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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Sometimes →
Strive with your reason →
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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Take a moment →
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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Far apart →
There are too many of us and we are all too far apart.
~ Kurt Vonnegut
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Connections between it all →
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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Proper training →
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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Intentional →
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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The only true voyage →
The only true voyage would be not to travel through a hundred different lands with the same pair of eyes, but to see the same land through a hundred different pairs of eyes.
~ Marcel Proust
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Instincts with Alexandra DiPalma →
What inspires and sustains someone working behind the scenes in podcast production?
This conversation uncovers the struggles and joys of producing creative podcasts with purpose.
The team that I’m working with needs to be cool and needs to be on the same vibe as me, you know? It’s just not worth it to me, at this point, to be forcing myself into a box to work on a certain team.
~ Alexandra DiPalma (3:31)
This conversation explores the personal and professional challenges of working in podcast production. Topics include maintaining inspiration despite the workload, the importance of selecting projects that align with personal values, and the satisfaction of empowering underrepresented voices in the podcasting industry. Insights are shared about prioritizing teamwork and avoiding projects that lack alignment with one’s instincts or mission.
The discussion also touches on collaboration, emphasizing the value of working with peers at similar levels of experience. Alex reflects on how her perspective has shifted over the years, balancing passion with pragmatism, and remaining open to meaningful projects that may not offer immediate financial rewards. The metaphor of an upward spiral is used to illustrate growth and self-awareness, reinforcing themes of connection and the power of thoughtful framing.
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