Craig Constantine

Practicing peace

June 24, 2021

Walking is a deliberate, repetitive, ritualized motion. It is an exercise in peace.

The Buddhists talk of “walking meditation,” or kinhin, where the movement after a long session of sitting, particularly movement through a beautiful setting, can unlock a different kind of stillness than traditional meditation.
~ Ryan Holiday from, Take A Walk: The Work & Life Benefits of Walking – RyanHoliday.net

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Running is also a deliberate, repetitive, ritualized motion.

But gosh do I hate running. There’s no peace at all. At the very least, I’m glad that I can run (in the shoes I like to wear, for the general health of my feet,) without injury. I can go a good mile—where “good” refers to the length, I’m not cheating calling the distance “a mile”… I emphatically do not mean the running of said mile is A Good Thing. I digress. I can go a good mile and I’m confident that the next day I will not be in agony. I know that running is exceedingly good for me. I sleep better that night, am in a better mood the next morning, and something about that level of effort just turns the volume down on the rest of the world for a good day or even two.

But I know people who swear that running is peaceful. …that running is meditative. …that running is an enjoyable part of their life. …something they even look forward to.

I sure wish I could figure out how to reconcile those two alternate realities.

The only way out is through

May 29, 2021

If it’s easy, you’re not growing.

It’s like lifting weights: if you can do it without trying, you’re not going to get any stronger.

The whole point—of life, of working out, of work—is to push yourself, and to grow as a result of pushing against and through that resistance.
~ Ryan Holiday from, If You’re Not Seeking Out Challenges, How Are You Going to Get Better?

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Nine years ago I was smack in the middle of my HVAC-installer apprenticeship. I lovingly refer to the roughly two-week period as, “that time I got really into attic-yoga.” The contractor installing our central HVAC had a young fellow working with him, and that guy hurt his knee. I spent days learning how to make and insulate hard duct work, HVAC line sets (the wiring and refrigerant piping), electrical, removed the ancient mouse-pee infused blown-in insulation and eventually put in new fiberglass insulation through the attic. It was hell. Hot. Sweaty. Ichy. Low roof. Things to climb in, over, around, through and under. Mostly while carefully stepping, squatting, leaning, and crawling on the long thing ceiling joists. And it was not something I was planning on doing. One day I was all like, “Benjamin is installing the HVAC!” [that’s a money reference] and the next day I was studying attic-yoga.

I bring this up because it’s too easy to think “I’m doing the hard work!” when you are simply going to the gym (or for the morning run, whatever.) Sure, you’re working hard, you’re sweating, and building muscle; you are literally doing hard work.

But that’s nothing compared to choosing to do the hard work, on the spot. Do I whinge and call AAA (road-side assistance club) or do I climb under the van to figure out how to get the spare tire out at Midnight after a long day? Do I take the time to split the portion of the firewood that would be a pain 8 months from now, or do I just stack it and hate my today-self in the dead of winter? Do I take the time to carefully explain something even though it’s not my responsibility or do I just “walk past” that person who needs a hand? Right now, on the spot, do you choose the hard path?

Forget all that

May 20, 2021

I get it. This might all seem like a bit much. I was intimidated by journaling too. And people, I find, tend to intimidate themselves about it: What’s the best way to do it? What’s the best journal? What time? How much?

Man, forget all that. There’s no right way to do it.
~ Ryan Holiday from, This Is The Most Important Thing You Can Do Each Morning

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We all try to share things with others—hey look! Blogging. We share stories, books, images, music, songs, and suggestions, (where to go, what to do, etc.,) hoping, if I can be so generous, that what we share will provide some guidance, enjoyment, hope, or what else we know not. Whether or not the things we share land… whether they stick, have the desired affect, or any positive affect at all… we’ve no way to know that.

But what might happen if we tried to share things with our future selves?

Deciding is the easy part

May 16, 2021

So recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to use it less. About how to get the benefits from the technology without all the downsides.
~ Ryan Holiday from, A Radical Guide to Spending Less Time on Your Phone

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Hey, thanks for deciding to receive this not-so-little email from me each week.

Did you notice how easy it was to decide to get this additional, new interruption? My web site is friendly, the form is friendly, dear Friend all you have to do is put your email in this form . . . But if you decide to leave this weekly email? Well, first you have to have one of the emails in front of you, then scroll down and find the unsubscribe link at the bottom, click that, etc. It’s not much harder than joining, but it is just a little bit harder.

Let’s say you decide—after reading Holiday’s post or this post or that post—to clear the home screen of your phone, (not the lock screen, but the first screen you see after unlocking.) Have you tried to do that? It’s difficult. First you have to manually move those apps, one by one, to other pages… Then you have to keep up with that if your phone throws new apps on that nice clean screen. You have to change how you launch apps; If you simply swipe and find the app, well, that’s going to become a new default habit: Unlock-phone-and-swipe-right will be muscle-memory in a day. To make the blank home-screen useful, you have to also get in the habit of using your phone’s search to launch exactly the app you opened the phone for in the first place. But that is quickly learned by your phone. You have to go in and adjust search settings so that when the search input is blank, it doesn’t suggest the apps you often use. Otherwise the search screen will become just another screen of app icons you’ll tap on via muscle-memory. The phone is designed to try to help, so it’ll feed you a new habit. Then a notification pops up. And you want to disable those, so you have to dive into settings… And get used to telling apps, “no notifications” when they first ask. And then something will break… like suddenly Google Maps can’t use “Siri” so it doesn’t work in Car Play. (Me: “Wait. Wat?”)

It’s not just with fiddly phones. Decide you don’t want to watch Netflix. …but, movie date-night with the spouse is a legit thing we want to do now and then. Decide you want to only own one car. Decide you want to grow some food in a garden. Decide you want to make a few new friends. Decide you don’t want your phone ringing.

My friends, deciding is the easy part. The hard part is doing the really complicated, detail-oriented, 57-step planning, and 2 hours of fiddling, (or days of labor or thousands of dollars in expense,) figuring out how to make the change, how to keep the change in place, and even how to figure out in advance what things depend on the thing you’re deciding to change.

Creating anything

May 13, 2021

Creating anything of consequence or magnitude requires deliberate, incremental and consistent work. At the beginning, these efforts might not look like they are amounting to much. But with time, they accumulate and then compound on each other. Whether it’s a book or a business or an anthill or a stalagmite, from humble beginnings come impressive outcomes.
~ Ryan Holiday

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Anything of consequence

May 13, 2021

Creating anything of consequence or magnitude requires deliberate, incremental and consistent work. At the beginning, these efforts might not look like they are amounting to much. But with time, they accumulate and then compound on each other. Whether it’s a book or a business or an anthill or a stalagmite, from humble beginnings come impressive outcomes.
~ Ryan Holiday

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Sometimes I manage to remember that lesson.

…usually that my remembering happens during my morning routine. I won’t bore you with the specifics, but: I regularly read things which spur the sorts of thinking I’d like to do more of; I spend time writing in, and re-reading, my journals; time reading good-old printed-on-dead-trees books; time thinking about how to create some thing I’m building; lots of thinking and jotting in outlines.

Things take me vastly more time and work than it appears from the outside.

Tranquility

May 10, 2021

Of course, Odysseus isn’t unique. He is us. He’s the human condition in a nutshell. As Blaise Pascal put it, “all of humanity’s problems stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room.” Because we cannot be happy, because we can’t just be, we waste years of our life.

~ Ryan Holiday from, Can You Be Still?

Holiday puts forward an interesting theory, (and, in my opinion a correct one,) that Odysseus is a tragic figure. Odysseus is doomed by his inability to see his own fatal flaw.

Given that I can be tenacious when tenacity seems needed… Enduring when endurance seems needed… Focused… I’ve been wondering: Can I be still? Quiescent? Tranquil, even, when those would be appropriate?

Something sustainable

May 7, 2021

What we need is something sustainable. Something balanced. Something deliberate without being forced. Purposeful without being obsessed with productivity. We need something like a great Saturday—or one of those Mondays where you’re not sure if it’s part of a three-day weekend, resulting in just enough work that it’s productive, but not so much that it’s a chore.

~ Ryan Holiday from, You Could Have Today. Instead You Choose Tomorrow.

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Sustainable. Yeah, I’ve no idea what that means.

It occurs to me to make a note to have, “…but holy crap did he get a lot done!” put on my tombstone.

And I’m instantly reminded of my favorite de-motivational poster: “It could be that the purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others.”

Fear of missing out

April 22, 2021

The constant interruptions and distractions of our society are, to me, the opposite of philosophy. Getting caught up in minutiae. Getting caught up in things that don’t matter. Getting caught up in things that are designed to exploit and antagonize us and our emotions.

~ Ryan Holiday from, Seriously, You—Ok, We—Need To Stop Watching The News This Year

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The way out from the chaos is to first convince yourself that you are in chaos, and to then decide you don’t like the current situation.

It will not work for you to try taking a hiatus from all the distractions. If you try, (just some “for examples” here,) to put your phone down during dinner, or to have a no-internet weekend with your partner, or no internet-surfing in the bedroom, etc., these small diversions from your normal existence will be uncomfortable. So of course you won’t want that small discomfort to grow larger! And there you go; that’s the exact opposite of how you would expand the tranquility in your life. If—somehow—you deeply wanted more tranquility, then you would automatically do all those things I mentioned and many, many more.

The other day I drove to my favorite gym only to discover they were closed that day. It happens that this was announced on Facebook. (I’m not on Facebook.) This experience was not the least bit annoying to me. I drove 20 minutes each way. The ride was pleasant; Just like every other time I drive in a car because I long ago resolved the issues with myself which caused driving and riding in cars to be annoying. I did not begrudge that 40 minutes as “wasted,” and I simply went on to the next thing I wanted to do.

I’m not railing against Facebook. I’m pointing out that if you fix your life, Facebook no longer has an attraction for you.

You are not obligated to be constantly reachable.

You are not obligated to have an opinion on every topic someone might raise in conversation.

You are not obligated to help every other person you physically or virtually encounter.

What obligations do you have?

What do you truly desire?

What is the meaning of life?

Actually… are those even the right questions to ask oneself?

Baked geese crap

April 16, 2021

Everything we do matters — whether it’s making smoothies to save up money or studying for the bar — even after we’ve already achieved the success we sought. Everything is a chance to do and be our best. Only self-absorbed assholes think they are too good for whatever their current station requires. Wherever we are, whatever we’re doing and wherever we are going, we owe it to ourselves, to our art, to the world to do it well. That’s our primary duty. And our obligation. When action is our priority, vanity falls away.

~ Ryan Holiday from, How You Do Anything Is How You Do Everything

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I sometimes think back to a summer I spent working on a golf course. As a grounds keeper. These days, I’m still pretty fast with a string trimmer. A job string-trimming a golf course teaches certain skills. Every day that summer I hopped on my trusty red 10-speed bike—I think it was actually originally my mom’s bike—and ride… just for fun I Google’d it… 5 miles to work. I distinctly remember the coolish Pennsylvania mornings.

It just this moment occurs to me that my “the weather today will be…” prognostication skills are generally quite good. Probably something to do with riding a half hour while wondering if I was going to get roasted in the sun, soaked in the rain, or pleasantly browned.

Meanwhile I learned many things. About getting along with other people to greater or lesser degrees of success. About how laughter makes work lighter. And about good healthy, sweat labor. I already mentioned the string trimming. But my favorite was how we used to edge the sand traps. Every day—at least as far as I can remember—there’d be the same work to do; we’d simply advance our way around the course based on our boss’s early-morning directions on a whiteboard. “edge traps 8/9” for example… along with a few more. One guy was the greens keeper. His responsibility was just to mow the putting greens and tend that grass. Move the pins (the tall flags stand inside special metal cups set into the ground) periodically. Another guy—an aged adult, so he was probably like 38 at the time—was the fairway mower. Willie was his name. I remember his last name, but I don’t want anyone hunting him down. He’d drive a large farm-sized tractor pulling gang-mowers like a flock of geese behind him. All the grass was always cut with reel mowers.

Anyway. Sand traps. We used to edge them with a machete. You see, the edge of the trap, where the grass meets the sand, has interesting geometry. The lawn may not be level, it often was sloped or curving like a little hill. So the “cut” is not just, “hey yo, no blade of grass sticking out that way!” but also, a perpendicular (to the plane of the grass bed) curb of sod (the grass, roots carpet part) and dirt. A string trimmer just sort of beats things up into a rounded mess. With a machete—and a crap-ton of stooping, back-breaking, labor—you can cut everything in a perfect plane. It’s as if you made the perfect cut through layer cake, creating a smoothly undulating curb perimeter, angled perfectly. wack wack wack wack …we’d just walk around the trap backwards, walking on the grass. wack wack wack wack… fifty, maybe a hundred swings. Every sand trap is different. Then we’d clean the trap. Weed it, rake it, sift it, then shape the sand. When we moved on, there’d be not a single bit of anything besides sand in the trap. It’d be gorgeous.

Craftsmanship.

One day, “trim the lake” was on the board. Again. We’d just done that the other day. It was one of the most god-awful horrible jobs. It was basically a very big pond, with not much water flow, particularly mid-summer. The bottom was muck-tastically nasty with geese crap and—wait for it—9 gazillion golf balls making for treacherous footing. The weeds grew in the water. With a string trimmer you can actually trim a bit below the water level if you’re adamant about it. (As we were.) When doing this chore you had a choice: You could stroll into the water and muck to reach the weeds 6 feet out in the pond, or wreck your back, (I don’t care how young you are, this wrecks it,) straining all around the lake to reach out there with the trimmer. Regardless, in the heat of summer, those water-whatever weeds needed a wacking every few days.

On this day, I stood by the artificial rock weir that impounded the pond. I looked at my work boots, being well-shod to deal with the muck, but not so much for standing directly in the water to trim. I looked at the weir. I thought about having to sacrifice my back to reach the weeds. At the weir. I looked at my golf cart—we had the best ones. Special motors for hauling trailers and actual loads and extra batteries. And my we don’t screw around here double-string trimmer and gas can. My face shield. I looked back at the weir.

And I went for it.

I strolled into the stream, moved a bunch of rocks and pierced the maybe 2-foot tall weir… and drained the entire lake. Then I spun up my trimmer and… there are two ways to string trim: One way is a sort of judicious, scalpel wielding, if I twitch it leaves a mark that takes a week to grow away, and I’m going to have to clean up all the mess I make. And the other way is BANSHEE STYLE! I strolled into that disgusting muck and strode around the entire thing with the trimmer throttled wide open… non-stop… at like 6:30am. Muck, geese crap, golf balls, weeds… everything flying every which way… none of it on me of course because, duh, string-trimming guru.

Meanwhile, the sun crept higher.

I don’t know how long it took me. Not long. I don’t think I even had to refill the trimmer’s gas tank. But all the while, the sun started to bake the mud and muck.

Now the area (the general regional area I mean) had a lot of farms and you got used to all sort of smells. Pennsylvania smells (to me) like petrichor, and maybe a dash of cow or horse manure baking on a field. Us Pennsylvanians are all like, *yawn* “whatever bro’.” But baking geese crap and muck, as it turns out, is another thing.

Yes, when I finished trimming I reassembled the weir, but as I mentioned, the little creek’s flow rate was low, and it took all stinking-to-high-heaven day for that thing to fill submerging the muck. I was vindicated amongst the groundskeepers, including my boss who went to bat for me so I could keep my job, because we all freakin’ loved it. It looked awesome and stayed awesome for like TWO WEEKS!

But to my knowledge, no one ever did it again.

That was the first time I effectively closed an entire golf course.

Scenes

April 13, 2021

Because they can only show scenes, …

~ Ryan Holiday from, Sorry, An Epiphany Isn’t What’s Going To Change Your Life

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Check the following against your experience: Except for sleep, or fits of unconsciousness, my life is a perfectly seamless and continuous experience. It has no montages, elisions of time, “jump cuts,” nor cross fades. I’ve never experienced a rerun of any moment; every moment is the next moment found directly after that moment that was now, but is now just past.

From my point of view, every other person… every book… every movie… every image painting film story… I experience those in one, compressed form or another. I catch up with a friend over lunch; I get two weeks of their experience compressed into a thirty-second story. Rocky goes from zero to hero in a two-minute (I’m guessing) montage. That person experiences an entire year; I experience their birthday dinner.

Everything out there is a small scene from some real experience. Is it any wonder it’s difficult to understand?

The guilty, crazy secret

April 7, 2021

The bullshit— …well, it disappears for a fleeting second.

~ Ryan Holiday from, The Guilty, Crazy Secret That Helps Me Write

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I have playlists for this exact thing. Hundreds of individual songs selected and shuffled, for very specific purposes.

Sometimes I go “hunting” to find new tracks for these lists; My Mac says my music library has 9,121 items, 26.5 days, 77.96 GB, and I have a “smart” playlist which grabs 250 least-recently played. It avoids some genres (like “Spoken Word” so it doesn’t pick out French lessons, etc) and it avoids any track I’ve one-starred (my way of saying omg no)… It’s basically an endless series of, “I forgot about that!” I often flip over to the original album, start from the front, and sometimes I add a track to one of my play lists.

What? Why? …best of both worlds. I have playlists that do what I need—hide the world, hide everything. And I’m continuously startled with delight by my tiny music collection.

No and yes

June 9, 2020

Because we can’t say no—because we might miss out on something if we did. We think “yes” will let us accomplish more, will give us more of what we want, when in reality it prevents exactly what we seek. All of us waste precious life doing things we don’t like, to prove ourselves to people we don’t respect, and to get things we don’t want.

~ Ryan Holiday from, How To Say “No”: Advice From The World’s Most Powerful Man

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Accepting and rejecting are two sides of the same coin. A lot—I contemplated writing “all”—of my problems came from being unable to intentionally say, “yes,” or being unable to intentionally say, “no.” When completely lacking the skill from either side of this coin, I’m a puppet for others. I’m one of those doormats that says, “WELCOME,” come on in and use me.

But simply developing both of the skills is not enough. I needed to learn to balance the skills; To balance the requirements of life with the pursuits of pleasure, leisure, and creativity. That requires a finer control of these, “yes,” and, “no,” skills.

I occasionally encounter people who speak of, “always saying, ‘yes and…’.” That’s utter nonsense. One can only say once to the pan-handler on the street asking for money, “yes, and take my house.” Or to the myriad of people clamoring for one’s attention online, “yes, and…” scrolling scrolling scrolling and… the whole hour is lost.

The mastery level of, “no,” and, “yes,” is to go beyond reacting to life—figuring out which tool to deploy in this situation—to intentionally using, “no,” and, “yes,” to navigate life.

Distraction, Busyness, Hurrying: No.

Discovery, Reflection, Efficacy: Yes, and…

Tiny incremental improvements

May 7, 2020

James Clear talks about the importance of becoming just one percent better every day. This may not seem like much but he writes “The difference a tiny improvement can make over time is astounding. Here’s how the math works out: if you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done.” None of us know how long the crisis will last or how long we’re going to be stuck at home. But we are in control of what we do to improve during this time. Don’t be fooled, the version of you that comes out of quarantine can be much better than the person that went in, if you make tiny positive changes every single day.

~ Ryan Holiday from, How To Remain Calm When The Rest Of The World Is Freaking Out

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In any given moment, of any given day, of any given year, wether or not I’m freaking out, there are a few ideas which do well to help me live a good and meaningful life. This succinct collection covers those ideas better than I ever could. ‘nuf said.

Blog by a Stoic

April 11, 2020

Stoicism has long surged in times of difficulty—the decline and fall of Rome, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Civil War, depressions, and periods of strife because it is a philosophy designed for difficult times. It says, in effect, you don’t control these alarming events going on in the world, but you do control how you respond. And in fact is a framework for responding with courage and virtue, and with the good emotions that accompany and sustain them: joy, caution and well-wishing. None of these inspiring figures were guilty of emotionless acquiescence.

~ Ryan Holiday from, The Secret, Singular Philosophy That Today’s Politics Are Desperately Missing

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I’m certainly not going to transform my blog to be entirely about Stoicism. Not because others have already done so, (others have, and have done it better than I could,) but rather, simply because this blog doesn’t have a single specific topic. It’s one long stream of consciousness where I’m leaving a breadcrumb trail of my thoughts. That being said:

Stoicism is turning out to be a powerful toolset; an excellent fulcrum for leveraging change in my personal life. Over several years, I’ve become increasingly interested in it, and have read slowly, but steadily. Very recently, I started a morning practice I’ve labeled “philosophical reading.” It’s simply some time set aside in my mornings to read and reflect on philosophy.

Time management

February 22, 2020

As addicting as it is, desire is the enemy to proper time management. Poor sleeping habits, unhealthy lifestyle choices, and just plain dissatisfaction are all byproducts of a poorly managed life.

~ Ryan Holiday from, 5 Stoic Lessons On Time Management

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Time management is the only thing—the only major skill critical for leading a good life… Time management is the only thing which no one ever attempted to teach me explicitly. Everything else was covered to some degree: science, religion, morality, philosophy, work ethic, hygiene, sexuality, language, geography, personal finance, and more, depending on how you want to subdivide all the stuff in my head.

Time management isn’t the most critical thing to know. Language and critical thinking are the top two, because with those two and sufficient time you can bootstrap everything else. However, things would be far better for everyone, if the third item on the list of must-have skills to be Human was a basic grasp of Time Management.

For me, I was trying to fix my sleep when it became obvious that I needed to arrange my day around sleeping. That lead immediately to an entirely new need for time management. “I need to be at work by 8,” is not Time Management (with capitals.) I then took a circuitous route discovering the needs and methods of Time Management.

But where do I wish I had actually started? That’s an excellent question. Right around 18 years old, I wish someone had handed me a copy of this tiny book: How to Live on 24 Hours a Day by A Bennet.

Focus your attention

February 2, 2020

One of the most powerful things you can do as a human being in our hyperconnected, 24/7 media world is say: “I don’t know.” Or, more provocatively: “I don’t care.” Most of society seems to have taken it as a commandment that one must know about every single current event, watch every episode of every critically acclaimed television series, follow the news religiously, and present themselves to others as an informed and worldly individual.

~ Ryan Holiday from, The Daily Stoic, p39.

Stoicism is a terrific tool. (It’s not about suppressing your emotions.) One of the practices is to pay attention to where your attention is. If I know I’m not going to do anything with this information—this news show, this political argument, this batshit-crazy conspiracy theory, this story, that solicitation, this bit of entertainment, that bit of distraction . . . If I know I’m not going to do anything with this information, then it turns out that it is trivial to not be distracted by things. People think I’m ignoring things, or that I’ve not noticed things. I’m simply choosing where to allocate my attention, (and therefore my time and efforts.) I choose to be in control of where my attention is placed. Only then can I apply it where it will do good.

What in your life can demand your attention? Are you okay with each of things that you just thought of?

Let the news come

April 10, 2019

And what better use could you make of that time? A day that could be your last — you want to spend it in worry? In what other area could you make some progress while others might be sitting on the edges of their seat, passively awaiting some fate? Let the news come when it does. Be too busy working to care.

~ Ryan Holiday

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Thought experiment

January 16, 2019

We should apply the same ruthlessness to our own habits. In fact, we are studying philosophy precisely to break ourselves of rote behavior. Find what you do out of rote memory or routine. Ask yourself: Is this really the best way to do it? Know why you do what you do—do it for the right reasons.

~ Ryan Holiday, p24 The Daily Stoic

I sometimes imagine that the things I can choose to do can be placed on an aspirational spectrum. It’s not a linear, ordered list, but rather a thought experiment to do the pair-ordering; for any two things I could do right now, which is higher on the aspirational spectrum?

I could go even farther than just the pair-wise comparing and imagine all the things in my life might be orderable as…

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

Fortunately—not a typo—the incessant work of ordering things to pick what to do next is exhausting. It forces me to notice that when I zoom out, I could imagine I’m doing things in the “j” through “q” range…

a b c d e f g h i ( j k l m n o p q ) r s t u v w x y z

I can make things better simply by making some space in my life. If I just drop that “j”-thing entirely I can be comfortable in knowing I’m improving, without having to actively micro-worry about everything all day. Dropping that “j”-thing leaves me with…

a b c d e f g h i j ( k l m n o p q ) r s t u v w x y z

Whereas before my average was between “m” and “n”, just by eliminating something from the lower side, my average moves up. Clearly I can improve my life appreciably by occassionally thinking about all the things I’m doing, and identifying a lower-end thing to drop.

Yes, of course things aren’t really this simple. But it took me a long time to learn the lesson that removing something can produce marked improvement. Some would say that removing is the very definition of how to approach perfection.