Modern luxury is the ability to think clearly, sleep deeply, move slowly, and live quietly in a world designed to prevent all four.
~ Justin Welsh
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Modern luxury is the ability to think clearly, sleep deeply, move slowly, and live quietly in a world designed to prevent all four.
~ Justin Welsh
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One of the reasons we work in six week cycles, is that it gives us a different definition of later.
~ Jason Fried, from Avoiding pile-ups
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I often remind myself (in my mind, in my journals, in blog posts, in 7 for Sunday… because I need a lot of reminding) that all of my problems arise because I overestimate what I can get done in the short term. Yes, that usually has a second part about the long term. And that’s not where my problems arise from. For me, it’s all about teeing up too much to do. Working in relatively short cycles, as Fried describes, and put things into the “now” (in this cycle) or “never” (not “later”!) categories is a big part of how I manage to not explode into chaos and depression three times a week.
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Conversation is a musical thing, like jazz or birdsong: more ‘call and response’ than question and answer. It enables us to travel great distances, but the joy is in the journey not the destination. We are meant to sing and dance along the way, jamming with others, riffing off them, creating something new right here, right now, in a way that no one can alone.
~ Robert Poynton
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So much has happened in 2024. What do I have in mind for 2025? I’m looking forward to reading all my 2024 journal entries—I’m excited to see optimistic Craig get punched in the face (only because I know how that story ends.) I’m also looking forward to getting back to writing regularly here on the ‘ol blog. This is, after all, where the shift into my current epoch started.
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Make your own recovery the first priority in your life.
~ Robin Norwood
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Have you heard the phrase “a big lift”? It’s the idea of making a concerted effort to accomplish something big, in one steady effort. The idea being that some accomplishments just don’t quite ever get done via small, daily steps.
Each year, in NO!vember I set about weeding. I try to identify every single thing I’m doing, and then assess whether or not I want to keep doing that. This sets me up for December. In December everyone I normally interact with starts to assume everyone else is on holiday. Things generally get more quiet in terms of projects and work.
In December, I identify big things that I’ve either just discovered (perhaps I didn’t even see them until clearing out in NO!vember) or which I’ve been ignoring (which means they’ve been nagging at the back of my brain.) I try to find a big lift that will yield some sort of big benefit in the coming year—a big time savings, or a big force multiplier for me going forward.
In December, I point my efforts at one of those big lifts…
It invariably ends up being a huge effort—bigger than just “big,” several hours, every day! But each year, as I head into the new year, I ride on that bad-ass high of knowing I cleared the decks in NO!vember and picked off that one big lift in December.
Is there a big lift you can imagine that would shift your continents creating new opportunities or capabilities for you in the new year?
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In my view, the amateur does not love the game enough. If he did, he would not pursue it as a sideline, distinct from his “real” vocation. The professional loves it so much he dedicates his life to it. He commits full-time. That’s what I mean when I say turning Pro. Resistance hates it when we turn Pro.
~ Steven Pressfield
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It is not speaking that breaks our silence, but the anxiety to be heard.
~ Thomas Merton
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Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get when you don’t.
~ Pete Seeger
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Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.
~ Henry David Thoreau
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I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe runs on an axis of suffering; Surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!
~ Louise Bogan
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Grandiose fantasies are a symptom of Resistance. They’re the sign of an amateur. The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work. The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not com, whatever they like.
~ Steven Pressfield
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One hour of thoughtful solitude may nerve the heart for days of conflict—girding up its armor to meet the most insidious foe.
~ Percival
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I really enjoyed Curtis Cates’s episode 14, Transformation can be fun…!.
Lately, I’ve been back to my regular walking, and I’ve started getting serious listening time in. I was delighted to get a chance to hear from Curtis.
(Yes, yes, I’m way waay behind on the Hansel & Gretel Code.)
Like you, my to-listen-to podcast cup runeth over! I’m regularly adding newly-released episodes. But I also have a way of systematically looking through shows’ entire back-catalog. So I’m also, regularly adding very-old episodes.
Yikes!
…and I heard one of Curtis’s sound-bites as I typed that.
Anyway, if you’re already familiar with Curtis’s work, drop back into ep14 of H&G, just for fun. If you’re going “Curtis who?” … start below. And, you’re welcome!
art is personal
~ Curtis Cates, from Kristo.art
and what qualifies or disqualifies something as art is all up to you
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PS: I don’t subscribe to shows; I add episodes one-by-one when I see interesting episodes via my daily RSS-feed reading.
Do not weep; Do not wax indignant. Understand.
~ Baruch Spinoza
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Spending time in solitude with your artist child is essential to self-nurturing. A long country walk, a solitary expedition to the beach for a sunrise or sunset, a sortie out to strange church to hear gospel music, to an ethnic neighborhood to taste foreign sights and sounds—your artist might enjoy any of these. Or your artist might like bowling.
~ Julia Cameron
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To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
~ Joseph Chilton Pearce
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Individuals who are realized in their own lives almost never criticize others. If they speak at all, it is to offer encouragement. Watch yourself. Of all the manifestations of Resistance, most only harm ourselves. Criticism and cruelty harm others as well.
~ Steven Pressfield
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It is all very well to insist that man is a “social animal”—the fact is obvious enough. But that is no justification for making him a mere cog in a totalitarian machine—or in a religious one either, for that matter. In actual fact, society depends for its existence on the inviolable personal solitude of its members. Society, to merit its name, must be made up not of numbers, or mechanical units, but of persons. To be a person implies responsibility and freedom, and both these imply a certain interior solitude, a sense of personal integrity, a sense of one’s own reality and of one’s ability to give himself to society—or to refuse that gift.
~ Thomas Merton
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I have written about this before and it is something I wish to emphasize repeatedly: efficiency and clarity are necessary elements, but are not the goal. There needs to be space for how things feel. I wrote this as it relates to cooking and cars and onscreen buttons, and it is still something worth pursuing each and every time we create anything.
~ Nick Heer, from Delicious Wabi-Sabi
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Yes, “efficiency and clarity are necessary elements, but are not the goal. There needs to be space for how things feel.” Hear! Hear!
There are at least three reasons to read Heer’s points. Retro-digital photography is really a thing; the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi (appreciating beauty that is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete); A bit of hist wondering about software.
It’s the wabi-sabi that got me thinking about podcasting. I’m well-known for cutting the corner when it comes to editing the conversations I record. I’ve always looked at that as a necessity: If I tried to raise the level of quality by editing, I’d not be able to put the episodes out (or at least not as many.)
After reading Heer’s thoughts, now I’m wondering if I’m also—perhaps even more so?—drawn to the wabi-sabi of the conversations with all their blemishes, false-starts, uhm-and-ahs in place.
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