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/.

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, Labour of love

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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, 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, What If The Best Times Are Still To Come?

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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, 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, When You’re Overwhelmed, Simplify

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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, 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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Failure also

May 20, 2023

Pass on what you have learned. Strength, mastery… but weakness… folly… failure also. Yes, failure most of all. The greatest teacher failure is. Luke, we are what they grow beyond. That is the true burden of all masters.

~ “Yoda”

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Consciousness

May 19, 2023

When we consider consciousness, a number of questions naturally arise. Why did consciousness develop? What is consciousness good for? If consciousness developed to help us plan and act for the future, why is consciousness so difficult to control? Why is mindfulness so hard? And for that matter, if our actions are under our conscious control, why is dieting (and resisting other urges) so difficult for most of us?

Why does it appear that we are observers, peering out through our eyes at the world while sitting in the proverbial Cartesian theater? Why do we speak, in William James’s words, of a “stream of consciousness”? Can we perform complicated activities (such as driving) without being consciously aware of it?

Are animals conscious (and if so, which ones)? Are there developmental, neurologic, or psychiatric disorders that are actually disorders of consciousness?

There have, of course, been many answers to these questions over the last 2500 years. We hope to provide new answers to these and a number of related questions in this paper.

~ Andrew Budson, et al from, Consciousness as a Memory System

A longer pull-quote than usual for me. But it’s from a 30,000 word article. o_O

That list of questions reads like the Table of Contents from the Owners Manual that my body didn’t come with. It’s a big deal that there might be an answer to just one of them, let alone the claim in the last sentence, “We hope to provide new answers to these and a number of related questions.”

Having now read some of those plausible answers to those questions—including rebuttals and improvements to some others’ answers to those questions—my take away is: Oddly, I am now less interested in those questions.

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Opinions everywhere

May 17, 2023

Secondly, I say something like this: “I’m sure you’ve heard the expression ‘everyone is entitled to their opinion.’ Perhaps you’ve even said it yourself, maybe to head off an argument or bring one to a close. Well, as soon as you walk into this room, it’s no longer true. You are not entitled to your opinion. You are only entitled to what you can argue for.”

~ Patrick Stokes from, No, you’re not entitled to your opinion

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Stokes is a professor, and I rarely find myself in a teaching context. When I hear someone express an opinion, I make an assessment of their argument. Did they actually give a coherent argument? Did they give a sketch of one? Do they seem the sort of person who could give an argument in support of their opinion? To be clear, I’m not judging the person, but rather I’m trying to judge the ideas espoused.

Surprising to me, it’s become clear it’s often not obvious when something is a fact versus an opinion.

On the flip side, I try to signal my level confidence in my opinions. I’m trying to banish the phrase, “I think…” because it carries no meaning. Instead I try to say, “It seems obvious to me that…”, “I read somewhere that…”, “So-and-so told me that…”, or “It happened to me that…”

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