Exasperated, the therapist finally suggests that she could stop writing. âStop?â says the writer, blinking in surprise.
~ Mandy Brown, from A battle with the gods
The challenge is to realize that the error I’m making is in thinking the writing part sucks. Of course it’s not easyâ that’s what makes it fun. (Is the lesson I need to continue to work to internalize.)
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It’s a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.
~ John Steinbeck
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Each night as you lay down to sleep, you embark on an extraordinary journey â not through space, but through the shifting terrain of your own consciousness. This transition, known as the sleep-onset period, is not a simple flick of a switch from wakefulness to slumber, but a gradual, nuanced shift that suspends you between two worlds. Long regarded as a mere prelude to sleep, recent studies suggest there is far more to this fascinating twilight period.
~ CĂ©lia Lacaux, from The brainâs twilight zone: when youâre neither awake nor asleep
Back in The Interlude I wrote about an experience⊠pretty sure this was a prolonged dip into that state.
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A bore is a man who, when you ask him how he is, tells you.
~ Bert Taylor
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Overwhelm from tasks, messages, and more is completely normal. Itâs based on a fear that we canât handle everything coming our way. That weâre going to fail at juggling all of these balls, and drop them, and be a failure. Itâs a fear of inadequacy, that shows up as anxiety.
~ Leo Babauta, from Transforming Overwhelm into a Creative, Productive Energy
It’s not just a “fear” that we can’t handle everything coming our way. It’s the reality for me. I’m ambitious to a fault and I set myself up daily for far too much. As always, Babauta has the keys for pivoting away from the overwhelm, into the possibilities of progress.
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My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.
~ Michael J. Fox
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Yes, guilty, are happy. Today, lost none of our number. All still here. Will not be here forever. But all here now.
~ George Saunders, from The Moron Factory
This short story is written in a style that feels like text messaging. However, do not let that make you miss reading it.
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I think freedom, ideally, is being able to choose your responsibilities. Not not having any responsibilities, but being able to choose which things you want to be responsible for.
~ Toni Morrison
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Maybe it’s the nature of the binary times that we’re in that makes it very, very difficult to applaud one thing without condemning another. I think we’re afraid to take a victory lap, and maybe we should be. Maybe that’s just a bit premature or arrogant.
~ Nick Gillespie, from Mike Rowe on Patriotism, Paul Harvey, and American Progress
The same question (can we applaud one thing without condeming other things?) arises with eulogies. I say we can. The key is to know and understand the broader context that we’reâjust for a little whileâignoring.
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The essence of professionalism is the focus upon the work and its demands, while we are doing it, to the exclusion of all else. The ancient Spartans schooled themselves to regard the enemy, any enemy, as nameless and faceless. In other words, they believed that if they did their work, no force on Earth could stand against them.
~ Steven Pressfield
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But what about self-forgiveness? Is it morally valuable, or just something we do to make ourselves feel better? And what is self-forgiveness, anyway?
~ Mordechai Gordon, from Self-forgiveness is more than self-comfort â a philosopher explains
This is one of those topics that I thought I understood⊠until I started reading more about it.
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I will keep constant watch over myself andâmost usefullyâwill put each day up for review. For this is what makes life evilâthat none of us looks back upon our own lives. We reflect upon only that which we are about to do. And yet our plans for the future descend from the past.
~ Seneca
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And so Iâve been learning to find the complainer in myself, and bring love to him. This is transformative! It means itâs OK for me to have complaint, to feel put upon, to not be happy or grateful. This is a permission to just be how I am right now â which is sometimes full of complaint.
~ Leo Babauta, from Transforming Our Complaints into Something Generative
Some days I really wish I could just let go of all this blogging shenanigans. But it does force me to do a lot of reading, and that means I’m periodically reminded to pay attention to what Babauta is saying.
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The fact is one’s own voice is not heard anywhere else. It’s a challenge to be yourself. It makes a lot of courage.
~ Yusef Lateef
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What you realise, the moment you ask âwhat would it mean to be done for the day?â, is that the answer canât possibly involve doing all the things that need doing â even though thatâs the subconscious goal with which many of us approach life, driving ourselves crazy in the process. If there are a thousand things that need doing, youâre going to need to arrive at some definition of âfinishedâ that doesnât encompass them all.
~ Oliver, from What would it mean to be done for the day?
And defining “done” for the day is just the first step. How can I be done at the end of this week? âŠmonth? I need to keep pulling back to larger timeframes to imagine: How do I ever stop having a, “the next thing I should do is⊔?
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Self employment, for me at least, is a never-ending contest between the world’s worst manager and the world’s laziest employee.
~ Daniel Akst
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Whenever anyone tells me that some platform is great, I always nod and think to myself ⊠for now. For now.
~ Bob Sassone, from Bluesky is not going to save you
I don’t understand why no one else is saying this: Until I see anyone else running separate federation instances, it’s still just another monolithic platform. This again? If the AT Protocol (what Bluesky is built upon) is really great, how do I run my own instance to join the federation?
If you see only one instance, then it’s a platform. When you see multiple instances talking to each other, then it’s a protocol.
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The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
~ Eden Phillpotts
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That was always a huge thing for me. I was so terrible at everything at school; I couldn’t catch a ball, I couldn’t even run without running into a tree. I was pretty uncoordinated. I couldn’t paint or draw, I couldn’t sing, and I thought I was just hopeless at everything. And then I discovered that what I could do was string words together in ways that tickled people.
~ Stephen Fry, from Stephen Fry
I think my problem was I was too good (not actually good, but not bad enough) at too many things. I sometimes wonder what it would be like to have a clear calling like Fry describes.
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There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
~ Shakespeare‘s Hamlet
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