Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.
~ Howard H. Aiken
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New ideas →
Maybe I should walk back? →
As autumn settles in where I am, I’ve been looking ahead to winter with longer nights, brisk days, etc.. I also looked back at the shape I’ve been in in years past. I’m not lamenting, “if only I had my youth back.” Rather, just thinking about health, movement, and what would be the minimum effective dosage of some exercise to move me in the direction I want. (That DuckDuckGo link should make you wonder why a medical-sounding phrase is used most relating to exercise not medicine, and strength training in particular.)
Sometimes—by which I mean any time running comes up—I say that running is both the best thing for me, and the form of activity I hate most. Both of which are untrue. What’s actually best for me is zone-2 aerobic exercise and that’s sometimes what I get when I run. It’s best for me, because that is the main driver of base fitness until you get well up into being a competent athlete. But usually, being quite over-weight at the moment, any running drives my heart-rate above the surprisingly low/slow zone-2. The second part about hating it is also untrue. It turns out that one time—the one single day apparently—that I was ever in shape, I enjoyed running. I was walking, the weather was beautiful, and I had an irresistible urge to run, (and so I did.) But, literally, that happened once.
Anyway. It’ll suffice to say: I spent a few weeks recently thinking about going full-on nerd with zone-2 training. To do it right requires planning, scheduling, and—sources vary—between 150 to 180 minutes exercising each week. And warm-up and cool-down time are not included in those weekly times. Honestly, the deal-breaker was I’m seriously pissed at FitBit, (and their watches are useless without a FitBit account,) and I refuse to spend many-hundreds on an Apple watch. Also, my $30 Timex is nicer, for my definition of “nicer.”
My thinking continued, and eventually I thought: I should just walk back from Mordor.
…except this time I’m not going to bother trying to track the actual mileage. Just walk as many days as I can. Listen to some podcasts some of the time. And basically just stroll along thinking, “If this isn’t nice…“
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The flowers that blossom →
In the hopes of reaching the moon men fail to see the flowers that blossom at their feet.
~ Albert Schweitzer
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Knowing →
Knowledge is the beginning of practice; Doing is the completion of knowing.
~ Wang Yangming
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Some S’s →
Sometimes, simple summaries suffice.
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Taken for granted →
In all affairs, it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
~ Bertrand Russell
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Freedom in every moment →
One of the great discoveries of my life is that this freedom is always available to us. In any moment.
~ Leo Babauta from, Find Freedom in Any Moment – Zen Habits Website
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I’ve said many times that all of my problems come from me. The flip-side to that of course is that my freedom is available to me at any moment.
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Sight →
It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
~ Henry David Thoreau
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Eureka →
But this moment cannot come without the days of frustration at the blackboard. “You can’t really blame the storytellers,” Rockmore writes, “It’s not so exciting to read ‘and then she studied some more.’ But this arduous, mundane work is a key part of the process.”
~ Cal Newport from, On the Myth of Big Ideas – Cal Newport
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And Niels Bohr said something similar about Painful experience. And I bet your experience agrees. I know mine does.
Nobody sees how much time I spend working on podcasting. Every facet is complicated. I’m regularly noticing new things, picking up interesting skills and ideas from nearby areas of expertise. Structural wisdom from the field of authors. Empathic skills from the field of therapists. New kinds of questions from the field of hosts. New vocal skills from the field of speakers. And teachers and mechanics and on and on.
The eureka moments get the attention but they’re very few and very far between.
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Cynicism →
Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.
~ George S. Patton
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