On this day

July 11th

It’s the messiness

10 Days Ago

It turned out in retrospect that the messy diversity of the forest had been the source of its resilience. When stresses such as storms, disease, drought, fragile soil, or severe cold struck, a diverse forest with its full array of different species of trees, birds, insects, and animals was far better able to survive and recover. A windstorm that toppled large, old trees would typically spare smaller ones. An insect attack that threatened oaks might leave lindens and hornbeams unaffected. The rigidity and uniformity of the system meant that failures were not small and contained but systemic.

~ Tiago Forte, from Productive Disorder: The Hidden Power of Chaos, Noise, and Randomness

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I’m simply stuck, staring at: “The rigidity […] of the system meant that failures were […] systemic.” I’m filing this under Stuff I Wished I’d Learned 30 Years Ago. I often say that I use systems and structure as a way to multiply my efforts. And that’s true. But I’ve learned that the real reason is that I’m afraid. The big why behind my hyper-organization, maximally-complex systems, and endless aligning of figurative ducks is my desperately trying to control the world around me. With realization comes… the recognition that I have a lot more work to learn to not do.

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Experience

July 11, 2022

Experience often deeply embeds the assumptions that need to be questioned in the first place. When you have a lot of experience with something, you don’t notice the things that are new about it. You don’t notice the idiosyncrasies that need to be tweaked. You don’t notice where the gaps are, what’s missing, or what’s not really working.

~ Chris Sacca

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Grit

July 11, 2022

(Part 72 of 72 in series, My Journey)

Don’t let ease tempt you. Don’t fall for its false promises. What you gain in ease, you lose in meaning. What you gain in ease, you lose in excellence.

~ Hugh MacLeod from, «https://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/2022/07/08/follow-the-yellowbri-road-to-greatness/»

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This topic came up today in an outdoor Parkour class. Being outside, training, sweating, and overcoming challenges with friends old and new is always a treat. (“If this isn’t nice…“)

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Baseball

July 11, 2020

If I stick with it, however, my mind eventually downshifts — quieting the noisy neuronal clamoring for easy entertainment, and leaving instead an unencumbered attention of a type that I often seek in my work.

~ Cal Newport from, Deep Habits: Listen to Baseball on the Radio – Cal Newport

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Once or thrice I’ve heard a baseball game on the radio. This would have been back in the 80’s when with some neighborhood friends—brothers, whose father was a plumber—we’d occasionally ride to a baseball game. The kind of game where we were playing as kids; semi-organized little league games at random churches’ baseball fields scattered around the Pennsylvania rolling hills. A homerun into left-field was in the graveyard and into right-field was in the corn field. I can’t convey in writing what it sounded like riding in the truck with the radio on; some combination of a monotonous announcer with a touch of crowd noise, a big ‘ol truck engine—this was the plumbing truck full of plumbing supplies in the back—a 5-speed manual floor shift and 3 rowdy kids with the windows rolled down and the smell of fields and manure and baseball gloves.

I think I had something else to say about baseball and focus when I started typing. But I forget what it was.

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Status update July 2018

July 11, 2018

(Part 65 of 72 in series, My Journey)

I’m not quite ready to publish scantily-clad selfies… so I left my socks on. I’ve a target weight in mind which corresponds to 20-year-old-me and a good photo from 1991.

Meanwhile…

This is the least I have weighed in 20 years. About 55 pounds (25kg!) lighter than 2008.

A visiting Finn mowed my lawn for me yesterday, and so I had time for one last run on this continent before I leave for a triple-stop Parkour trip in about twelve hours.

The graph is a little odd because I didn’t stop the tracking immediately, so there’s a huge bar for the last split (not shown.) It’s a lollipop route, so the 11-minute split is up the slight hill which I ran down at ~9-minute pace. The whole run came in about 9:33, which is right on the fastest I’ve ever run this. This time was much more uniform in pace than the last time I ran this.

Why do I post this stuff? Because whomever you are, whereever you are in your physical fitness (or complete lack thereof), you can simply do what I did: Start where you are.

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Nyuunanshin. And that is not a typo.

July 11, 2013

Nyuunanshin roughly translated means having a “flexible, pliant, generous spirit.” It’s having an attitude of being open to one’s feelings, environment, and situation, and trying to adapt instead of trying to be like an unmoving, solid block of wood. It’s sort of a contrast to the notion of fudoshin (being immovable, like the implacable god Fudo-Myoo); but fudoshin concerns a spirit of facing adversity. Nyuunanshin is not so much about a combative mind as it is about being able to grasp or accept concepts in a learning environment. It’s not about being a pushover; you do have convictions. But you are flexible enough to look at all sides and then make a conclusion.

~ Wayne Muromoto from, 77. Nyuunanshin: Being “open” to your feelings – The Classic Budoka

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