Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn whatever state I am in, therein to be content.
~ Helen Keller
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Wonders →
Not too often, not too infrequent →
There is no piece of straw incapable of breaking the camel’s back. Because there’s nothing particularly interesting about the final piece of straw, it’s the total mass. Over the past week I’ve been attacking my lists in a sort of upside down fashion. There are some big, low-priority things sitting at the bottom of my lists for some time. They’ve resisted my finely-honed urge to summarily delete them; each time I consider them I remain sure I want to actually do them. None the less, I see them and I know they’re there and they weigh upon my mind.
Left unchecked, every life flows away from higher aims and towards the path of least resistance. Daily practices can help stem this slide. But staying on course requires check-ins that are too big to do every day, and too important to only accomplish monthly (or yearly).
~ Brett McKay from, «https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/habits/sunday-firesides-theres-only-so-far-you-can-get-off-track-in-a-week/»
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Last weekend, as I often do, I did a review and decided to focus on those big, low-priority items. And to my surprise, I’ve been springing out of bed at 530—the normally targeted time, but which is often a struggle—and smashing these items in multi-hour dashes. Crossing them off one by one has been sublime. The magic seems to be the combination of going to bed knowing I’m going to start tomorrow working on those things which are actually on my mind, and knowing that I’ve set myself a specific window of days to smash this stuff.
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Change →
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
~ Buckminster Fuller
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It’s people not things →
People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed and redeemed. Never throw out anyone.
~ Audrey Hepburn
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Souvenirs →
I don’t collect many souvenirs. Sometimes I buy postcards when I visit places… and then I tape those into my journals. But in a very real sense a lot of what I write in my journals is meant to be a souvenir. Either way, the physical or the notational souvenir, is meant to trigger some memory.
Even institutions built for the express purpose of information preservation have succumbed to the ravages of time, natural disaster or human conquest. The famous library of Alexandria, one of the most important repositories of knowledge in the ancient world, eventually faded into obscurity. Built in the fourth century B.C., the library flourished for some six centuries, an unparalleled center of intellectual pursuit. Alexandria’s archive was said to contain half a million papyrus scrolls — the largest collection of manuscripts in the ancient world — including works by Plato, Aristotle, Homer and Herodotus. By the fifth century A.D., however, the majority of its collections had been stolen or destroyed, and the library fell into disrepair.
~ Adrienne Bernhard, from Shining a Light on the Digital Dark Age
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Always I’m thinking: Do I really want to add this thing to my pile? There’s a timeframe of only a few decades where any thing, or notation, has the chance to jog my memory. Sometimes I think of taking a photo… and then I think, why? Why this image right here? Maybe it would be better (I continue thinking) to just relax and enjoy the moment. Even the Library at Alexandria’s enormous collection was surely only a minuscule fraction of what humanity had created to that point. Why take a photo? Why make a notation? Why build a web site? :)
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Challenged to change →
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
~ Viktor Frankl
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I did not see that coming →
I struggle a lot with processes. I struggle with not implementing all of the processes I imagine. I struggle with gauging if some process will have the desired outcome. I struggle with deciding if I’m fascinated with the process, with the outcome, or simply with novelty in itself. I struggle with knowing when to abandon a process; for something I do which had clear benefits in the past, but isn’t moving me forward right now, how long do I stick with that?
Humans have invented all sorts of practices like this, and their purpose is simply to put your mind somewhere outside of your normal, habitual ways of seeing, and discover what you come back with.
Nobody knows quite what insights and paradigm shifts will be produced by doing these practices, which is exactly why you do them.
~ David Cain from, You Need to See Things Differently to Do Things Differently
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Over the years I’ve come to terms with my struggles. That’s just the way it is (for me.) Year by year I find I’m increasingly okay with tossing stuff (figuratively and literally.) “Is this working?” seems too dumb to be useful, and yet it cuts as well as Occam’s Razor. Today, I’m downright comfortable with leaving many ideas and opportunities unexplored. “Life moves pretty fast.“
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Perspective →
Looking at life from a different perspective makes you realize that it’s not the deer that is crossing the road, rather it’s the road that is crossing the forest.
~ Muhammad Ali
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The disturbing truth →
Artists never stop looking for the disturbing truth behind the facade. When reality arrives, they won’t be surprised, because they saw it coming. Sometimes they even encouraged it to come.
~ Seth Godin
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The choice →
It’s a choice. The choice between being the linchpin (the one people can’t live without) and the cog (who does what she’s told). The choice between doing art (and forging your own path, on your own terms, and owning what happens) and merely doing your job (which pushes all the power and all the responsibility to someone else).
The good news is that it’s your choice, no one else’s.
~ Seth Godin
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