The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
~ Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
I’m not quite ready to publish scantily-clad selfies… so I left my socks on. I’ve a target weight in mind which corresponds to 20-year-old-me and a good photo from 1991.
Meanwhile…
This is the least I have weighed in 20 years. About 55 pounds (25kg!) lighter than 2008.
A visiting Finn mowed my lawn for me yesterday, and so I had time for one last run on this continent before I leave for a triple-stop Parkour trip in about twelve hours.
The graph is a little odd because I didn’t stop the tracking immediately, so there’s a huge bar for the last split (not shown.) It’s a lollipop route, so the 11-minute split is up the slight hill which I ran down at ~9-minute pace. The whole run came in about 9:33, which is right on the fastest I’ve ever run this. This time was much more uniform in pace than the last time I ran this.
Why do I post this stuff? Because whomever you are, whereever you are in your physical fitness (or complete lack thereof), you can simply do what I did: Start where you are.
Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
~ Lao Tzu
https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/how-to-build-unscaleable-relationships/
These people are, effectively, hiding behind a wall. They are passing up more difficult work for the easy work — sharing or “liking” photos, retweeting, commenting on someone’s wall. These are activities which can serve a purpose, but they are poor substitutes for the real thing. It’s like saying Splenda is the same thing as sugar, tofu is the same thing as real meat, or Red Lobster is a good place for…a red lobster. It’s not the same thing. Not even close.
~ Brett McKay
There is a fine line between using social media (and other technology conveniences) to increase the number of people I can keep up with. Dunbar’s Number is often pegged at about 100 or a bit more. I definitely agree that there’s a trade off between how many people I can maintain relationships with and the quality of each relationship. I find the hardest part is when a relationship gets asymetric — when the other person isn’t able to commit as much time — eventually it’s time for me to stop putting in the effort; Eventually it’s time for me to stop trying, and instead to let another person settle into the social space in my universe.
Nature has given us two ears, two eyes, and but one tongue – to the end that we should hear and see more than we speak.
~ Socrates
https://m.signalvnoise.com/is-group-chat-making-you-sweat-744659addf7d
I believe attention is one of your most precious resources. If something else controls my attention, that something else controls what I’m capable of. I also believe your full attention is required to do great work. So when something like a pile of group chats, and the expectations that come along with them, systematically steals that resource from me, I consider it a potential enemy. “Right now” is a resource worth conserving, not wasting.
~ Jason Fried
Certainly there are situations where real-time chat is the right tool. But I think real-time chat is the rare case.
The road to success is through commitment, and through the strength to drive through that commitment when it gets hard. And it is gonna get hard and you’re gonna wanna quit sometimes, but it’ll be colored by who you are, and more who you want to be.
~ Will Smith
https://bradpilon.com/weight-loss/what-do-you-do-when-a-friend-asks-you-for-advice-on-losing-weight/
Truth be told, if I really wanted to help people lose weight I would increase the price of Eat Stop Eat to 100 dollars per book. Far less people would buy it, but those who did would be invested heavily in making a change in their lives. They wouldn’t just read about fasting and weight training, they’d actually practice it.
~ Brad Pilon
Call it wisdom– Call it Imposter Syndrome— whatever. The more I learn about health, the more I’m convinced I know nothing.
For me, the solution to my unhealth was to change my life. Not, “more exercise,” but “rediscover moving.” Not, “eat better,” but “listen honestly to my body.” Not, “lose weight.” — there’s no, “but…” on that last one; The weight loss just happens the more I change my life.
https://chriskresser.com/what-is-health/
But as the saying goes, the darkest hour is just before dawn. At some point during this “dark night of the soul,” I realized that the depression and despair I was feeling was the direct result of comparing my actual experience with an idea of what I thought my experience should be. I saw that I was striving for an ideal of health that was—at least at that point—unattainable, and that this was the cause of most of my suffering.
~ Chris Kresser
This idea is right at the heart of my experience of the last few years.
In the morning, when you rise unwillingly, let this thought be present: I am rising to the work of a human being.
~ Marcus Aurelius