Creativity with Teresa Mitchell →

Published August 26, 2021  ·  All posts on Aug 26

What motivates and sustains a creative journey into podcasting as a medium for personal and professional expression?

Explore the intersection of financial empowerment and creative storytelling through podcasting.

You know this isn’t very original, but it really is the journey. It’s the day-to-day experience and that for me has been sterling-platinum amazing.

~ Teresa Mitchell (8:00)

The conversation explores the intersection of personal passion and professional purpose through podcasting. Teresa discusses her journey from a career as a financial planner to creating a podcast, highlighting how podcasting became a creative outlet for self-expression after retirement. She describes podcasting as a space to break traditional rules and pursue ideas freely, emphasizing how the medium supports deep connection and personal growth. The challenges of mastering the technical and creative aspects of podcasting are framed as part of the rewarding journey of experimentation and learning.

The discussion also touches on financial coaching, particularly addressing the needs of women and encouraging financial confidence. Teresa explains her approach to making financial topics more accessible, combining mindfulness and practical advice to empower listeners. She envisions blending financial topics with other interests like cooking to create innovative content that mirrors real-life integration of passions. This conversation underscores the potential of podcasting as both a platform for impactful storytelling and a means to explore multidimensional ideas.

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Likewise disturbed →

Published August 26, 2021  ·  All posts on Aug 26  ·  

The soul is like a vessel filled with water; and impressions are like a ray of light that falls upon the water. If the water is disturbed, the ray will seem to be disturbed likewise, though in reality it is not.

~ Epictetus

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drip drip drip →

Published August 26, 2021  ·  All posts on Aug 26  ·  

This is post number 3,000 — What a long, strange trip it’s been!

My very first post here, “Hello world,” was written on August 13, 2011. That marked the beginning of this second incarnation of my home on the Web. It’s been a sublime decade of tap-tappity-tapping away. I’ve learned a lot about werd-slingin’, and obviously developed my own way of doing things. Looking back, I believe I’ve settled into a comfortable melange of: posting photography rarely enough that they have real impact when they appear, and often enough that I feel I’m actually doing something with the digital photography I manage to shoot; quotations that inspire, conspire, and aspire to be helpful; random linking to the effectively limitless wonderful things created by humanity; working on my own thinking by exposing my reflection; pointing out interesting connections among people, places, and things.

I’ve collected a surprisingly small number of posts tagged “Meta”, (19 to be exact,) which share more of the what-and-how of this blog.

I spent the last year preparing for this little milestone by currating a collection of posts tagged “Apogee”, which are the best-of-the-best. I was hoping to find 100, and without paying attention as I was finding and tagging, I ended up with 96.

Finally, this blog is a labor of love, and the front of the blog acts as the central-most “start here” for my presence on the Internet. It would mean a lot to me if you shared something with anyone you think would also enjoy it.

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When you gaze into the abyss →

Published August 26, 2021  ·  All posts on Aug 26  ·  ,

Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster. For when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

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If I’m being honest →

Published August 26, 2021  ·  All posts on Aug 26  ·  

So the worst-case scenario is someone who’s both naturally bitter and extremely ambitious, and yet only moderately successful.

~ Paul Graham from, Fierce Nerds

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Graham is one of that vanishingly-rare type of blogger: One who posts stellar ideas, very infrequently and is being heard. Follow that link, take a trip back to the 90s-blogs, and learn something about nerds.

If I’m being honest, I’m not sure if I’m a nerd or a geek… I mean, I don’t actually know the definitions of those nouns. Sure, I can go look—here’s a good definition-and-how-to-tell… but the words simply don’t stick in my head as standing for something. Worse, I can tick boxes on both columns of that how-to-tell page. On the other hand, this page has a nifty graph and I think I’m over on the nerd side.

On the other, other hand, looking for “nerd” versus “geek” here on my own blog, isn’t very helpful. Maybe… just maybe… I was a geek, but there’s a natural half-life to Geeknadium, after which a certain percentage of geeks spontaneously transform into Nerdomium?

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Never be poor →

Published August 25, 2021  ·  All posts on Aug 25  ·  ,

If you shape your life according to nature, you will never be poor. If you shape your lie according to people’s opinions, you will never be rich.

~ Epicurus

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The hive mind →

Published August 25, 2021  ·  All posts on Aug 25  ·  

Few working scientists can give a ground-up explanation of the phenomenon they study; they rely on information and techniques borrowed from other scientists. Knowledge and the virtues of the scientific orientation live far more in the community than the individual. When we talk of a “scientific community,” we are pointing to something critical: that advanced science is a social enterprise, characterized by an intricate division of cognitive labor. Individual scientists, no less than the quacks, can be famously bull-headed, overly enamored of pet theories, dismissive of new evidence, and heedless of their fallibility. (Hence Max Planck’s observation that science advances one funeral at a time.) But as a community endeavor, it is beautifully self-correcting.

Beautifully organized, however, it is not. Seen up close, the scientific community—with its muddled peer-review process, badly written journal articles, subtly contemptuous letters to the editor, overtly contemptuous subreddit threads, and pompous pronouncements of the academy— looks like a rickety vehicle for getting to truth. Yet the hive mind swarms ever forward. It now advances knowledge in almost every realm of existence—even the humanities, where neuroscience and computerization are shaping understanding of everything from free will to how art and literature have evolved over time.

~ Atul Gawande from, Atul Gawande and the Mistrust of Science

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I can’t add to that. I only wanted to be sure that others see it too.

Meanwhile, I never bothered to read Gawande’s hit book, The Checklist Manifesto. (To be candid, bordering on obnoxious: Time is limited, and I don’t need to seek more information about processes. I’ve got that sorted.) But it has hovered in my awareness none the less. Recently, two unrelated sources gave over-the-top praise for Gawande’s newer book, Being Mortal. On those recommendations alone it’s now in my reading queue. I’ve cracked it open, and done the preliminary reading… Have you read it? Do you have any thoughts on it?

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Your faculty of reason →

Published August 24, 2021  ·  All posts on Aug 24  ·  

You are a human being; that is, a mortal animal capable of making a rational use of impressions. And what does it mean to use them rationally? In accordance with nature and perfectly. What is exceptional in you? Is it the animal part? No. The mortal? No. That which enables you to deal with impressions? No. What is exceptional in you is your faculty of reason.

~ Epictetus

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Sedantarism →

Published August 24, 2021  ·  All posts on Aug 24

Right now, “sedentary culture” is part of the broader, overarching culture, but subcultures—including our individual culture—can also be sedentary. These sedentary subcultures end up reinforcing the overarching culture, so what can we do? I’m (obviously) interested in working on sedentarism at the broadest cultural level, but I recognize that the most immediate benefits can be found by changing our personal culture. I’ve made working on sedentarism at this level part of my work as well.

~ Katy Bowman from, «https://www.nutritiousmovement.com/changing-a-sedentary-culture/»

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Overall, the amount of activity [for Americans] has gone up slightly since the 1970s. The big issue is that our diet is killing us. Becoming more active alone isn’t enough—and Bowman’s take is nuanced, I’m not disagreeing with her article. But the first-order thing is diet. (I don’t mean “restriction” or “reduction” per se, I mean what specifically are you eating? That, “diet.”) That said, “eat better stuff” and “move around” is the prescription.

I’m reminded of, that room we all euphemistically call a living room: Would I call it my sedentary entertainment room, if I were honest? I realized that I should call it that, and so I rearranged the entire room, and got rid of the dedicated “tv” device. I still consume entertainment, but now it’s just one thing I can do in that room, rather than what the room is designed to be used for. We’ve done this, and continue to redo this occassionally, for every space inside and outside our home. For example: We don’t have a “second bedroom” nor “guest room”; We have [what we call] the “middle room”… and it’s got foam mats on the floor and random exercise, self-care, movement stuff… a finger-board over the door, a full-length mirror, a pull-up bar bolted into the ceiling, a chalk-board wall for tracking and notes… space for books. And the room also has a folding frame, air mattress, and bedding for the extremely rare guests who visit.

Frankly, there isn’t much in the way of “sedentary” left that I can trim out of my life. The vast majority of what I do is mental work. So I’m reading, writing and computing a lot. What’s left for me is to develop a healthy relationship to food. I get mental—over think, extreme thinking, stuck in my head… that sort of thing—and the way I’ve learned is the easiest escape is to run to entertainment. And to eat while being entertained. But, I’ve only learned that as being the easiest. There are a number of other things that also work to “fix” my thinking: Reading, writing, and physical activity can all work too. The hard part is changing my learned behavior. For me, it’s a matter of crafting my environment to encourage me to do things other than seek entertainment. (Learning to not mentally stress myself out would be even better, and I’m working on that too.)

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Mindset with Elizabeth Cunningham →

Published August 23, 2021  ·  All posts on Aug 23

How can someone with no technical expertise successfully create and sustain a podcast while navigating challenges and leveraging teamwork?

Hear the story of a podcast journey that started with a simple Facebook post and evolved into a partnership with a professional network.

What is your why? […] because I’m doing this because I want to talk about the taboo things around relationships and sex and love and [simply because] I want to? That’s my message and that’s why I want to make a normal conversation.

~ Elizabeth Cunningham (21:37)

The conversation explores how Elizabeth navigates the world of podcasting without a technical background. She shares her experiences of starting with zero tech knowledge and seeking help from friends and professionals along the way. Through simple actions like posting on Facebook and asking for guidance, she built a podcast with over 60 episodes, proving that technical expertise is not a prerequisite for success. The discussion highlights the importance of focusing on the message and reaching out for support when needed.

Another key theme is the significance of taking action despite uncertainty. Elizabeth reflects on how her regrets were always tied to inaction, while her successes stemmed from simply trying, even when the outcome was unclear. The conversation also touches on the benefits of forming a team and the synergy that arises when working collaboratively, as well as the value of starting small, mastering one thing, and building from there. These lessons apply not just to podcasting but to any creative or professional endeavor.

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