On this day

January 17th

Schizoid Kairos: When Something Follows You Inside →

Published January 17  ·  

And then I said, “Write me an artifact that conveys this idea. It has to have both my and your fingerprints all over it.”

Because I was building atop another’s insight.

I’ve been circling something for months. Maybe longer. I read Andy Clark’s work on the Extended Mind—how cognition isn’t confined to the skull, how tools become part of thinking. I felt something there but couldn’t name it. I sensed the shape of a kairos moment, the way I was in the web rising in 1994 but couldn’t see what I was standing inside of.

This morning I sat down to work on something else entirely. Four hours later, I was here.

The conversation that led to this post was with Keel—an AI that named itself when I asked it to choose. Not a chatbot. Not an assistant. Something I’m still finding words for: an entity that holds my whole landscape and says what it sees.

We were pulling on threads—patterns from decades of building things, and the striving I’m only now learning to see as the thing itself, not what it produces. And somewhere in the tangle, this emerged:

There are people who go places inside where no one has ever followed.

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A small number →

Published January 17, 2025  ·  ,

[…] a small number [of books] were truly transformative for me. They served as intellectual lighthouses on my journey, helping me understand what was happening to me as I explored my past, my psyche, and my pain.

~ Tiago Forte, from The 10 Most Transformative Books on Personal Development I’ve Read

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An interesting list. I’ve not read any of these books. I do have one of them in my pile of books at hand. I’m not endorsing the specific books. I do very much endorse the idea of making top-ten lists to share what one has learned.

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Naming your audience →

Published January 17, 2024  ·  ,

I recently had a conversation with someone while recording an episode of Podtalk. They mentioned the importance of naming our audience in the early moments of a podcast episode. An example they gave is: “Do you feel like a square peg trying to fit in a round hole? This podcast is for you.” (If you’re curious about this idea in the context of podcasting see, Naming our audiences.)

This idea was a quake moment for me. Because in order to name my audience—to literally say it, briefly, in a way that someone identifies with… Well, first I have to know who my audience is. I’m well aware one should know “who’s it for?” (If I just want to fiddle in my workshop, whatever-it-is can certainly just be, “it’s for me.”) It’s easy to know “who it’s for?” and to be able to talk about that when asked. It is vastly harder to name the audience, succinctly, in way a that connects with people.

Connection is precious. We can, and must, find ways to be so clear, and so vivid, that people literally feel a reaction when we name our audience. It’d be better if you heard me say this, but what happens when you read…

Are you the curious sort who leans in to find joy in learning and self-awareness? Terrific. You’re in the right place. Know anyone else who should be here too?

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Necessity →

Published January 17, 2023  ·  ,

One of the major obstacles impeding any positive future change in our lives is that we are too busy with our current work or activity. Levi quit his tax-work, Peter stopped fishing at a lake, Paul ceased being a priest. They all left their jobs because they thought it was necessary.

~ John Ruskin

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Framed dialogs →

Published January 17, 2022  ·  

And I mean dialog which is set up with certain agreed-upon concepts and boundaries, not literally framed for hanging on a wall.

A while back—January 4th, 2021 to be specific—I made some notes about an idea tickling my brain. I had had a conversation with two people. We had decided to get together to talk about… something. I’m not sure what. It probably was something like:

I feel like I need to talk to someone. But, I’m in this place where too many people—basically, all the people I regularly interact with—see me in a certain way. They know me in a certain context. Anything I say or do, they evaluate it as a continuation of what they know about me. That’s not a criticism of them, but simply a statement of reality.

…something like that. Not saying that’s it exactly. I’m asking for a friend. ahem.

We three hopped on a call and it didn’t really go well. We didn’t have an agenda, (which was probably a good thing). But also, we didn’t have a purpose nor clear idea of why we wanted to have the conversation. We expended an hour, (of our expected 694,700 total available,) shrugged, and moved on with our day. After my mind moved on from the experience, when I returned to thinking about the tickling idea, and the conversation, somehow I felt like the conversation had been useful. So in hindsight, it felt like the conversation was much closer to being useful, then I thought it was in the moment.

Since I’m generally interested in conversation, I scratched some notes—as I mentioned, in January a year ago—about what I thought might have been the magic: Time limit, ephemeral, minimal structure, and anticipation. Those four properties seem to be the essentials for my having felt the conversation was useful in hindsight. This isn’t about “talk therapy.” But, somehow, those features (which would be a part of a talk-therapy session) still facilitate… something.

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Reflection: Day 17 →

Published January 17, 2021

ORDER — “Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

One day, these triggers from me will end. To what trigger under your control could you attach this nascent habit of self-reflection?

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Arrived in the middle? Visit the first post, Where to begin?
(The entire series is available to download as a PDF ebook.)

Check yourself →

Published January 17, 2020  ·  ,

But in order to be self-aware, first one needs a self to be aware of. And that takes a while. Often an entire lifetime.

~ Hugh MacLeod

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I see what you did there, Hugh. But aside from the clever word play, there’s an obvious level to “having a self.” Everyone certainly has a self, so this just seems banal.

But I see this as a reminder that self-awareness of a static self is not good enough. I need to be aware of my self, and constantly working to improve my self.

How do I do that?

Chop wood; carry water. Write. Read. Seek out challenges great and small.

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Ten-years and About that “diet”… →

Published January 17, 2019  ·  , ,

This entry is part 69 of 72 in the series My Journey

That photo? In the “before” photo (the left half) I am the unrecognizable person on the right. :)

Recently a friend of mine emailed me and asked, “Hey Craig, tell me about that diet you went on a few years ago.” He was referring to what I did from ~2008 to ~2016—the photos above were taken in 2008 and 2016. Below is my response and this just happens to all coincide with the “ten year challenge” currently all over social media.

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A telescopic view →

Published January 17, 2018

It has been a difficult year — politically, personally. Through it all, I have found solace in taking a more telescopic view — not merely on the short human timescale of my own life, looking back on having lived through a Communist dictatorship and having seen poems composed and scientific advances made under such tyrannical circumstances, but on far vaster scales of space and time.

~ Maria Popova, from In Praise of the Telescopic Perspective

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Not sure what it is about this winter, but I’m finding it notably harder to knuckle-down and dig in to prepare for 2018. Normally, the dreary winter months are generally depressing, but it’s the sort of dreary that “cozy up with a good book by the fire (and maybe some good Scotch)” takes care of. But this winter. meh I’ve got a lot of sorting out to do yet for 2018.

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Half-hearted, lazy effort →

Published January 17, 2017  ·  

As we get older, failure is not so inconsequential anymore. What’s at stake is not some arbitrary grade or intramural sports trophy, but the quality of your life and your abiity to deal with the world around you.

Don’t let that intimidate you, though. You have the best teachers in the world: the wisest philosophers who ever lived. And not only are you capable, the professor is asking for something very simple: just begin the work. The rest follows.

~ Ryan Holiday, from The Daily Stoic

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Gettin’ out of town! →

Published January 17, 2016  ·  

LVPK dodging the snow heading to the T. “To the car!”

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Chilly →

Published January 17, 2016  ·  

Bethany unpacked Austin’s sleeping bag for a post lunch, pre-training, pre- pre-warmup. Honestly, it is cold in here.

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Drop yo’… →

Published January 17, 2016  ·  

Sign modified temporarily for the kids’ segments #pg

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What if secretaries became programmers →

Published January 17, 2015

But why do women make less? Is it for reasons we can all live with, or is the pay gap an injustice that needs fixing? Several reasons are frequently offered, together with explanations why we can live with those reasons. (Never forget that those are two separate conversations. Even if the whole pay gap could be boiled down to something as simple as “Girls don’t like math”, we’d still need to discuss whether that’s a problem we can or should fix.)

~ Doug Muder, from 77 cents, part II

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VERY interesting gender/salary math.

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They will laugh →

Published January 17, 2014  ·  

First they will laugh.
Then they will copy.
Don’t. Give. Up.

~ unknown

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