There’s something to it

February 20

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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Not just fear, but reality

February 18

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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Perspective

February 14

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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Review each day

February 11

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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Complainer heal thyself

February 10

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 definition of done

February 8

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, 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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It makes no sense

February 6

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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What’s my thing?

February 4

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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Only so many hours

February 2

Several years ago the idea struck me to try living in the digital world but without digital media. I realised that I used to have all these analogue habits that fell by the wayside as I spent more time online, and thought that six months without digital media would give me the opportunity to focus on more material activities.

~ From Jennifer Rauch on why Slow Media is satisfying, sustainable and smart

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There are, after all, only so many hours in the day. Our choices (or our defaults if we don’t choose) end up determining the quality of our lives.

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