Curated and random

I recall a little sign which was sometimes spotted on desks, back in the before-times when everyone had a desk and papers and ring-binders and books and a telephone that also sat upon that desk. The sign was: “A messy desk is a sign of genius.” (And sometimes it said, “…of a creative mind.” )

I’ve had a lot of desks. In every case, I’ve always swerved repeatedly between messy and organized. I get to a point where—sometimes with a literal scream—I stop working and reorganize everything. For a long time, I hoped that one day I would manage to be just comfortable enough, with just the right amount of clutter and chaos, to be able to reach a steady state.

One detail that drives me bonkers is in the digital realm, computers are perfectly organized. I use a tool (called Reeder) to manage a read-this-later collection. It’s a big collection often reaching 500 different things marked as possibly interesting. (Some are interesting enough to spend a few minutes on, some are interesting enough to spend hours on.) Sometimes I’ll randomly shuffle things in a digital list. But sometimes… the list is just ordered the way you assemble it. And you can look at the list in forward or reverse order. This gets to me. If it’s a big list, neither forwards or backwards is best. So instead, I do both: I read the item off one end (the thing that’s been in the list longest) and then the other (the newest), and I just alternate in a reading session.

Perhaps this seems like a silly or trivial thing to point out. But there’s a bigger lesson: Where do I have some specific structure (organization, ordering, etc.) that I didn’t actually intend? …is that structure holding me back or keeping me from experiencing something I’d prefer?

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Happy full moon tonight! A blue moon, this *Full Flower Moon* (Algonquin) will peak Sunday morning, 4:45 am Eastern.

*Leaf Budding Moon*; *Egg Laying Moon*; *Frog Moon* (Cree)
*Planting Moon* (Dakota, Lakota)
>>*Moon of the Shedding Ponies* (Oglala)<< my fav

First full moon this month was May 1, also a Flower Moon.
#feeling #looney #BlueMoon #FlowerMoon #waning #waxing #planting #frog #egg #blue #flower #moon #apogee #micromoon
https://www.almanac.com/full-moon-may

Friction and process

Picasso observed that, “inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” Inspiration has to find you in the midst of your practice.

Let’s say that I enjoy painting. When I find myself painting, I usually find myself happy. I love the feeling of setting down my brush after having worked out some little problem in a painting. And so, I decide I’m going to paint regularly.

Or let’s say I enjoy sailing. I love the adventure, or the wind in my face. And so, I decide I’m going to sail regularly.

Or, running, writing, movement, music … your choice.

But without concrete plans, and clear processes, I will never actually do the practice. Friction, followed closely by excuses, will sap my momentum. If I’m to be a runner, my shoes, clothes, music or whatever I need— Those things must be in place. For any practice there are some things which you will feel must be in place.

The processes that I’m imagining, which remove friction and enable my practice, have a steady state. For my process, what does “done” look like? It looks like me sailing so often I can’t even remember not sailing all the time. Or it looks like me running and jumping and playing so often that my body is a comfortable place for my mind.

Matthew Frederick, the author of 101 Things I learned in Architecture School, makes this point:

True style does not come from a conscious effort to create a particular look. It results obliquely—even accidentally—out of a holistic process.

This point about a holistic process—the idea that mastery isn’t some higgledy-piggledy mish-mash of throwing things together—is an idea I’ve held dearly for a long time. Every single time that I’ve decided to take a process, and repeat it in search of understanding, the learning and personal growth has paid off beyond my wildest dreams.

I’m a process process process person. The second time I have to do something, I’m trying to figure out how to either never have to do that again, or how to automate it. (And failing those two, it goes into my admin day.) Random activity, powered by inspiration works to get one thing done. But inspiration doesn’t work in the long run, and it won’t carry me through my practice.

Instead, I want to know what can I intentionally do to set up my life, so that I later find myself simply being the sort of person who does my chosen practice? I want to eliminate every possible bit of friction that may sap my momentum.

There’s a phrase in cooking, mise en place, meaning to have everything in its proper place before starting. The classic example of failure in this regard is to be half-way through making something only to realize you’re missing an ingredient and having to throw away the food. Merlin Mann, who’s little known beyond knowledge workers, has done the most to improve processes for knowledge workers and creative people. I’m not sure if he’s ever said it explicitly, but a huge part of what he did was to elevate knowledge workers and creatives by cultivating a mise en place mindset.

And don’t confuse “process” or a “mise en place” mindset with goals. Forget goals. Focus on the process, and focus on eliminating friction.

To quote Seth Godin:

The specific outcome is not the primary driver of our practice. […] We can begin with this: If we failed, would it be worth the journey? Do you trust yourself enough to commit to engaging with a project regardless of the chances of success? The first step is to separate the process from the outcome. Not because we don’t care about the outcome. But because we do.

And I’ll give my last words to Vincent Thibault, author of one of my favorite books:

That is how we are still conditioned socially as adults: Do, achieve, produce results, instead of be, feel, enjoy the process. Quantitative over qualitative. We are obsessed by performance and “tangible” results. But that is one of the great teaching of Parkour and Art du Déplacement: That the path is just as enjoyable as the destination; That sometimes it is even more important, and that oftentimes it is the destination.

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Embedded in a culture

Ray Liotta died on May 26, 2022. I wasn’t a particular fan of his, but he was definitely an actor who was a significant part of the culture I grew up in. There are many such people; actors of course, and also authors, musicians, journalists, teachers, scientists, politicians, military leaders, activists, and others less classifiable.

It’s one thing to think: That huge band that I love, which I’ve seen in concert… they’ve retired and hung up the act. Just knowing the people are still around however, means that something of, whatever it was that I loved, continues on in whatever it is, (public or not,) that they’re doing. Nostalgia rises up as people retire and things become, “remember when?”

But slowly, year by year, those people die and that makes it clear: Everything has its time, and that time ends. There but for the grace of God go I, is a beautiful turn of phrase.

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The more we know to ask

As the Island of Knowledge grows, so do the shores of our ignorance—the boundary between the known and unknown. Learning more about the world doesn’t lead to a point closer to a final destination—whose existence is nothing but a hopeful assumption anyways—but to more questions and mysteries. The more we know, the more exposed we are to our ignorance, and the more we know to ask.

slip:4a785.

It feels as if everything I know is fractal! Things are complicated by the fact that everything I discover, read, and learn creates a network of connections in my knowledge. I’m always trying to get enough perspective to see where that network is inbred; I’m always looking for ways to break out of my knowledge bubble. But sometimes, the knowledge bubble can be used to make manageable a task that would otherwise be impossibly large.

Consider the writings of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, known as Seneca the Younger, or most often just written as Seneca. Even just his series of letters to a student make for a 500 page tome. Worse, there are notes, references and multiple very different translations into English. As an example of the complexity, consider these translations of a small excerpt from letter 42. (There are 124 letters plus some additional fragments.)

So, concerning the things we pursue, and for which we vigorously exert ourselves, we owe this consideration—either there is nothing useful in them, or most aren’t useful. Some of them are superfluous, while others aren’t worth that much. But we don’t discern this and see them as free, when they cost us dearly.

If I’m correctly understanding their notes, that’s their translation from the original Greek and Latin texts. I find this translation frequently on the Internet, sometimes crediting those authors/that book, and sometimes crediting, Seneca, Moral Letters, 42.6.

Next, this is from Richard Mott Gummere. My limited digging suggests his original work was published in 1917. I’m guessing it went out of copyright in 2017, because it’s pretty easy to find it entirely republished. (Search for “Seneca Richard Mott Gummere”.) The copy I have is a crappy version from Barnes and Noble. (It’s as if they printed the book at 50% oppactiy.) Gummere titled letter 42, “On Values.” (Seneca did not title them, he simply wrote letter after letter after letter to his student.)

Therefore, with regard to the objects which we pursue, and for which we strive with great effort, we should note this truth; either there is nothing desirable in them, or the undesirable is preponderant. Some objects are superfluous; others are not worth the price we pay for them. But we do not see this clearly, and we regard things as free gifts when they really cost us very dear.

Finally, here’s the rendering from a very new publication from Chicago Press, which—again if I’m interpreting things correctly—takes as its primary sources translations from 9 different authors, (including Gummere,) published between 1914 and 2010. The same section is presented with letter 42 titled in the Table of Contents as, “Good People are Rare.” (But the letters in the body of the text are not presented with their titles—recall, Seneca didn’t title them.) Interestingly, I cannot find the following text anywhere on the Internet, the book only having been published in 2015 may be the reason.

This indeed is a point we should keep in view. Those things we compete for—the things to which we devote so much effort—offer us either no advantage, or greater disadvantage. Some are superfluities; others are not worth the trouble, but we don’t realize it. We think things come for free, when in fact their price is very steep.

As the length of this blog post attests: What starts simply as, “I’d like to read some of Seneca’s writing,” quickly gets complicated. Frankly, it gets impossibly complicated. Impossible as in: Never mind, I don’t have time for this. But I do want to read some of Seneca’s writing. (I have already read many of his letters.)

So my current plan is to use my collection of Seneca quotes to choose which letters to read again and more thoroughly. Thanks to the Internet, I can find the source letter given a snippette of text. Then I can enjoy the letter using my exquisite University of Chicago Press translation, which is magnificently annotated.

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Click

I’m a child of the vinyl album era. We had a collection—about 5 feet of shelf space—of classic rock, some jazz, the usual suspects collected during the 60s, 70s and into the 80s. There was sublime magic in that vinyl. My dad wasn’t an audiophile per se, but he had a few nice things that comprised the stereo system, and the crown jewel was a Marantz turn-table. We had special soft-cloth cylinders for gently lifting dust off the surfaces. We even had a little space-ray-gun-looking thing that [as far as I recall] neutralized static charge on the vinyl, (which apparently can accumulate when you pull them out of their sleeves.) A classic Pioneer amp… at one point he found someone who rebuilt his speakers for him—repair rather than replace was, at one time, the norm in America. There was a dedicated cabinet for the gear, with a built-in power strip, and lighting…

And the CD was invented while I was a kid. We—society at large—had endless arguments about sound. I even did a high-school presentation about how CDs actually work to encode the sound digitally, and how that encoding uses compression, and how quality is lost… and I bought more and more CDs. I skipped right over collecting cassette tapes; I made countless of my own from albums and CDs, but I don’t believe I ever bought a single one. The Sony Walkman was the driver for my recording cassettes. Then the portable CD players arrived and all hell broke loose. I only purchased a handful of vinyl albums and I never ever set up the Marantz after my dad died. (I passed it to my cousin who did get into collecting vinyl as a kid. I made him promise to spin the helll out of it, and play music loud— damn loud.) And my CD collection grew to thousands. Then I mixed in my dad’s extensive CD collection which had almost zero overlap with mine. My stereo? I keep a scary-old little AirPort Express plugged in, with a cheap-ass set of “computer” speakers, with a woofer, plugged into the AirPort’s 3.5mm headphone jack.

This morning… “I think some Mozart would be nice.” Click, click… and click… and Symphony no. 39, recorded in 1977 by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra streams from the little stereo. Rather loudly I might add.

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Attitude and assessment

It seems likely that Jack Sparrow’s admonishment about attitude is an echo of Aurelius’s reminder to himself two thousand years earlier. This idea that the attitude and assessment is most important has really helped me relax. Things will never be done, and I create all of my problems. I’ve come to understand that concrete goals and clear progress are detrimental to my health. They’re necessary, yes, but detrimental. The more goals I set, the more clear progress I can measure, the worse off I become; Mentally and physically those things grind me down.

Since they’re necessary—without them, it seems I’d simply devolve to being a blob on a sofa—I must have something in my life which counters the damage so that I can continue setting some sane number of goals and measuring some concrete progress. One of those things is practicing my attitude and assessment. I set aside time for this each morning. It’s not meant to take long. 15 minutes is really long enough. I read through a prompt from a set that I’ve created for myself. I read through a selection from some key books. I write in my journal, usually copying a single new quote from my collection as the beginning of the journal entry. I write some thoughts. I write some observations from the previous day.

Unfortunately, just about every morning, my urge—affliction? addiction?—to measure and create goals creeps into my morning reflection. Why am I taking all this time? (I’m up to something like 4,000 hand-written pages of journals!) Am I getting benefit from all this reflection? What’s the optimum “dosage” of reflection which yields the most benefit? How do I even measure the benefit? Is that page—that one I just wrote, an instant before these questions pop into my mind—worth writing? If I read that page in a year, will it in any way help me? Is the entry for today long enough? Should it have more “here’s what I did yesterday,” type stuff, or less? Maybe I should be also making a small note on my mood, or how I feel physically? Maybe I should… Oh, crap.

Close the journal, and go on with today!

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drip drip drip

This is post number 3,000 — What a long, strange trip it’s been!

My very first post here, “Hello world,” was written on August 13, 2011. That marked the beginning of this second incarnation of my home on the Web. It’s been a sublime decade of tap-tappity-tapping away. I’ve learned a lot about werd-slingin’, and obviously developed my own way of doing things. Looking back, I believe I’ve settled into a comfortable melange of: posting photography rarely enough that they have real impact when they appear, and often enough that I feel I’m actually doing something with the digital photography I manage to shoot; quotations that inspire, conspire, and aspire to be helpful; random linking to the effectively limitless wonderful things created by humanity; working on my own thinking by exposing my reflection; pointing out interesting connections among people, places, and things.

I’ve collected a surprisingly small number of posts tagged “Meta”, (19 to be exact,) which share more of the what-and-how of this blog.

I spent the last year preparing for this little milestone by currating a collection of posts tagged “Apogee”, which are the best-of-the-best. I was hoping to find 100, and without paying attention as I was finding and tagging, I ended up with 96.

Finally, this blog is a labor of love, and the front of the blog acts as the central-most “start here” for my presence on the Internet. It would mean a lot to me if you shared something with anyone you think would also enjoy it.

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Two roles in a conversation

I assist in an online podcasting workshop where a student recently asked:

Could knowing all these [interviewing] techniques be making us more aware of the style, and […] getting us further away from the natural, inherent style we all have […] ?

I’ve mentioned before that I distinguish between “interview” and “conversation” in what I’m currently recording for podcast publication, (for Movers Mindset and other shows.) Today, I’m just going to gloss over that distinction and riff off this student’s excellent observation. Whether we label it “interview” or “conversation,” there’s a key milestone people go through when they realize that practicing something intentionally, is going to—at least partially—paper over their own innate style. This is a normal step in any journey involving mastery practice. After sufficient practice, you will find you still have an innate style; It’s simply different than the one you started with.

I believe that my role as a conversation partner, (being who my guest needs me to be for us to have a great conversation,) and my role in serving my listeners, (being who the listeners need me to be for them to enjoy and/or learn from a great conversation,) are antagonistic. The better I perform at one of those roles, the worse I perform at the other. That’s the balance I’m trying to work out each time I press record. Techniques which serve well for one role, can be detrimental to the other role.

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