Alexandersmap

    Category: Lifestyle

    • Time and Stoicism

      My dog Bodhi is reaching the end.  His back legs, so powerful in driving him in sprints around the yard or on those mad dashes out the open door and down to the beach for a swim, are betraying him now.  In the morning when it’s time for him to go out I need to lift up his back end so he can walk slowly to the back door to go out to relieve himself.  Time is catching up to him at the end of his thirteenth year.

      “Forget everything else.  Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant.  The rest has been lived already, or impossible to see.” – Marcus Aurelius

      Time knocks us all down eventually.  We all sort of know it as we go through life, but most people push thoughts of death aside and distract themselves with television or politics or celebrity gossip or who knows what.  I’ve come to embrace stoicism as a philosophy precisely because it cuts through the bullshit and lays out what we should all remember.  Memento Mori.  Carpe Diem.
      Today I’m driving to New Jersey for a sales meeting.  I’m debating going early to watch the Patriots game there.  The alternative is to stay here and leave a bit later, spending time with family a bit longer.  Under the right lens, the decision is obvious.

    • Empty Houses

      Cape Cod and other places that are chock full of tourists in summer are incredibly empty in the dead of winter.  Last night I drove to the Cape for a quick night in Pocasset before driving to Providence, Rhode Island for an early meeting this morning.  I noticed a few things in my drive last night.  First, there were very few cars keeping me company on the highway.  Second, almost every business was closed by 10 PM, when I was driving through.  And finally, I noticed the empty houses.

      Cape Cod in winter has thousands of empty houses.  All of them dormant and patiently waiting for the return of their tenants.  Empty houses are dark, cold and lonely soldiers all lined up along the side of the road.  Coming across the few houses that are lit up with life adds a little cheer to an otherwise drab January commute.  Entire neighborhoods are empty, giving a lifeless, end of days appearance to what I’ve usually acquainted with on these streets.
      For one night, I had the family house lit up as a beacon to those who would look for life on a dormant street.  Tonight the house returns to stillness, like the rows of houses around it.  I’ll be back again soon to bring life back to the street, and hope that next time I won’t be carrying the torch alone.

    • Warmer Winters

      We happen to be having a relatively mild winter this year.  Last year was a different story.  Next year may be the coldest ever recorded for all I know.  But on the whole the trend seems to be towards warmer winters.  I read once about the early settlers in the New England region ice skating on the Merrimack River from Newburyport up to Haverhill.  The river in the stretch is tidal and brackish water.  It’s hard for me to comprehend a winter, or a series of winters, when this stretch of river would freeze enough to safely skate.  But then, our winters are different now than they once were.

      I’ve contemplated the impact of obliquity on the winters over the last 300 years.  If settlers were skating on a frozen Merrimack River in 1719, what is the impact of axial tilt on our ability to do the same in 2019?  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a believer in the impact of mankind on climate change, but how much is that impact exacerbated by obliquity?  I ran into this quote on NASA’s Earth Observatory site that describes the impact over time:

      “As the axial tilt increases, the seasonal contrast increases so that winters are colder and summers are warmer in both hemispheres. Today, the Earth’s axis is tilted 23.5 degrees from the plane of its orbit around the sun. But this tilt changes. During a cycle that averages about 40,000 years, the tilt of the axis varies between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees. Because this tilt changes, the seasons as we know them can become exaggerated. More tilt means more severe seasons—warmer summers and colder winters; less tilt means less severe seasons—cooler summers and milder winters. It’s the cool summers that are thought to allow snow and ice to last from year-to-year in high latitudes, eventually building up into massive ice sheets. There are positive feedbacks in the climate system as well, because an Earth covered with more snow reflects more of the sun’s energy into space, causing additional cooling.” – NASA, referencing Milutin Milankovitch 

      The question I have is whether 300 years is enough time to have the dramatic impact, or whether we’ve sunk our own boat through carbon emissions?  The impact of obliquity takes thousands of years.  And yet there’s a significant difference in the types of winters we have today versus what we had roughly 15 generations ago.  These are the questions that stir the inner scientist in me.  Far more than whatever my teachers were dumping on me in school ever stirred me.  It’s all about the questions you ask yourself when it comes to learning…  or life.

       

    • Late Bloomers

      I was doing some yard work this week and stopped to consider the roses.  I have these tea roses that bloom constantly throughout the summer and well into the fall.  It’s got these masses of light pink, fragrant blooms at its peak in June.  With a relatively mild autumn, we had blooms much later into the season than usual.  But some of the rosebuds waited too long to bloom, and were frozen in place.

      We hear a lot in culture about late bloomers.  Colonel Sanders comes to mind.  And there’s a place for late bloomers in culture and in nature alike.  But there’s a lesson in the roses too.  Don’t wait too long to bloom, or you may die with unfinished potential.

    • Time Travel

      As we speak cruel time is fleeing.  Seize the day, believing as little as possible in the morrow.” 
                                                                                            – Horace

      “Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” – William Penn

      January 4th.  Working this week is almost as challenging as working last week was.  Short weeks are always tough, but add in that most people are on vacation or working on their plan for the year and the productivity in a given week goes out the window.  Working the tools of the trade – Salesforce CRM, bullet journal, Getting Things Done methodology – helps but some weeks are more off the rails than others.  I’ve entered the Friday afternoon Bermuda Triangle of productivity.  I look up and it’s after 3 PM and I’ve checked one out of five boxes on my bullet journal to-do list.

      I’ve tried many methods, but to me the Bullet Journal combined with GTD methodology is working the best for me.  If I had all the money I spent on productivity tools over the years I’d be able to retire early.  Best to keep it simple.  Right it down immediately in a bullet form, cross it off when you finish it, move it forward if you don’t.  Keep it simple…

      For a short, unfocused week, I’ve managed to get a few things done.  Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty to do, but you need to celebrate the small successes when you achieve them.  After all, there’s always something else that needs to be done.  If you waited until it was all done you’d never celebrate anything.

    • Coating to an Inch

      There’s mental math that you do when you live in New England.  When the forecast calls for snow followed by temperatures above freezing, you need to decide the cutoff point where you ignore or clear the snow accumulated on the driveway.  Today is a classic case of just enough accumulation – more than a coating – to consider scraping it off the driveway and deck.  My default after years of experience is that you clean the driveway and enjoy the warming trend later.  Don’t count on a melt-off, because New England weather can dash your dreams quickly.

      I’ve had plenty of coating to an inch storms that I’ve decided to let Mother Nature “just melt” that have haunted me later.  That warming trend doesn’t materialize, the meteorologist shrugs and marvels at the way the front came through and I’m left with a skating rink for a driveway.  No, best to clear the driveway and deck and just call it a light workout.

      There have been some business trips where I’ve come home and the residents of the home have determined that the math worked in their favor.  That’s when ice melt becomes your ally.  When the equation turns to despair, you introduce ten to twenty pounds of salt to the driveway.  This is a safety net, but not the preferred way of doing things.  This paragraph is curmudgeon talk.  Best to just keep your mouth shut, clean the driveway as best you can and wait a day to three weeks until the next warming trend melts off the discretion.

    • New Year’s Day

      2019 has begun in earnest and there’s no time to waste.  Things to do, places to see, books to read, people to meet, friends and family to reconnect with, work to accomplish.  The flipping of the calendar signifies many things but it does mark change, if only in a number.
      “I will begin again” – U2, New Year’s Day
      The morning after the celebration, for those who didn’t celebrate too much, is chock full of promise.  New habits or the banishment of old habits, goals to accomplish, changes to make in the way you live your life.  Really, every morning offers this opportunity.  Every day you wake up is a clean slate, and offers the promise of the coming day.
      “When you see the Southern Cross for the first time
      You understand now why you came this way
      ‘Cause the truth you might be runnin’ from is so small
      But it’s as big as the promise, the promise of a comin’ day”
                                          – Crosby, Stills & Nash, Southern Cross
      Those lyrics remain burned in me like cattle prod, and poke at me now and then to get out in the world.  Just as the movie Local Hero does.  They serve as a catalyst and travel and some form of adventure must follow soon after each taps me between the ears.  I need to pay penance first with work to do at home, in Pocasset and in my job, but sure as the calendar changes on January 1 I’ll be off somewhere again, finding adventure where I may.

    • HNY

      “Give yourself fully to your endeavors. Decide to construct your character through excellent actions and determine to pay the price of a worthy goal. The trials you encounter will introduce you to your strengths.” – Epictetus

      Perfectly stoic outlook for the 2019.  Here’s to a great New Year’s Eve tomorrow and a safe and Happy New Year for all.  Cheers!

    • The Reading List

      Each day the reading list grows.  The will to read is there, and I’m working through the stacks, but the stack grows nonetheless.  I feel like Permetheus pushing the rock up the hill when it comes to tacking the mountains of books I’d like to get through.  Counting some Christmas additions and leftover 2018 reading list books that I’m either still trying to get through or trying to get to, I’m looking at dozens of books.  While I’m happy to have completed many of the books on my 2018 list, I regret the  distractions that kept me from completing the rest.  So here we are, heading into the New Year, and these are the books that I’d like to complete in 2019:

      How the Scots Invented the Modern World
      Guns, Germs and Steel
      This is Marketing
      The Map Thief
      American Nations
      The Count of Monte Cristo
      Cultural Amnesia
      The French and Indian War
      Letters from a Poet
      The Way of the Seal
      The Cuban Affair
      Ulysses
      For Whom the Bell Tolls
      The Rising Tide
      The Fateful Lightning
      Empire of Liberty
      Valiant Ambition
      Benedict Arnold’s Navy
      Leadership
      Belichick

      Twenty-one books.  Thirteen are historical novels or cover historical events. one sports biography, one self-improvement, one business book (marketing), four fiction and one is a book of letters from a poet.  It’s history-heavy, but then that’s an interest of mine.  My short term goal is to finish seven of them – 1/3 – by the end of April.  So I’d better get focused.

    • Christmas Stoicism

      On”Do what nature demands.  Get a move on – if you have it in you – and don’t worry whether anyone will give you credit for it.  And don’t go expecting Plato’s Republic; be satisfied with even the smallest progress, and treat the outcome of it all as unimportant.” – Marcus Aurulius

      Stoicism and Christianity started at roughly the same time.  I embrace stoicism not as a rejection of Christianity, but because it completes the story for me.  Merry Christmas – and Memento Mori.