Alexandersmap

    Author: nhcarmichael

    • Understanding How to Think

      “Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.” – David Foster Wallace, This is Water

      Watching the Pixar movie Soul yesterday, there was a reference to fish in water not knowing what water is. An hour later I was reading Admiral James Stidiris’s book Sailing True North and he also dropped in a reference to the speech, mentioning he reads it at least once a year. So, not one to ignore two disparate neon arrows pointing towards one specific source, I put the book down and re-read Wallace’s commencement speech. And just to be sure of his inflection I then listened to it again this morning (link above). Stidiris is right to read it every year. It should be required reading/listening for every person as part of their education, for if you look around at the highly-polarized America of 2020 it’s striking how on the mark Wallace was.

      I tend to absorb things through repetition and diversity, and maybe you do too. So watching the speech was one method of understanding, but reading the transcript at my own pace is where I fully absorbed what Wallace was trying to say. And in re-reading it at the end of 2020, when so much of what he said in 2005 reverberates differently, was striking. Wallace covers the peril of blind certainty, the contrasting importance of critical awareness and the “basic self-centredness” embedded in all of our operating systems. Critical awareness leads to freedom:

      “This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship.”

      “The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day… That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.”

      And there it is: the real, and really important, freedom of learning how to think for yourself. Of listening to the vile poison coming out of a politician’s mouth or written in upper case Twitter ramblings and taking a step back from it and saying “no, that’s bullshit”. And, importantly, listening to a counter argument by another talking head and seeing the bias in their words too.

      Perhaps this is the elitism that the zealots describe independent thinkers as having. I once had a conversation over lunch with a customer in Rochester, New York who was incredulous that I might have a different point of view about Donald Trump. I quickly steered to common ground, pointing out that it would be better if he didn’t tweet quite so much (never debate politics, or anything really, with your customers). I saw right away that there was no helping him understand the underlying issues with Trump. Debating him would have positioned me as a smug liberal (I’m a centrist, thank you).

      The thing is, I’m not sure I’m right about Trump, but the body of evidence and his consistent tendency to do just the opposite of what I would have done in just about everything he’s done surely suggests my assessment is correct for me. And that freedom to consider what is known, assess and reach my own conclusion about a matter, independent of what others say and with full awareness of my own biases, well, that I think is what Wallace was trying to get at with this speech about the value of a Liberal Arts education.

      Wallace committed suicide three years after delivering this Commencement speech at Kenyan College. He was born in Ithaca, New York and got his undergraduate degree from Amherst College. These are two places I’ve immersed myself in during my tenure on this planet, so I feel a small connection to him. Infinite Jest is the book that got the world to take notice of him. But his Commencement speech might just be his most enduring work.

    • Maintaining Streaks

      “Build streaks. Do the work every single day. Blog daily. Write daily. Ship daily. Show up daily. Find your streak and maintain it.” – Seth Godin, The Practice

      I made a relatively big deal (by my standards) of blog number 900. Well, this is 914 and I just keep quietly going. I have some exciting plans for blog posts in 2021, which rely on good health and the freedom of mobility that comes with a world getting back on its feet again – dare I say – after the pandemic. But I’ll write either way. I like this particular streak I’m on too much to stop just because I’m not out there seeing the world. And so the streak continues for as long as I’m blessed with another day and the acuity to do something with it.

      The concept of streaks is nothing new, but I’ll credit James Clear with writing the right book at the right time (for me) a couple of years ago shining a spotlight on habits and building streaks with them. It hit me in a way that Charles Duhigg’s book on the same topic didn’t. Both informative, but Clear’s book was catalytic. Since reading it I’ve tried to string together consecutive streaks for many things, but the writing is the one that’s lasted the longest. If you search for James Clear in this blog you’ll find plenty of quotes on this topic, but here are three I don’t believe I’ve used before:

      “The point is to master the habit of showing up.”

      “The identity itself becomes the reinforcer. You do it because it’s who you are and it feels good to be you.”

      “Never miss twice.” – James Clear, Atomic Habits

      So every morning begins with maintaining the streaks: Writing and reading. Fitness is saved for the middle of the day, and the evening is Duolingo to close out the day. Which may explain why I’ve had to use the streak saver several times with Duolingo (though I’ve never missed twice in a row) and the exercise streak gets broken more than it should. That exercise streak is just as critical for overall health as the writing, reading and language learning are for mental fitness. But it tends to get lost in that middle of the day time slot, so I’m debating moving it to the beginning of the day without breaking what’s working.

      As a morning person, the payoff is more obvious in the morning streaks. I publish every day, usually before I eat breakfast unless there’s an early start for a flight or a hike or whatnot. And I chip away at the reading immediately afterwards. I finished John McPhee’s Draft no. 4 (for five books in a week). That reading streak is paying off as much as the writing streak. They go hand-in-hand, of course, but it’s nice to finish things and “check the box”. For the blog checking the box means clicking Publish. For reading checking the box means reviewing the book after I’ve finished it on Goodreads. This also serves as my de facto tracker for how many books I finish in a year.

      “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

      Reading that McPhee book reminded me of what I don’t know. I spent a fair amount of time looking up the definitions of words he’d drop, or places he’d been to that I wasn’t familiar with. You could look at that in two ways: either you’re hopelessly behind on the learning curve, or you’ve reached another hurdle to clear on your sprint around the track of life. Embrace the humbling process of learning what you didn’t previously know, and look with anticipation towards the next hurdle in line.

      So that’s where you’ll find me each morning: maintaining streaks while sprinting around the track of life. We’re moving around it either way, we might as well keep a few streaks alive as we go. Now, about that fitness goal…

    • The Nature of Robust

      I tripped over a delightful word while reading a John McPhee book, turned it around in my head to assess it, and diligently highlighted it for the definition to be sure I had it right. The word? Pallesthesia. I write it and even WordPress underlines it in red dots of confusion. Pallesthesia is a “vibratory sensation”. A more complete definition may be found here if you choose. Anyway, the word seems appropriate for the topic at hand this morning: coffee.

      This week I’ve had the opportunity to assess four distinct coffee blends with my trusty AeroPress coffee maker. Two Peet’s (Berkeley, CA) Major Dickinson blends, one pre-ground and one whole bean. A Stumptown (Portland, OR) Hair Bender pre-ground blend and finally, a Blue Harbor (Hampton, NH) Sumatra whole bean blend. This gave me a unique testing lab to compare the differences, with the AeroPress and the water consistent for each cup.

      It may go without saying that there’s a distinct difference between whole bean and pre-ground coffee, but sometimes you just need the convenience of pre-ground. Given the time it takes to grind a tablespoon of whole coffee beans, it isn’t even convenience, really, but lack of motivation to get the grinder out and do the necessary work. Since I’m waiting for water to boil anyway, why not grind a few beans?

      The difference between pre-ground and freshly ground whole bean was most pronounced between the two bags of Peet’s Major Dickinson beans. The whole beans offer undeniable richness and flavor profiles that you don’t get with the pre-ground. I’m not one to ever turn down a cup of Peet’s, but given the choice the whole bean is the way to go.

      Stumptown is a famous name in coffee, and it’s a good cup, but it suffered in comparison to the whole bean Peet’s. I think it’s partially the Hair Bender roast being blended for mass appeal versus the richer blends I tend to favor. That said, I’m sipping a cup of it now while writing this blog, and it will do the pallesthesia trick when you just want to get moving in the morning.

      And that brings me to Blue Harbor’s whole bean Sumatra. This turned out to be my favorite of the lot. I think it comes down to it being the freshest roast of them all (being a local roaster that doesn’t mass produce bags of coffee at the scale of a Peet’s or Stumptown) and Sumatra is a go-to blend for me anyway. Peet’s guarantees that their coffee is no older than 90 days when you buy it at your local market, but that Blue Harbor is likely no more than 9 days old. Both are great, but you really taste the difference in a freshly roasted, just-ground coffee. So a nod to the local New Hampshire roaster for this round of the coffee wars: best in class this week.

      One thing is clear from all of this sipping and contemplation: great coffee matters. And whole bean great coffee roasted recently is profoundly more interesting than a whole bean brewed a while back. Another example of buying local making a big difference in the quality of your life.

    • The Wait

      Christmas morning for early risers is all about the wait. The scene is set, the stockings are strung by the chimney with care and stuffed full of candy and knickknacks and gift cards. The coffee is made, sipped down, and sometimes made again. The waiting game has begun.

      Back when the kids were in the magic age when Santa Claus and Rudolph dominated the conversation on Christmas Eve, sleep deprivation was the name of the game. You’d stay up half the night assembling the shock and awe gift of that particular season. And then they’d wake you up in a flurry of excited activity as one or the other would stir, realize what the moment was, whisper loudly to the other to wake up! and then they’d rush in to finish the job of getting you out of bed too. At the height of this mad dash we’d often be done with the early shift unwrapping by 7 o’clock.

      Not so when they reach adulthood. Now it’s all about the waiting game. The residents of the house get up in stages like it’s a Saturday morning with no place to go. We’ll get this celebration rolling around 9 o’clock I’d guess, but then again, who really knows? But they’re worth the wait.

      We won’t see everyone we’d like to see this Christmas, but we’ll add Zoom to our day and make the most of it. It’s a different vibe, but the same love. No assembly required. But maybe some tech support and reading glasses.

      Merry Christmas. And Happy Holidays. For all this year brought I hope this morning brings you Peace.

    • The Magic of Single Line Journaling

      “find beauty in each day
      a small beauty works fine

      bask in it
      then let it go

      other beauty awaits you”
      – Kat Lehmann, Stones from the River

      Last night I finished my fourth book in four days. That sounds like I’m reading a book a day, which is inaccurate. No, I’m merely whittling down the stack of books read throughout this year at around the same time. But I’m pleased to close them each out. When I read on the Kindle app I then go back and review the highlights once again, just to understand the salient points to make sense of the whole. No great surprise to anyone: some of those highlighted passages end up in this blog.

      If you take the micro poem by Lehmann and insert the word “book” where “day” is, well, you get an entirely different micro poem, and yet very much the same. Or insert “journey” or “conversation” or “decision” where “day” currently resides and… you get the point. There’s magic in words, and our choice of words.

      But to stay with the original word just a bit longer, I established this habit of writing down a summary of each day in one line in a journal. Sometimes this isn’t easy when all you did in a day was write a blog post, work and eat a pizza for dinner. But other entries offer more emphatic moments of consequence. I start/stopped this habit early in the year, and then it became an every day thing in June. I’d say six months officially makes it a habit.

      This micro poem sums up the exercise quite well. Find something notable or beautifully commonplace that occurred in a day and write it down in one line. And like a micro poem there’s joy in its simplicity. You only have one line. Write small if you will, but get right to the point. What happened? What did you do? What was the beauty you found in this day? One line.

      As with re-reading the highlights in a Kindle book I look back on months of single line entries and I see moments come alive again. Celebrations, mountains climbed, loved ones lost, friendships rekindled, and yes, an occasional pizza. I’m grateful for having written it all down. One line, for one day, at a time. For there’s magic in those words.

    • Quality Time

      “What is the state of things, then? It is this: I do not regard a man as poor, if the little which remains is enough for him. I advise you, however, to keep what is really yours; and you cannot begin too early. For, as our ancestors believed, it is too late to spare when you reach the dregs of the cask. Of that which remains at the bottom, the amount is slight, and the quality is vile.”
      – Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

      Re-read that Seneca quote and measure your use of alive time against what you have left in the cask. If this year offered plenty of cause to question our use of time or the unfairness in the world, it also gave us time to think and to pivot towards better uses of time than we might have before. But the irony is that we can’t waste time dwelling on it, we can only use it as a guiding light for what we do next.

      “Our current use of time is not rational. There is therefore no point in seeking marginal improvements in how we spend our time. We need to go back to the drawing board and overturn all our assumptions about time. There is no shortage of time. In fact, we are positively awash with it. We only make good use of 20 percent of our time. And for the most talented individuals, it is often tiny amounts of time that make all the difference.” – Richard Koch, The 80/20 Principle

      I got out and walked yesterday, pondering the narrow shoulders of the roads in my town and the number of cars driving on them in the busy stretches, and appreciating the quiet stretches with no cars where I could think. The takeaway was to remove the busy roads and walk in places where thinking is 80 percent of your walking time instead of simply surviving the experience. The time allocated to walking was always available to me this year, I just put it aside more often than I used it.

      I think back on the crazy year that was 2020, and wonder where the time went. Too much time on useless activities, chasing after opportunities that turned to vapor in the hard reality of the pandemic, and squandering time on social media, political debate, and watching entertainment of questionable quality. I spent more time with an iPhone in my hand than I should have, but tried to use that time reading the Kindle app, learning a bit of French and Portuguese, and taking pictures of the good moments.

      “The 80/20 Principle says that we should act less. Action drives out thought. It is because we have so much time that we squander it…. It is not shortage of time that should worry us, but the tendency for the majority of time to be spent in low-quality ways… If much greater work would benefit the most idle 20 percent of our people, much less work would benefit the hardest-working 20 percent; and such arbitrage would benefit society both ways. The quantity of work is much less important than its quality, and its quality depends on self-direction.” – Richard Koch, The 80/20 Principle

      During those moments of thinking time while walking I turned over the key points of Koch’s book in my head, thinking about the the quality of the time spent and how to spend it better. We don’t really know what’s left in the cask, but we know it’s not as full as it once was. The 80/20 Principle is both obvious and widely ignored by most people. But why be most people? When applied to our use of time, the pursuit of quality becomes… imperative.

    • The Cold Water Initiation

      “Though it be the hottest day in July on land, and the voyage is to last but four hours, take your thickest clothes with you, for you are about to float over melted icebergs.” – Henry David Thoreau, Cape Cod

      The stretch of water between Cape Sable Island in Nova Scotia and Cape Cod in Massachusetts is known as the Gulf of Maine. A lot of history has floated between these two points, from Native Americans and later the Basque fishing and whaling these rich and vibrant waters to explorers like Giovanni da Verrazzano and Samuel de Champlain mapping the coast and looking for places for settlements. The Gulf of Maine remains the one constant that each would recognize, though they might wonder where all the fish went until they glance back at the developed shoreline.

      In 1604 Champlain ventured south from Port Royal to explore the coast of Maine. It was on this trip that he discovered Acadia, and further south, the “baye longue” between two capes and a long stretch of sand beaches on the present coast of New Hampshire.” (David Hackett Fischer, Champlain’s Dream. It’s on these beaches that generations of New Englanders and vacationing Canadians have discovered the truth in Thoreau’s words: this water is as cold as melted icebergs!

      Cold water gets in your blood, and you don’t celebrate it so much as accept it for what it is: a shocking reminder of how insignificant we really are. The Atlantic Ocean is divided into the Northern Atlantic and the Southern Atlantic, but really, there are divisions within divisions. A swim in Miami is not the same as a swim in Virginia, and a swim in the Hamptons on Long Island is definitely not the same as a swim at Hampton Beach in New Hampshire.

      You aren’t really a New Englander until you’ve taken the plunge into the Gulf of Maine on a hot day. It’s an initiation of sorts into the extremes. There isn’t a person who swam in early July at Hampton Beach who couldn’t relate to the bobbing passengers at the end of Titanic. The cold water hardens you, tests your mettle, and reminds you of your mortality. And that’s why I’ve grown to love a bracingly cold swim now and then. That stinging skin is a shocking reminder that you’re still very much alive… if a bit numb.

    • Brighten Up: Winter Solstice 2020

      We’ve reached the 21st day of December and the Winter Solstice: the shortest day of the year, and the beginning of brighter days. And today is also the day Jupiter and Saturn have their Great Convergence, but New England looks to be clouded over for this once-every-800-years event. Such is our fate, but at least the earth starts coaxing us back towards the sun.

      Today the earth reaches its maximum tilt of 23.5 degrees away from the sun in the northern hemisphere and towards the sun in the southern hemisphere. I hope you southern hemisphere folks have a great summer, but it’s time for a bit more brightness up here, thank you. I’m not eschewing winter, for I enjoy my time with snow. But enough with the shorter days, thank you. We in the northern hemisphere could use this symbolic beacon of hope, this turning of the page, this tilting of the earth back in our favor more this year than any other in memory.

      Symbolically, this is a good day to make things brighter for ourselves. To begin our own mental tilt back towards the sun. To introduce positive new habits, to take longer walks, exercise more, reach out to more people. The days are getting brighter once again, and even if we can’t see the Great Convergence we can at least reconnect with loved ones to make one of our own.

      Ultimately we choose how we react to the world around us. But it’s nice to at least have the sun trending back in our general direction again. And after a dark year of worsening trends, it’s nice to have one going our way.

    • Stepping Out of Tiny Boxes

      Most people live their entire lives in tiny little boxes of their own making. I recognize the tendency because I too live in my own tiny box. But, for most people, the box we live in isn’t as tiny as it once was. It grows when we step out of it, over and over again. Until it isn’t such a tiny box after all.

      Experience is the great teacher, be it ours or the work of others before us. Reading and understanding are also forms of stepping out. Building things of significance, be they careers or causes or art or relationships, expand our tiny boxes. And journeys of consequence are also expansive in nature. I’ve never quite fit in my old box when I return from a faraway place or a mountain top, nor would I want to.

      Some choose to remain in their tiny boxes. Perhaps they find it comfortable in there. It isn’t our place to expand other people’s boxes, but we can gently coax them outside for a stretch. The sneaky part about helping other people expand their boxes is that ours expand in kind.

      Now and then I’ve realized that inside the box was far more comfortable than the place I found myself on the outside, but I couldn’t get back in again as hard as I tried. Soon any discomfort faded and I realized that it was just my hardened edges expanding to new places. I’ve learned to enjoy that feeling of discomfort more each time.

      We reach a point where we want to spend more time outside stretching, and less time pressed inside our borders. I hope that feeling never goes away, but I see it fades in some people. If you aren’t paying attention you get pretty comfortable in that box you’ve built and even stretching a little bit seems like a step too far.

      If we’re being honest with ourselves, sometimes it feels better to just stay where you’re comfortable. After all, there’s nothing cozy about leaping. Crossing chasms is scary and dangerous work. So why risk it?

      Because we weren’t born to live in tiny boxes.

    • En Passant, Knowing Your Place and Breaking Rules

      I once got in a debate with my grandfather about the rules of chess. Specifically, he would execute En Passant when I would attempt to move past his advancing pawn. At the time I thought I knew the rules of chess, but it seems I’d never fully grasped the rules the pawn plays by. It wasn’t until I took the time to learn chess at a deeper level that I realized he was right all along. And I can see him winking at me in my mind.

      For those who don’t play the game, a pawn may advance one square forward, can’t move past a piece that blocks its forward advance until that piece moves and may capture another piece diagonally forward only. Simple. And then they added another rule to help speed up the game a bit, allowing you to move every pawn two squares forward on its initial move only. Well, this created a problem as well, for if an opponent’s pawn had advanced to a point where your move two squares forward eliminated their ability to capture your pawn in it’s forward diagonal move, you were essentially stealing the already limited power from the opponent’s pawn.

      En Passant, French for “in passing“, is a rule that allows the opponent to say “not so fast!” (Well, really they would say “en passant“) and execute the move of putting their pawn onto your square where your recently deceased pawn had once been. It’s a way of telling you not to get too far ahead of yourself or you’ll pay the consequences.

      And there lies the dark side to En Passant: It’s reminding the pawns of the world to know their place, to not get ahead of themselves or they’ll suffer the consequences. En Passant was invented long before democracy, and pawns generally knew their place and skated their lanes. The bold were snuffed out if they went a step too far.

      In democratic societies we chafe at being pawns, and the bold among us do leap forward. The rules of law can still remind you you’re a pawn if you grow reckless, but mostly it’s other pawns telling you not to stick your neck out. And worse, En Passant largely resides in our own minds: Imposter syndrome, timidity, and fear of the unknown keep us skating in our own lane, one square at a time, while the big players in the world spin around us.

      A pawn that plays by the rules may advance forward diligently and become a queen or any player it wants should it reach the end. There’s a subtle message there too, and you look around and most people play that game. Skate your lane, reach the end and retire… Fine, I suppose, but a little less sparkle for your time on the board, don’t you think?

      No, there’s a place for boldness in this world. We are each in passing here for a very brief time. En Passant only applies to pawns, after all. And who said you had to be a pawn anyway?