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    • Silence, Exile, and Cunning

      “I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use—silence, exile, and cunning.” ― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

      We’re in a strange new world, full of people believing unbelievable things. Or maybe the world has always been strange and unbelievable, and I’ve just risen above the din to finally see it all myself. These are days we’ll remember, at least if we survive long enough and the victors are on the right side of history.

      Belief is a funny thing, carrying us to places we may never have imagined we’d go to, simply because we believed the story that pulled us there. This can serve us well, when used for snuffing out imposter syndrome and such things for productive work. The day I stepped away from anonymous blogging to having friends and family fully aware of what I’m writing (if at all inclined) was a notable moment in my development as a writer. There are other notable moments to come this year on the writing front (I believe this to be true).

      Belief can also be used to control the masses. The world is a far more dangerous place because of shared beliefs of “us versus them”. It leads to mass indifference at the separation of families at borders and the bombing of hospitals and schools, all to keep them from threatening us. We all know the world is a complicated place with no easy answers, but when someone loudly starts pointing their fat finger at another group and screaming “Them!” it’s usually time to back slowly away to look for the real story. But who tells real stories anymore?

      There is no them
      There’s only us
      — U2, Invisible

      The thing I tell people who dare to ask me what I think is that we must build resilience into our lives. Some people believe resilience is hoarding guns, food and toilet paper. There’s a whole economy built around those folks. My own form of resilience lies in creating more diversity in my diet. Better nutrition for the mind and body through selective consumption. More books, poetry and song, less curated social media and billionaire-run mass media. And, as James Joyce suggested, the use of silence, exile and cunning to build a mote between the zealots and all that I know to be true in this world.

      There’s nothing silent about a blog post. It’s a stamp of stated beliefs marking this moment in time. A betrayal that I’m still trying to change the world for the better. We may choose to be a voice for reason and acceptance, after all. At least until things really go to hell and they ship us all to Greenland to mine precious metals for the next generation of self-driving cars, weaponized drones and phones that tell us what to believe next (I digress).

      We may be selectively silent when it suits our purposes, just as we may exile ourselves from the zealots who would have us fall in line. Both tools have limitations in a small world with big reach. That leaves us with cunning. We must be smarter than the average bear, to stay one step ahead of what they want to tell us is true. This is the ultimate resilience, and it begins and ends with our audacity to think differently.

    • Begin Already

      “Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go.” — Brooks Atkinson

      My writing desk is filled with old receipts, business cards, lip balm and coupons from the holidays. Why do these collected scraps of the past accumulate on spaces we mean to use for more productive, forward-looking work? It’s time to clear all that stuff off and get back to the work that I created this space for. It’s time to write, to dive deeply into questions, to create something more than the scattered refuse of prior days.

      We can’t very well dwell on all that’s come and gone and expect to get to the places we still want to go to in our lives. Are we awaiting warmer days? Inspiration? Enough of limbo, it’s time to begin climbing again. Our future depends on us doing something productive with our time now, not thinking back on what we did then. Begin already!

    • Crossing the Threshold

      “To see that your life is a story while you’re in the middle of living it may be a help to living it well.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

      Some change is obvious. Quit drinking for the month and you can say you had a dry January. Stop eating for a day or two and call it a fast. Write a blog post every day for a year (or six) and call yourself a writer.

      Some change is more subtle—sneaking up on us over time. Read enough books and you begin to think differently. Walk a few steps more each time out the door and find the scale doesn’t mock you as much. Change can be abruptly obvious or a drop in the bucket that overflows with time.

      We are all writing our life story. We are the sum of all that we’ve written thus far. So which chapter are we working on today? Are we encountering the threshold in the hero’s journey, leaving the ordinary for the extraordinary? To feel the rush of crossing the chasm is as exhilarating as it is terrifying. Most of us feel we aren’t crossing thresholds every day. Mostly we feel we’re in the ordinary because it sure feels that way to us.

      Seen another way, every day is a threshold to be crossed. We woke up again! What a thrill that should be! We know where we are, but not always where we’re going. Life is our puzzle to solve in our time. A master class in becoming someone we only imagined before. Doesn’t it serve us to be more creative with the script we’re writing for today? To be bold in our daily decisions pulls wonder out of a previously blank page. So spice it up a bit, grateful for the opportunity! Be bold today.

    • The Right Time

      “A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting.” — Carlos Castaneda

      I spent a lifetime
      Waiting for the right time
      — Elvis Presley, Its Now or Never

      It’s been bitter cold the last few days. The kind of cold that stings bare skin. These are the days when building a roaring fire to warm ourselves was exactly what we envisioned when we were busy chopping and stacking firewood. Indeed, all that chopping and stacking led us here; so make use of that spark we jealousy hold onto and light the damned fire already!

      All that planning and goal setting to start the year is useful, but now we must get straight to the business of executing on that plan. Start the streak of productive days, or keep the streak alive if we’re fortunate to be on the right path already. The trap is to keep on planning for a bold life, instead of living it.

      There is no right time for anything, there’s only now. Do what must be done in the time we have. We all want to be the hero in our own epic journey—so what are we waiting for? It’s now or never, friend. There comes a time when chopping and stacking firewood is no longer the best use of our precious time.

    • Like Wind Blowing

      “Things don’t have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What’s the function of a galaxy? I don’t know if our life has a purpose and I don’t see that it matters. What does matter is that we’re a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

      It is and we are. What matters is we’re a part. We need not make sense of it all, for who can possibly know? What matters is that we are playing our part in the universe in our time.

      This echoes of Walt Whitman’s famous answer in O Me! O Life! which will always be read with the voice of Robin Williams in my head:

      “That you are here—that life exists and identity,
      That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”

      Some of us forever dwell on the why. Some descend into nihilism, as if a why matters a lick, for existence itself is folly. And some simply get straight to work, believing action creates a why. The only thing we control is our reaction to the world we find ourselves dropped into. What do we find when we break down the word reaction? Google AI to the podium:

      “The Latin word reāctiō is the origin of both the Old French and Middle English words, which comes from the verb reagō. Reagō is made up of the prefix re- meaning ‘again’ and the word agō meaning ‘to act’.”

      To act again. Like wind blowing through the grass, we stir meaning out of the inanimate and create a life for ourselves. This is what it means to be alive. To play a part infers action, for which we must boldly embrace our agency. Life has purpose or it’s meaningless—we play a part in determining which it will be. Who says we can’t make our part a thrilling page-turner?

    • Dismantling Our Walls

      “Change is freedom, change is life. It’s always easier not to think for oneself. Find a nice safe hierarchy and settle in. Don’t make changes, don’t risk disapproval, don’t upset your syndics. It’s always easiest to let yourself be governed. There’s a point, around age twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities. Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I’m going to go fulfil my proper function in the social organism. I’m going to go unbuild walls.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

      I used part of this quote a few months ago, but wanted to revisit it using Le Guin’s entire challenge. And it is a challenge, isn’t it? We must decide what to be and go be it, or fall in line with all the rest of the compliant souls marching to their ends with their hopes and dreams and potential to make a dent in the universe unfulfilled.

      We’re a few days into the new year now, so how are those resolutions going? Are we moving in the right direction? Walls take time to build, but once built they’re equally hard to unbuild. We know that what brought us here won’t get us there, so we must get busy building or dismantling our walls.

      Change is rarely a leap to the summit but a steady climb built today upon the work of yesterday. Our lifetime is a story written over thousands of days. We must remember this and focus on the direction we’re going and not the failings encountered as we close out any given day. Turn the page and start writing the next.

      “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” — James Clear

      What is identity but a series of days built around behavior and habits? Each reinforces who we are, or corrodes our set beliefs over time. Our lifetime work is to embrace our peculiarities and make something special out of them. The alternative is to fall in line with everyone else, marching through time to their inevitable end, living the lives of quiet desperation that Thoreau warned us of. That’s not us, friend. When we find that our walls are blocking us from any direction but the one in front of us, we’d better like that direction or we must get busy dismantling walls.

    • ‘Tis Time for Action

      Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.” — Benjamin Disraeli

      Some of us are excellent planners. I pride myself on planning every detail of a trip, whether business or pleasure, to ensure I make the most of my time wherever I’m going to. There’s room built in for discovery, but the key building blocks of an impactful and successful trip are covered. The key to maximizing the return on that time and effort investment spent in planning is action. We must do the things we said we were going to do.

      We’ve turned the corner into a new year. All that planning must now be realized through action. The workouts, the calls we promised to make, the books we said we’d read and the waterfalls we said we’d go see are all lined up and waiting for us. We must keep our promises to ourselves and do something with the opportunity.

      Everyone wants to be happy, but what is happiness but a byproduct of action? What is a long term, happy marriage? Ask someone out on a date, find there’s a spark, build bridges out of common ground, and thirty years later find that we’ve built a hell of a life together. Happiness is the series of actions by each player in the relationship to keep it all together through all that life throws at us along the way.

      What is the opposite of happiness? Indifference. Which is manifested by inaction. Every day I play frisbee with the pup. The moment one of us becomes indifferent the game is over. One side is waiting for the other to be present again and momentum fizzles away. It’s not such a leap to see this applies to more than frisbee. When we go through the motions, skip steps, and drift away mentally or physically, the gap grows between the state we wanted and the reality of our life. We must invest ourselves daily in the work necessary to keep the game alive, whatever that game is for us.

      So here we are with all that planning just waiting to be executed on. We know the first step is going to be awkward, but still a bit thrilling. We know our inclination may one day—maybe tomorrow, maybe next week—lead to indifference. Just as indifference kills action, action kills indifference. Each day we show up builds momentum. So we must show up and honor all that planning with action.

    • All This Scribbling

      “But what does all this scribbling amount to? What is now scribbled in the heat of the moment one can contemplate with somewhat of satisfaction, but alas! to-morrow—aye, to-night—it is stale, flat, and unprofitable,—in fine, is not, only its shell remains, like some red parboiled lobster-shell which, kicked aside never so often, still stares at you in the path.
      What may a man do and not be ashamed of it? He may not do nothing surely, for straightway he is dubbed Dolittle—aye! christens himself first—and reasonably, for he was first to duck. But let him do something, is he the less a Dolittle? Is it actually something done, or not rather something undone?”
      — Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry David Thoreau

      We aren’t the only ones who wonder at our writing. Thoreau telegraphed his own doubts in his journal, but kept writing nonetheless. And what of us? A friend asked me today if I would keep the blog going in the new year. Which raises the question of why. Why keep this going at all? Well, why not?

      Does our daily routine lead us somewhere or are we going in circles? It’s a new year and a new day. These are the times that stir the imagination. Where will we go with it? What might we do that we may be proud of?

      When it comes to the blog, and maybe some other writing of consequence, the journey is worthy of the time investment. It feels to me that all this scribbling leads somewhere very much worth going to. Onward then, into the great unknown that is the new year. Let’s see where it all takes us.

    • Our Opportunity of a Lifetime

      We know what we are, but not what we may be.”
      — William Shakespeare, Hamlet

      The final day of the year offers us a clear idea of who we are, and tantalizes us with the mystery of what we may be in the next year. So here we are again, friend. What have we become? What will we become? All the weight of identity placed on a turn of the calendar. But every day offers these questions that only we may answer. To be or not to be, that is the question: every single day.

      This year coming to an end offers us the answer. We have become both in what we have consumed (food, media, books, feedback, time) and what we have produced (art, presence in the lives of others, our chosen professional work, our acceptance of or anger at our fellow humans to the sum of each in the world). We are the sum of our consumption and production to this point. We either like who we’ve become or we may reset the compass and go in a new direction entirely. That’s the beauty of a new day and the New Year: reinvention.

      It always comes back to what we say yes and no to. Today’s post completes a promise I made to myself a year ago to write every day. Regular readers know that I considered stopping to focus on other things, but pushed through the no to arrive back at yes. I’m inclined to say yes to this promise again in the next year, knowing that there will be hurdles once again. We all have those things that set our day in motion, don’t we? Writing is my motion setter.

      We may take that concept of setting things in motion to tomorrow, today. Whatever that audacious resolution may be, today offers an opportunity to set the stage. What we may be remains our unique opportunity of a lifetime. Why wait another day to get started on the path to becoming?

    • Adapting to the Alpha Dog

      “Without the spur of competition we’d loaf out our life.” — Arnold Glasow

      We invited another dog into our home for the holidays, to help out a nephew who is away for a few days. The holidays are an interesting time to get to know a new dog, but she’s been a sweet pup in most every way. She is most definitely an alpha, and quickly established herself as such with our own pup. Our pup in turn learned to eat her meal immediately or risk losing it altogether to the other. We feed them in different rooms, but a girl only has to see her food eaten by another once or twice to hammer home the lesson. Live with urgency when your world turns competitive.

      I joined a new company a couple of months ago and have received phishing emails and texts from someone posing as the CEO a couple of times per week ever since. It’s easy to let our guard down in such circumstances, but we must always be vigilant. Those who would take all we’ve earned grow more sophisticated every day, and so we ourselves must learn and grow as well. A simple check with IT confirmed what I knew already: it was a phishing attack. The real CEO can still reach me if he wants to chat.

      We know that our true aim is personal excellence, but we still must keep an eye on the world around us. This world has always been competitive, and will be long after our last day in it. There’s always someone who wants what we want, so we must work harder to earn what we want for ourselves. And there’s always someone who wants what we have, so we must grow ever more resilient to protect what we’ve earned.

      It’s easy to get comfortable when we reach a certain place in our lives. The world in 2025 will surely be different from the years preceding it. We can’t just loaf our way through the changes, we must keep reinventing ourselves to survive, and maybe even to thrive. All of this reinvention may feel exhausting at times, but it’s simply personal growth hidden as work.

      That alpha dog visitor is still with us for a few more days. She’s been wonderful, but goodness she’s brought some changes to our home. It’s good to remember that our visitor is adapting to the challenge of living in a strange new home for a few days, full of creatures she doesn’t know all that well, and absent the people she’s grown to trust the most. We aren’t the only ones adapting to change. So reminding her that we’re equally invested in making it work is a good first step to growing together.