Then the only proper response for me to make is this: You are much mistaken, my friend, if you think that any man worth his salt cares about the risk of death and doesn’t concentrate on this alone: whether what he’s doing is right or wrong, and his behavior a good man’s or a bad one’s.
~ Marcus Aurelius
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The fatalism advocated by the Stoics is in a sense the reverse, or one might say the mirror image, of negative visualization: Instead of thinking about how our situation could be worse, we refuse to think about how it could be better.
~William B. Irvine from, A Guide to the Good Life
I use negative visualization very often. “What could possibly go wrong?” is one of my favorite interjections. Everyone thinks I’m making a joke—and in part I am—but what I’m really doing is actually thinking about what could actually go wrong.
I’ve learned, (slowly after far too much struggle because: i dumb,) that the more simple I can keep my life, the better. I want to be clear: The complexity I wrestle with—and which wins and beats me down—is all stuff I’ve invented. Not simply accepted, but outright invented. Things I want to create or see get done or ways I can help when someone asks and on and on and on. My brain is a snow globe of ideas.
And that all springs from my apparently hardwired drive to make things better. So, practicing refusing to think about how it could be better.
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The Untapped Power of Vulnerability & Transparency in Content Strategy
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Something I stumbled over the other day related to my recent efforts within the Movers Mindset project to find a focus vision and mission.
In the context of the linked article: What I’ve done with Movers Mindset has often been vulnerable and transparent. It hasn’t worked—”worked” being defined as, “made the project able to continue indefinitely while doing good things.” But it also definitely has not hindered my efforts.
I simply wanted to leave this here so that I can read it again at some future date.
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The man of contentment seeks nothing that he doesn’t have and understands that whatever he has isn’t his to own
~ Wu Hsin
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Is it better to be the fly on the wall, or the hornet in the room?
I variously categorize conversations on a spectrum from formal to casual. Today I want to talk about conversations that fall in the middle. At the formal end would be police interrogations and then—perhaps—live, antagonistic interviews of politicians. At the casual end would be pillow-talk and long-term friends around a campfire with their preferred beverages. In the middle is fertile ground for great conversations.
So what exactly is in the middle? Therein lie conversations built on a shared intention: Two people who want to resolve a difference, who want to co-create something new from their individual experiences, or who are simply excited about taking a leap into the unknown experience that is a good conversation. It’s that third one which really calls to me these days.
I’ve now done enough recorded conversations to say two things:
I used to think I was doing interviews. In fact, I began using a process and format intentionally meant to create interviews; I showed up with things I was interested in and I wanted to learn more about from my partner. I soon discovered that when we veered away from the formal-end of the conversation spectrum, (away from the “interview” I had intended to create,) into the more middle-area of simply good conversation, that was when I most enjoyed the experience. My conversation partners clearly enjoyed it more, and the listeners did too. (“hmmmmm… maybe I am onto something here?” #seecraiglearn )
The first thing I have to say is that the form of the created artifact follows from the process.
If I use a process intended to create formal conversations, that’s what I’ll get, (more or less.) If I use a process intended to create more casual conversations, then I get that, (more or less.) The insight is that the process for creating casual conversation is not itself casual. The process is specific, rigorous, and frankly exhausting. It’s exhausting because I want to execute the process in order to create the best possible conversation, and I want to experience that conversation. That’s in contrast to my conversation partner who is only attempting to do the latter because they’re only aware of their desire to experience the conversation. They’re not aware of the process, and they probably shouldn’t be aware.
Each conversation—each performance, since I’m today talking about when we are recording—is better if we’re comfortable going just a bit farther than we might normally. This is where the process pays off. Everything I’ve done in preparation, and everything I do during the conversation, from the obvious to the subtle to the outright manipulative, is in service of creating the best space for that conversation.
The second thing I have to say is that to create good, casual conversations I have to help my partner leap.
I recently listened to Jesse Thorn’s interview of Werner Herzog for The Turnaround. If you’ve read this far, I can’t imagine you wouldn’t enjoy listening to that ~35 minutes of Thorn and Herzog.
In the conversations that I’m currently interested in creating and recording I simply cannot be the fly on the wall. I have to literally sit down with my conversation partner. But there’s an enormous range of engagement that I can vary. (More realistically I can only try to control this, as I’m always balancing the observer-process and the participant-creation experiences.) In my first recorded conversations there quickly became far too much of me performing, (and I’ll leave it at that for today.) Then followed me reigning myself in too far, then some relaxing back towards more of me, and currently I find that I like the amount of me that appears in the conversations.
After listening to Herzog’s thoughts on documentary film-making, (but he talks about a lot more than that in the podcast,) I now see that I need to work on being the active hornet in the room. This is the dimension where I actively lead the conversation—not upstage my partner, but actively lead in the way that two intimate dance partners have a leader, (and, yes, who is leading can change at any moment.)
I need to more often be the hornet. I need to more often suggest simply by my presence that a sting might be imminent. Then if they decline to leap, maybe, sting just a little.
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What drives personal growth, resilience, and connection in the face of challenges like health conditions and cultural transitions?
Diagnosed at age 18, diabetes has simply been a fact of life for Josh Wit. He discusses traveling to Germany and his experiences training and living with diabetes. Josh unpacks why he loves workshops and training with community. He shares stories of how diabetes affects his practice, and his thoughts on training and community.
I had to learn over a long period of time that, ‘Wait a minute! If I actually start listening to what my body’s telling me, the outcome is better even if it might hurt the ego at the time.’ That’s a huge practice.
~ Josh Wit (25:52)
Josh Wit is an engineer turned parkour practitioner, coach, and organizer. He is a parkour coach with the Brisbane Parkour Association (of which he is also the vice president), and has traveled globally to visit other communities and events. Josh has been training parkour for many years, despite being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes prior to beginning his training.
The conversation explores themes of personal resilience, connection, and the transformative power of movement practices. Josh shares his journey with type-1 diabetes, describing the challenges of managing health during intense physical activities like parkour. He reflects on how diabetes shaped his awareness of his body and pushed him toward a deeper understanding of balance, both physically and emotionally.
Another key topic is the influence of community and cultural experiences. Josh discusses his decision to move to Germany, motivated by a desire to immerse themselves in a different culture and to embrace their dual heritage. He also shares memorable experiences from international workshops, emphasizing the importance of learning from others and the sense of connection fostered through shared physical practices.
Takeaways
Learning from others — Acknowledging that much of personal growth and creativity stems from shared experiences and inspirations from others.
Managing diabetes through awareness — Balancing life and physical activity with diabetes requires heightened self-awareness and proactive management.
Impact of cultural immersion — Choosing to live in a different culture can provide profound personal and anthropological insights.
Transformational power of workshops — Structured, progressive environments in workshops can lead to significant personal breakthroughs.
Value of resilience and adaptability — Adapting to physical and emotional challenges teaches patience, balance, and self-compassion.
Resources
Brisbane Parkour Association — The organization where the speaker coaches and promotes parkour.
Yamakasi — The group known for pioneering parkour and their workshops.
Parkour Wave — The parkour community in Italy mentioned during the discussion.
Continuous Glucose Monitors — Devices discussed by the speaker as essential for managing type 1 diabetes effectively.
(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)
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Episode 27 of John Vervaeke’s, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis presents an intriguing definition of intelligence, and in particular how does one succeed or fail at finding solutions to generalized problems (“I’m thirsty, how do I get water?” “How do I win this chess game?” “What’s 4 times 8?”)
Awakening from the Meaning Crisis
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To watch the courses of the stars as if you revolved with them. To keep constantly in mind how the elements alter into one another. Thoughts like this wash off the mud of life below.
~ Marcus Aurelius
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The things that worked out weren’t _supposed_ to work, so I realized on my birthday: I had no plan for after 40. As often happens at forks in the path—college graduation, quarter-life crisis, midlife crisis, kids leaving home, retirement—questions started to bubble to the surface.
~ Tim Ferris from, Tribe of Mentors
If you’ve not heard of this book, my pull-quote is from Tim’s Introduction… eight lines into the book. The book is 597 pages, and the pages of the book—not including the hard covers, just the pages—are 1-and-three-quarters inches thick. It’s can serve as a functional foot-rest in a pinch. (But interestingly, not as a doorstop since it’s mysteriously light for its size. I keep wondering if the back half of the book is hollowed out, as in a prison escape movie, hiding a whoopie-cushion full of Helium.)
Anyway, if you’ve not heard of this book, find a copy and start reading the Introduction.
This book arrived in our house November, 2018. I started into it and it is, as one would hope, chock full of stupidly interesting ideas from so many different people. I got through 64 pages before, for some reason which I only just today realized, I put it down one evening. And then I didn’t pick it back up for, well, two years. I mean I moved it around a lot, but whatever it was that made me _want_ to read the book, there was something else that made me _not_ want the book.
You ever have sand slipping through your fingers? I didn’t realize it, (until today,) but that’s what made me walk away from the book. Yes there’s some malarky and woo-wu in the book; But there’s so much that I want to dig further into. Back in 2018, what was I going to do with that? …blog about every other page? Instinctively I knew that wouldn’t do _me_ much good.
But today? Today I’m comfortable knowing that I can bump into ideas, mull them over, and produce a contextualized, reduced to something I’m interested, idea… and drop that into the Slipbox.
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I think there are some specific reasons why Zettelkasten has worked so well for me. I’ll try to make those clear, to help readers decide whether it would work for them. However, I honestly didn’t think Zettelkasten sounded like a good idea before I tried it. It only took me about 30 minutes of working with the cards to decide that it was really good. So, if you’re like me, this is a cheap experiment. I think a lot of people should actually try it to see how they like it, even if it sounds terrible.
~ Abramdemski from, The Zettelkasten Method
If you’ve been following along with my personal knowledge system, Zettelkastën and Slipbox journey of discovery you might be interested in this deep, DEEP dive someone else wrote. This is one of the many things I read all over the place before beginning my experiments. I don’t agree with his “30 minutes … to decide”; It’s taken me a little bit /sarcasm longer than that. But I do agree with his assessment. And everything else in that link.
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