As if all was safe and well with you, you have dwelt upon the final area of study, which has to do with unchangeability, so that you can make yourself unchangeable—in what? Your cowardice, means-spiritedness, admiration for the rich, your failure to achieve what you desire, and your lack of success in avoiding what you want to avoid. These are the things that you have been laboring to secure.
~ Epictetus
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I often wish that I could just post a link with my scratch notes; if I did, this post would have been up two hours ago. But you come here to read full sentences, so it is the least I can provide. However, it is not that simple: while I am certainly not famous, I am lucky to have an audience. It is important for me to remember that I cannot write solely for myself, since other people might read it. No matter whether it is a longer article or just a quick link, I don’t want to further the spread of something that I believe to be false or unhelpful.
~ Nick Heer from, The Digital Garden – Pixel Envy
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For me, the purpose of writing for my blog is to help me clarify my thinking; It’s a big part of my ongoing process of reflection. That said, I’m well aware that others are reading, and whenever possible I would like what I write to also be helpful to my readers. At the very least, I’d like it to not be unhelpful.
I’m pragmatic. I’ve had that hurled at me as a criticism on more than one occasion. But—hey, pragmatism—it’s important to understand why someone is being pragmatic. I’m pragmatic because I want to be understood, and I want to understand others. That’s as opposed to being pragmatic as a defensive maneuver. To be fair—look, more pragmatism—I enjoy deploying pragmatism for humor, but I’d like to think it’s self-evident when I do so.
Take for example the common adage, “You get what you pay for.” It’s understood that it’s not literally true in all cases; one can get swindled by an unscrupulous seller, but that’s not the point of the adage. The point, obviously, is that if you’re a cheap-skate and try to save too much, you end up getting crap. The pragmatist in me loves to point out that we can fix that adage so that it is literally true always, and makes clear the point. A more convoluted grammar serves better, “You don’t get what you don’t pay for.”
That’s my go-to explanation for pragmatism. Which of those versions is better? The first has simplicity and clarity, but it buries the lead and requires actual thought to get at the kernel of wisdom. The second puts the wisdom on the surface; but it’s a convoluted double-negative that makes one sound like a grammarian.
…at which point whomever I’m discussing pragmatism with is starting into the deep end of the thinking pool, and I point out: Bingo. The specific answer in this discussion doesn’t matter. You’ve now been, at least briefly in this dicussion, a pragmatist. Don’t we now understand each other better?
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How does podcasting serve as a platform to connect deeply with people and uncover their unique stories?
Unearthing extraordinary personal tales through the lens of community and endurance.
She does 10 Ironman [races] in ten days, a little crazy… and I said to her: Look some people go to work from 9 to 5. You’re basically doing an Ironman from 9 to 5. And she’s like: Yeah, you get it.
~ Susanne Mueller (17:28)
The conversation explores the intersection of running and podcasting as ways to connect with people and share compelling stories. It begins by examining how shared activities like running foster community, especially during challenging times. Susanne highlights how training in groups and braving harsh conditions cultivates bonds that transcend the sport itself. This shared resilience is paralleled in podcasting, where personal stories are unearthed, often revealing unexpected insights about people’s lives and journeys.
The discussion also emphasizes the role of storytelling in podcasting, focusing on how unique questions can draw out previously untold stories. Susanne shares anecdotes about interviewing runners and other guests, noting that people often reveal personal details not usually shared in formal or public settings. The power of podcasting lies in its ability to humanize individuals, even those perceived as highly accomplished, and to create moments of genuine connection and surprise.
Takeaways
Podcasting as a tool — It serves as a platform to connect deeply with others and share impactful stories.
Running and community — Shared endurance activities create strong, lasting bonds among participants.
Personal storytelling — Uncovering unexpected and deeply personal anecdotes through thoughtful questions.
Language and expression — The importance of being concise and clear as a podcaster.
Humanizing the accomplished — Podcasting reveals the relatable, everyday aspects of even the most accomplished individuals.
Unique interview styles — Asking unconventional questions can lead to remarkable moments of insight.
Resources
New York RoadRunners — A community and organization tied to the running culture discussed.
Lipstick Leadership — Susanne’s book illustrating diverse leadership styles.
(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)
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Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.
~ Jonathan Safran Foer
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Furthermore, when your imagination gnaws at you (for that is something outside your control), strive against it with your reason, subjugate it, do not allow it to gain strength, nor to advance to the next stage of picturing what it wants as it wants.
~ Epictetus
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Wherever you go, there you are. But I think Marcus Aurelius’s two-millenia-old version is better. The tranquility is to be found within.
What I like—if you ask me, which I know you didn’t—about going to the beach is the very fact that precious few of my normal behaviors are even possible. The photo above was taken just after sunrise, (that’s the Atlantic Ocean,) during a micro-getaway to a beach campsite. It was hot; cool enough to sleep though. It was vault toilets and cold showers in semi-enclosed stalls with no electricity, (I mean no lighting for the “bathrooms” and “showers”,) and there were plenty of biting bugs in the campsite and on the beach. Everything takes longer when camping; “bathing” and changing and preparing meals and even trying to do a little bit of morning mediation and reading. There’s nothing to do either. You can sit at the camp site or sit at the beach or go for a walk.
And all of that is exactly the point. Is exactly the thing I like about going to the beach. When I go there, there I am and there is nothing else.
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There are too many of us and we are all too far apart.
~ Kurt Vonnegut
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Digital gardening is the work we do to make an organic mess less messy and more useful. It’s certainly not a new idea but I think it’s something that is becoming a major problem for may digital spelunkers. We’ve never had a greater variety of information inboxes and it has never been easier to capture new information into these boxes. The problem now is with recalling the information and making connections between it all.
~ Gabriel Weatherhead from, On Digital Gardening, Blogs, and Knowledge
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Weatherhead goes on to list several specific problems, but not much in the way of solutions. And that’s perfectly fine; Having a clearly defined problem, (or two, or three,) demonstrates a lot of thinking and a lot of hard work has been done in search of a solution. We even have an adage for that: A problem well-defined is half-solved. He mentions in passing that a lot of his bookmarking, (saving, marking for later reading, staring, adding to lists, etc.,) is done as an aspiration. Becoming aware of this was a key turning point for me.
At some point, someone will carry the last of my worldly possessions… and deposit them in a dumpster. At some point, all of my digital files will be given a shrug and summarily deleted. I currently aspire to stop collecting things “for later” and instead use, read, compose, share, create and inspire now.
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What, then, is the proper training for this? Firstly, the highest and principal form of training, and one that stands, so to speak, right at the entrance way to the enterprise, is, that when you become attached to something, let it not be as though it were to something that cannot be taken away, but rather, as though it were to something like an earthenware pot or crystal goblet, so that if it happens to be broken, you may remember, what kind of thing it was, and not be distressed.
~ Epictetus
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About a month ago, I was lamenting the loss of some of my Movement mojo. After some soul-searching, we started with a simple change: Rather than waiting for movement to happen as a part of our day, we began asking a simple question, every day:
“What are we doing tomorrow?”
For fun, we set this chalkboard-wall up to encourage activity and to let us savor the decreasing number of days to American Rendezvous, a Parkour event held in Somerville, just across the Charles River from Boston.
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