Alexandersmap

    Category: Learning

    • Have a Look

      “The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.” – Eden Phillpotts

      Rumors of Aurora Borealis potential had me looking up at the skies last night and tracking its progress across the globe with my trusty Aurora app. Overcast skies last night combined with being too far south made it all but impossible to see it where I am, but there’s hope tonight when I’m further north. Expectations rise with the solar flares.

      Do you wonder at the skies the way that I do? I should hope so. Without magic and wonder life would be a quiet bore. A bitter slate of scarcity and distraction and isolationism. There are plenty of people in this mad world who consume and sling bile. That’s no way to live.

      The Northern Lights are big and evasive when you live far away, but there’s magic right in our midst, should we look for it. It’s in the eyes of a toddler looking at you with a soggy smile. In the vibrating purr of a cat sneaking in for body heat and affection. In the wispy steam drifting from your coffee on a cold morning. Lurking in a dusty book on the shelf that you’ve skipped over for years. It’s right under your nose waiting for your wits to grow sharper.

      Have a look.

    • Developing Oneself

      “If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone.” – John McPhee

      Now and then I re-read that quote to shake myself out of my own head. The implications of that McPhee sentence are profound enough on the merit of “marine limestone”, but wait; there’s more. There’s also the craft of forming a sentence so starkly beautiful, so elegant in its simplicity, that it inspires you to be a bit better at your own writing.

      “No one will ever write in just the way that you do, or in just the way that anyone else does. Because of this fact, there is no real competition between writers. What appears to be competition is actually nothing more than jealousy and gossip. Writing is a matter strictly of developing oneself. You compete only with yourself. You develop yourself by writing.”
      ― John McPhee, Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process

      I have this McPhee book, partially read, in my virtual stack of books to finish this year. I began reading it, was pulled towards some weighty books that demanded attention, and keep looking back at it wanting to finish what I’d started. Another case for reading one book at a time, as if it were required to build a case at all.

      Ryan Holiday writes about this time during the pandemic through a Stoic lens. He’s a prolific reader, and also a prolific writer. His mentor is another prolific writer in Robert Greene. What he said rings in my ears as this crazy year spirals towards an end:

      “I remembered a piece of advice I had gotten from the author Robert Greene many years earlier. He told me there are two types of time: alive time and dead time. One is when you sit around, when you wait until things happen to you. The other is when you are in control, when you make every second count, when you are learning and improving and growing.” – Ryan Holiday

      I note the challenge, and accept it. We’ve all wasted too many seconds in 2020, and the years that preceded it. Focused action, high agency, and discipline matter more than ever. You don’t get down the path if you keep detouring off to view every distraction along the way. To ship the work you must complete the work.

      Reading inspires action, but it also distracts. If you’re caught up in the greatness of the work of another you can get cavalier about your own work. Reading is alive time, but so is productive action towards a goal. There’s time enough for both in a day, should you use your day wisely, and with urgency. You develop yourself through the work. Embrace it.

    • Grains of Sand

      “Every time you wake up and ask yourself, “What good things am I going to do today?” remember that, when the sun goes down at sunset, it will take a part of your life with it.” – Indian Proverb

      I’m not sure of the source of the quote, but “Indian Proverb” seems as likely a source as any. There’s something timeless in the wisdom, even as it points out the value of a single day. That old cliché about time slipping by like sand slips through your hands comes to mind. The tighter you try to hold onto it the quicker it falls away. Making sense of time is folly; living each day as if it were our last seems a better place to focus.

      “People say that time slips through our fingers like sand. What they don’t acknowledge is that some of the sand sticks to the skin. These are memories that will remain, memories of the time when there was still time left.” – David Levithan, Invisibility

      The fact is, life is a blur. We aren’t walking down some endless beach here. This patch of sand is all we’ve got, no matter the mad swirl of wind or crash of the waves. What will stick and what will fall away?

      The central question from that Indian Proverb is “What good things am I going to do today?”, which is where those memories that remain come from. The grains of sand stuck to our hand are the interactions with others, the laughs and the tears; the memorable. Those are what make up a lifetime.

    • Breaking the Norm

      I’ve been skimming the surface with the French language for eleven months now. Eleven months of daily lessons on the Duolingo app, making sure I hit the bare minimum and some days a little bit more. And as you might expect I’ve learned the basic words that they repeat in their lessons, struggle a bit with the same hurdles, and plod along in language limbo.

      I’ve noticed a similarity with the writing, where I write the blog and a little bit more most days, but then switch off to my job or chores or some distraction like computer chess. As with learning French I know that the writing would benefit deeply from immersion, but when you stack up other things that draw your attention you remain in writing limbo.

      It seems to me that there’s never been a better year for deep work than 2020. We’re all stuck here in this strange, socially-distanced limbo. Home improvement projects have skyrocketed. Hiking and biking have become hugely popular, and pool and hot tub sales have broken records. Binge watching programs took over where going to the movies left off. There’s never been a shortage of distractions in 2020, the only shortage is focus.

      If immersive, visceral experience triggers deep learning, then wouldn’t it make sense to place yourself in an environment where this can be achieved? Well, sure. I’ve watched my nephew become deeply proficient in Spanish through immersion after years of studying it and now teaching it. There’s no doubt that immersion is better than independent study. But what if you don’t have the time and agility to pluck yourself out of your current life into another? Are you doomed to living in limbo with the thing you wish to master?

      I think the answer comes down to commitment level and grabbing the opportunities that come your way. Break the norm! Don’t skate through life. We let many opportunities slip away in a lifetime, don’t we? But when we really want something we find a way to get it. When the student is ready the teacher will appear. Being open to immersive and visceral experiences while investing more deeply in the experiential track we’re on seems the answer. Do the work necessary to get where you want to be. Make methodical progress with an eye towards diving in the deep end when the opportunity arises.

    • Towards Remarkable

      “What is the purpose of writing? For me personally, it is really to explain the mystery of life, and the mystery of life includes, of course, the personal, the political, the forces that make us what we are while there’s another force from inside battling to make us something else.” – Nadine Gordimer

      I don’t know much about Nadine Gordimer that you can’t find in her obituary or on Wikipedia. She was a South African writer who helped expose the darkness of apartheid for the world to see. She won a Nobel Prize for her writing and was on the short list of people that Nelson Mandela wanted to see first when he was released from prison. By all accounts she was a pretty remarkable woman.

      “…with an understanding of Shakespeare there comes a release from the gullibility that makes you prey to the great shopkeeper who runs the world, and would sell you cheap to illusion.”

      You know remarkable when you see it. There’s a life force exuding out of certain people that pulses. It’s not celebrity, though some celebrities, athletes and leaders have it (certainly not all). You learn to spot the authentic energy from the great shopkeepers and cons. It’s an intangible force from inside that is magnetic but genuine. People are drawn to them, because they see something in them that they haven’t quite let out of themselves.

      “If I dreamt this, while walking, walking in the London streets, the subconscious of each and every other life, past and present, brushing me in passing, what makes it real? Writing it down.” 

      I understand Nadine Gordimer better through her words. And in her words she shows us the way. Learn from the great observers of the past. Write it down (Rolf Potts recommends a “commonplace book” where you can record the best ideas you find – blogging certainly helps achieve this too). Keep improving over time. With patience but earnest effort.

      “Your whole life you are really writing one book, which is an attempt to grasp the consciousness of your time and place – a single book written from different stages of your ability.” 

      I’ve come to focus on remarkable recently. Having come across a few people with that extraordinary life force exuding out of every pore, you begin to think about how you might reach some level of that yourself. Gordimer hints at the journey we’re all on with this last quote. We’re all climbing at different paces, at different stages of our ability, towards our own peak. Towards remarkable.

    • The Lifting Fog

      “Opinions are like nails: the stronger you hit them, the deeper inside they go.” – Decimus Junius Juvenalis

      Or maybe in 2020 it’s “the more you express them the more your friends mute you on Facebook”. Or look at you funny when you see them in public. The lesson, I suppose, is to stop hammering all the time. And, as we all know, you can’t change other people, only yourself. So focus your energy in the right place.

      We begin another work week with deep fog outside. The heat of yesterday gave way to a cold, clammy fog that descended into the woods and surrounds the house this morning. It inspires me even as it drives nails into the ankle I thought was healed. The fog offers lessons: This day marks a new beginning, as every day does. Enough hammering opinions and defending positions.

      If you’re wondering, Decimus Junius Juvenalis, AKA Juvenus, has a wealth of wisdom/great quotes you’re familiar with in The Sixteen Satires (like “who watches the watchmen?”). Worth a search if you geek out on such things (as I clearly do). There are days when I wish I could just read all day just to catch up on things that I skimmed through in school because I wasn’t mentally developed enough to fully grasp what they were saying at the time. But that’s what lifetimes are for.

      “You can never step into the same book twice, because you are different each time you read it.” – John Barton

      And so we change, day-to-day. The fog slowly lifts, and a new understanding develops. I’m clearing out the fog of politics and rancor from the last several months and looking ahead with clarity and purpose. To grow in the new light emerging from the fog. To begin again.

    • Making Decisions

      “If my mind could gain a firm footing, I would not make essays, I would make decisions; but it is always in apprenticeship and on trial.” – Michel de Montaigne

      “If you’re not saying “HELL YEAH!” about something, say “no”.
      When deciding whether to do something, if you feel anything less than “Wow! That would be amazing! Absolutely! Hell yeah!” — then say “no.”
      – Derek Sivers

      When you’re presented with a choice, there are a few paths in front of you. You could go with the flow and see where it leads you. You could just say no to everything and stay the course on whatever you’re currently doing. Or you could explore the path, decide if it’s a hell yeah! or a maybe yeah and jump in… or jump away.

      I found myself a while back with an attractive offer to go play in another sandbox for what was on paper a big chunk of money more. I contemplated it, talked to a few people to bounce the idea off of them, and thought about it some more. Tempting. Distracting. But admittedly less than Wow! for me. I’m at a point in my life where time expended on the unknown for incrementally more profit better mean a Wow! or it’s necessarily a No!

      “The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      And so it was that at 4 AM I woke up for a bathroom break and lay there with the Sivers phrase above spinning through my head, reminding me that this thing you’re contemplating? It’s not a Hell yeah! for you. It’s an opportunistic money grab. And what of the time expended in its pursuit? For life is very short, as living keeps reminding me. So it’s a “no”. Which led me to wondering, then what is my Hell yeah! anyway? And it was right in front of me all along. And then I knew where to double down.

    • November and the Ninth Wave

      “November retained its name (from the Latin novem meaning “nine”) when January and February were added to the Roman calendar.” – Wikipedia

      And there it is: November. I’ve wondered about October before. I mean, “octo” is eight yet October was the tenth month. I hadn’t thought much about the origin of November until I stared at the November 1 on my calendar a beat longer than normal. And so here we are, with “novem” forever associated with nine for me. (novem ≠ 11, novem = 9, but November is the 11th month so deal with it. Don’t even get me started on December). We learn through association. Those Romans forever shaped the minutia of our world…

      November has always had a special place in my heart, for in the Northern Hemisphere its the month of quiet walks on crunchy fallen leaves, when the world opens up to reveal all that was hidden previously by foliage. In the United States November is associated with Thanksgiving, the very best of holidays (at least in my family) because it’s only about giving thanks together with family and friends. There are November birthdays of note in the family, and personally, one very notable anniversary coming up in a few days to punctuate the importance of the month in this household.

      And then there’s the election. Every four years in the United States we have the national election to choose our President. The “first Tuesday after the first Monday” of November was chosen and made into law in 1845 “to establish a uniform time for holding elections for electors of President and Vice President in all the States of the Union.” So Election Day can never be held on November 1, since it must follow the first Monday (unless the law is changed of course).

      This year has been relentlessly charging along, both rapid in the spinning of days and painfully slow in getting it all over with. Nobody who loves life wishes away time, but we all wish away the current situation we find ourselves in. November marks the moment when we vote and either validate the current administration or reject it wholeheartedly and install new leadership. I know where my vote goes. Choose wisely with your own vote, fellow citizens.

      In sailing the ninth wave in succession is the largest. It’s the one that might sink the ship and drown the crew. I reflect back on the stunning masterpiece Ninth Wave by Ivan Aivazovsky that I was blessed to see once in my lifetime. The Ninth Wave offers a glimmer of hope for those clinging to the mast in a raging sea. The sun is rising through the storm, marking a turning point of sorts. Danger remains all around and there’s no guarantee of survival, but again, there’s hope. And that’s what I think about on this first day of November. November (novem), marks the turning of the seasons towards winter. Change is coming. We all know it, and now we all face it. With hope.

    • Where The Knowing Is

      “The explorer returned to his people, who were eager to know about the Amazon. But how could he ever put into words the feelings that flooded his heart when he saw exotic flowers and heard the night-sounds of the forest; when he sensed the danger of wild beasts or paddled his canoe over treacherous rapids?
      He said, “Go and find out for yourselves.” To guide them he drew a map of the river. They pounced upon the map. They framed it in their town hall. They made copies of it for themselves. And all who had a copy considered themselves experts on the river, for did they not know its every turn and bend, how broad it was and how deep, where the rapids were and where the falls?”
      – Anthony De Mello, The Explorer

      Reading this story three times, my mind flashed back on moments over the last year when I transcended the maps: hiking trails where every rock was a wince, Scottish roads that proved narrower and a spouse who grew more horrified by the non-existent shoulder than the oncoming truck, carefully arranged graduation reservations scrapped by COVID and a banner at the ready should a party someday be a reality. Each an example of what I thought I knew turned on its head. Each a learning experience.

      2020 was the big number on the horizon we all wondered about. Places we’d be, events we’d experience, moments we’d celebrate. Now we’re all living through the actual 2020, in ways that we didn’t anticipate. It’s just like any other map or plan in that way. Each event, each trip, each person and each day won’t be what you expected in some way or another. The maps and guides and itineraries and YouTube videos of those who went before help frame things, but you’ve got to go out and experience life to really know anything at all.

      We all think we know how things are going to turn out. But living through the moment, exploring and testing our limits of understanding and endurance, going and finding out for yourselves, that’s where the knowing is. That’s where we fully realize the feelings that flood our hearts.

    • Process and Persistence

      “Process saves us from the poverty of intentions.” – Elizabeth King (via Seth Godin & Tim Ferriss)

      “You begin with a subject, gather material, and work your way to structure from there. You pile up volumes of notes and then figure out what you are going to do with them, not the other way around.” – John McPhee, On The Writing Process

      Blogging is a process that saves me from my poverty of intentions. I’ve intended to write for years, but pushed it aside in pursuit of everything both worthy and irrelevant. Sure the site needs work, the writing has typos now and then and Yoast SEO is fixed in a permanent frown, but so what? If you’re along for the journey, welcome, you’ve apparently overcome a ton of SEO blunders on my part to get here.

      If there’s a common theme throughout life, its the fact that we can never do quite enough to reach perfection. I’m nowhere near it myself. But I walk the path one step at a time, writing, editing, publishing and starting again at the beginning every day. And that’s a victory in itself. Screw perfection – give me process and persistence.

      “Mastery is the process of narrowing your focus to a tiny element of success, repeating it until you have internalized the skill, and then using this new habit as the foundation to advance to the next frontier of your development.” – James Clear, Atomic Habits

      And that’s where I am, focus narrowed and repeating daily towards a level of mastery I may never achieve. But I’ll be closer for the effort. There’s some measure of the Pareto principle in that James Clear quote. Focus on the 20% that achieves the goal. SEO doesn’t necessarily matter. Likes and follows don’t necessarily matter. The work matters. So do more than focus, do the work.