7 for Sunday

7 for Sunday is a weekly serving of 7 things for you to savor. — It’s an email containing my reflections on interesting things I find laying about, seasoned with some quotes from my collection. See https://7forsunday.com/.

Bibliofervor

November 26, 2023

I recently cracked open Listening: Interviews, 1970-1989 by Jonathan Cott. The Introduction alone knocked one of my socks off; I leapt out of my reading chair to search the Internet hoping the Introduction might be published publicly so I could share it. Alas, instead I found this:

There ought to be a word in English that describes the nearly uncontrollable urge to leap out of a reading chair, race to find a friend, and press the book you are reading urgently into their hands. When they politely agree to take a look, you say no, no, you have to read this right now. Let me hold your coffee.

~ W. Scott Olsen from, Review

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Which—thank you W. Scott Olsen!—is an altogether different thing, which knocked my other sock off. I took a few moments to noodle it and didn’t have any good ideas. Then I asked Chat-GPT (v3.5 if you’re keeping score)…

Make up a new english word which describes the nearly uncontrollable urge to leap out of a reading chair, race to find a friend, and press the book you are reading urgently into their hands. When they politely agree to take a look, you say no, no, you have to read this right now while I hold your coffee.

How about “bibliofervor”? It combines “biblio,” relating to books or reading, with “fervor,” conveying intense passion or enthusiasm. This word captures the strong, almost irresistible impulse to share a captivating book with a friend, urging them to read it immediately, even going as far as offering to hold their coffee just so they can dive into the story right away. It’s that delightful moment when a book is so enthralling that you can’t help but share it with someone else in real-time.

Oi! That is a superlative answer. NEW WORD: Bibliofervor :)

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Knowing when to stick and when to walk away

November 24, 2023

Among the vast options every day, how does one choose well? Should I observe guardrails and steer down the center of the easy path? If I can see guardrails which are clearly “that would be, or create, a true problem” and “that would be a quagmire of ongoing struggle”, why would I ever want to not steer down the middle of that path?

And finally, some problems get better if we’re willing to talk about them. Some situations, on the other hand, simply get worse when we focus our energy and community on them.

~ Seth Godin from, Working with problems

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Any time I choose to walk away, I can also choose to widen my perspective. From a wider perspective, any time I walk away is simply the next step in my path.

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Winter is coming

November 22, 2023

This caught my eye on a bright sunny day, as we approach the cold of winter (here in the Northern Hemisphere.) Sure, the blue of the sky and the orange of the leaf is a nice found-composition. But what I really like is the implication of the leaf being captured by the already-dead whatever-that-plant-was. As always: questions, connections, and open loops to ponder; no clear conclusions though.

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The good, the bad, and the ugly

November 20, 2023

I’m deep into NO!vember and of course the biggest reduction in overload is the practice of not adding more things. But I’m finding some snowball effect too: As I see the pile evaporating… as I’m not adding more things… I’m feeling more inspired and motivated to pick off one or two problem things.

One thing I will say about these lists: they are written as a way of fortune and future-telling and anticipating what a technology might do. But you often don’t know the answers to a lot of the questions until you adopt the technology.

~ Austin Kleon from, Questions for technology

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Kleon’s post is a significant collection of things (people who’ve dug into technology, lists of questions as way to evaluate technology, and more) for evaluating technology. But this point he makes at the very end is critical: Sometimes, you just can’t tell until you try it.

I hate that about technology. In fact, I use it as a key test of my own. If I cant’ tell without trying it, then it’s not worth my time trying.

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Happy. Generous. Contributing.

November 19, 2023

For years now I’ve been fascinated by groups of three.

These perspectives are not just useful literary devices. They are core practical perspectives that we adopt toward the world and our place in it. As we pursue our projects and pleasures, interact with others, and share public institutions and meanings, we are constantly shifting back and forth among these three practical perspectives, each bringing different elements of a situation to salience and highlighting different features of the world and our place in it as good or bad.

[…]

Am I happy? Am I generous? Am I contributing to the world? The moral struggle we face is finding a way to honestly and accurately answer ‘Yes’ to all three of these questions at once, over the course of a life that presents us with many obstacles to doing so.

~ Irene McMullin from, The right right thing to do

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Just yesterday, in a conversation for a podcast, I was responding to a guest who asked my opinion… I don’t think I’ve ever expressed what I said so clearly, when I suggested balancing the first-person and second-person points of view. And here I am one day later staring at something I originally read months ago, crafting a blog post… and *POW* this quite philosophical essay is talking about balancing the three perspectives of the first-, second-, and third-person. But, sorry, now I’ve buried the lead.

Am I happy? Am I generous? Am I contributing to the world? This group of 3 questions is clearly yet another guiding principle straight from the How to Be a Human manual. (Which I feel compelled to point out I’m certain exists despite my never having received a copy upon arrival in this human form.)

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It matters that you start

November 17, 2023

It matters that I start something. I don’t have to start everything; That’d be tragic. I don’t have to start many things, nor even more than one thing. But it matters that I start something. The knowledge is in the doing of that something. It matters that I go through contemplation (choosing just the right something), then into commitment, and then… that’s where I often struggle.

I’d like to propose a different view: that struggle is the place of growth, learning, curiosity, love, creativity. Struggle is an incredible opportunity for being creative.

~ Leo Babauta from, Turn Struggle into Creativity

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I struggle when there’s a huge gap between the know-naught starting point, and my being one of those effortless creatives who get stuff done. Those who get stuff done well and demonstrate craftsmanship and care and pride and joy! (Gazing at the horizon,) there’s the thing. I know what it can be. I see how to begin, but I see hills and I know there will be challenges. Don’t turn away. (Gazing at the horizon,) if there’s somewhere I want to be, I need to start walking.

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It matters that you stop

November 15, 2023

“I wonder what would happen if I created a daily podcast, and did nothing else— if I didn’t tell anyone, didn’t share on social media, nothing. Just publish the thing every day.” So I went and made it happen, over 1,300 times. The answer to “what if?” is: I would receive a cornucopia of benefits simply from doing the work, even if no one heard a single one of them. I received: practice speaking extemporaneously, lessons in dramatic reading, countless tiny lessons of microphone technique, countless nuanced insights of physiology, and much much more.

Unfortunately, over the years, I became fixated on the least-important part of my original question: Daily.

I think this dynamic, to one degree or another, impacts anyone who has been fortunate enough to experience some success in their field. Doing important work matters and sometimes this requires sacrifices. But there’s also a deep part of our humanity that responds to these successes — and the positive feedback they generate — by pushing us to seek this high at ever-increasing frequencies.

~ Cal Newport from, Danielle Steel and the Tragic Appeal of Overwork

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It’s become clear that maintaining the pace is a problem, and so I’ve changed the pace. And in a blink, I feel I’m again focused on that still-overflowing cornucopia of benefits.

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I arrange my thoughts

November 14, 2023

[A]s I write I think about all sorts of things. I don’t necessarily write down what I’m thinking; It’s just that as I write I think about things. As I write, I arrange my thoughts. And rewriting and revising takes my thinking down even deeper paths. No matter how much I write, though, I never reach a conclusion. And no matter how much I rewrite, I never reach the destination. Even after decades of writing, the same still holds true.

~ Haruki Murakami

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This right here is just fine

November 13, 2023

There are only two things which seem to work for me: Plain old discipline, and regular, high-intensity exercise. Make a plan. Work the plan. Follow through. I don’t have to finish it all. (That used to be a huge problem too.) Each day, make a plan. And yes, some days the plan is, “today there’s no plan just follow your nose.” Where the mental freedom to believe that’s a good plan is banked during the days with a more plan-looking plan. The exercise acts as a baseline reset.

The result? An inevitable sense of disappointment. A sense that other people are doing better than us. We feel guilt. We feel pressure. We think “Oh, if only I had more money, or a better job, or lived in France where the child care benefits were different, if I had more custody, then things would be good…”

~ Ryan Holiday from, When You’re Too Busy Aiming For It, You Miss The Moments In Front Of You

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Slowly, daily, my false sense of urgency ratchets up. It’s not healthy, but going out and doing something high intensity resets my personal brand of insanity. Every time I’m in the worst of moods, all I have to do is head out and just start running like I hate myself. (This is rare, but frequent enough that it’s useful to have a strategy ready.) I can go just a couple minutes running like I stole something, and then my crazy-brain starts bargaining… okay, uh, if we can just slow down a bit, I promise to stop acting crazy. I’m pretty sure that’s not the best way to deal with things, but it’s definitely a coping strategy that works well. And the side effects are awesome.

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Our experience of time

November 12, 2023

Sometimes I sit in a chair on the patio in the afternoon sun. If I’m just the right combination of tired, relaxed, and comfortable, and if the wind, sun, temperature, and soundscape are just so, I can drift into a trance. Time passes. After which, I have no clear sense of whether it was a moment, or ten minutes. It doesn’t seem that time had stopped, rather it feels like time had ceased to affect me. Did I breath? Did I move? Did I even think in that time?

It’s not only that our experiences of space are different. Our experiences of time are likely different, too. We think about the passage of time through our terrestrial experience of unidirectional motion through space – our metaphors of time are almost all grounded in the way our bodies move forward through the environment. Given this fact, how would an octopus, who can easily see and move in all directions, conceptualise time?

~ David Borkenhagen from, Octopus time

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Sometimes I find things on the Internet and there’s a clear takeaway for me, or a clear new-to-me idea or connection. This isn’t one of those times. Instead, I dipped into this article one day, came out the other end aware that it had to be included in a post.

And, perhaps I just fell asleep?

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