Alexandersmap

    Category: Art

    • Buried Treasure

      I know, you never intended to be in this world.
      But you’re in it all the same.
      so why not get started immediately.
      I mean, belonging to it.
      There is so much to admire, to weep over.
      And to write music or poems about.
      — Mary Oliver, The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac

      I know that there’s darkness in the world. I know that my time in it will draw to a close one day. I can hope that day is long from now, but really, who knows? And so I work to make something beautiful of this day, even if the world never finds it—it will be my buried treasure awaiting discovery. Perhaps this blog post, perhaps a photograph, or maybe the way a passage I underlined in a book long ago, that escapes even me.

      The snow is accumulating, layering above the frozen lawn, hiding those stubborn acorns and oak leaves that fell after the very last cleanup. There is never a last cleanup, they whisper. Life is a cycle and we are merely surfers catching a wave in our time. We aren’t meant to wrestle with infinity, it’s always had the advantage of waiting us out. Those holdout acorns have become buried treasure too.

      Each day I find some small project to finish. A book I thought would never end, a bit of paint on the wooden trim, a call I’ve been reluctant to make, a paragraph written and re-written in hopes of being published one day. Maybe, like those acorns buried under the falling snow, our work will be frozen in time awaiting some moment in the sun. Our best treasure still hides within. We must stop hiding and venture out into the world, while there’s time for such things.

    • To Be More

      “Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.” — Albert Camus

      To live and create, to the point of tears… How many of us read that and then settle back into old routines? It would be more prudent to stick with the familiar, to live a vanilla lifestyle, to do work that we’re comfortable with, and to stay in our circle of influence so we don’t upset the apple cart. There’s something to the tried and true, after all, for it brought us to this place.

      In the words of Marshall Goldsmith, “What got you here won’t get you there.” We’ve only got a few blessed days to work with, let us not dare waste this one on trivial pursuits. We may choose to be bold, and rise to meet the moments that unfold. For this, friend, is all there is.

      This isn’t a call for reckless living, consumerism or nihilism—just the opposite really. We must be bold, focused and purposeful with each moment, that we may optimize it. Optimization may sound very professional and career-focused, but can we not use the same standard on our days? We only have this one, why dare squander its potential? Carpe diem.

      With every deliberate act, we ought to consider how to amplify it more. Be more creative in our work, be more adventurous in our recreation, be more engaged in our relationships. It doesn’t take much more than choosing and following through. Momentum matters in all things: we may be more now, that we may build on that later. Live as if tomorrow depended on our actions today. We know it does.

    • The Highest Possible Thing

      “It’s so silly in life not to pursue the highest possible thing you can imagine, even if you run the risk of losing it all. You can’t be an artist and be safe.” — Francis Ford Coppola

      To reach for something beyond our present capabilities is to risk something tangible, be it a hit to our reputation, our financial or physical wellbeing, or our precious time. It’s easier to just do what everyone wants of us, rather than to keep answering the same old questions about what we’re going to do with our lives. That question is so common that it auto-filled as I typed it.

      The thing is, we waste so much time just answering the damned question instead of simply pursuing the dream that most people never ship the work. Wait too long and that dream dies with us one day. Talk about losing it all…

      That voice of reason means well for us, but it thinks small. Nothing perfectly reasonable turns out to be great. Reasonable only leads to “fine”, as in, “How’s everything going for you, old friend?” Our confidant who once knew our secret dream back in the day asked. “Oh, it’s going fine.” We respond, and all that was lost but unsaid was revealed.

      When it comes time to put our highest aspirations ahead of the feeble excuses about time and commitments or the expectations of our tribe, we must train ourselves to forget reasonable. The biggest risk is wasting the present in the futile hope that tomorrow will be any different. There is no tomorrow, old friend: Take the bold route now.

    • Urgency Applies

      “The reason to finish is to start something new.” — Rick Rubin

      To finish what we started ought to be the goal for every project, but we know the truth isn’t so pretty. We bounce between projects, finishing some, but too often drag others along forever for want of attention. It’s all prioritization and focus, lest the forces conspiring against us wash over our lives and that project we were once so excited about gets flushed away like so many schemes and dreams. As with life itself, urgency applies to projects. Do it now.

      Starting something new is exciting. We dance with possibilities: discovering and enhancing and dancing with the light that shines through our eyes and lights up our work. Like a cold mountain stream, it’s invigorating and full of momentum. It’s only downstream, where things slow down and sometimes stagnate, where that project grows tedious. Momentum is everything, and we maintain it through focused attention. Deep channels flow relentlessly fast, shallow deltas slow and sometimes flow backwards with the whim of the tide.

      That new project ought to be a reward for having finished the previous project, not yet another distraction from it. Surely urgency applies to the things we wish to accomplish in this lifetime. We must finish what we’ve started, that we may begin again with the fresh perspective and skills developed from the last brought to the next.

    • The Roll of the Peculiar

      “There’s a point, around the age of 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.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

      We finally begin to hit our stride when we ignore the expectations of the well-intentioned and follow our own path. For some of us it comes well after our formal education and those earnest early career moves. Momentum isn’t leaping off the cliff, it’s picking up pieces of our identity and adding them on, one after the other, like a snowball rolling down a mountain of fresh, sticky snow. Soon there’s no stopping us.

      The thing is, that momentum applies as much to the wrong slopes as it does the right one. Once we start rolling and picking up habits, stopping becomes very challenging indeed, let alone nudging ourselves over to another slope. We don’t always know which slope is our slope, but we often know which one is not for us. And we know we can’t wait forever to decide: we must eventually roll.

      Some snowballs appear as oddballs. So what? Does the world need yet another compliant commuter making their way to a job they hate? Who want to go through life wedged into a box like that? Find a place where it’s okay to roll the way you want to roll. That which makes us peculiar also makes us unique, and there’s always an audience for someone unique. What is more virtuous than a life spent growing into the purpose we were meant for?

    • Action is Identity

      “Creators create. Action is identity. You become what you do. You don’t need permission from anybody to call yourself a writer, entrepreneur, or musician. You just need to write, build a business, or make music. You’ve got to do the verb to be the noun.” ― Chase Jarvis, Creative Calling: Establish a Daily Practice, Infuse Your World with Meaning, and Succeed in Work + Life

      If action is identity, so too is inaction. What we say yes to and what we say no to are each a part of who we are. It’s inherently obvious, yet so easy to forget in the day-to-day demand for our time played to the soundtrack of the well-meaning who only want the best for us (thanks a bunch for that). We must pause a beat and get our bearings, then get back to the climb to our potential.

      If I could offer a bit of unsolicited advice to myself, to my children and anyone else paying attention, it’s to simply follow the call for as long as we can get away with it until we meet that person we envisioned. The only way forward is to do that thing. To write, to build, to make: action is our identity. It’s that vote for the person we wish to become that James Clear reminded us of.

      And so a bias towards action is the not-so-secret way to reach the promised land. Hitting the lottery is a fool’s game, hitting our stride by doing the things we know we need to do is how we live fully. We’ve been gifted with being born at a time and place where possibility flows. The people telling us that this is a time of scarcity are getting wealthy with words. There’s an audience for everything, even that thing that we’re telling ourselves to go be. Decide what to be and go be it, as the song goes.

      We ought to give ourselves a gift these last few months of the year. Do the creative work and put it out there for the world to see. Make a bold statement in who we will be today, and build on it in our following days should we blessed with enough of them. Tempus fugit: time flies. Do it now before it all slips away. If action is identity, just what will we think of ourselves if we don’t act now?

    • Chopping the Frozen Sea

      “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.” ― Franz Kafka

      I’ve been investing in a lifetime of learning that began in earnest right about when I started writing this blog. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t learning before that, but it was learning filled with distraction and ulterior motivation: simply put, I was too busy raising children and building a career to dive deeply into the things I wanted to learn about, and so I deferred much of it until the kids were off to college and the career was somewhat established. This second stage of life is ideal for reinventing ourselves, and so the quest commenced.

      A string of habits occurred all at once. I finally started writing every day instead of telling myself to do it one day. Similar habits began around learning a second language, finding something uniquely interesting about whatever place I happened to be in when traveling and of course reading in earnest. The reading in particular has evolved from heavy fiction with a layering of history to heavier works of philosophy, history, science, etc. We become what we consume, after all. And driving it all is an underlying feeling of having fallen behind that has me striving to accelerate my pursuit of learning to catch up. This hasn’t abated over time.

      That driver shouldn’t be underestimated. To seek knowledge is to acknowledge an emptiness within us that we must fill. Each layer of learning is growth that brings us to a more complete version of our potential, yet also offers a vantage point from which to see all that we’ve missed on our singular pursuit, and so another quest begins, and so on. As the frozen sea is released, we find we may inch closer to a desired place, but the chopping never ends until we do.

      This all comes back to that version of excellence reserved only for the gods—Arete. I’ve known the word since I was an underclassman in college, but that didn’t inspire me to reach for it at the time. I simply wasn’t intellectually or emotionally developed enough to pursue excellence at a level beyond being a big fish in the small pond I swam in then. That pond flowed into a stream that became a river that brought me to the vast ocean, where I looked around and realized I’d better get to work growing.

      The thing is, I don’t aspire to be the biggest fish in the ocean anymore, I simply want to grow closer to my potential. Shouldn’t we all aspire to arete, even knowing we’ll never quite reach it? We must keep chopping away at the things that have locked us in place for far too long. What we learn is that the frozen sea isn’t something external, it’s within us, holding back the universe. Like Michelangelo chipping away at the marble to reveal the sculpture hidden within, we too must chip away to find what was hidden within all along.

    • Nice, With Nerve

      “It’s not enough to be nice in life. One must have nerve.” — Georgia O’Keeffe

      “I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I’ve never let it keep me from a single thing that I wanted to do.” — Georgia O’Keeffe

      The old expression that nice guys finish last isn’t completely accurate, but it ought to include the disclaimer that for nice guys not to finish last they have to show some courage and go after what they want in life. We all see the assholes who ascend to positions of power. They wouldn’t have it any other way, really. Nice people don’t have to be assholes to do consequential things in their lifetime, but they must have courage to push through the walls the world wants to box us in with. We must learn to fight for what we want in our lives.

      We can be nice but still have nerve. Nice people rise too. They just don’t leave as many bruised egos in their wake. Remember this when encountering walls and ceilings placed by assholes, but also by other nice people who meant the best for us. It’s not enough to persist, we also must insist and, just do what calls to us.

      Consequential things don’t just manifest themselves. Those climbs to summits, manuscripts and realizations of dreams require action and the nerve to start. We mustn’t wait another moment! It’s not a departure from identity to be bold, for being nice with nerve is how great things happen in this world.

    • Let it Mingle

      “You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.” — Mary Oliver, Staying Alive

      I woke up to find it another Monday. I’m ambivalent about the day of the week most times, but this Monday feels tinged with changes in the air that only Tuesday may tell. Every day is an opportunity to dance with boldness and truth. Especially this one.

      Leave it to a poet to point the way. Saying more with less (as they do). Grasping the timeless in the fragile present (as they must). Having the generosity to share with others (as we so desperately need them to do). To live as a poet is to move through the world like a sophist and reveal the naked truth hidden in plain site. We might all be poets, but for the languid inefficiency with words and an inclination to look the other way.

      To truly live in this world is to frolic through the days, not in a nihilistic way, but in a knowing the truth and choosing to dance anyway kind of way. We only have this one. What kind of spell might we stir up in the hours before us? To live with purpose and urgency and generosity and yes, a bit of whimsy, is the magic potion of the poet. We must not defer to others in our march through time, simply bring our best to each moment and let it mingle.

    • Combinations

      “I’m not the best writer, but it is a strength. I might be a 90th percentile writer.
      And I’m not the best marketer, but it is a strength. Again, maybe 90th percentile? I’m better than most, but if you pass 100 people on the street it won’t be hard to find some people better than me.
      What I have gradually learned is that it is not your strengths, but your combination of strengths that sets you apart. It is the fact that writing and marketing are mutually reinforcing—and that I enjoy both—that leads to great results.
      How can you combine your strength? That’s something I would encourage everyone to think about. You will find talented people in every area of life. It’s the combinations that are rare.”
      — James Clear, 3-2-1 Newsletter, 4 July 2024

      We thrive when our unique set of developed skills and natural talents come together at the right place and time for us to leverage them fully. And the rest of the time we’re simply figuring things out. We know when our timing is right, because it all seems to fall into place for us as if by magic. Everything else in our life is incremental growth or gradual decline. It’s up to us to choose daily routines that move us in the right direction even when the timing isn’t right for our unique combinations to thrive in a maddening world.

      I remind my daughter (and myself) to write every day because muscle memory matters. Writing every day helps us find combinations of ideas and words that we otherwise might not have found. We never know when the timing is going to be just right for our combinations, only that we must be ready to seize the moment when it arrives. When you’re young if feels like you can push off the writing for tomorrow when the muse isn’t whispering in your ear today, but it doesn’t work like that. The cruelest twist in our creative life is that it’s got a timer. We must therefore use the time we have as best we can.

      “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” — Chinese Proverb

      Most of us will go through our lives doing work that is good enough to get by but never really takes off. Perhaps the answer isn’t in the work but that we’ve put the puzzle together incorrectly. Most jigsaw puzzles have pieces that seem to fit in one place but on further review aren’t where they’re supposed to be. Once we finally see that and move those pieces to where they belong we may finally solve the puzzle. And so it is with our own combinations of skills and talents. We know when they’re not being used in the right place. Still, we must use them until we find the right combination.

      The way to unlock the puzzle is to take stock of our strengths and begin to try new combinations, that we may find the ones that work. To be forever locked up in our untapped potential is no way to go through life. Like that jigsaw puzzle, stubbornly holding on to things that clearly aren’t working will leave us with an unfinished project or worse, an unfulfilled life.

      The thing to remember about puzzles is that they’re meant to be solved. Unlike jigsaw puzzles, we humans are forever making new pieces of our identity that may be just the right combination we were looking for. So it is that we must continue to develop new experiences and skills that may be applied to our life’s work. There’s a time and place for everything. Just keep working on those combinations.