On this day

April 12th

Where’s… everything?

April 12, 2024

It doesn’t matter how you store things, only that you do. If I know that, somewhere, I know something… and I can find it… that’s success. There are two parts to remembering (aka storing in such a way that it can be later found and used) everything: First, capture it in some form and put it somewhere intentional. Second, when you go for something and it’s not in the first place you looked (it’s instead in the 3rd place you looked), move it to the first place you looked.

These books helped educated people cope with the “information explosion” unleashed by the printing press and industrialization. They were highly idiosyncratic, personalized texts used to make sense of a new world of intercontinental trade, long distance communication, and mass media. Commonplace books could contain recipes, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, proverbs, prayers, legal formulas, notes from sermons, and remedies for common maladies, among many other things.

~ Tiago Forte from, Commonplace Books: Creative Note-Taking Through History

slip:4ufobo4.

Of course, the hard part is getting in the habit of capturing things. Our minds are terrible at holding ideas. Our minds are for having ideas (and composition and creation and more.) The best day to begin capturing your knowledge was yesterday. If you missed that opportunity, today is also good.

ɕ

Sometimes I weep

April 12, 2023

What focus means is saying no to something that you, with every bone in your body, you think is a phenomenal idea and you wake up thinking about it, but you say no to it because you’re focusing on something else.

~ Jonny Ive from, The Ultimate Productivity Hack is Focus

slip:4ufofo2.

I have a lot of ideas. (Perhaps your experience is similar?) For most of my life I thought all of my ideas where good ones. Sure, there were some insane bicycle accidents and spectacular snow-tubing disasters, but in the minutes following an incident, I still thought it was a good idea. Poorly planned, poorly executed, or both, sure. But life seemed to be an endless parade of good ideas each affording an opportunity to grab life by the choose-your-own-metaphor. In hindsight, I think it was all simply poor—or, if I’m honest, a complete absence of—impulse control.

In recent years it has become apparent my time on Earth is limited. (Perhaps your experience is similar?) These days that stream of ideas continues. What if I installed a motion-activated auto-targeting water sprinkler filled with Capsaicin-laced water to keep the squirrels away? (Yes, really.) …and okay, well, the ideas don’t all seem like good ideas anymore. Fine. I’m cool with having limited time, limited resources, and possibly some added social awareness.

But every once in a while, I have an idea which is blindingly awesome. Even if I have one such idea only once in a while, that still means I have more than I can try, and then I have to choose. I have to choose some, and say no to others.

ɕ

Interior stability

April 12, 2022

To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, welcome, to accept.

~ Henri Nouwen

slip:4a838.

What do you know

April 12, 2022

Read that title in the Petulant Voice. (There are the 1st-person, 2nd-person, Narrator, Author, etc. voices; I’ve always thought failure to formally recognize Petulant Voice was a major literary oversight.)

Reasoned skepticism and disagreement are essential to progress and democracy. The problem is that most of what’s happening isn’t reasoned skepticism. It’s the adult equivalent of a two-year-old throwing a tantrum.

~ Shane Parrish from, The Distrust of Intellectual Authority

slip:4ufodi1.

As in this article, the majority of what I’ve read—in the 32 years I’ve been reading stuff on the Internet—has been about the skeptic in the skepticism/disagreement relationships. But the responsibility is actually with the side claiming authority.

Always.

Because that’s the moral high road. (The high road is always less crowded.) If one wants to hold oneself out as an authority, then one is responsible for reaching down and helping others up. (Also, is “Tortured” a recognized voice?) One is not responsible for the skeptics whose attention you do not have. But one is responsible for those whose attention you do have; Those skeptics see you. There’s your chance to do good work.

ɕ

Well enough alone

April 12, 2021

Some take nothing into account, and others want to take account for everything. They are always talking importance, always taking things too seriously, turning them into debate and mystery. Few bothersome things are important enough to bother with. It is folly to take to heart what you should turn your back on. Not the least of life’s rules is to leave well enough alone.

~ Baltasar Gracián

slip:4a339.

The greatest gift

April 12, 2020

The greatest gift you can give to somebody is your own personal development. I used to say, “if you will take care of me, I will take care of you.” Now I say, “I will take care of me for you, if you will take care of you for me.”

~ John Rohn

slip:4a462.

An action appearing in words

April 12, 2018

The grandeur of the Declaration of Independence… consists… in its being the perfect way of an action to appear in words. And since we deal here with the written and not with the spoken word, we are confronted by one of the rare moments when the power of action is great enough to erect its own monument.

~ Hannah Arendt from, Hannah Arendt on Action and the Pursuit of Happiness

slip:4ubaha2.

The foundations of the American democracy are unique, regardless wether you think it is a “good” or “bad” construction. If you would like to take your knowledge of it to the next level, I highly recommend, The Constitution.

ɕ

25 years ago

April 12, 2016

25 years ago, on a Friday night, Tracy and I went on our first date.

There’s a wonderful, socially ackward story about me chickening out of the original plan, then a late-evening missed phone call, and an eventual midnight movie. If you ask us nicely, we’ll tell you our conflicting versions of the story. There even a bit of debate about the exact movie we saw; We’re pretty sure it was Silence of the Lambs. (Yes, we opted for a midnight showing for our first date. I’ll let that settle in for a few moments.) On the other hand, the movie might possibly have been a spectacularly horrible movie titled Warlock, which no one has ever heard of. So sometimes we tell the story with it being Silence of the Lambs and sometimes it’s Warlock. Long ago, I think we used to argue about this when we told the story… now, I can’t even remember which of us argued for which movie.

I digress.

Tracy is awesome, and I love her very much! We are still in love. …but, this isn’t a ‘Happy Anniversary!’ card addressed to Tracy.

I firmly believe that there’s no single perfect person for me. I am not a “special snowflake”. And if – as the old saying goes – Tracy “is one-in-a-million,” then she’s one of about 8,000 perfect people for me alive at this very moment.

What makes me special in some ways is the same thing that makes her special in some ways: We have both invested a large portion of our lives in each other. We’ve both spent 25 years working each on our own selves, and have continued sharing the improved versions with each other. The “institution” of marriage doesn’t magically make our relationship special; I, and she, made the relationship special by working on it.

25 years ago I was a totally different person. I was (just simply by definition) on some path through life. There was absolutely no way I could have selected the perfect person for me. I didn’t know myself. I didn’t know my future. I didn’t know how my path would evolve. How could I possibly pick someone who was compatible then, and would grow and change to remain compatible for 25 years.

In one sense, I was extremely lucky to find someone who turned out to be able to adapt and grow in some sort of way that somehow remained compatible with my ever-changing general insanity. But in another much more important sense, we both have spent huge amounts of time talking, arguing, discussing and growing together. So today, it’s not that the luck we had years ago was special or unique – because “humans meet” happens constantly every day – it’s that we somehow stood by that bit of common, every-day luck and worked on it for 25 years.

People change. People age. People get sick and die. Life moves ever forward. The love at age 20 is nothing like the love at age 40, or – as far as I can tell at this point – the love at age 80. (eg, Old Love.)

What matters most to me is that I continue to honestly work on who I am. Only by doing that work do I continue to be worthy of a relationship such as we’ve created so far.

Here’s to another 50 years! Huzzah!!

ɕ

Five simple rules

April 12, 2015

Five simple rules for happiness:
1. Free your heart from hatred
2. Free your mind from worries
3. Live simply
4. Give more
5. Expect less

~ unknown

slip:4a65.

The Cat’s Out of the Bag

April 12, 2013

(Part 2 of 72 in series, My Journey)

If you want to repeat that little jump at an angle to a moss covered wall all day until you can do it with your eyes closed… well my friend, you are not alone. I want to repeat that jump with you. But let’s do 50, just to be sure. And one more for the others who can’t join us. That’ll do us both more good than that big roof gap whilst you hold the camera.

~ Chris ‘Blane’ Rowat from, «http://www.parkourgenerations.com/article/call-arms»

By now, all of my friends know I practice parkour with Lehigh Valley Parkour. I’m pushing 42, with graying hair and the BMI calculator says 34.9, (which is “obesity.”) So when people first find out, they raise an eyebrow and say, “You’re a brave soul!” or “Huh? The jumping from roof-top to roof-top thing?!”. …my answer is ‘no’ to both of those.

Please do not go to TouYube and look up parkour; Total waste of your time. This is one of those Catch-22 things where the people who believe — quietly, to themselves — that they “get it”… well, those people aren’t posting spectacular videos on TouYube. So you don’t notice their point of view on the whole thing.

I am not saying, “those people over there have it wrong.” I am not saying, “parkour is the One True Path(tm)”. I am not saying, “these ideas are to be found only through parkour.”

I am saying parkour is…

…a journey composed of tiny steps so easy that failure is impossible.

…the grueling, deconstructing, work of self-improvement.

…that well-earned sense of accomplishment.

…the joie-de-vivre that I hadn’t noticed I let slip away.

Playfulness.

Freedom.

…and one more for the others who can’t join us. :*)

ɕ