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    • Adding Treasure

      “Why be saddled with this thing called life expectancy? Of what relevance to an individual is such a statistic? Am I to concern myself with an allotment of days I never had and was never promised? Must I check off each day of my life as if I am subtracting from this imaginary hoard? No, on the contrary, I will add each day of my life to my treasure of days lived. And with each day, my treasure will grow, not diminish.” ― Robert Brault

      I took a walk with the pup late last night, hoping to see the Geminid meteor shower. Most magic in the sky is inevitably obscured by cloud cover, so when we’re lucky enough to have a crisp, clear sky and a meteor shower we ought to get out the witness it. It proved to be a walk filled with exclamation points punctuating the celestial dance. Like days, every walk is different. A few are special.

      We ought to seek out that specialness in every day. It’s likely hiding in plain sight. As with everything life-amplifying, a bit of awareness surely helps. Knowing the Geminids were happening got me out of a warm house on a cold evening at a time when I’m usually fast asleep. Likewise, a bit of research before traveling to a new place nets all kinds of treasures worthy of a side trip, treasures that will whisper to us in the quiet moments until we experience them, and then whisper delightfully forever after: “We really got to experience that!”

      Awareness is essential, but so is engagement; we ought to talk to the people sitting next to us, we ought to find the local scenic vistas, we ought to dance when the music kicks up a notch. and yes, we ought to miss out on a bit of comfort now and then to try bold things. The time will flow right by either way—shouldn’t we do something more with it?

      “Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures.” – Henry David Thoreau

      The mindset of steadily adding memories instead of subtracting days is a wonderful way to filter exactly what we’re going to do with this day at hand. We can’t possibly stop the flow of sand through the hourglass, so maybe taking a walk on the beach and forgetting about that hourglass altogether is our best move. When we steadily accumulate magic in our moments life becomes something memorable. Go be deliberate and adventurous—for that’s where the treasure is.

    • The Better For It

      “Love what you do. Get good at it. Competence is a rare commodity in this day and age. And let the chips fall where they may.” — Jon Stewart

      “The artist uses the talent he has, wishing he had more talent. The talent uses the artist it has, wishing it had more artist.” ― Robert Brault

      Over time we become proficient at some things at the expense of other things we might have done instead. We simply can’t do everything in this world, and when we try we dilute our potential to master anything. Focus matters a great deal in becoming competent at anything, let alone to master that thing.

      Lately when I click publish there’s a wave of purposelessness that washes over me for just a moment. The dialog goes something like this: “I’ve completed the blog for the day, the one nagging thing that drives me out of bed that must be done is done… so what now?” And that’s usually when the noise of the world fills the void and my purpose becomes clear once again. Do the things that must be done that have been ignored that you might do this other thing. The fog lifts and I get to it.

      Sometimes the noise of the world keeps me from writing the blog until later in the day. Those are days of great discontent, as if I’m being held back from something essential. Now don’t get me wrong—what is essential to me is mostly noise to the rest of the world, if heard at all, but it’s another rung on the ladder towards better that I must climb. The talent uses the artist it has, and I hate disappointing it with lackluster effort.

      When we love what we do, we keep doing it with an earnest focus on something beyond competence. We owe it to ourselves to reach for excellence in whatever we’re doing in this moment. We can always be better, until one day we can’t be. The race for mastery has an expiration date that we’re charging towards faster than we might believe. Shouldn’t we love the work enough to put our best out there right now? If we’re blessed with tomorrow we’ll be the better for it.

    • Designing the Sweet Life (La Dolce Vita)

      “A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.” ― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      In a full confession that will surprise no one in my circle of friends and family, I struggle with the act of idleness. I rarely sit still, even on vacation, choosing to explore whatever place I find myself in, and too often stack too many activities into those “idle” days. There’s no lying on the beach for hours for me. The default is activity over idleness. I marvel at the pets for their ability to simply nap away hours of a day. If I nap at all I set the alarm for 15 minutes and get right back to moving about as soon as possible. And the idea of sleeping in? There is no snooze alarm in my world.

      But that doesn’t translate to being productive all of the time. We can putter about without really getting anything done. The world is full of people quietly quitting the work they have in front of them. There are plenty of people opting out of frenetic lifestyles. There are whole cultures built around the sweetness of doing nothing (dolce far niante: I’m looking at you Italy). So how do we restless souls learn to chill out a bit and live the sweet life (la dolce vita) ourselves?

      “Doing less meaningless work, so that you can focus on things of greater personal importance, is NOT laziness. This is hard for most to accept, because our culture tends to reward personal sacrifice instead of personal productivity.” ― Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek

      The thing is, Thoreau and Ferriss, both known for promoting more strategic idleness in our days, have also produced some significant work that resonates beyond the moment they created it. For all their perceived idleness, there’s an underlying productivity hidden in plain sight. That’s what people miss in the idea of la dolce vita—it’s living the sweet life while still keeping the lights on with productive work. It seems we can have it all, if we create a lifestyle that is both pleasurable and productive.

      The trick is being far more strategic in our productivity, thus giving breathing room for idleness. We ought to know what we’re really setting out to do in this lifetime, and break that down into milestones. Milestones in turn are achieved through work strategically designed into our days. If that sounds like the antithesis of dolce far niante, well, I understand. But it really is the essence of living Thoreau’s “natural day”: filled with enough idle time to feel we’re not cogs in a machine while still producing something memorable.

      Productivity (and idleness) requires focus. Doing the work that matters most in the moment and then get on with living that sweet life. We’re all students of maximizing the potential of our lifetime. We ought to know what makes life sweet, and also meaningful. Designing a pace of life that balances the two is the essence of a sweet life.

      Ultimately, designing a lifestyle that maximizes our potential should be our focus. But potential for what? Wealth? Fame? Isn’t it really time spent doing the things that makes a life sweet? Time with people who matter a great deal to us. Time doing the things that make life a pleasure. Time structured in a way that it doesn’t feel like we’re biding our time but living it.

      So the question when designing a lifestyle is, “what will maximize the number of beautiful moments we may stack together in this finite lifespan?” Nothing brings focus to our days like remembering we only have so many of them. Memento mori. Stop wasting time thinking about it and go live it, today and every day we’re blessed with. The Italians are on to something, don’t you think?

    • A December Dark

      We grow accustomed to the Dark –
      When light is put away –
      As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
      To witness her Goodbye –

      A Moment – We uncertain step
      For newness of the night –
      Then – fit our Vision to the Dark –
      And meet the Road – erect –

      And so of larger – Darknesses –
      Those Evenings of the Brain –
      When not a Moon disclose a sign –
      Or Star – come out – within –

      The Bravest – grope a little –
      And sometimes hit a Tree
      Directly in the Forehead –
      But as they learn to see –

      Either the Darkness alters –
      Or something in the sight
      Adjusts itself to Midnight –
      And Life steps almost straight.
      — Emily Dickinson

      On Emily Dickinson’s birthday a poem about darkness, or rather, about becoming accustomed to the darkness as we step deeper into it. We might call this night vision, or depression, or we might call it becoming jaded. It all depends on the type of darkness we step into.

      Moonless, rainy nights naturally tend to be amongst the darkest. Place that night into December and you’ve added raw. By all accounts raw, dark and rainy ought to be miserable. Surely nobody would choose it for pleasure optimization, and yet it has it’s own pleasures when we dress for it, or shelter from it in the comfort of a nest. But these are forms of mitigation. The conditions remain.

      Amor fati.

      The thing is, we can step into the darkness and learn to thrive in it. That doesn’t make us a part of the darkness, merely adaptive. That’s a healthy condition in a lifetime filled with rawness, filled with darkness. We adapt and learn to thrive once again. Eventually the rains end, the sun rises, and the days will warm. Count on it. But tread with care until then.

    • Being Open to Delightful Encounters

      “Do anything, but let it produce joy. Do anything, but let it yield ecstasy.” ― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

      We learn much from puppies and children. For all my self-absorbed analysis of the world and my place in it, there’s nothing like putting your ego on the shelf and playing a game of fetch with the pup, or laughing at the world like a toddler does, at the smallest of delights encountered. There are lessons on how to live in such moments of clarity.

      Life is either an active pursuit of joy, or a series of distractions designed to make us believe that we’ve done enough with our days. Which we choose determines how we feel about the game in the end. So it is that I throw the frisbee in the morning fog while my coffee grows cold inside. What’s a cup of coffee but a joyful jolt of clarity anyway? The frisbee seems more sustained and meets canine approval.

      On a solo walk yesterday through a high roller neighborhood yesterday I encountered a couple walking their own dog. Given the neighborhood, the chances are they were high rollers. Given the neighborhood, one could make the case that I was as well (not quite). The dog was a big black Labrador retriever eager to greet everything encountered, including me. The couple were less enthused, with doggie dad grimacing at the thought of saying a word at all. I know a no trespassing sign when I read it— this was an encounter best completed quickly. I said a quick hello to their dog and nodded and smiled at the grimace greeting me, and we walked in opposite directions. One never knows why someone is holding back their joy, for life is full of reasons for grimacing. That doesn’t mean we can allow them to steal our own joy.

      We ought to live our lives focused on joyful interaction with the world, but we know the world is full of pain and misery and the occasional threat to our own well-being. To see the world through the eyes of a child seems naive and fraught with potential danger. Walking through life with our guard up surely seems more pragmatic, but we face other threats when we keep the world at arms-length. We rob ourselves of the possibility of delightful encounters along the way.

      The more life I put behind me, the more I find myself in the business of joy production. We can’t get a smile out of everyone, but we can surely try to raise the collective spirit of a world increasingly in a sour mood. Perhaps this is too much to ask as a purpose of a single lifetime, but it can surely be a product of one.

    • The Kindred Sky Spirits

      The puppy is growing up. She’s seven months old as I write this, and her shackles of timidity are finally being thrown off. We walk at night and she doesn’t shrink in fear at every trash barrel or shadow. It offers this star gazer the chance to dance with the constellations once again without alarming the neighbors. The odd neighbor walking the streets in the dark isn’t so very strange when he’s walking his dog. The dog is learning that this is our time together, but my head is often tilted upwards while her nose is down. We assure full coverage I suppose; the two of us walking with noses pointed in different directions.

      The pup has learned that I’m a sky spirit, temporarily grounded in this lifetime of servitude to the nest. Do I want to fly? Don’t you?? To fly is to soar! You bet I want to fly. I steal envious glances at the hawks and osprey gliding overhead. I marvel at the flocks of geese in formation. If they can do it why can’t we?! Alas, it’s not in our genes to flap our wings and soar. And yet we’ve learned how to fly anyway. How audacious of us.

      My favorite videos are flying videos. Give me drone footage over the perspective from the ground any day. There’s wonder in soaring above it all, and I’m immediately drawn into the world from the vantage point of a fellow spirit. That we are grounded doesn’t mean we can’t soar. There are opportunities all around us should we look for them.

      And there are people in my life who are kindred sky spirits. We don’t see each other often enough, but when the sky offers magic, we conspiratorially and usually virtually nod upwards—did you see that? Yes. Yes I did. And noted: so did you friend. Almost a shared secret hiding in plain sight, the sky. The masses are like the puppy: noses down. They’re looking at their phones or god knows what while the kindred glance upward, finding magic all around.

      Some of us instinctively know the phase of the moon, or which planets are visible at any given moment. We keep an eye on the possibility of an aurora and curse the inevitable cloud cover that occurs at seemingly every meteor shower or Northern Lights display. Not for us, not this time. We grow weary of such self-talk and scheme trips to faraway places where the weather seems to follow us mockingly. Some things aren’t meant to be, but we keep looking anyway.

      There’s no doubt the world is full of ugliness and misery if you look for it. Most of that resides in the world of humans, right at ground-level. We are forced to confront the worst in us on a regular basis. And yet there’s also wonder and magic in the world, just waiting for us to look up and find it. Don’t we owe it to ourselves to look beyond the broken surface and learn to soar above it?

    • Reminiscing

      Friday night, it was late, I was walking you home
      We got down to the gate and I was dreaming of the night
      Would it turn out right
      Now as the years roll on
      Each time we hear our favorite song
      The memories come along
      Older times we’re missing
      Spending the hours reminiscing
      Hurry, don’t be late, I can hardly wait
      I said to myself when we’re old
      We’ll go dancing in the dark
      Walking through the park and reminiscing

      — Little River Band, Reminiscing

      I may write about it now and then, but I’m generally too busy living in the present to dwell on the past. That doesn’t mean I don’t fondly reminisce about the best days, while cringing now and then at the worst days. Life lessons, each and every moment along the way.

      The benefit of a journal, let alone a daily blog, is seeing just who you were then. Who had those dreams and aspirations, doubts and fears? How did it turn out in the end? How have we turned out, this work in progress marching through time?

      Reminiscing isn’t simply living in the past, it’s rewinding ourselves to another version of us and seeing what we’ve learned through our experiences since then. It’s not so much dancing in the dark as putting a spotlight on progress made. Though dancing in the dark to the right music sounds lovely too, don’t you think? What tune are we singing lately? Will we reminisce about it as fondly?

    • So Apart We’ve Grown

      One of these days
      I’m gonna sit down and write a long letter
      To all the good friends I’ve known
      And I’m gonna try
      And thank them all for the good times together
      Though so apart we’ve grown
      — Neil Young, One of These Days

      Talking to an old friend, we asked each other about other old friends. Who have we seen? Who has drifted away? How are the kids? It was a reminder of the person I used to be who danced with the world in the best way he could at the time. We’ve grown so far apart since then. Yet we’re still the same in so many ways.

      The thing is we’re all becoming something more as the layers pile on. Those layers either smother who we once were or keep that person warm for the day when we fling off the years and dance like it’s 1999 again. Like a tree, those growth rings differ year-to-year. Some years are better than others, some are distinctly harder. We reach for the sun in good times and bad and put the seasons behind us, until one day we look around and wonder where the time went.

      One of these days, we’ll all get together again. We won’t miss a beat, I expect, just as we didn’t miss a beat last time. Somewhere deep inside us is the person we were then, thrilled to come out and play the part once again. Sure we’re all so very different as life rolls along and sometimes over us all. But there’s a spark of energy between old friends that remains to rekindle the flames of our youth. A time before mortgages and divorces and funerals for people we thought would be here with us now, in this very conversation, talking about who we were then.

      Those conversations change as we grow, from who we want to be when we grow up to who we want to be now that the kids have grown up. That’s a lot of growth to catch up on some day when we get back together with those old friends. Now is just another growth ring we’ll laugh about (perhaps someday). We all know that the future is coming for us soon enough. But those growth rings make their own music. And we have so very much to catch up on.

    • Worthy of Becoming

      “What makes a man beautiful? Isn’t it being an excellent man? And so, if you wish to be beautiful, young man, work at this, the acquisition of human excellence. But what is this? Observe who you praise, when you praise many people without partiality: do you praise the fair or the unfair? ‘The fair.’ Do you praise the moderate or the immoderate? ‘The moderate.’ And the temperate or the intemperate? ‘The temperate.’ Therefore, you know if you make yourself a person like those who you praise, you will know that you will make yourself beautiful: but so long as you neglect these things, you must be ugly, even though you arrange all you can to appear beautiful.” — Epictetus, The Discourses

      We all aspire to something. Beauty. Power. Wealth. Fame. What we might become prods us along, becoming our why. This blog was born out of a desire to be a better writer, to express through a keyboard all the things I’d deferred in favor of other aspirations. That I stick with it is telling, for it betrays who I wish to become with every post.

      There’s been a steady improvement in the writer (perhaps also the writing) as change is documented, great works are read, routines are attempted. That he remains imperfect speaks to how far he had to go. He rarely speaks in the third person so this must be a very serious point. Or tongue-in-cheek. One never knows with this writer… and by that I mean one always knows.

      The thing is, the progress is there when we go look for it, when we have an aspiration worthy of pursuit. When we pass that magical ten thousand hour milestone, we believe we might just be mastering something but have learned just enough to realize we’ve got so very far to go. We never master anything, we only pursue excellence from a higher plane. But isn’t the view that much better? Just look at how far we’ve climbed!

      Any hiker will tell us this is a false summit. It feels like we’ve arrived but soon realize that it isn’t the summit at all, simply a small rise before we descend again to begin the next ascent. This can be crushing for the undisciplined, or simply a part of the climb for those who are more resilient. The trick is to stop looking around and start climbing again. Just good enough isn’t what we aspired to when we began this journey.

      Since we can’t possibly climb every summit in a lifetime, we must choose what we’ll aspire to master and what we’ll choose to be average or poor at. We ought to choose to fail at the things that won’t matter in the end that we may put all of our energy into developing within ourselves that which is truly beautiful. Arete—personal excellence, is our true summit, and thus worthy of the climb.

    • Eyes Open

      “There seemed to be endless obstacles preventing me from living with my eyes open, but as I gradually followed up clue after clue it seemed that the root cause of them all was fear.”
      ― Marion Milner, A Life of One’s Own

      When we think about it, most everything we imagine to be the worst case scenario is never going to come true. For every tragedy in the news, there’s a million ordinary days unfolding at the same time. For every unfortunate accident on the path to adventure there’s a thousand souls transcending their limiting beliefs. To live in fear is to handcuff ourselves to a previous version of ourself that will never experience everything the world could offer. Choose to be more audacious.

      The thing is, we all keep paying our dues, deferring the audacious for one more day of ordinary. The end game is we’ll run out of time if we don’t do it while we’re healthy and bold enough to try. In the end, that’s what we ought to fear: running out of time to finally live that un-lived life. While there’s still time. We must open our eyes and see the truth in those old Stoic guideposts: Tempus fugit. Memento mori… Carpe diem.

      There’s still plenty of ordinary in my days, and in moderation that’s okay too, but we ought to listen to that voice inside us calling for more and step to it more often. Friends and fellow bloggers Fayaway once posted an image that speaks to this wrestling match between the ears. I’ve kept this as a reminder to myself to push aside timidity more often in favor of boldness. To live a full life we must learn to fully live life: