Alexandersmap

    Category: Learning

    • A Self-Indulgent Rant on the WordPress Change to Block Editor

      I started writing this blog using Blogger, which was free but very limited in what I could create. I switched to WordPress and started paying for the privilege because I enjoyed using it and liked the creative challenge of building a website that I liked. Alexandersmap.com is still a work in progress and still amateurish by many standards, but it generally works for me and hopefully for you too.

      Then WordPress started pushing harder on the Block Editor, which is lovely, but seemed intrusive to me. Why force tools on people just because you fall in love with them as a company? That seems a bit too Apple to me… and yet here we are: force-fed, beginning today. To their credit, WordPress gives you two paths back to what you started with, but that means you’ve got to do the work to change things back to what you had versus having you opt in to their Block Editor experience. I’ve opted out for a long time for a reason, but then they forced my hand anyway. Thanks WordPress.

      Complicating my feelings on the matter are a new issue of uploading media to a post that started occurring when Block Editor was unceremoniously shoved into my lap. Perhaps they’re two separate things, but I don’t believe in coincidence. And don’t enjoy having to tackle my own technical support instead of simply writing, which is what I signed up for with WordPress. If a platform charges you money but eliminates the simplicity of why you started paying to use their product, is it still worth paying them money?

      This all makes me sound like a curmudgeon, and sure, I’ll take that categorization in this case even if I haven’t reached the minimum age limit for curmudgeon membership. For all the problems in the world having Block Editor forced on the paying customers of WordPress doesn’t seem like that big a deal, right? Right. And yet it seems an affront anyway. With a hint of we know what’s best for you smugness.

      I’m writing this post using Block Editor. Its not bad, just different. Who knows – maybe I’ll fall in love with it? Maybe I’ll figure out why my mobile uploads suddenly don’t work anymore? Maybe I’ll figure out how to select all and copy to another post? Maybe drafts will suddenly speed up again instead of taking forever to upload? Maybe. But I like WordPress a little less than I once did. Not because of Block Editor, but because they changed the tools on me whether I opted in or not. Again, it strikes me as a smug corporate move. Surely that doesn’t make a bit of difference to them, but hey, if enough of us complain maybe they’ll listen? No? Anyway, this post is completely self-indulgent, but my original post has been stuck in limbo while I try to figure out the mess I’ve been handed.

      Ultimately this is an exercise in handling change. There’s been a lot of change in 2020, and this is just one more. A good life lesson in handling minor inconvenience and finding creative ways to deal with it. And that’s what this post is really all about – approaching a hurdle thrown in my lane and finding a way to clear it without face-planting into the asphalt. Maybe tomorrow’s post will feature beautiful media and precisely-formatted content? One can hope.

    • On Reading and Time

      “Sit in a room and read–and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time.” – Joseph Campbell

      Over the last two weeks I’ve found myself reading less, and I feel the impact in my writing and in my overall mood.  It started with trying to get the blog done before I read, which is surely a noble pursuit, but a change of routine for me.  Then came the distraction of a complicated jigsaw puzzle that lured me in on vacation and as far as I know may never be completed.  And now I’m back and trying to crank out twice as much writing in the early morning hours when reading was an essential part of waking up my mind.  And the call of the writing distracts me when reading, which muddies up the whole works.

      Its not like I don’t have a cue of great books to read.  No, I’m particularly excited about a few of them and want to dive back in.  This is a disrupted habit loop that is still in a funk since vacation.  A habit loop that requires attention.  Normally I reset my reading by picking up a page-turner that spins my adrenaline up.  That worked quite well earlier in the summer.  Now not so much.  So how do you rectify the problem?  Schedule reading time after the writing and work?  That doesn’t feel like a slow-burn rapture to me.  It sounds like a chore. Reading for pleasure shouldn’t ever feel like assignment reading.  We’ve all lived the school assignment reading discipline.  Assignment reading gets the job done whether we like it or not.  After school there’s plenty of work-related assignment reading written strictly to inform that fills our days.

      So change the description from assignment reading to scheduled reading.  Scheduled reading time works for me.  I used it to work my way through some very dry reading in 2018 that bordered on assignment reading.  Scheduled reading time is a short burst of time carved into the day to prime the pump.  On a morning like today when I have a lot to do that might be ten minutes of quick reading, but even ten minutes will serve to reset the habit loop and leave me wanting just a bit more.  And when time allows I dive deeper.  Time is a funny thing, isn’t it?  We tend to find it again when we’re highly engaged.  And we wonder where the time went when we look up.  Good reading will do that.

      Look, I know the world is full of complicated problems and my reading habit doesn’t rise very high up on the things the world should be focused on.  But I do believe the world would be a much better place if more people carved out some time for some nice, mild, slow-burning rapture.  Whatever gets us off the news cycles and the click-baiting outrage and the constant stress of living in 2020 that seems to overwhelm so many people.  Reading great books drops you into another world – a world filled with wonder and discovery and empathy.  And when you step back into the “real” world maybe you’re just a bit better off for the journey you’ve been on.

       

    • Five Things

      “Strategically, its better to do five big things with your life than 500 half-assed things.” – Derek Sivers, The Knowledge Project podcast

      This statement got me thinking.  I’ve done plenty of half-assed things in my life, but what are the big things, both accomplished and yet to complete?  That’s the real question of a lifetime.  I’m likely past the halfway mark on my own life (you never know), so what have you done with the time?

      “Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
      Tell me, what is it you plan to do
      with your one wild and precious life?”
      — Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

      Raising two children to be good humans is one notable accomplishment.  An accomplishment that was decades in the making.  And if they’re a work in progress, they’re far ahead of where I was at their age.  Surely parenthood is one of the five big things.  When I look at my two I’m amazed at who they’ve become.  I played a part in that (perhaps only as an example of what not to do?).  If you have kids be a responsible kid with them, delighting in the world.  Most of parenthood is figuring things out as you go, but being a steady, reassuring presence in your children’s lives as they stick their own necks out into this crazy world.

      And if parenthood is one big thing, so too must a long, happy marriage?  Having gotten this one very wrong once, I celebrate the one I’ve gotten right.  And by right I mean I haven’t screwed it up just yet, despite my stumbling through the minefield of time.  I’m no expert on the topic, but I’ve learned a few things over the years.  Ultimately you get what you put into something, and if you invest the time and passion into a marriage you’ll have a healthy return on investment with the right partner.  Marriage is never 50/50 – sometimes you give 80, sometimes you give 20, but with the right partner it evens out over time.  So that’s two, for those keeping score, and where do we go from here?

      Career?  One’s career is a complicated journey full of half-assed things, but if you play it well there’s potential for that big thing over time.  If I’ve learned anything at this stage of my career its that relationships and trust built day-after-day matter more than skills accumulated or degrees earned.  It all counts, but nothing matters more than how you interact with others.  I celebrate being in a good place in a complicated time with the potential for great things should I do the work well.  Isn’t that what we all want in a career?  One of the key decisions you’ll make in your career is how much you want to sacrifice time with that family and in your marriage  for career growth.  Choose wisely, for balance is possible.  Life is too short to work for assholes.

      So riddle me this: Beyond family, marriage and career, what are the next couple of big things that you want to accomplish in life?  Starting a business?  Meaningful charitable work?  Environmental activism?  Writing that great American novel?  Athletic accomplishments?  And what of world traveler?  I like to think of myself as an unpaid American diplomat, going out into the world and demonstrating that what you see in the movies and reality television and (God forbid) politics isn’t the real America, but just a part of our story.  There’s a lot to be said for climbing the ladder and reaching a hand down to help others on their own climb.  The more you’re a student of the world, the more you learn and the more you can apply that knowledge towards meaningful interactions.

      “Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends.” – Joseph Campbell

      Focus on the big things, and less on the half-assed things.  You’ll know the big things when you find them.  At least I’m counting on that as a guiding principle on my own path.  And if you don’t eventually get five big things accomplished, maybe one or two is enough.  But make them really big things.

    • The Four Chronometers of Greenwich

      I confess when I visited Greenwich my mind wasn’t on chronometers, it was on the Prime Meridian and Greenwich Mean Time.  But after the obligatory pictures at 0° along the famous line that dictates so much of our modern lives I spent the duration of my time exploring the Royal Observatory Greenwich, and listened intently as an exceptional guide detailed the story of the four clocks that changed the world.  That all four of the clocks were on display, and three of them were still running was a mind-blowing moment.

      John Harrison invented the first clock, H-1, in an attempt to solve the most perplexing problem of the day – determining longitude while at sea.  It was such a critical issue that Parliament passed The Longitude Act 1714 with a prize of £20,000 for anyone who came up with an accurate way to determine longitude.  Dava Sobel wrote an excellent book that details Harrison’s lifetime pursuit of a final solution.  H-1 was completed in 1735, but Harrison wasn’t completely satisfied with it and went about immediately to work on an improved chronometer.  H-2 never went to trial (tested at sea), H-3 was completed in 1759 but wasn’t trialed right away because of the Seven Years War.  While they waited to trial it Harrison invented the smaller H-4, which was the size of a very large pocket watch, which went on to win the prize money after a lifetime of work and refinement and continuous trouble with The Commissioners of Longitude (some of whom were biased towards an astronomical solution to the longitude riddle).

      Part of me wishes I’d read Sobel’s book before visiting Greenwich and seeing the four chronometers that changed the world.  But there’s another part of me that is grateful for discovering them unexpectedly.  I immediately purchased Longitude when I returned from the UK.  Having seen the four chronometers side-by-side in the museum, with all in working order (H-4 is deliberately kept unwound to preserve it), I felt an immediate affinity for the story when I began reading.  But another hero emerged from the book besides Harrison.  It was Rupert Gould, a Lieutenant-Commander in the British Royal Navy who was given permission to restore the four chronometers that had been sitting in a deteriorating state for almost a century.  Gould spent 13 years restoring the clocks to their original state, and in doing so returned four examples of timeless magic for visitors to the Flamsteed House and the Royal Observatory Greenwich.  He’s a quiet hero in history, and is rightfully remembered as such.  I was spellbound by H-1, H-2 and H-3 as they earnestly marked time 2 1/2 centuries after Harrison built them.  Now that I know their history, I look forward to a return visit someday, and will re-read Longitude and linger for a spell in the presence of history.

      H-2
      H-1

      H-4
      H-3

    • Be Less Comfortable

      “It takes many hours to make what you want to make.  The hours don’t suddenly appear.  You have to steal them from comfort.  Whatever you were doing before was comfortable.  This is not.  This will be really uncomfortable.” – Derek Sivers, Where To Find The Hours To Make It Happen

      This phrase, stealing hours from comfort, was  plucked from a blog post Sivers wrote last October and highlighted yesterday by Seth Godin, borrowing for one of his own blog posts.  And so I pay it forward here.  For there’s genius in the phrasing, isn’t there?  We all have the same amount of hours in the day, and those who do exceptional things with their lives do so by stealing hours otherwise spent on comfortable things like binge-watching Ozark or SV Delos YouTube videos (guilty x 2).  In the meantime the great novel in your head slides sideways into the abyss.  The language you might have learned remains a mystery to you.  The belly gets soft.  The community volunteers carry on without you.  The work is accomplished by others, and we look on in awe at what they achieved.

      And the answer, of course, is to be less comfortable.  To challenge yourself more.  To do the work that must be done to get from this place of relative comfort to a better place of greater meaning and contribution.  To stop scraping by at the bare minimum and double down on your effort.  For all that is worthwhile in this world requires an investment in time and a healthy dose of discomfort to earn it.  But we have to remind ourselves of this daily, because comfort is a dangerous temptress.  And before we know it the days, weeks and years fly by and the dreams remain only dreams.  So toughen up, buttercup!  A bit less comfort is the answer to the question of where will you find the time?

      As Jackson Browne sings, I’ve been aware of the time going by…  and so I’m trying to invest my time in less comfortable things.  Hiking with intent, writing more, working more focused hours in my career, and slowly chipping away at expanding the possible of today.  But I’m still too comfortable.  When there’s so much more to do in the time we have left, isn’t it essential we get to it already?  And in some ways the pandemic offers us a reason to make profound shifts towards the uncomfortable.  To break from the routine and tackle the meaningful.  A catalyst for change just in the nick of time – in this, our critical moment.  For if not now, when?

    • Expanding Our “Life Force”

      “When we breathe, we expand our life force.” – James Nestor, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art

      I finished James Nestor’s book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art in quick order. Its unnerving when someone highlights something you’ve largely done unconsciously but inefficiently for most of your life and tells you why it’s essential that you change. This is one if those books that will be transformative to the open reader. I found it an informative, quick read. But for those looking for the Cliff notes version, here you go: Get in the habit of inhaling much more through your nose and exhale through your mouth, and then focus on optimizing the timing of your breathing:

      “The perfect breath is this: Breathe in for about 5.5 seconds, then exhale for 5.5 seconds. That’s 5.5 breaths a minute for a total of about 5.5 liters of air.”

      Of course, there’s so much more to the book, starting with the science behind breathing, the impact of soft foods on the modern human’s ability to breath properly, the importance of carbon dioxide in the body, and the incredible possibility in what the human body is capable of through controlled breathing. A worthy investment in time that will make you think about how you do something that’s largely an unconscious and automatic function.

      Regarding carbon dioxide, I’ve always thought of it as a waste product and that less of it would be better for the overall health of our bodies. Nestor turns that belief on its head:

      “When we breathe too much, we expel too much carbon dioxide, and our blood pH rises to become more alkaline; when we breathe slower and hold in more carbon dioxide, pH lowers and blood becomes more acidic. Almost all cellular functions in the body take place at a blood pH of 7.4, our sweet spot between alkaline and acid.”

      And consider the compounding impact of softer foods on the overall health of generations of humans:

      “The more we gnaw, the more stem cells release, the more bone density and growth we’ll trigger, the younger we’ll look and the better we’ll breathe.”

      Chapter 10, Fast, Slow And Not At All is the one that resonated most for me. For if everything in the universe is made up of matter, what does it mean for something to be “alive”? Nestor offers insight here as well:

      “Everything around us is composed of molecules, which are composed of atoms, which are composed of subatomic bits called protons (which have a positive charge), neutrons (no charge), and electrons (negative charge). All matter is, at its most basic level, energy.”

      “What distinguishes inanimate objects like rocks from birds and bees and leaves is the level of energy, or the “excitability” of electrons within those atoms that make up the molecules in matter. The more easily and often electrons can be transferred between molecules, the more “desaturated” matter becomes, the more alive it is.”

      “The best way to keep tissues in the body healthy was to mimic the reactions that evolved in early aerobic life on Earth—specifically, to flood our bodies with a constant presence of that “strong electron acceptor”: oxygen. Breathing slow, less, and through the nose balances the levels of respiratory gases in the body and sends the maximum amount of oxygen to the maximum amount of tissues so that our cells have the maximum amount of electron reactivity.”

      Optimizing our overall health and vibrancy through measured, considered breathwork isn’t new, but we seem to have forgotten many of the lessons. Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art was an eye-opener, prompting me to think about how I’m breathing and what I’m chewing on, to be more concerned about waking up with a dry mouth, to consider a pallet expander for the first time since I was a teenager and counting to 5 1/2 as I inhale through my nose and again as I exhale through my mouth. Perhaps a small step towards a greater life force? One can hope.

    • Really Only Words

      “All things are really only words
      in a tongue of endless gobbledygook
      that someone or something is writing in a book
      that is the history of the world. In herds,

      you, I, everyone, Carthage, Rome travel,
      and my unfathomable life too, and this stigma
      of having been an accident, a cipher, an enigma,
      of being all the unmelodious dialects of Babel.

      But behind every name is what has no name.
      Today, I felt its shadow flicker and take aim
      in the blue compass needle, lucid and light,

      that points far away across seas that gleam,
      something like a timepiece glimpsed in a dream,
      or the stirring of a bird in the middle of the night.”
      – Jorge Luis Borges, The Compass

      This poem was originally written in Spanish, and I’ve read two versions of it that are completely different from each other, depending on the translation to English.  And such is the challenge of interpreting both language and poetry.  Words mean different things to different people, and I wonder sometimes at the words I’ve read that were interpreted by another and how close to the truth those words truly are.  The better path would be to invest the time to learn to speak Spanish fluently and read the poem as Borges intended.  Instead I rely on the interpretation of others.

      Isn’t that the way it is with the news?  We rely on the interpretation of facts by writers who put their own spin on it, often to feed people what they want to hear.  I’ve stopped watching the news so that I can hear my own voice instead.  And what of hearsay?  You hear a story about someone else from the viewpoint of the speaker and make up your mind about them based on what someone else said about them.  The question is how much do you trust the source of your information?

      The gist of this poem is the mystery of who we are, and our path to figuring that out.  Finding our true north in a jumble of lives and words and interpretation.  And that makes the different versions of this poem somehow appropriate, I suppose.  Brian Doyle called Borges one of the greatest writers in history, but with a limited grasp of Spanish, Borges’ brilliance is largely lost to me as I rely on others to provide meaning to his work.  If ever there was a reason to learn languages its to truly understand and to be understood by others.  I’m just scratching the surface with a writer like Borges in reading an English translation, and you could say the same thing about Homer or Nietzsche or Marcus Aurelius for that matter.  They’re really only words, but the way you put those words together matters.

      Doyle pointed me to Borges, who’s work is frustratingly just out of reach for me in its original form.  I have the same frustration with bird calls and plants in the forest and other such things I can’t figure out given the scope of my current knowledge.  But its all part of the journey, isn’t it?  The unknown is either a roadblock or a welcome sign, depending on your own interpretation.  And there’s that word again.  All forks in the road that lead us down the next path towards a greater understanding of the world and our place in it, should we be so bold as to keep moving forward.

    • Change of State: Crickets & Krummholz

      In late July the crickets start chirping again, announcing the height of summer in New Hampshire. Early mornings just feel different month-to-month.  Sure, temperatures and the progress of the garden are a consideration, but beyond that the soundtrack at 5:30 is completely different in late July than it was in May or June.  Its all different really, beginning with those crickets.  But I’ve been here before, and know the seasons and the changes that will come over the next few months.  Changes come, but its all familiar change.

      Saturday, as I began my ascent above treeline, I took a few breaths of Balsam Fir-scented air and thought of Christmas.  When you get up in between the boreal and alpine zones where the 4000 footers dance in the windblown snow and ice, the trees are stunted and twisted and tough as nails.  Trees in this zone are called Krummholz, regardless of the species, and sometimes the term Krummholz describes this in-between zone too.  At treeline they’re typically Black Spruce and Balsam Firs and a few adventurous others like an occasional birch looking for a way out of the madness it rooted itself to.  Spruce are stoic but don’t flavor the air with aroma.  Firs make you feel like its Christmas in July.  Both struggle for footing and survival in the acidic, hard ground.  I’m a guest in their home, and silently offer gratitude for allowing me a visit.

      Hiking reinforces for me what I don’t know.  I can sit in my backyard in New Hampshire and pick out different trees and birds and bugs and generally know what they are because I live with them every day.  I can feel or hear the changes in seasons just by hearing some crickets announcing they’re back.  But my visits to the mountains are infrequent in comparison, and I’m less familiar with the migration patterns of birds and the trees themselves across the northern forest.  I heard a few bird calls on my last few hikes that are unfamiliar.  I looked at the forest and sedges and rushes and Mountain Cranberries and recognize that I don’t really know them all that well and couldn’t tell you one from the other.  I scanned the peaks on a clear day and recognize the famous Presidents, but not many of the others.  I was in the same state (New Hampshire), but in a completely different state (uncertainty).

      I’m feeling restless in the familiar lately – a sure sign that I need to get out and see more.  A few hours in a different zone reminded me that the unfamiliar isn’t all that far away.  And I’m reminded again of something Pico Iyer wrote that I quoted a few posts ago: “ecstasy” (“ex-stasis”) tells us that our highest moments come when we’re not stationary”.  To honor the restless spirit inside of us and just get out there to find our highest moments.  It seems a noble pursuit on this random Monday.  The crickets have announced that time is indeed moving along, and the Krummholz remind us that life isn’t always easy but if you hold on you might just survive long enough to see a few things.  Surely a good reminder for this crazy year when the familiar isn’t all that familiar and we’re all a bit restless.

    • Breathe

      I admit I didn’t think much about breathing until recently when my son strongly recommended a book for the family.  After some due diligence in listening to the author interviewed on a Joe Rogan podcast I was convinced I needed to read the book myself and quietly slid the stack of real and virtual books aside to read Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art before anything else. I’m well into it now, and can tell its one of those transformative books that influences the way you think about many things. And so it was that I hiked two 4000 footers yesterday with these thoughts in my head:

      “In a single breath, more molecules of air will pass through your nose than all the grains of sand on all the world’s beaches—trillions and trillions of them.”

      “Nasal breathing alone can boost nitric oxide sixfold, which is one of the reasons we can absorb about 18 percent more oxygen than by just breathing through the mouth.”

      “The greatest indicator of life span wasn’t genetics, diet, or the amount of daily exercise, as many had suspected. It was lung capacity.”

      “Moderate exercise like walking or cycling has been shown to boost lung size by up to 15 percent.”

      “The most important aspect of breathing wasn’t just to take in air through the nose. Inhaling was the easy part. The key to breathing, lung expansion, and the long life that came with it was on the other end of respiration. It was in the transformative power of a full exhalation.”

      With apologies to author James Nestor, I wasn’t going to fully commit to nasal breathing hiking up Crawford Path yesterday. I gave it a try a few times but didn’t feel like I was getting enough air. Something to work on for sure, but I opted for the more familiar mouth breathing for the steepest stretches of the path and reserved the nasal breathing for the descent from Mount Eisenhower. I can tell I’ve got my work cut out for me, but anything worthwhile deserves putting the work in. What’s more worthwhile than breathing?

    • To Visit All the Celebrated Places

      “Now is the time to visit all the celebrated places in the country, and fill our heads with what we have seen, so that when we become old and bald we will have something to talk about over the teacups.” – Jippensha Ikku

      Credit to Smithsonian Magazine for the Ikku quote, for it made me smile when I read it.  Ikku lived in Japan during a fairly important period in American history (1766-1831) so its easy to overlook what might have been happening in other places in the world.  The quote reminds me that our feelings about travel and aging are timeless.  We all hope to see the world while we’re young and full of vigor, that we might have epic stories to tell over a favorite beverage when we’re older and less mobile.

      The travel list of celebrated places is ready, and all earnest travelers wait for the starting gun to set us free to explore once again.  We’re all rooting for a vaccine and some level of herd immunity, some measure of personal responsibility from society at large and perhaps stronger political leadership to set policy that makes sense.  May we see it sooner than later.  But in the meantime, I’m traveling as Thoreau traveled: exploring the place where I am in ways that I hadn’t before.  Walking fully aware in the woods, or the mountains and shores of New Hampshire, stopping at local landmarks previously unknown to me, and exploring space  while looking up at the stars to pick out planets and constellations.  For the adventurous spirit, there’s no shortage of opportunities to explore, even in a pandemic.

      “Travel spins us round in two ways at once: It shows us the sights and values and issues that we might ordinarily ignore; but it also, and more deeply, shows us all the parts of ourselves that might otherwise grow rusty. For in traveling to a truly foreign place, we inevitably travel to moods and states of mind and hidden inward passages that we’d otherwise seldom have cause to visit.

      All [great travel writers]… believed in “being moved” as one of the points of taking trips, and “being transported” by private as well as public means; all saw that “ecstasy” (“ex-stasis”) tells us that our highest moments come when we’re not stationary, and that epiphany can follow movement as much as it precipitates it.

      Travel, then, is a voyage into that famously subjective zone, the imagination, and what the traveler brings back is — and has to be — an ineffable compound of himself and the place, what’s really there and what’s only in him.” – Pico Iyer, Why We Travel

      While nice on the surface, I chafe when spending too much time at resorts because I’m not looking for pampering or losing myself in a cartoon world.  Travel at its best isn’t distraction, but exploration.  It isn’t running away from ourselves, but finding ourselves.  And that can happen anywhere if we let it.  Our highest moments come when we’re not stationary…  and so we hear the call to explore.  I’m conspiring to travel locally over the next couple of weeks to places near, while foregoing far.  At least for now.  For there’s so much to see right in our own backyards that we rarely celebrate.  Over the next few weeks I’ll explore some of those places in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.  And as you might expect having read any of this blog, explore hidden inward passages too.