Emotional flooding →

Published October 17, 2022  ·  All posts on Oct 17  ·  ,

Whenever I hear about these incidents, I think of the best life advice I ever got, from my older brother: “Don’t freak out.” He was giving me a parenting tip, but really, it applies to everything in life. Freaking out—“emotional flooding,” in social-science jargon—never seems to make matters better, and we nearly always regret it. The fact that freak-outs may be happening with particular frequency right now is an opportunity to understand the phenomenon in ourselves and learn to manage our emotions better. If we do, we will be equipped with a skill that helps us be better friends, parents, spouses, and professionals, even when the pandemic is nothing but a distant memory.

~ Arthur C. Brooks from, How to Stop Freaking Out – The Atlantic

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I truly hope you’ve not experienced flooded emotions, recently or otherwise. For me, this is a big part of how my atypical brain works. I don’t have an emotional range. I have two settings labeled zero and eleven. Eleven means I love sappy movies, can get really engaged in helping people, and much more. But, I had to learn how to disengage when my emotions flare; I had to become a master at pausing while deciding what I want to happen.

But having a level–zero non-response to most everything means I can function very well under duress. For example, if the roof of the house is mid-repair, it’s been raining hard for hours, the ceiling is leaking in various places, and then the hard-wired fire alarm shorts out (ie, goes off) when water gets into a sensor, the deafening, in–house klaxon sounds, my cellphone rings as the monitoring company reports there’s a fire… Well, level-zero means I can repeatedly work the keypad to disable the fire alarm, even though it goes off again in a few seconds, give the person on my cellphone my alarm code to avert the fire department’s being dispatched, and then quickly work to physically disable the alarm system (even though it’s intentionally tamper– and disable–resistant.) All without my heart–rate rising; while actually feeling bored by it all.

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October 16, 2022 — #2 →

Published October 16, 2022  ·  All posts on Oct 16  ·  

Reading time: About 4 minutes, 700 words
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This issue is https://7forsunday.com/2

Great lakes →

Published October 16, 2022  ·  All posts on Oct 16  ·  

The Great Lakes of North America’s midsection—Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario—together span nearly 100,000 square miles, with a combined coastline just shy of 10,000 miles. They hold more than a fifth of Earth’s unfrozen fresh water, straddle an international border, and help move more than $15 billion dollars worth of cargo each year.

~ Gemma Tarlach from, Are the Great Lakes Really Inland Seas? – Atlas Obscura

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This article didn’t strike me as particularly interesting. But after I was about half–way through reading it, it became clear it was in fact interesting. It’s worth the read. It’s worth read just to find out was a “meteotsunami” is. It’s worth read to learn about that time the water in Lake Michigan sloshed to one side and then sloshed back creating a tsunami that swept into Chic– wait, wat?!

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Bravery →

Published October 15, 2022  ·  All posts on Oct 15  ·  ,

You should be brave enough to use your own intellect, in life and in your education.

~ Immanuel Kant

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I’m backing away slowly →

Published October 14, 2022  ·  All posts on Oct 14  ·  

Inside this box is a thing of beauty—and absurdity. It’s a one-of-a-kind puzzle created just for me by one of the greatest puzzle makers in the world. It is, almost surely, the hardest puzzle ever to exist. But before I open the box, let me tell you how the puzzle came to be, and why I think it’s not a trivial pursuit.

~ A. J. Jacobs from, The Puzzle That Will Outlast the World – The Atlantic

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There was a time… who am I kidding? The time is now. Must. Resist. The urge. To buy…

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Harmony and understanding →

Published October 13, 2022  ·  All posts on Oct 13  ·  , ,

People are wise beings; they possess the ability to live according to the dictates of their intellect, and sooner or later, they will evolve from a state of violence to a state of complete harmony and understanding. And every act of violence makes this time more distant from today.

~ Leo Tolstoy

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Wellness →

Published October 12, 2022  ·  All posts on Oct 12  ·  

Modern wellness, at its core, is a self-sustaining doom loop of precautionary, aspirational consumption: Buy to be better to buy more to be better still. Which is why, despite Raphael’s arguments, I don’t fully buy that wellness has taken on the role of religion. Instead, in classically entrepreneurial American fashion, it’s become extra unpaid work—the very thing we don’t need more of and truly don’t have time for.

~ Sophie Gilbert from, How Did Healing Ourselves Get So Exhausting? – The Atlantic

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I’d never really thought of it as “exhausting” until I read this article. Now I’m thinking that what I’ve been rebelling against, in the last year or three, is my self–imposed, continuous–improvement mindset of wellness. What I really want to do, is nothing; literally nothing in the sense of just lay in a hammock for—I dunno—a week, maybe much much longer. I’d thought, again in the last year or three, that I’d insulated myself from the outside effects Gilbert describes so clearly, but now I’m not so sure. I’m definitely way down the downward–slope side of spending money on “wellness.” But I’m definitely aware that I spend a lot of time thinking about, arranging, tweaking, planning, assessing… around wellness. Food for thought, indeed.

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Truth →

Published October 11, 2022  ·  All posts on Oct 11  ·  ,

Look for the truth; it wants to be found.

~ Blaise Pascal

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Photography from Seattle →

Published October 10, 2022  ·  All posts on Oct 10  ·  ,

For several years I’ve been attending the Art of Retreat events in North America. Originally they were held in New York City, but the latest three were held outside of Seattle. I’ve been recording conversations for Art of Retreat’s own podcast over the years. If you’re interested in what goes on behind the scenes, I tried to unpack some of it over on a topic in the Podcaster Community, Field Recordings at Art of Retreat 2022.

I have a habit of trying to capture interesting photos from airplane windows. Often it’s solar or weather phenomenon, but on this trip out to Seattle I was surprised to see these forest fires. Fortunately, they weren’t very close to where the event was held, but “fire fog” was thing during much of the time I spent in Seattle and all of the time at the event.

Photos from the flight out to Seattle WA.

A few shots from the location where the event was held…

View from the bunk-house porch, and from the lake shore.

And one last random shot from a cool, mushroom–infused coffee spot in Seattle, Wundergrond Coffee.

Quite the knitting project for someone.

Random, but fun photos — hope you enjoyed them.

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October 09, 2022 — #1 →

Published October 9, 2022  ·  All posts on Oct 9  ·  

Reading time: About 4 minutes, 900 words
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This issue is https://7forsunday.com/1