Alexandersmap

    Category: Writing

    • Silence, Exile, and Cunning

      “I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use—silence, exile, and cunning.” ― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

      We’re in a strange new world, full of people believing unbelievable things. Or maybe the world has always been strange and unbelievable, and I’ve just risen above the din to finally see it all myself. These are days we’ll remember, at least if we survive long enough and the victors are on the right side of history.

      Belief is a funny thing, carrying us to places we may never have imagined we’d go to, simply because we believed the story that pulled us there. This can serve us well, when used for snuffing out imposter syndrome and such things for productive work. The day I stepped away from anonymous blogging to having friends and family fully aware of what I’m writing (if at all inclined) was a notable moment in my development as a writer. There are other notable moments to come this year on the writing front (I believe this to be true).

      Belief can also be used to control the masses. The world is a far more dangerous place because of shared beliefs of “us versus them”. It leads to mass indifference at the separation of families at borders and the bombing of hospitals and schools, all to keep them from threatening us. We all know the world is a complicated place with no easy answers, but when someone loudly starts pointing their fat finger at another group and screaming “Them!” it’s usually time to back slowly away to look for the real story. But who tells real stories anymore?

      There is no them
      There’s only us
      — U2, Invisible

      The thing I tell people who dare to ask me what I think is that we must build resilience into our lives. Some people believe resilience is hoarding guns, food and toilet paper. There’s a whole economy built around those folks. My own form of resilience lies in creating more diversity in my diet. Better nutrition for the mind and body through selective consumption. More books, poetry and song, less curated social media and billionaire-run mass media. And, as James Joyce suggested, the use of silence, exile and cunning to build a mote between the zealots and all that I know to be true in this world.

      There’s nothing silent about a blog post. It’s a stamp of stated beliefs marking this moment in time. A betrayal that I’m still trying to change the world for the better. We may choose to be a voice for reason and acceptance, after all. At least until things really go to hell and they ship us all to Greenland to mine precious metals for the next generation of self-driving cars, weaponized drones and phones that tell us what to believe next (I digress).

      We may be selectively silent when it suits our purposes, just as we may exile ourselves from the zealots who would have us fall in line. Both tools have limitations in a small world with big reach. That leaves us with cunning. We must be smarter than the average bear, to stay one step ahead of what they want to tell us is true. This is the ultimate resilience, and it begins and ends with our audacity to think differently.

    • Begin Already

      “Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go.” — Brooks Atkinson

      My writing desk is filled with old receipts, business cards, lip balm and coupons from the holidays. Why do these collected scraps of the past accumulate on spaces we mean to use for more productive, forward-looking work? It’s time to clear all that stuff off and get back to the work that I created this space for. It’s time to write, to dive deeply into questions, to create something more than the scattered refuse of prior days.

      We can’t very well dwell on all that’s come and gone and expect to get to the places we still want to go to in our lives. Are we awaiting warmer days? Inspiration? Enough of limbo, it’s time to begin climbing again. Our future depends on us doing something productive with our time now, not thinking back on what we did then. Begin already!

    • All This Scribbling

      “But what does all this scribbling amount to? What is now scribbled in the heat of the moment one can contemplate with somewhat of satisfaction, but alas! to-morrow—aye, to-night—it is stale, flat, and unprofitable,—in fine, is not, only its shell remains, like some red parboiled lobster-shell which, kicked aside never so often, still stares at you in the path.
      What may a man do and not be ashamed of it? He may not do nothing surely, for straightway he is dubbed Dolittle—aye! christens himself first—and reasonably, for he was first to duck. But let him do something, is he the less a Dolittle? Is it actually something done, or not rather something undone?”
      — Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry David Thoreau

      We aren’t the only ones who wonder at our writing. Thoreau telegraphed his own doubts in his journal, but kept writing nonetheless. And what of us? A friend asked me today if I would keep the blog going in the new year. Which raises the question of why. Why keep this going at all? Well, why not?

      Does our daily routine lead us somewhere or are we going in circles? It’s a new year and a new day. These are the times that stir the imagination. Where will we go with it? What might we do that we may be proud of?

      When it comes to the blog, and maybe some other writing of consequence, the journey is worthy of the time investment. It feels to me that all this scribbling leads somewhere very much worth going to. Onward then, into the great unknown that is the new year. Let’s see where it all takes us.

    • Our Opportunity of a Lifetime

      We know what we are, but not what we may be.”
      — William Shakespeare, Hamlet

      The final day of the year offers us a clear idea of who we are, and tantalizes us with the mystery of what we may be in the next year. So here we are again, friend. What have we become? What will we become? All the weight of identity placed on a turn of the calendar. But every day offers these questions that only we may answer. To be or not to be, that is the question: every single day.

      This year coming to an end offers us the answer. We have become both in what we have consumed (food, media, books, feedback, time) and what we have produced (art, presence in the lives of others, our chosen professional work, our acceptance of or anger at our fellow humans to the sum of each in the world). We are the sum of our consumption and production to this point. We either like who we’ve become or we may reset the compass and go in a new direction entirely. That’s the beauty of a new day and the New Year: reinvention.

      It always comes back to what we say yes and no to. Today’s post completes a promise I made to myself a year ago to write every day. Regular readers know that I considered stopping to focus on other things, but pushed through the no to arrive back at yes. I’m inclined to say yes to this promise again in the next year, knowing that there will be hurdles once again. We all have those things that set our day in motion, don’t we? Writing is my motion setter.

      We may take that concept of setting things in motion to tomorrow, today. Whatever that audacious resolution may be, today offers an opportunity to set the stage. What we may be remains our unique opportunity of a lifetime. Why wait another day to get started on the path to becoming?

    • The Two Characters We Meet Every Day

      “I don’t feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning.” — Michel Foucault

      “When the person you could have been meets the person you are becoming, is it going to be a cause for celebration or heartbreak? ” — Seth Godin, This is Strategy

      It’s been a couple of weeks since I stopped using Duolingo, and even though I grew dissatisfied with the app, I’ve grown more dissatisfied with not consistently working on being multilingual. And so I purchased a competing app, Babbel, to give that a go. I’ve evaluated it before, but at the time didn’t want to invest in a second app. So we’ll see how it goes.

      This will not be a blog post about learning a language. It is (partially) about becoming the person we could be if we just applied ourselves to the task every day. I fancy myself a writer, and so I write. The blog isn’t quite enough for me, and so I’ve set daily goals beyond the blog that I must honor. As with Babbel, we’ll see how it goes, but we learn with everything we aspire to in our lives that it’s now or never.

      There’s a reason that Planet Fitness sponsors the New Years Eve celebration in Times Square. They’re aware that we’re all looking at who we’re becoming as the year turns and deciding whether we’re going to be heartbroken by the encounter or have reason to celebrate. We all want this next year to be our best year ever, don’t we? The trick is in how we realize that. One resolution does not an identity make, but our incremental daily actions carry us a long way.

      The thing is, that character we’re becoming is simply the course we set for ourselves. The character we live with every day ought to be interesting, productive and fun or we’ll inevitably back away slowly to find a better dance partner. Becoming is a daily reckoning of who we are with who we want to be. The key to a successful, joyful life is to make the character who is marching towards the future to meet our desired future self the kind of person we want to be around every day.

    • Domino Days

      “I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live.” — Françoise Sagan

      At some point in our lives we must turn our best intentions into action and do the things we claim we want to do. Otherwise we are adding our voice to the choir of quiet desperation Thoreau warned us about. Playing a bigger part in the play of life naturally leads to more things to talk about, which is nice in conversation, but it also leads us to a string of ever-larger dominos disguised as days. The thrill is in seeing how big we can grow our days, simply built upon the one before.

      There’s nothing wrong with lining up a row of our days of like size, one after the other, for a time that suits us. When we raise children, every day feels like the same-sized day of changing diapers, making lunches, helping with homework, driving them to practice, teaching them how to drive and suddenly(!) moving them to college. We’re simply helping them line up their own domino days, along with our own. It turns out those days are growing in scope too, we were just to busy to realize it at the time.

      There are days when it feels like we’ll never topple those larger dominos, but each incremental day builds towards something more substantial still. Our unbroken string of days pays off with an ever-bigger life. It’s the gaps that force us to start all over again. Mind the gap, as the Brits say, and step into the next thing. Soon we’re really going somewhere.

      The blog you’re reading now (thank you) is a string of dominos disguised as daily posts taking both of us somewhere bigger than where we started. When we view our writing and our lives in this way, we begin to see that it’s all about building and sustaining momentum, thus increasing our contribution for the days beyond this one. Growth is inevitable in both our writing and our lives when we just keep pushing a little further along.

    • Our Vehicle to the Future

      “Small habits don’t add up, they compound.” — James Clear

      What happens when the routine becomes, well, routine? We must change our habits in order to course correct towards something more desirable. We’ve got to disrupt what was once our normal and create a new normal. And yet we know from looking around at the world that just because a normal is new doesn’t make it desirable. Habits that once worked for us seem to conflict with the person we’d like to become. Life can feel complicated in this way.

      The leap into the unknown will happen in January for millions of people with those ambitious resolutions. We know how that will work out for most. It’s not that the goal is wrong, it’s that the desired outcome hasn’t been designed properly into our lives. Lasting change is realized through a daily reckoning with habits. James Clear would point out these habits are rather small, but compound as they become a part of our identity. Writing this blog is one of mine, and it’s survived a lot of challenging days thus far simply because not doing it on any one day would break a streak I don’t want to see broken. And here we are.

      If the pup could write she’d point out that our evening walk is another habit that must not be broken. We aim for a mile, sometimes overachieve and sometimes do half as much, but it’s our routine. And at this point in our time together, she wouldn’t have it any other way. When I travel I know I’m breaking my part of the deal and try to make it up to her with a longer walk next time.

      Habits are like contracts. Just as an athlete signs a contract and puts on the uniform of that team, we assume the identity of our collection of habits. Our interests, compounded, are who we become. But when we become interested in changing, we must turn against the current of habits that brought us to who we are now. No wonder it seems so difficult to change. Just like any of our investments, we ought to be very deliberate about where we want to be when we arrive and create a system that compounds over time. Small habits aren’t just our behavioral pattern, they’re our vehicle to the future.

    • The Noble Road

      “There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.” — Ernest Hemingway

      I was out for a walk on the local rail trail, looking at the ice formations developing on the ledge, when I noticed someone had tagged some of the rock face. My opinion of tagging isn’t positive. It’s someone spray-painting inane symbols of self importance on something that in many cases was more beautiful before the affront. And yet I’m a fan of street art. It’s the same paint, but in my opinion the intent is different. I value order over chaos, and tagging nature is chaos in my mind. Collectively, we must choose a better path.

      I’m a better technical writer than I once was if only because I think more about the semicolon in Hemingway’s quote and the em dash I used to credit him for the quote than I did when I began blogging. But being a technical writer was never the aspiration (no doubt my writing still makes an editor shudder). Being a person who has something interesting to write about is the true goal. Some days are full of growth in this regard, some days leave something to be desired. The road to better continues upward.

      Better in and of itself is useless unless we leverage it for growth and enlightenment. The noble road is a path of goodwill towards others, of mutual support for common goals and uncommon dreams. It’s Kaizen (constant and never-ending improvement of the self) with the aim of arete (that forever evasive personal excellence). We may never reach excellence, but the climb towards it has a nicer view.

      We know that art is highly subjective, and one person’s junk is another’s art. I may not understand or appreciate some art for all that it represents, but I generally find connection in the intent of the work. When an artist aspires towards excellence, it shines through in both their art and in how they move through the world. We can see when someone is on the noble road just as easily as we can see when they’re on the road to ruin. The trick is to rise above the distractions of life and see which road we ourselves are on.

    • Survival Skills

      “That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the nature of the task has changed, but our ability to do has increased.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

      “A ship in a harbor is safe but that is not what ships are built for” — John A. Shedd

      I met with several old work friends for lunch yesterday. We haven’t worked together in years, because I left their industry to try something completely different and never looked back. As with old friends we picked up right where we left off, caught each other up on other people, and stepped back into our present lives as we separated. I remember the uncertainty of leaving the industry I was in with those folks, and the climb that lay ahead of me in the industry I stepped into from there. Life offers us plenty of opportunities for growth, we just have to be bold enough to step into the unknown.

      As it turned out, later that evening I went to a holiday party with my current coworkers (I’ve been there a month now). One veteran asked me how it was going and was confused when I said I was still drinking from the firehose. It never occurred to him that my move to this new company would be full of massive change for me, because he’d been comfortably doing the same thing for years. He’s reached a level of expertise in a company that he wants to be in until he retires, and kudos to him for reaching it. I’m inclined to leap back into the unknown now and then. Call me a risk taker or reckless, but for me life is best experienced just out of my comfort zone. As soon as I get comfortable I get bored.

      That doesn’t mean that leaps should be haphazard or foolhardy. We must acquire and then leverage the survival skills we’ve developed in our lives or we’ll sink into the abyss after our leap. Organizations don’t hire people without the skills they need to fill a gap, but they take a chance on people who may have a gap in their experience but otherwise have the skills. Too often it’s us who lack the imagination to see that a gap isn’t a chasm. We may grow into the next version of ourselves simply by leaning into it. The people who stumble are usually looking backwards too much.

      Our lives up to this point have been an accumulation of survival skills that allow us to function and thrive in the complex environment we choose to live in. Where can we sail our ship next? Writing and travel are my personal call of the wild, and the small steps I’ve taken with each are merely an accumulation of skills. You might have a different call of the wild and other skills begging to be tested. The thing is, we’ve heard the call, and we’re often we’re more ready to answer it than we give ourselves credit for. Is that safe harbor really enough? Asking the question usually reveals the answer that was awaiting our attention.

    • 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.