Alexandersmap

    Category: Writing

    • Different Things

      “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” — Attributed to Albert Einstein (but probably someone else lost to history)

      Habits have gotten us this far. Writing every day, for me best exemplified by this humble little blog, has expanded my experiences in the world as I sought out interesting things to write about. Reading every day pays dividends in creative thinking, a more expansive vocabulary and generally helps on trivia nights. These are habits that have brought me here, for all that here represents, and I’m grateful for having done them.

      And yet, some habits hold us back. I developed a routine during the pandemic of sitting at the home office desk and largely working from my desk. I bought a cool and comfortable chair. I bought a sit/stand desk that the cool chair neatly rolls under. I’ve gotten very comfortable in this space. Too comfortable. That routine no longer works in a world that wants engagement, and I force myself out into the world more often.

      If we want different outcomes, we’ve got to do different things. And so we must find new positive habits, systems and routines to replace the old ones. To try to stay the same represents stasis and our eventual decline. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep reading and writing and working out, but it does mean we ought to question why we do things a certain way and look for ways to improve.

      I made a decision this week to stop doing Duolingo, the language learning app that has been a part of my routine for 5-6 years now. It’s become an obligation to keep a streak of days going, but I’m not serious enough about it to actually reach proficiency in the languages I’m trying to learn while using it. Plus they keep ruining the experience by making it more of a game to lure more young users in. More power to them, but it doesn’t resonate with me anymore. And so it joins other apps that seemed productive once and now ring hollow. Au revoir Duo.

      The thing is, that’s not the only part of my daily routine that I’m questioning. I’m ready to turn it all upside down and try a new routine on for size. I almost shut down the blog a while back, but recognize the value in writing every day and changed my expectations about it instead. The first thing one ought to do with any habit is ask why we do it in the first place? What’s our why? Where is it bringing us? If we don’t like the answer, change the habit.

      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

      Thanks for the reminder, Mary. Yes, we’re all going to be lost to history one day, too soon: Memento mori. When are we going to stop diddling around with a routine that wastes our precious life and get on the path to meet our potential? Personal excellence (arete) is evasive, but it’s mostly a lifestyle choice. We can choose to keep getting better at the things that matter the most on our trajectory or we can get distracted by silly things. The choice has always been ours to make.

    • The Shape of Stories

      “You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.” ― Annie Proulx

      Finding stories is relatively easy when we’re paying attention to the world around us. I could write a week’s worth of blog posts based on my experiences of just the last 24 hours. That’s a 7:1 ratio for those keeping score, which infers that an active and engaged mind has infinite possibilities to create something. That doesn’t make the story interesting or easy to read, for there’s work to do beyond the first telling of a story, but it’s a great starting point.

      Here’s a story: I confronted two small disasters in my world since the last blog post dropped yesterday morning. In both cases life lessons were learned and we lived to see another sunrise. Shall I end the story there or flesh it out with more detail? A story must have structure and purpose and most of all enough interesting detail to pull a reader in. Having failed thus far at the basics, allow me to continue…

      We have one of those double ovens, top and bottom, that allow us to bake something in each independent of the other. For several years now this has worked out quite well for us. Yesterday, Thanksgiving, I turned on the oven and tucked the turkey in to roast. I inadvertently heated up the wrong oven, and our turkey sat for almost three hours in a room temperature oven before I discovered the mistake. Timing is everything with Thanksgiving and this had the makings of a disaster. After a few moments of despair, we did the only thing one can do in such moments and creatively solved the problem. Our oven has a convection bake function that greatly speeds up the cooking process. We’d never used it on something as big as a turkey but it saved the day yesterday. Crisis averted.

      Now I could have fleshed out that story with some juicy bits of dialogue between my bride and me, with her saving the day with the convection suggestion, but that’s the stuff of second or third drafts. In a proper telling of the story I would be the one stumbling, and my bride would be the hero that saved the day (she’s been saving my days for years). In my first draft, we just covered the basics and moved on to other things. In this case, there’s that second small disaster I teased earlier. Shall we continue?

      This morning I walked down the stairs in the dark, feeling my way along as I always do with a hand on the railing and years of muscle memory carrying me along. As I reached the bottom, my hand felt the dogs face greet me in the dark. “That’s not like her,” I thought to myself as I whispered a quiet good morning. I reached the kitchen, flipped the light switch and discovered something out of a murder scene. Spatters of intestinal distress all over the kitchen, literally everywhere a dog could, uh, go. “Oh no,” I muttered to myself as a reconciled myself to this new reality. But then I thought to myself, “Well, I was going to mop the floor this morning anyway.” and moved on to the next. The only thing to do in such moments is to tell the pup everything would be okay, bring her outside, grab the paper towels and begin cleanup in aisle 12.

      Again, first draft, could be fleshed out and made to sparkle with spine-tingling detail. Perhaps remove the intestinal distress part and make it a truly grisly encounter and we have the makings of a real page-turner. Stories are what we shape them into. The underlying message in both is that there’s always a solution to a problem, beginning with the decision to persevere. And from there the hero’s journey may ensue.

      So was this a memorable blog post? It can always be better but we must ship our work every day. And yet good is the enemy of great. What’s a writer to do but their best in the time they have? Only you the reader can decide whether this post was worthy of your precious time. Still, it was a memorable day since last we met. One can only hope to do their disasters justice in the storytelling.

    • Saunter to the Craft

      “The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure. There will be a wide margin for relaxation to his day. He is only earnest to secure the kernels of time, and does not exaggerate the value of the husk. Why should the hen set all day? She can lay but one egg, and besides she will not have picked up materials for a new one. Those who work much do not work hard.”
      — Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry David Thoreau 1837 – 1861

      Thoreau was a famous saunterer, but he was also a prolific writer. Leisure, mediation, exercise and hard work all have their time. We know when we’ve reached balance and when we’ve stumbled off the line between chaos and order.

      It’s not just work, it’s inspired work that is the ultimate goal for all of us, and it’s out there waiting for us to grab hold of it and take it as far as we can. It’s just hidden amongst all the other tedious, uninspired labor that passes for work. We owe it to ourselves to do work that carries us towards personal excellence, whatever that is for us. Any work that isn’t bringing us somewhere is dragging us sideways down the cliff. We ought to choose our work accordingly.

      Efficiency is the trick. When we focus on the essential work in its time, not only do we get so much more done—it’s done so much better. Take writing for example; I can either turn off the world and write this blog post within this hour, or I can succumb to the distraction of the text messages buzzing me, wonder about the weather today, get up to feed the cats, check the news and watch some video on social media curated especially for me based on previous views. The hour will slip away in any case, but what will we show for it?

      The thing is, most of us love a job well done. We want to bring something meaningful to the world for our efforts, and not look back on the day like we laid an egg. In order to reach our potential, a bit of focused productivity goes a long way. Go ahead and saunter, but when we meet our task we must do it wholeheartedly, that we may rise to our potential. That isn’t tedium, it’s craftsmanship, and isn’t that a far more interesting expression of our time?

    • Leave No Crevice

      “To fill the hour,—that is happiness; to fill the hour, and leave no crevice for a repentance or an approval.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: First and Second Series

      Here’s a deep dive: What is important to us? Of those important things, what is essential? And of those essential things, what’s the one thing that we want to leave as our legacy, that others may remember of us until they too pass? This is our driving mission, above all the rest, that we must deliberately fill our hours with lest they be lost to the whims of the universe.

      Writing is essential for me, but it hasn’t yet crossed into a driving mission. If it had I’d be a lot more jealous of my time with it. I’ve made writing a habit in a busy life, and I’m happy its stayed with me. In fact I demand that it stays with me by starting every day with it. Habit formation takes time, but habits die from neglect. I know my tendencies (when was the last hiking entry in this blog?) and if I’m not doing this every day I’m doing something else instead.

      It’s those something else’s that make the days feel so busy but unproductive. We get wrapped around the pole with so much clutter and mayhem, and feel obliged to pay attention to each thing that bounces into our path. I have people in my life who would happily watch pop-up videos one after the other on their phones than put it aside and engage with the world. I don’t want that for myself, thank you. I simply want to feel like each day wasn’t wasted on trivial pursuits, for we’ll never get it back.

      Emerson didn’t have to deal with dog videos popping up in his social media feed, but he surely had distractions that pulled at him. The monkey mind is timeless, we just have more tools at our disposal now to suck our vitality away. Focus isn’t what we do in a lifetime, or a year or even a day. It’s what we do with this hour and nothing more. That’s the root of productivity. Stack enough productive hours together and we’re really on to something. The rest of our hours will sort themselves out in time—what shall we do with this one?

    • Far More Than Nothing

      You get up every day, you are entitled to nothing.
      Nobody owes you nothing.
      You can have talent, but if you don’t have discipline, you don’t execute or focus, what do you get? Nothing.
      If you’re complacent and not paying attention to detail, what do you get? Nothing.
      So nothing is acceptable except your best.
      Everything is determined by you trying to be your best so you can build on positive performance.
      That is the only thing, and there should be nothing else.
      We can’t accept nothing but our best.
      — Nick Saban, The Importance of Nothing

      We must ship the work in its time, as Seth Godin reminds us, even when it doesn’t feel like the best we could offer the universe when it ships. Nothing matters more than putting out the best we’ve got at the moment. We learn and refine and grow from that release of our work to the universe, and must then leverage that to do it all over again, but better.

      Our best changes all the time as we change. My best rowing time for 2000 meters was in my early 20’s, and I know I’ll never see sub-6 minutes again in my lifetime. But I can get more fit than I am now, and beat the times I’ve posted earlier this year. Improvement is relative to where and who we are now. Better is always on the table for something.

      I’m a better writer than I was ten years ago, simply because I do it every day and I’ve developed the muscle memory to convey what I’m thinking into words on a screen. More than that, I’ve read a few hundred books in that time span, lived through a pandemic and my children growing up and people I care about passing away and a whole host of other experiences that have tangibly changed who I was then to who I am now. Simply put, our best is way better at some things now than ever before. There is always a season for some highly developed skillset or knowledge that we may bring to the world now.

      Without shipping our work we have nothing. Doing our best at the things we feel are most essential for us is the clear path to personal excellence (arete). Perhaps a poetic speech by an old football coach will be just the thing to shake those ideas loose, that we may do our best in our one and only today. Perhaps arete will be evasive today, but we may get that much closer to it than ever before. Maybe our best will be enough for today, or maybe not. But the attempt to reach it is far more than nothing.

    • Working With It

      “Accept – then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.” — Eckhart Tolle

      I’m working through a blip in the old WordPress blog, dealing with changes I inflicted upon myself, not happy about that but accepting of the moment. life is change, and not all changes are welcome. Amor fati.

      We must work with what we’ve been given. Today I was given some never-ending tasks and a blog site that turned upside down. So it is. All that is to be done is to make the most of it, and here we are. Our only real choice in life is to carry on.

    • November Pivot

      “Carpe diem, quam minimum credula a postero (Seize the day, and put the least possible trust in tomorrow)” — Horace

      When the leaves are finally all down and the chores are largely done for fall cleanup, there’s a moment of stillness with which to process what’s transpired this year. What went right, what went wrong, and mostly when are we going to do that thing we said we were surely going to do this year since we didn’t do it last year or the years before that. November is a great time to assess and adjust those habits to do something more with today. Put another way, November is a time to pivot to better.

      Why November? Why not simply wait for the New Year? Well, we aren’t guaranteed tomorrow (See: Horace) and if we’re blessed with it, a little momentum rounding the calendar goes a long way. I can celebrate the consistent writing but recognize that it’s not enough, just as casually but consistently using the Duolingo app is helping me read French better but not to speak it or understand it when it’s being spoken to me rapid-fire, a habit (like writing) requires deeper immersion to get closer to mastery. We get what we put into it.

      By November we’ve accumulated a lot of positive or negative energy from our habits. What’s working well for us? What’s fallen off? With 45 potentially transformative days in front of us, beginning with this one, what can we still do with 2024 that we thought might be possible on New Years? What one habit will transform us the most if we were to master it? What one relationship might we strengthen or even salvage simply by reaching out to someone? What life changing step should be our next? We know the answer most of the time, or at least the direction to move in to find it. By all means, we must begin it today!

    • Quiet Places

      We could all use a bit more quiet right about now. Whichever side of the cultural or political divide we fall on, it’s been a noisy, relentless year. If everything has its season, now seems a good time for some restorative quiet. Reaching quiet places is a journey with many possible routes. Which we take is less essential than the act of taking it.

      We don’t need money to find quiet, just a bit more social engineering and applied creativity. Removal from the noise is the obvious way—simply turn off the relentless media and walk away. A walk in the woods would be lovely, though orange is a must here in New Hampshire during hunting season. So maybe a walk on the beach would serve better for the next few weeks. However we find nature, it offers a whispered message that eternity doesn’t care a lick about our problems. Should we?

      I find the tactile more valuable than the electronic when seeking silence. Picking up a pen and scratching on a pad of paper can draw the noise right out of us and carry us to more enlightened places. Menial tasks like washing dishes or sweeping the floor may feel like chores when we begin, but carry us to quiet places as we work our way through the task.

      Ironically, sometimes the opposite of silence is just the answer. Lately I’ve returned to some music from my childhood that I’d pushed aside when a younger version of me thought it wasn’t cool enough. It’s probably still not cool enough, but neither am I, so who cares? I know all the words and that can be enough at this stage. Sometimes it’s not physical quiet at all, but internal quiet. Music drowns out the other noise around us and reminds us that some noise is joyful. That negative noise just gives up and floats away for a while.

      We aren’t monks or hermits, most of us anyway, and sequestering ourselves in quiet solitude isn’t a forever act, but a cyclical act of renewal. Just as the trees have shed their leaves and gone dormant, we need to give our minds the time to go dormant too. The noise level will inevitably rise again, but quiet has its place. Perhaps more than ever.

    • Here We Are

      “A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that’s just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it’s a joke.”
      ― Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part I

      Those who pay attention know the score. Those who don’t are happy with the distractions the world flashes in front of them one after the other. They don’t want to know the score, they want to be entertained in the moment. Let the world crash down later as long as we all have a good laugh now. And here we are.

      To pay attention is to watch a story where you know the ending but you just hope maybe there will be one of those Hollywood twists that make everything all right. Whoops, the scientists forgot to carry over the extra value! Climate change is magically fixed! Only a clown would believe that, and here we are.

      The only answer is to build a resilient life for ourselves. Live in places that put us in the best position possible for the best or worst case scenario. Invest well financially, but also in our knowledge, our network and in our physical and mental health. Resilience is a way of life, not a lock on the door. It’s seeing how high the flood waters might rise and building ever higher than that. Yes, here we are, but maybe we need to move up and over there.

      The stoics went through their version of all this themselves. That they wrote about it offers us a light in the darkness with which to navigate. We too may be writers and thinkers and live boldly individual lives apart from the whims of a distracted society. We’ll be fine or we won’t, all we can control in the universe is how we react. Amor fati (love of fate). And here we are.

    • Source Material

      “Who are you? They called out, at the edge of the village. I am one of you, the poet called back. Though he was dressed like the wind, though he looked like a waterfall.” — Mary Oliver, Pen and Paper and a Breath of Air

      This morning there was a hard frost on the lawn, and a bit of sea smoke mingling with fog across the bay. The sky was pastel and postcard perfect. Why do we leave such places? Because life happens beyond the bliss of the comfortable moment. There’s so much more to discover and do, just over the bridge between here and what’s to come.

      Scanning the headlines it was evident that the doom cycle is in full gear. Wars, accidents, murder and a heated national election. It’s all a hot mess. No wonder so many people are irrational and afraid. No knock on responsible (and absolutely necessary) journalism, but there are those who seek profit in rapt attention. Shame on all of them, they who profit on dissent and tragedy and the misery of others, for they serve the darkest depths of human instincts. We may acknowledge the lessons without slowing down to have a good look. For all the madness that pastel sky indicated another perspective.

      It’s all source material for how we live our own lives, and for what we produce ourselves. Do we carry light or darkness with us in our oeuvre? To produce anything in this noisy world that may resonate with another is challenging, and leaning into formulaic and familiar may feel like a shortcut to acceptance in a fickle world, but aren’t we simply a part of the choir then? Where is our own voice? What differentiates us more than marching to our own beat? We may choose to be the source material for those who would follow. We may choose to be true to ourself.