This we built with our hands

This we built with our hands →

Published 8 Hours Ago  ·  All posts on May 27

This is a massive wood crib for stacking and drying firewood.

I have two smaller versions of this at my house where I stack up green, split firewood. A friend of mine wanted one as well. This was such a fun project. I started with a pen and paper sketching what I’d built nearly 20 years ago. Then discussions about the size he wanted. I came up with the buy-list and break-down list, and took all my notes on a long car ride. The next day we headed into town and loaded up on lumber. We carried the materials to the spot, and as we considered the exact layout, he asked, “What if we just made one big crib?” Well, I agreed that was an even better idea.

The best part: Midway I said, “I love this project! I’m not doing anything except helping.”

“That’s funny,” he replied, “all I’m doing is helping you!”

Much later it struck me: That might just be the best definition of a good day’s honest labor.

ɕ

Incomplete. Forever. →

Published 1 Day Ago  ·  All posts on May 26  ·  

For most of human history, you bought a thing, and it was yours, and it was finished.

That word is nearly extinct.

Nothing you own is finished. Everything exists in a state of permanent incompletion, permanently needing. Your phone needs updates, needs charging, needs storage cleared, needs passwords rotated.

~ Terry Godier, from The Last Quiet Thing

That’s exactly it. I’m often talking about calm technology and that’s one key issue with stuff these days. But this point about finished makes my heart sink.

ɕ

What’s actually happening when conversation works? →

Published 1 Day Ago  ·  All posts on May 26  ·  ,

I’ve recorded a lot of conversations over the past decade — and started my Open + Curious project to explicitly write down what I think I’ve learned. The advice everyone gets about conversation — be warm, follow up, build rapport — doesn’t fully describe what I’ve actually seen happen in the conversations that worked.

This thread is a path through pieces I’ve written and conversations I’ve distilled, sequenced for someone who’s wondering why so many attempts at meaningful conversation fall flat. As usual for my writing, none of them answer the question. Instead, they name some of the gaps between what we usually mean by good conversation and what’s happening when a conversation is actually good.

(more…)

Who controls the terms →

Published 3 Days Ago  ·  All posts on May 24

But the real Luddites weren’t afraid of machines; they were afraid of the social and economic impacts of the new technology on people—and of who controlled the terms of technological change.

~ Courtney C. Radsch, from We should all be Luddites

I don’t see what else I can really add to this…

The more things change, the more they stay the same? History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes? Do you think your individual choices about current technology trends are going to be enough? At why point do you feel coordinated effort is going to be necessary? Luddites.

ɕ

Who belongs to what? →

Published 4 Days Ago  ·  All posts on May 23  ·  ,

The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist.

~ Novalis

slip:4a1572.

temenos.place →

Published 4 Days Ago  ·  All posts on May 23  ·  ,

A small marked enclosure where a different kind of attention is kept.

A temenos, in ancient Greek, was a piece of ground set apart from ordinary use — bounded, dedicated to something larger than daily life, and respected as such. Not a temple, necessarily; just a marked enclosure where a different kind of attention was kept. People went there to do something they couldn’t quite do anywhere else — pay attention to what was hard to see in the noise of regular life. The marker around the place mattered as much as anything that happened inside it.

Temenos.place is an instance of one. A small daily instance. Each day, one thing appears on a page behind this one — a sentence, a question, a quote. Anyone who’s joined can sit with it. They can leave a short reply, where the others can see it but no one responds to it. Tomorrow the post is gone, the replies are gone, a new one is there. Nothing accumulates; there’s no archive, no body of work being built, no count of anything. People can show up today, or not, and either is fine. There is nothing to fall behind on.

The thing worth taking from this page is the temenos itself, which is yours to mark out wherever you are. A notebook, a chair, a corner of a morning, a daily walk — anywhere you decide that a particular kind of attention will be kept. If reading this gives you the word for something you’ve been doing already, or the permission to start, that’s enough.

ɕ

Access to a temenos →

Published 5 Days Ago  ·  All posts on May 22  ·  ,

It’s important for us to remember in our own journey to self-improvement: one never arrives. The sage—the perfect Stoic who behaves perfectly in every situation—is an ideal, not an end.

~ Ryan Holiday

For me, the first glimmer of my own access to a temenos (the ancient name and clarity of the place’s meaning and utility came much later) was when I took up a daily reading practice. At first, I selected a physical book designed to be a daily devotional, and later I’ve bent all my daily reading into digital formats. The key point being: I needed to anchor my daily habit in an analog context, away from all the digital addictions I had developed. Later, once the habit was the thing I enjoyed more than the digital distraction, I was able to bend digital tools to my use.

As opposed to how digital tools normally (by their creators’ designs) bend you to their use.

ɕ

Spectacular Peony blooms

Spectacular Peony blooms →

Published 6 Days Ago  ·  All posts on May 22

These blooms (and the greenery) were snipped by Tracy to create an entry for the American Peony Society’s annual convention. It’s WAY more complicated than I made it sound. Her hobby is hybridizing Peonies, and that means there are more than 100 tree- and herbaceous Peonies around our house. o_O

ɕ

Where to place the crowbar →

Published 6 Days Ago  ·  All posts on May 21

Revert to what Epictetus described as our “chief task in life”—getting real clear about what’s up to us and what isn’t. Our actions, our thoughts, our feelings—these are up to us. Other people, the weather, external events, these are not. But here’s the thing: our responses to other people, the weather, external events are in our control. To reset your life, the best place to start is with making this distinction and then choosing to focus on the things that are in your control. If only because it concentrates your resources in the places where they matter.

~ Ryan Holiday, from You Slipped Up […]

Bryan Ward wrote a great article How The Hammer Fails You and reading his metaphor about the hammer versus the crowbar was a pivotal moment for me. Later, I realized that Epictetus’s counsel feels like the seed for Ward’s metaphor.

Am I applying my mental or physical effort in the correct place?

Until my answer was consistently coming up yes, that was the most useful question I kept asking.

ɕ

The eudaimonia machine →

Published 7 Days Ago  ·  All posts on May 21

Perhaps further outside the clear connections, it also reminded me of the Eudaimonia machine, which I’ve previously written about here and here. It’s “a multipart floor plan that effectively funnels employees[, workers, creators, thinkers] through various spaces with the intention of triggering different mental states. The layout consists of an entry gallery, a social salon, a multi-person office, an archival library, and the chamber—a site for deep work.” One can easily think of the cloister as one more space in such a setup.

~ Patrick Tanguay, from The Cloister & The Starship

I’ve long been an admirer of subtly curated spaces. Sentiers itself is one such space. There, I keep staring at the juxtaposition of a starship and a cloister. There’s just something special about a wide range of experiences. For example, listening to meditative music streamed across the Internet—an incredible tech stack just to make some quiet sounds—while sitting in an ancient meditation posture listening to water gurgle in a downspout. We each contain multitudes, as it were.

ɕ