Alexandersmap

    Category: Writing

    • Says I to Myself

      “To-day you may write a chapter on the advantages of travelling, and to-morrow you may write another chapter on the advantages of not travelling. The horizon has one kind of beauty and attraction to him who has never explored the hills and mountains in it, and another, I fear a less ethereal and glorious one, to him who has. That blue mountain in the horizon is certainly the most heavenly, the most elysian, which we have not climbed, on which we have not camped for a night. But only our horizon is moved thus further off, and if our whole life should prove thus a failure, the future which is to atone for all, where still there must be some success, will be more glorious still. ‘Says I to myself’ should be the motto of my journal. It is fatal to the writer to be too much possessed by his thought. Things must lie a little remote to be described.” — Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry David Thoreau

      The thing about writing a blog every day is that it can feel like a journal pretty quickly. That’s not the intention at all, especially given the number of wonderful people in my life that read the blog. Sure, I’ve made this bed now I’ve got to lie in it. But it will never be a journal, even if people occasionally comment on it as if it was.

      We reach a place in our lives, look off to the horizon and see another mountain to climb. We reach that one and it all starts again. A life lived in pursuit of personal excellence is a constant process of seeing the next goal and setting out for it. When do we get to rest? In our graves? But so goes the journey of becoming. It will always be action-oriented, it will always be a climb. But oh, the view!

    • Where Am I?

      “Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” ― Lao Tzu

      I was prompted to look at an old blog post I’d written back in 2019 because it showed up in my statistics. That one post has garnered hundreds of views, which isn’t exactly Seth Godin numbers, but it was one of the ones that got more traction than most. Historical, introspective and curious. I’d like to think I’m still those things, even if my focus has changed a bit.

      Back then I was traveling a lot more, we hadn’t had a pandemic yet, and life hadn’t thrown a few more gut punches our way. We all accumulate experiences over time—the good, bad and ugly. In general, I liked the way I wrote back then, I just hadn’t experienced the changes that would wash over me yet.

      The thing is, back in those days exploring place, I was asking the same questions I’m asking now: Where am I? What happened here and what can it teach me?

      Everything changes, and so must we. Each experience accumulated changes us in some way minutely or profoundly. It’s like that river analogy, where both the river and we are not the same each time we visit. And flow we must, always having been somewhere, always on to the next, and yet right here in this moment. What have we learned this time?

    • The Optimal Moment for Yes

      “Time and energy are limited. Any successful person has to decide what to do in part by deciding what not to do.” — Angela Duckworth

      I recently stirred the pot in my community of friends by questioning the viability of outrage. One person’s call to action is another’s endless distraction at the latest assault on what’s good in this world. I choose to put all outrageous acts into the same bucket of atrociousness and simply focus on what I can control. Acknowledge they’re bastards doing bastardly things and don’t let them drag us down into the time-suck abyss. To do otherwise concedes effectiveness. Use that emotional energy for useful productivity.

      Deciding and doing necessarily demand deciding what not to do as well. As I write this, I have notifications pouring in on my phone, a long list of priorities written out to check off today and a lingering awareness that time is rapidly ticking away. And that’s exactly why we must learn to say no. We only have so many grains of sand to work with, so why waste it being unfocused on the things that will matter most in the end?

      Case in point: I postponed writing this blog post until some essential work was completed. It quietly gnawed at me knowing that I deferred writing for other work, but the work was important enough for me to say yes to it, while the writing of the blog wasn’t a “no” (!) but a “not yet”. Will the work matter in ten years? Maybe. Will the blog post? Again, maybe. But both are are important enough to me to warrant prioritization. In the end both will be completed and I’ll move on with my life knowing I’ve honored a commitment to myself.

      Everything essential has its time, and all the rest distracts us from focusing on optimally meeting this moment. What feels essential today may mean nothing when we’re on our deathbed. Yes, there are some things we can say yes to now that we’ll never be able to say yes to again. But what are we saying no to to attain it? Which is more optimal for a yes in this moment? Perhaps that’s the ultimate filter for what we say yes and no to. Because those grains of sand are flowing oh so fast and we may never pass this way again.

    • Floating Off the Edge

      “Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.” — Max Ehrmann, Desiderata

      May your hands always be busy
      May your feet always be swift
      May you have a strong foundation
      When the winds of changes shift
      May your heart always be joyful
      May your song always be sung
      May you stay forever young
      — Bob Dylan, Forever Young

      I rewatched The Last Waltz last night, secure in the knowledge that I could turn up the volume as loudly as I wanted to with my bride on the other side of the country (she may still have heard it playing). I was struck by how young each of the performers were. Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Neil Diamond, Emmylou Harris, and even Director Martin Scorsese—they all looked like kids because really, they still were. And The Band, every last one of them gone now, all were at the height of their productive youth. How quickly it all flies by… Tempus fugit.

      That film was the amber of that moment for them, and they’re locked in time. So it was fitting for Dylan to sing Forever Young, and for Scorsese to provide the amber. The Band knew what they were walking away from—the grind of the road, true, but also their youth. There’s lingering sadness at what was left on stage revealed in conversations with each member, especially Rick Danko. No, we aren’t Peter Pan, forever young and living the life of adventure, we all must grow up one day. And so it is that each of the performers have aged and faded away one-by-one. Memento mori.

      Why did I rewatch this film? Maybe it was the music, or maybe to have my own look back on a different time. An industry friend passed away this week. He was twenty years my senior and cancer took him away with a mind as sharp as someone twenty years my junior. Age is just a number—health and vitality are our true currency in life. The body or the mind will surely fail us all one day, so be bold and dance today. And while we’re at it, turn up the volume as loud as we dare. Carpe diem.

      “We’re all in the same boat ready to float off the edge of the world” — The Band, Life is a Carnival

      Maybe I write to capture my own moments in amber, or maybe I’m just leaving breadcrumbs of where I’ve been. We all have our body of work and our faded photographs (or increasingly, lower resolution JPEG’s) that whisper of who we once were in the height of our own productive youth. The trick is to keep producing, to keep dancing, and to lock some particularly shiny moments away in amber while we can, until one day this boat floats off the edge to join all the stars in infinity.

    • Run to Simplicity

      “Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.” — Max Ehrmann, Desiderata

      Do you wonder why the most beautiful people in this world seem so placid and steady? There’s an inner calm like a still pond; clear and deep and surrounded by hushed beauty. Isn’t that something to aspire to in our own lives? Not for the shallow goal of being beautiful, but of living beautifully? Our lives must be more than a puddle in a rut, waiting for a truck to thump into us and drag our essence down the road. Get off that damned road.

      “There is nothing that the busy man is less busy with than living; there is nothing harder to learn.” — Seneca

      The thing is, we’re all so very busy and distracted by life. It’s hard to go deep on anything when we barely have a moment to understand things at a surface level. But surfaces dry up quickly when the drought comes. We’re taught to stick to the surface—to hack our way through the hard stuff, seeking shortcuts and a way out of anything that holds us back from the next. That applies equally well in our education, our work, and our relationships with others. Is it any wonder why so many are unsettled and distracted? There’s no substance to them because they keep running away from it.

      To skate through life without ever lingering long enough to truly know the world and our place in it is the path of mediocrity accepted by the masses. Choose to be the exception—for there lies extraordinary. To truly master anything in life, especially the living of life itself, requires immersion and stillness. We must learn to turn off the spigot and develop a thirst for deeper waters.

      “One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.” — Bruce Lee

      I believe I keep this blog going to force myself deeper. The times when I want to simply shut it down and miss a day are when I’m running shallow—spread thin and beginning to dry up emotionally, intellectually, spiritually. I remind myself to run deeper, to eliminate distractions and to find stillness. Sure enough, the inclination fades away and I begin to write with clarity once again. Like a shallow stream building into a flowing river that steadily moves to the sea, building momentum in a deeper channel carved out of persistence.

    • Moments of Clarity

      no baby, if you’re going to create
      you’re going to create whether you work
      16 hours a day in a coal mine
      or
      you’re going to create in a small room with 3 children
      while you’re on
      welfare,
      you’re going to create with a part of your mind and your
      body blown
      away,
      you’re going to create blind
      crippled
      demented,
      you’re going to create with a cat crawling up your
      back while
      the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment,
      flood and fire,

      baby, air and light and time and space
      have nothing to do with it
      and don’t create anything
      except maybe a longer life to find
      new excuses
      for.
      — Charles Bukowski, air and light and time and space

      I heard from the daughter of an industry friend. He doesn’t have long now, she told me, and is spending this time in hospice with family and friends. I reached out knowing this, and to offer a few words that I know will reach him through her. In such situations, we must say it now, or know that it will be never. These moments of clarity are profound when someone reaches the end of their life, but we must remember we’re all just a step behind them ourselves. Memento mori. So for gods sake, carpe diem already!

      We have so many excuses available to us to avoid telling someone how we feel, or to defer exercise and writing and creating beauty in a world insistent on growing darker. But it grows darker precisely because we defer the call of creating. This is our verse, after all, and it could all end today for us. What will we leave behind as our beacon of truth and courage?

      We must put all that energy used to create excuses aside and finally listen to the muse before our opportunity fades away forever. Produce something beautiful. For all the chaos and distraction, there will not be a better time than now. We’re going to create now, or know that it will be never.

    • Don’t Imagine They’ll All Come True

      You’ve got your passion, you’ve got your pride
      but don’t you know that only fools are satisfied?
      Dream on, but don’t imagine they’ll all come true
      When will you realize, Vienna waits for you?
      — Billy Joel, Vienna

      Blame it on the maddening state of the world, or for reaching an age where paths diverge in a person’s life, but I’ve been struggling with uncertainty lately. Make a decision, change my mind and cancel plans, then abruptly pivot back to the original plan again… or not. Really, it’s all a confused mess. And that’s no way to go through one’s days.

      To never be fully satisfied with the plan, and to thus always feeling compelled to modify it, is a blessing and a curse. Forever seeking Kaizen (constant and never-ending improvement) is a path to personal excellence, or to a restless life never fully realized because there’s always going to be something to work on. What works for Toyota ought to work for us, right? But we aren’t corporations, we’re humans. We can’t simply systematize ourselves and expect we’ll arrive at perfection. We must dig deeper and understand where the restlessness is rooted in.

      The answer typically lies in the question: what do we want out of life? That is our direction. Coming to understand it, we may set out in that direction today without trying to change course over and over again. Good habits and a healthy routine automate some important behaviors in our lives like exercise and flossing and writing, serving as gyroscopic stabilizers so we don’t get seasick from rocking back and forth too much with our behavior.

      Some people go to a Vienna coffeehouse simply to enjoy a torte or Buchteln. Some go to lasso a muse. Both can be right. To borrow a lyric from another Billy Joel song, do what’s good for you, or you’re no good for anybody. And to rock abruptly back to Vienna, don’t imagine all your dreams will come true, just focus on the one’s that do.

    • To Be In This World

      Bless the notebook that I always carry in my pocket.
      And the pen.
      Bless the words with which I try to say what I see, think, or feel. With gratitude for the grace of the earth.
      The expected and the exception, both.
      For all the hours I have been given to be in this world.
      — Mary Oliver, Good Morning

      When the world turns us brittle, a bit of Mary Oliver poetry helps make the soul pliable once again. The poem quoted above is the same one that brought us the lines, “Stay young, always, in the theater of your mind.” and “It must be a great disappointment to God if we are not dazzled at least ten times a day.” I can’t very well put every line she ever wrote in this blog, but surely I’ve covered a lot of them. For all the exceptional lines, the one that resonates for me is action-oriented: To be in this world.

      A couple of nights ago I walked out at dusk and looked at Venus, Jupiter and Mars marching in a neat line across the sky. Orion, ever the hunter, stood ready to release his arrow. These are days we’ll remember until they scrub the hard drives and burn the books, but the infinite remains indifferent to the drama unfolding here. Knowing it’s a short run, we must return our focus to our own verse, whatever it might be for us. A creative, productive life demands our full participation.

      Perhaps it’s the poet in me, but I believe that gratitude and wonder are the two key ingredients to a meaningful day. When we look at the whole hot mess that is our lives in this moment, we must accept the miracle that we’re here at all. We cannot be forever distracted by the fools on the hill, letting our precious life slip away. Be here, now. And perhaps, like Mary Oliver, have the audacity to do something exceptional with the opportunity.

    • Limitations and Openings

      Any framework, method, or label
      you impose on yourself
      is just as likely to be a limitation
      as an opening.
      — Rick Ruben, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

      Every morning I wake up and start to think about what I’m going to write about. Routine has brought me to this place, and even if the entire day turns to crap, even if I’m distracted and frustrated by the world around me, even if it feels like this will be the last blog I ever write because I’m just done with the entire process, my mind settles into the rhythm of writing just as soon as my fingers begin to keep up with where my mind is taking them. And here we are again.

      This blog is not taking the world by storm. I’m under no illusion of grandeur about my place in the lives of its readers, or the number of ripples these thoughts and words will carry across space and time. I write because I fancy myself both a thinker and a writer, and it follows that one ought to jot down what one is thinking about, if only to see where it takes us.

      The question is, does the process take us to a breakthrough, or are we simply going around in circles? Is the very act of blogging a limitation on other writing that isn’t being done because the mind is satiated every morning at around this time? And what other habits and routines would take the place of writing, should it be relegated to later in the day? Would the writing slip like workouts slip?

      We’re caught in a trap
      I can’t walk out
      Because I love you too much, baby
      — Elvis Presley, Suspicious Minds

      We know when it’s time for a change. But how often does knowing lead to doing? Identity is built on the habits and routines we create our days with. And our days in turn become our lives. We ought to ask ourselves when we’ve finished writing and click publish, is this process a limitation for me or an opening? Just where are we going anyway?

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    • Our Many Short Races

      “Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.” — Walter Elliot

      Fortitudine vincimus (by endurance we conquer) — the family motto of Sir Ernest Shackleton

      When we look back on our lives thus far, we often gloss over the small, daily challenges that we had to overcome just to get through the day and only remember the good times we had. Sure, we remember the big setbacks and the losses (it’s hard to ever forget a gut punch). But each small challenge conquered honed and shaped who we are. The race was won, at least that day’s race, and we moved on to the next.

      My favorite rowing workout is an interval workout of 10×500 meters. It’s an intense burst of energy applied to a relatively short distance, and then a brief rest period before doing it all over again. I’m still covering 5000 meters, but there’s no time to settle in to a lower standard of performance or to get bored. Work, rest, work again until the work is done.

      So why not apply this process to our creative work? Write quickly, take a minute or two minute walk away from the work and then jump right back into it again. It adds up to more work, but often better work too. There’s no time for distraction, no time for anything but producing our best in that short burst of time before we earn another break.

      Every day is a series of challenges that must be overcome for us to earn the knowledge, skills or nerve to move on to the next. We climb ever higher, we get pushed back, adjust and push forward again. It’s not a long slog into infinity, it’s simply today’s short race. When we focus on the short race we’re currently working through, we think less about the short break someone else may be posting pictures about on social media, or the work someone we admire just published that feels out of reach for our current ability. We’re in a different race, after all, and our task is simply to finish this micro burst with focus and intensity.

      Zoom back out, and we see seismic shifts happening politically, economically, culturally… and it feels like this race may be too overwhelming for us to be in. But we’re in it just the same. We forget that that larger game at play isn’t our weight to bear alone. Don’t let the bastards grind you down (that’s what they want us to feel—ground down and powerless). Focus on the race we’re running and chase personal excellence in the things we alone are doing with our time. Life may indeed be a marathon and not a sprint, but all races are completed one stride at a time.