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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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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I will keep constant watch over myself and—most usefully—will put each day up for review. For this is what makes life evil—that none of us looks back upon our own lives. We reflect upon only that which we are about to do. And yet our plans for the future descend from the past.
~ Seneca
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And so I’ve been learning to find the complainer in myself, and bring love to him. This is transformative! It means it’s OK for me to have complaint, to feel put upon, to not be happy or grateful. This is a permission to just be how I am right now — which is sometimes full of complaint.
~ Leo Babauta, from Transforming Our Complaints into Something Generative
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Some days I really wish I could just let go of all this blogging shenanigans. But it does force me to do a lot of reading, and that means I’m periodically reminded to pay attention to what Babauta is saying.
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The fact is one’s own voice is not heard anywhere else. It’s a challenge to be yourself. It makes a lot of courage.
~ Yusef Lateef
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What you realise, the moment you ask “what would it mean to be done for the day?”, is that the answer can’t possibly involve doing all the things that need doing – even though that’s the subconscious goal with which many of us approach life, driving ourselves crazy in the process. If there are a thousand things that need doing, you’re going to need to arrive at some definition of “finished” that doesn’t encompass them all.
~ Oliver Burkeman, from What would it mean to be done for the day?
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And defining “done” for the day is just the first step. How can I be done at the end of this week? …month? I need to keep pulling back to larger timeframes to imagine: How do I ever stop having a, “the next thing I should do is…”?
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Self employment, for me at least, is a never-ending contest between the world’s worst manager and the world’s laziest employee.
~ Daniel Akst
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Whenever anyone tells me that some platform is great, I always nod and think to myself … for now. For now.
~ Bob Sassone, from Bluesky is not going to save you
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I don’t understand why no one else is saying this: Until I see anyone else running separate federation instances, it’s still just another monolithic platform. This again? If the AT Protocol (what Bluesky is built upon) is really great, how do I run my own instance to join the federation?
If you see only one instance, then it’s a platform. When you see multiple instances talking to each other, then it’s a protocol.
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The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
~ Eden Phillpotts
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That was always a huge thing for me. I was so terrible at everything at school; I couldn’t catch a ball, I couldn’t even run without running into a tree. I was pretty uncoordinated. I couldn’t paint or draw, I couldn’t sing, and I thought I was just hopeless at everything. And then I discovered that what I could do was string words together in ways that tickled people.
~ Stephen Fry, from Stephen Fry
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I think my problem was I was too good (not actually good, but not bad enough) at too many things. I sometimes wonder what it would be like to have a clear calling like Fry describes.
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