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/.

Provoking the powerful

June 5, 2023

One reason I write here, is because I think it’s healthy for me to work with the garage door up. My choice of the guideline that herein I write about myself and things I find lying about reminds me to stick with sharing my subjective experience. Long ago I began suppressing my urge to share my opinions, and gosh, that turns out to be liberating.

This is the birth of “epistemic humility” in Western philosophy: the acknowledgment that one’s blind spots and shortcomings are an invitation for ongoing intellectual investigation and growth.

~ J. W. Traphagan and John J. Kaag from, https://theconversation.com/what-socrates-know-nothing-wisdom-can-teach-a-polarized-america-202696

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The confetti gun of opinions seems always to be spewing. For a while I was concerned that my expanding humility would create a sort of power vacuum into which even more opinions of others would drift and settle. But, nope. Removing my contribution has made no difference in the fluttering mess. None the less, it’s simply nice not to feel urgency to contribute to the mess.

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Never say never

June 4, 2023

Is there a term for applying the Socratic method on oneself? Maybe, autosocraticism? Not simply self-examination or self-inquiry, but rather when you find yourself speaking with someone and realize you’ve just deployed the Socratic Method on yourself? Because this happens to me. I’m explaining something I’m thinking about, and I realize I actually don’t understand what I’m thinking about. (This is very close to “rubber duck debugging” where you can sometimes find the source of a problem by explaining it to a rubber duck. Yes, really.)

Also, a pull-quote is a self-quotation; a selection from the thing itself, presented earlier to suggest reading on is worthwhile.

And of course, I also need the past tense verb-form of that noun, just so I can write the sentence I really want to start with:

The other day I autosocratisized myself into realizing I had no freakin’ clue what the difference is between a pull-quote and a blockquote.

All of which confirms the (usually unspoken) truism about humans – we’re often wrong but never in doubt. We’re as sure of the future of our relationships as we are that 2+2=4.

~ Bob Seawright from, https://rpseawright.wordpress.com/2018/06/23/proof-negative-2/

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Never say never. I’m often wrong and frequently in doubt.

Also, a pull-quote is a self-quotation; a selection from the thing itself, presented earlier to suggest reading on is worthwhile. Versus a blockquote; something quoted from another source, but which is too large to be just dropped inline wrapped in quotation marks.

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Just, hard

June 2, 2023

I spend large amounts of time just thinking. That’s not so terrible, all things considered since there’s lots of actively anti-useful stuff I could be doing.

People have different personalities, goals, experiences, and levels of chance and serendipity, all of which make universal truths hard to find and difficult to teach. No matter how smart the world becomes, the best answer will always be, “You’ve got to figure it out for yourself.”

A lot of things work like that. Some of the most important topics are the hardest to teach, and real world experience is the only school.

~ Morgan Housel from, https://collabfund.com/blog/very-important-and-hard-to-teach/

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There are certain traps for my mind. One insidious example is when I notice I’ve been doing prolonged thinking. …and then I start thinking about how I was thinking about whatever-it-was. …and might there be some underlying principle or knowledge that I don’t understand? …and maybe I should read more about that? …and maybe I should seek out others who know more about that?

Sometimes, I can manage to shake myself out of that. But usually, I have to simply lean into it for another hour, sometimes even the rest of the day (or week!) “Okay, I’m hung-up on this” and I have to try to go all in. After a real attempt at figuring it out, when I can apprehend just how bonkers-complex it would be, my mind simply let’s go of it.

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New associations

June 1, 2023

Instead of feeling complacent about what you know, you must expand your knowledge to related fields, giving your mind fuel to make new associations between different ideas. You must experiment and look at problems from all possible angles. As your thinking grows more fluid, your mind will grow increasingly dimensional, seeing more and more aspects of reality. In the end, you will turn against the very rules you have internalized, shaping and reforming them to suit your spirit.

~ Robert Greene

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Slightly better

May 31, 2023

An eternal question which I find myself frequently pondering: When to stick with something and when to dramatically pivot (or outright quit)? Pondering this problem is not a recent development. I have countless stories going back as far as I can remember—all the way back to little-kid baseball at, perhaps, age 10.

[…] there’s not a lot of readily available answers to the question of what the meaning of life is. The only answer I’ve been able to come up with for myself is this: to ensure that my presence on this earth makes it better than if I hadn’t lived at all. Whether or not I’ll have managed to achieve that is an unknowable calculation. All I can do is try to love this stupid, cruel, wonderful, gorgeous world I’ve been given through an accident of entropy, and hope that I can give it a better than equivalent exchange.

~ Jenny from, https://phirephoenix.com/blog/2022-10-18/work

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When I find I’m staring into space, pondering the stick-or-pivot question, a two-part test has been getting me moving again: If I keep doing the thing (upon which I’m pondering sticking or pivoting) are my efforts making the world a better place, and does what I’m doing have a clear end-goal?

The perhaps counter-intuitive part is that while I want a ‘yes’ (obviously!) for the first part of that test, I want a ‘no‘ for the second part. When I have a clear end-goal things don’t work out well. I find I generally misunderstand in the beginning of a thing what would be a good end goal, and worse, I lose interest once I understand what done looks like for the long-arc of the thing. Far better it seems to point myself in a makes the world better direction, and wonder onward.

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Setting and scene

May 29, 2023

Lately I’ve been struggling with setting. As many people have noted, excessive fiddling with getting things ready, or “just so”, before feeling one can begin to do something is simply a form of procrastination. It’s a form of hiding from doing the work. Steven Pressfield describes this as the “resistance” which shows up just when you are finally facing the real work that you are called to do.

I tell this story not because I think a method approach, in which you inhabit your characters and their behaviors, is the best way to write fiction. (If this were true, a lot more authors would take a swing at romance novels.) But instead because it’s an extreme example of a more general point that I’ve been emphasizing recently: when it comes to cognitive work, setting makes a difference.

~ Cal Newport from, https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2022/10/13/on-vampires-and-method-writing/

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Setting is real, and it is important. But there’s a second part to finding (or creating) the optimal environment: Scene. Where are the others who are also doing the same work? It could be the other painters or authors like you, and you’re all living in a neighborhood and regularly gathering and conversing at the local cafes. (The archetypical writers scene of the 1900s was in Paris.) If I’ve imagineered a certain niche of work that I want to do, how do I find (or create) the scene?

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Thank you I. Asimov

May 28, 2023

Over in my Open + Curious project, I’ve been working intentionally to improve my writing. For Open + Curious the more recent articles all begin with a clear posit (a statement which is made on the assumption that it will prove to be true) and then go on to explain why I believe that to be true; that’s their finished form. I was generally writing each piece, editing it to find and hone a single line of thinking, and then finishing up by crafting the leading posit. Yes, I know, “Craig discovers the essay.”

I’m reading I. Asimov and this advice leapt off the page:

What I do now is think up a problem and a resolution to that problem. I then begin the story, making it up as I go along, having all the excitement of finding out what will happen to the characters and how they will get out of their scrapes, but working steadily toward the known resolution so that I don’t get lost en route.

When asked for advice by beginners, I always stress that. Know your ending, I say, or the river of your story may finally sink into the desert sands and never reach the sea.

~ Isaac Asimov

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I’ve now written thousands of posts where I’ve led with a quotation from something. I’m forever writing some observation about what I’ve quoted, and then trying to pivot to what I actually want to say. Unfortunately, this style has begun to feel constraining.

Going forward, I’m going to see what happens if I think of what I’m quoting as giving me a direction. This piece starts with my thoughts about my writing for Open + Curious, and then looking “in the direction” of Asimov’s quoted contribution, beyond that I “see” this gibberish about my writing process. Sorry, maybe that’s all too meta? It’s noisy in my head.

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I’m starting to feel like an optimist

May 26, 2023

And I typed that title with trepidation. I’ve been saying forever, “You know what you call an optimist with experience? A realist.” I suppose at some point in the past, I must have had the rosy-eyed optimism of youth— but I don’t really recall that. Also at some point, I realized I had a solidly pessimistic position. I simply spent too much time dealing with broken technology; technology is always broken. I always seemed to end up having to fix it. But lately, my mood has certainly shifted. Is that because my “outlook” shifted, or is it vice versa?

The first time I saw speculative futures used to shape cities, I was standing on the work. It was an April evening years ago, and I was headed to a client meeting. I hustled from my car toward the building in question, my arms full of rolled paper, when I noticed a series of questions chalked in block letters on the sidewalk below my feet.

~ Johanna Hoffman from, https://longnow.org/ideas/02022/10/10/speculative-futures-cities-design/

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I once QM’d 2km across the Williamsburg bridge. A fellow adventurer had started the morning by buying a croissant with the express intent of not eating it. (Aside: In the French origins or Parkour, they used to say [but in French of course] “…it’s okay, head home, put your feet up, and have a croissant.” As a way of hazing each other into pushing themselves a little harder.)

We had each taken a piece of sidewalk chalk with us. When we were ready to quit (ie, stand up and walk) we planned to write our “excuse” for stopping on the bridge pathway… and then continue on in QM, moving over and beyond our excuse.

I was over the middle of the river, pretty alone, in the chilly October drizzle. And thinking about quitting. And thinking about getting out my chalk… when I crawled—inconceivably! since the pathway is like 12 feet wide—directly over a freshly chalked hashtag… I was so tired I didn’t look up to read, I just stared straight down and read it as I crawled along what had been written…

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It made me laugh. It reminded me that my friends were there too. It reminded me why we were doing the challenge. Thank you Kristen. I hope you read this.

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Work ethic

May 24, 2023

Hedonistic adaptation ensures that I continuously cycle back and forth between, “If this isn’t nice I don’t know what is!” and rage-quitting all my self-assigned should’s. Two things help temper my intemperance: Journalling provides me with some—albeit subjective—perspective, and reading about the reality of people’s actual lives and work ethics relaxes my self-criticism.

A truer answer would have been that he was fiercely private and deeply caring. He often let other people talk, entering a conversation with a single considered sentence. He didn’t smile unless he was really pleased, and his biggest laugh was a small chuckle. His eyes would squeeze shut and his head would tip back and after he chuckled, he would look at you with delight.

~ Alison Fairbrother from, https://lithub.com/lessons-in-writing-and-life-from-my-grandfather-e-l-doctorow/

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Without Internet cheating, I can’t name a single one of E. L. Doctorow’s works. But I have this diffuse idea that he is (was?) A Real Writer. Someone who got things written, and maybe had a few ideas worth sharing. Darn it if reading Fairbrother’s piece didn’t tug at the ‘ol heart strings, and I might have gotten something briefly stuck in the corner of one of my eyes.

But I came away with a recalibration: I now have this diffuse idea that he was A Real Writer, got things written, had a few ideas worth sharing, and it was made possible by his family and his work ethic.

(Also, maybe help this autodidact out by hitting reply and telling me one thing of Doctorow’s I must read.)

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Anxiously panicking

May 22, 2023

A couple of weeks ago I started obliterating processes. I’ve often talked about how everything is a process, and I still believe that. However I’d reached a point where I simply had too many processes (I won’t bore you with unbelievable examples) and a couple of weeks ago I decided enough was enough. I spent several days doing nothing but thinking about everything I was doing, and wanted to be doing but wasn’t “getting around to.”

We’re overwhelmed by it all: all the things we have on our plates, all the interruptions and messages and emails, all the things online and on social media, all the news and chaos of the world, all the things going on in our relationships.

~ Leo Babauta from, https://zenhabits.net/onebreath/

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Some things I do can feel like a chore but when I was honest, they are actually things I enjoy doing. Furthermore, they pay off outsized benefits for the time they require. What then made them feel like chores? I think it was the anxiety of the other things I felt I should be doing—after all, I put those other things on a list or made a process so I could chip away at them in sane-sized chunks. I went through everything, and then started deleting things from that “everything else” space.

Is this simply me oscillating between no-planning, planning, no-planning, planning? Is this a 2/3-life (or, if I pretend I’ll live long, “mid-life”) crisis? Have I said a polite-but-clear “no” to some big things? Have I been having some anxiety-free days? YES, to all of those. I’m currently trying to be vigilant to notice the first thing I get anxious about—because I’m going to delete that next.

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…and some housekeeping

May 22, 2023

Could you contribute a testimonial for 7 for Sunday? I’m always on the lookout for some, “This is better than sliced bread! ~ Craig C.” testimonials. If you’re open to being quoted, please hit reply and send me a testimonial. (They end up getting posted on the front of my site where the main signup is for 7 for Sunday.)

And please consider sharing 7 for Sunday with others. Forwarding the email you received works, but you can also just point people to https://constantine.name/7-for-sunday/.

Thanks for reading! I appreciate your time and attention, and I don’t take it for granted. :)

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Slow, surreal

May 21, 2023

I’ve embraced this slow philosophy for most of my professional career. As with Stearns, I too have become a believer in how much can be accomplished in normal 40-hour weeks; if you’re willing to really work when you’re working, and then be done when you’re done. It’s nice, however, to see someone so much more eminent than me also find success with this fixed-schedule approach.

~ Cal Newport from, https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2022/10/21/professio-sano-in-vitam-sanam-on-balancing-work-and-life/

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The other day I had a most surreal experience. I was at home. The weather was gorgeous and I spent most of the day on the patio. For about half of the day I did nothing in particular. And I felt—in the moments when I was doing nothing—that that was fine.

I have often experienced this surreality, but always when I have been away. Always, critically, when I had intentionally spent time planning and working to create space to be away. Think of it like getting a running start to coast through the away time; the experience of that surreality had always been while coasting.

“…and then be done when you’re done.” But the other day? I dunno. I did stuff, and then I was done, and that was okay.

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