It’s a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.
~ John Steinbeck
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Sleep →
There’s something to it →
Each night as you lay down to sleep, you embark on an extraordinary journey – not through space, but through the shifting terrain of your own consciousness. This transition, known as the sleep-onset period, is not a simple flick of a switch from wakefulness to slumber, but a gradual, nuanced shift that suspends you between two worlds. Long regarded as a mere prelude to sleep, recent studies suggest there is far more to this fascinating twilight period.
~ Célia Lacaux, from The brain’s twilight zone: when you’re neither awake nor asleep
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Back in The Interlude I wrote about an experience… pretty sure this was a prolonged dip into that state.
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A bore →
A bore is a man who, when you ask him how he is, tells you.
~ Bert Taylor
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Not just fear, but reality →
Overwhelm from tasks, messages, and more is completely normal. It’s based on a fear that we can’t handle everything coming our way. That we’re going to fail at juggling all of these balls, and drop them, and be a failure. It’s a fear of inadequacy, that shows up as anxiety.
~ Leo Babauta, from Transforming Overwhelm into a Creative, Productive Energy
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It’s not just a “fear” that we can’t handle everything coming our way. It’s the reality for me. I’m ambitious to a fault and I set myself up daily for far too much. As always, Babauta has the keys for pivoting away from the overwhelm, into the possibilities of progress.
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Acceptance →
My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.
~ Michael J. Fox
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Dance while we can →
Yes, guilty, are happy. Today, lost none of our number. All still here. Will not be here forever. But all here now.
~ George Saunders, from The Moron Factory
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This short story is written in a style that feels like text messaging. However, do not let that make you miss reading it.
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Freedom →
I think freedom, ideally, is being able to choose your responsibilities. Not not having any responsibilities, but being able to choose which things you want to be responsible for.
~ Toni Morrison
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Perspective →
Maybe it’s the nature of the binary times that we’re in that makes it very, very difficult to applaud one thing without condemning another. I think we’re afraid to take a victory lap, and maybe we should be. Maybe that’s just a bit premature or arrogant.
~ Nick Gillespie, from Mike Rowe on Patriotism, Paul Harvey, and American Progress
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The same question (can we applaud one thing without condeming other things?) arises with eulogies. I say we can. The key is to know and understand the broader context that we’re—just for a little while—ignoring.
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Professionalism →
The essence of professionalism is the focus upon the work and its demands, while we are doing it, to the exclusion of all else. The ancient Spartans schooled themselves to regard the enemy, any enemy, as nameless and faceless. In other words, they believed that if they did their work, no force on Earth could stand against them.
~ Steven Pressfield
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Self-forgiveness →
But what about self-forgiveness? Is it morally valuable, or just something we do to make ourselves feel better? And what is self-forgiveness, anyway?
~ Mordechai Gordon, from Self-forgiveness is more than self-comfort − a philosopher explains
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This is one of those topics that I thought I understood… until I started reading more about it.
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