what’s where the trains were.” It helps that the cafeteria sells ice cream and croissants and has a view of the Red Line.

Happy February, everyone. In between your sneezes, keep fighting.

The Beastwood Files: December 2024

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I’m embracing a bit of a different format this month, partly to keep y’all on your toes as January begins and partly to hold myself accountable for the things I hope to accomplish in 2025.

Professional Goals for the Year Ahead

Make this a Big Boy Website. I created this site several years ago but did about 86% of the work on it in the first week of April 2020, when I decided to use being laid off as an excuse to try full-time freelancing. It’s due for a refresh and, more importantly, I think I’m ready for a Big Boy Corporate Email Address, too.

Finish the eBook that’s been 18 months in the making. Remember that blog post I wrote about telehealth’s day of reckoning back in April 2023? A few of you said it was good enough, with some additions and updates, to be an eBook. Well, I’m taking y’all up on that. Let’s see what happens.

Stick to what I do best. It’s not all sunshine and roses up here. I had a few projects go sideways in 2024. A few factors were at play in each case, but one thing that unified them all was a focus outside of what I think I do best: Healthcare, healthcare tech, and executive leadership. If I decide to take on more work, I’m going to be very particular about it.

Personal Goals for the Year Ahead

Be more systematic about running. After taking about two months off to recover from Morton’s neuroma in my right foot, I finished the year strong. I hit my time goals and snagged a couple age group prizes in some lovely little suburban races. More importantly, I found shoes (and insoles) that work and settled into a good rhythm. If all goes well, this might be the first year since 2015 I manage a marathon in the spring AND the fall.

Be as good a person as my kid things I am. I’m at the great stage where my son, at three and a half, wants nothing more than to hang out with me and do what I do. I hope other people will feel the same way. At the same time, I need to make sure that being there for him and with him doesn’t drain me emotionally. I can’t be afraid to take a break here and there.

Eat more hot sauce. My wife gave some really good hot sauce for Christmas. It was delicious. I see no reason not to have more.

Adventures in Fatherhood

You may recall that I taught my son the emblematic Boston phrase “bang a U-ey.” Now, whenever we see a sign prohibiting U-turns, he screams “DON’T BANG A U-EY!” He’s quite proud of himself, though he hasn’t fully grasped the linguistics of the phrase and believes “bang a” is one word, like the city in Maine.

We recently had the following exchange. “Daddy, I love you!” “Aw, I love you too. That makes me feel special.” “I love the songs you sing.” “I’m glad. Do you even love the silly ones I sing?” “I love the songs you sing on your phone.” (Dear reader, that would be the YouTube videos of children’s songs that we play at 10- to 15-minute intervals a few times a day.)

Happy January, everyone. I’ll return to the regular format next time, since I know everyone’s chomping at the bit to read something with my name at the top.