(Part 44 of 46 in series, Level 52 countdown)
This was a long day, packed full of breaking down the campsite, driving, unpacking and cleanup at home. Simply no energy nor initiative to put in a real workout. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
On this day
September 4th
What to do with twenty minutes
I recently realized I’ve wasted 23 years. Way back in 1990 a good friend gave me a CD of MCMXC A.D. by Enigma. It was mind bending, and remains so; to this day, I use it when I really need to zone out and not quite sleep, but rest. It’s an album which I have never once listened to a single track separately. I’ve only ever started at the front and gone straight through.
The other day, I thought: I should see what else Enigma (the brain child of Michael Cretu) may have done since 1990. Followed by my ordering all of the other seven albums. I buy the CDs used, and that means they tend to trickle to my doorstop over a few weeks. Oh. I’ve turned into a lunatic, listening to music far too loud in the house. I’ve recently done this with other artists and suddenly I’m up to my eyeballs in great (in my opinion) music.
So, why 23 years wasted? The Screen Behind the Mirror was released in 2000. I’ve therefore wasted 23 years worth of opportunities to play it.
Basically I had just aged myself by twenty minutes. Two virtual cigarettes, and not even a fading buzz to show for it. I learned nothing, gained nothing, made no friends, impacted the world not at all, did not improve my mood or my capacity to do anything useful. It was marginally enjoyable on some reptile-brain level, sure, but its ultimate result was only to bring me nearer to death. Using my phone like that was pure loss of life — like smoking, except without the benefits.
~ David Cain from, Most Phone Use is a Tragic Loss of Life
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I’ve no idea if you like Enigma. (You can thank me later if you just discovered Enigma and do like it.) But there simply must be some music that you do like! …find which music it is, buy a copy of it in whatever medium you prefer, and spend that twenty minutes—and the next 23 years, if you’re lucky—leaning into that stuff.
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A wave
You didn’t come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean.
~ Alan Watts
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Elusive of casual definition
We feel something, and reach out for the nearest phrase or hum with which to communicate, but which fails to do justice to what has induced us to do so. We hear Beethoven’s Ninth and hum poum, poum, poum, we see the pyramids at Giza and go, “that’s nice.” These sounds are asked to account for an experience, but their poverty prevents either us or our interlocutors from really understanding what we have lived through. We stay on the outside of our impressions, as if staring at them through a frosted window, superficially related to them, yet estranged from whatever has eluded casual definition.
~ Alain De Botton
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1,000 quotes
Wow. Here’s the 1,000th quote added to my collection:
The world is like a ride at an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think that it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills, and it’s very brightly coloured, and it’s very loud and it’s fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question – is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us. They say ‘Hey! Don’t worry, don’t be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride.’ And we… kill those people.
~ Bill Hicks
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I don’t “use” the numbers in simple 1, 2, 3, … order. Often I find several quotes from one person at the same time. I don’t want 20 quotes in a row from Leo Tolstoy in the daily quotes podcast. I space them out and end up with a smattering of numbers used out of order. So I keep a little list:
Each time I find a quote, I look to find the next number. When I used 999 for a proverb I thought, “I wonder what quote will be next?” And promptly forgot all about the milestone.
Today I bounced on my take-me-to-a-random-post link (see About this site) and landed on a very old post from 2013. It was a very large block of text, much longer than what I usually quote. I trimmed it down to what’s show above and copied it into my collection. I looked up the number and …surprise! 1,000.
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Serenity, Freedom
When you have considered all these things with care, then, if you think fit, approach philosophy, and be willing to give up all of this in exchange for serenity, freedom and an undisturbed mind. Otherwise, do not come near; do not, like children, be at one time a philosopher, later a tax-collector, then a rhetorititian, and then one of Caesar’s procurators. These things are not compatible. You must be one man, either good or bad. You must cultivate either your own ruling faculty or externals, and apply yourself either to things within or those outside; that is, you must assume either the attitude of a philosopher or that of a layman.
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Last vestiges
It can be hard to say no. It means refusing someone, and often it means denying yourself instant gratification. The rewards of doing this are uncertain and less tangible. I call decisions like this “first-order negative, second-order positive.” Most people don’t take the time to think through the second-order effects of their choices. If they did, they’d realize that freedom comes from the ability to say no.
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I think the “slavery” [to things, to money, to “more”] metaphor is inappropriate, but philosophers from Epictetus and earlier have been using it, so it’s entrenched. “Freedom” is mentioned in the pull-quote, and the metaphor also appears in the article. None the less, it connects a few different ideas together and gives good guidance if you’re new to the ideas. (Or if you could use a wee refresher.)
For me, the last vestiges of the yearning—as Wu Hsin put it—is the yearning for experiences. I am quite often restless. I often joke: “I do not idle well.” In my series on parkour-travel I even mentioned the idea of, when spare time exists, move towards the next scheduled-thing, and kill time there. I believe this yearning springs from my bias to action. As a counter-practice, I like to pause—often seemingly randomly—to remind myself: If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.
That phrase can get tossed around lightly, but there’s deep wisdom in it. Once I understand that this is in fact nice, right now, then when I realize that I wasn’t—just then, in the moment—feeling how nice it is… then the second part of the phrase has power: I don’t know what is. Put another way:
If I know what is nice, then this is.
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The span we live is small
Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see. The span we live is small—small as the corner of the Earth in which we live it. Small as even the greatest renown, passed from mouth to mouth by short-lived stick figures, ignorant alike of themselves and those long dead.
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Naomi Honey: Dance, coaching, and self talk
How does engaging in movement practices like Forró and parkour contribute to personal growth, emotional development, and professional coaching?
Naomi Honey shares her experiences learning the Brazilian dance of Forró, and how it relates to her other movement practices. She unpacks her work as a life coach; what that means, how it works, and why she loves it so much. Naomi wraps up by discussing her thoughts on her current interests, the idea of success, and self talk.
[It’s] amazing. I’m the cheerleader while they’re doing it, and while it’s difficult. And I’m the cheerleader when there’s success. And then—one of my absolute favorite moments—coaching is designed to end at some point.
~ Naomi Honey (11:45)
Naomi Honey discusses how her experiences with Brazilian dance and parkour have shaped her personal and professional life. She highlights the contrast between the individual nature of parkour and the partner-based dynamics of Forró, a Brazilian dance she has been practicing for over a year. Naomi shares how these practices have enhanced her ability to listen to her body and respond intuitively, revealing unexpected emotional blocks and new ways of engaging with others.
Her work as a life coach focuses on helping people recognize and overcome personal obstacles, drawing from her movement experiences. Naomi explains how self-talk plays a critical role in both movement and life coaching, recounting workshops where participants verbalize negative inner dialogues to foster awareness and shift perspectives. She also emphasizes the importance of celebrating effort over results, demonstrating how encouragement and playful experimentation foster growth and confidence in movement and beyond.
Takeaways
Engaging in movement practices — reveals emotional and mental blocks that impact personal growth.
Life coaching integrates physical practices — combining parkour and dance helps address personal fears and limitations.
Self-talk awareness — recognizing and addressing negative internal dialogue improves movement and emotional resilience.
Parkour’s impact on personal growth — confronting physical obstacles mirrors the process of overcoming psychological challenges.
The value of celebration and encouragement — celebrating effort rather than success fosters persistence and emotional well-being.
Physical closeness in dance — offers unique opportunities to explore connection and interpersonal dynamics, filling gaps not addressed by parkour.
Coaching designed to end — successful coaching encourages clients to become independent while maintaining ongoing connections for support.
Resources
Flytality — Naomi Honey’s life coaching business where she helps people achieve personal and professional goals.
Parcon by Andrew Suseno — A fusion of parkour and contact improvisation that explores movement through physical interaction with others.
Gerlev Idrætshøjskole — A movement-focused school in Denmark specializing in parkour and physical education.
Women’s International Parkour Weekend — An event organized by Parkour Generations to advance parkour training and self-talk awareness for women.
(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)
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Put it in full-screen mode all the time
Single-task by putting your life in full-screen mode. Imagine that everything you do — a work task, answering an email or message, washing a dish, reading an article — goes into full-screen mode, so that you don’t do or look at anything else. You just inhabit that task fully, and are fully present as you do it.
~ Leo Babauta from, 8 Key Lessons for Living a Simple Life – Zen Habits Website
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Whenever I perform a save or equivalent preservation action, I stop and spend a second determining the context that needs to be associated with this artifact. Every single artifact has a bit of context.
~ Rands, from Everything Goes in a Context Bucket – Rands in Repose
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Another idea: Long ago I cleared the home screens of my devices. I wake my phone and the screen is empty; Just the background image.
This requires a bit of work initially to drag all the applications off that first screen. There’s also a trick with IOS where you can dock your phone, and use iTunes to insert an empty page in the front. Either way, on IOS, once you clear the home screen, it’s smart enough to NOT drop any new apps on your pristinely blank screen.
At first, I opened my phone, a lot, and stared at the blank screen, “wait, why did I…” AND THEN I CLOSED IT. Now I think, “what’s the weather tomorrow?” Wake phone. Swipe down w-e- … touch, read weather, hit home (back to clear), close phone.
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Things worth the writing
If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.
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rock. trees. sun.
Day 34/100 – the Master and I
(Part 36 of 104 in series, 100 Days of Training (2017))
I was recently listening to a podcast with Jerzy Gregorek where he was talking about our internal ‘voices’. (the Fatalist, the Master, et al) He was describing how weight lifting had awaked his internal Master… it clicked for me this morning as I went out the door. “fitness” versus “training”. Solitude. Hard work well done. My internal Master — the master of me, not a master of others — has slowly awakened these past few years and knew what I should do this morning. 20 min trail run up here, work on this one route until my hands have had enough.
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§13 – On Noticing New Jumps
(Part 25 of 37 in series, Study inspired by Pakour & Art du Déplacement by V. Thibault)
I once visited the Hoover Dam in Nevada.
South of the dam, U.S. Highway 93 soars across the gorge 900 feet (270m) above the Colorado river. The view of the dam, from the pedestrian walkway on that bridge, is one previously seen only by helicopter. It is simply amazing.
There is a chest-high railing along that pedestrian walkway, and there is nothing above the railing.
The bridge is a “simple” arch span — all of the bridge structure is under the bridge deck — so there I was, standing on a sidewalk.
…next to a railing.
…900 feet in the air.
I leaned casually on that rock-solid railing and took in the unrivaled view.
I took some tourist-y photos.
The bridge occasionally quivered ever-so-slightly in response to a truck embedded in the streams of traffic flying between Arizona and Nevada.
I looked down, down, down to the river far below. It was a serene view; peaceful.
I noticed: The big, round, easy-to-hold top of the railing and the two-inch-wide concrete lip on the outside of the railing.
…and like a sucker-punch to the stomach, it occurred to me that I could turn-vault over that railing. I nearly threw up from the adrenaline spike. My knees went wobbly and had I not been on the sane side of that railing, I would absolutely have fallen off that bridge.
I slinked back to the car, hugging the side of the walkway away from the railing.
I have since looked up the numbers; it would have taken me 7.5 seconds to fall to the river, and I would have been traveling at 160mph (263km/hr) upon dipping my toes in the Colorado river.
I have never — before or since — been blind-sided so violently by a physical reaction. I went from calmly enjoying a spectacular view, to needing to immediately hurry the long distance to the end of the bridge where we had parked.
Noticing new jumps indeed.
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Pictures of food
Look I’m really sorry for posting dorky food-photos… but I walked a mile to this vegan restaurant. OMG this is one of yummiest things I’ve ever eaten. It looked awesome and tasted better. It’s a riff off of Pad Thai. It was so good, I’m going to sit here for AN HOUR until their lasagna comes out of the oven!!
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Days off
Resting the ‘ol bones, and exercising the grey matter, with a superlative book by Vincent Thibault in my new, favorite-spot.
Update: I’ve started an entire series of posts as part of my studying this book. Study inspired by Pakour & Art du Déplacement by V. Thibault.
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