Whoever wants life must go softly towards life, softly as one would go towards a deer and fawn that are nestling under a tree. One gesture of violence, one violent assertion of self-will and life is gone. […] But with quietness, with an abandon of self-assertion and a fullness of the deep true self one can approach another human being, and know the delicate best of life, the touch.
~ D.H. Lawrence
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If you had said that it’s possible to see white blood cells with the naked eye, I wouldn’t have believed you. If you had somehow convinced me, I’d have then been impressed. But never would I have thought that it’s possible to see your own white blood cells in your own eye. Aye, ’tis true!
The blue field entoptic phenomenon is an entoptic phenomenon characterized by the appearance of tiny bright dots (nicknamed blue-sky sprites) moving quickly along undulating pathways in the visual field, especially when looking into bright blue light such as the sky.
~ Wikipedia from, Blue field entoptic phenomenon
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Is the takeaway here that you’ve just learned something? …or that wonders never cease? …or something else entirely?
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Reading time: About 5 minutes, 1000 words
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This issue is https://7forsunday.com/75
It’s a good day, any time I can find an excuse to link to A List Apart. This piece doesn’t need an excuse to be linked. Nearly every sentence in it starts with “I am a creative…” and makes it read like some sort of manifesto… or the beginning of a communal incantation at some Creatives Anonymous meeting in a church basement.
I am still 10 times faster than people who are not creative, or people who have only been creative a short while, or people who have only been professionally creative a short while. It’s just that, before I work 10 times as fast as they do, I spend twice as long as they do putting the work off. I am that confident in my ability to do a great job when I put my mind to it. I am that addicted to the adrenaline rush of postponement. I am still that afraid of the jump.
~ Jeffrey Zeldman from, I am a creative.
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That quoted bit isn’t better than several other bits. Rather, I wanted to point to that “addicted to the adrenaline rush of postponement” to say that verily (be sure to read the example use of verily related to aviation) this used to be me. These days I’m addicted to the adrenaline rush of postponing… and then entirely abandoning whatever it was. Also, I am still afraid of the jump.
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Sometimes you don’t know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.
~ Gunnar Freyr
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A small platform—like a family restaurant, or an indie bookstore—can be run by a small group of passionate people. Possibly, it can even be run by one person. Things are too big, when they get big enough that everything needs to be normalized (specified, rules based, flow charted, committee decided and charted.)
The future of the internet that most excites me is also, in many ways, a snapshot of its past. It’s a place where the Neil Gaiman’s of the world don’t need to feed their thoughts into an engagement engine, but can instead put out a virtual shingle on their own small patch of cyberspace and attract and build a more intimate community of like-minded travelers. This doesn’t necessitate a blog — podcasts, newsletters, and video series have emerged as equally engaging mediums for independent media production. The key is a communication landscape that is much more diverse and distributed and interesting than what we see when everyone is using the same two or three social apps.
~ Cal Newport from, Neil Gaiman’s Radical Vision for the Future of the Internet
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It comes down to engagement versus contribution. A large platform is one where engagement is rewarded (time spent on the platform, ads viewed, affiliate links followed, likes given, etc.) and a small platform is one where contribution is rewarded. What makes small platforms and spaces potentially great is that everyone’s contribution can be seen. “I see what you did there,” is both how culture is created and how cultural norms are enforced.
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The real measure of our wealth is how much we’d be worth if we lost all our money.
~ John Henry Jowett
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Sure, it’s been thousands of years, but has anything really changed?
Once my curiosity was piqued, I could see a bit of curdling in some of the men around me, too.
They struggled to relate to women. They didn’t have enough friends. They lacked long-term goals. Some guys — including ones I once knew — just quietly disappeared, subsumed into video games and porn or sucked into the alt-right and the web of misogynistic communities known as the “manosphere.”
~ Christine Emba from, Men are lost. Here’s a map out of the wilderness.
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This article was interesting… but I didn’t feel like it offered any answers. Then again, I’m no longer the target audience (man, of a certain age), so perhaps it simply didn’t “land” with me. On the other, other hand, I do think it’s worth a read.
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What role do emotions and energy play in creating meaningful connections and achieving success in podcasting and life?
Matt Phelan joins Craig Constantine to explain how he manages to measure happiness without making it a pointless metric and to reveal the profound impact of podcasting on personal connections in the world of employee happiness research.
For 10 years I ran a marketing agency, I know how the world works and getting big names on your podcast is really good […] But then I have to remind myself: The whole point of the podcast, for me, was the discovery of really interesting people […]
~ Matt Phelan, 10:05
Matt Phelan and Craig Constantine lean into podcasting, happiness measurement, and the authenticity of dialogues. Their conversation evolves into a reflection on personal and professional paths, transcending the mechanics of podcasting to highlight the emotional bonds it can create.
Matt shares his experience with his podcast, “Happiness and Humans,” stressing the critical view that happiness shouldn’t be reduced to a quantifiable metric, as it risks losing its essence. He reflects on his decade-long journey, concluding that failing to align himself with the natural energy flow resulted in significant time lost on unfruitful endeavors. This insight shapes a broader conversation about the importance of surrendering to the flow, influencing his life philosophy and his approach to the podcast.
Further, Matt explains his decision to spotlight insightful, yet possibly overlooked, stories and research over pursuing notable figures, thereby staying true to his podcast’s aim to uncover novel perspectives on employee happiness and well-being.
(more…)We can set our deeds to the music of a grateful heart, and seek to round our lives into a hymn—the melody of which will be recognized by all who come in contact with us, and the power of which shall not be evanescent, like the voice of the singer, but perennial, like the music of the spheres.
~ William Mackergo Taylor
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