In Memory of My Wife, Elise Cawley, with Thanks for 36 Wonderful Years

I used their hosted platform about 8 years ago and It went down many times. I just checked it today and to my surprise, my data is still there. Very glad to find it.

We need more personal CRMs in general. Monica is too outdated by today's standards. There's one called Dex but no free plans there and it's a bit too complicated for a personal CRM, like a business-like onboarding, linkedin/notion integrations etc.

I'd personally prefer something that's easy to use and can intelligently keep track of my personal contacts that I may find valuable in years or decades from now. About a decade ago, I added three friends on Monica and I'm really glad to see the records again. I wish I added more details but I remember the process of adding someone was boring and unrewarding. It still is.

Edit: Dex is about $12/mo for the base plan. I don't think I'd be willing to drop that much dough for a personal CRM. Of course there's an option to self-organize/self-host it.

> assigned conversation number

... I'm tempted to start doing this.

I’ve been a light reader of Stephen Wolfram’s work over the years. I am grateful he’s taken the time to write this tribute. May she rest in peace and condolences to Stephen.

How I considered Stephen coming in to this:

1) he is wonderfully generous with his ideas and knowledge, especially towards the young. I think this is an extremely good quality.

2) he attracts envy from many people, partly because of his successes, but also because of his manner. I feel his manner is often totally unintentional to cause upset, but also I think he’s so unashamedly himself and how he wants to be that it is sometimes verging on rude, which people hold against him (mostly unfairly, sometimes fairly)

3) given his commitment to work I always wondered about how he balanced his personal life amongst all that

What I found very interesting about this letter was how his personal relationship seems to have been in keeping with the man we see on the outside:

1) the first thing in the lists on his wife, as well as what he spends significant time on in the letter, are her intellectual capabilities. He is a man of intellect through and through, and it shows in how he writes of his wife.

2) he mentions how he has failed to collaborate with her for their entire marriage because of their strong wills. It strikes me as somewhat sad that there’s this failure to connect somehow. It might be that a prioritisation of the intellect in life holds us back from virtues.

3) there were moments where he talks about how she was intuitively right and how he had to work things out by taking “the long way”. I just get the feeling that a lot of their relationship was somehow like this - where something obvious to the normal intuition is something to be worked out by the intellect.

4) I think there might be an element of regret in this letter. A regret that perhaps a connection could have been different had one chosen to indulge one’s intellect less. I feel like this moment perhaps made Stephen’s mind pause for a moment on that - an all too human pause.

I'm making this about me, so feel free to skip past this.

I've been married for 26 years, which means I'd only have 10 more years with my wife, which would take us almost into retirement. That's not near enough. We're meant to have at least another 25-30 to take us deep into our 70s, becoming grandparents and seeing out that whole stage of life.

No guarantees in life, obviously, but there's no way to plan a backup "life partner". Half of the two people with that specific shared life experience is gone, it's an unfillable hole.