Alexandersmap

    Category: Writing

    • On Discovery

      “Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. there is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.” ― Henry Miller

      The fun of travel is to go to unfamiliar places and discover a world wholly different from our own. A place where we may find the similarities or delight in the rituals and traditions that make a place unique. The sin of travel is to go and not meet the place halfway. How many people go to a place and never attempt the local language? How many stick to food they know and never indulge in the local cuisine? Discovery is getting outside of ourselves and meeting the world on its terms, and finding out something new, not just about that place, but about ourselves.

      The thing is, most of us recognize this about travel, but what of art? When we dive into the unknown in our creative work, are we going deeper with it or retreating back to familiar themes? I’ve heard the feedback: this blog dances on the same ground more often than not, and I’m straying further beyond the themes of memento mori, carpe diem, tempus fugit and amor fati to see what I may find within. Now familiarity with these themes are so central to a well-lived, productive life that they inevitably find themselves in the mix again and again, but who wants to be a one-trick pony?

      The routine changes slightly, adapted to circumstance and commitments, but the daily reckoning continues. Open up a blank page and see what comes out to greet the world. We must be creative and chase our impulses, or we cannot truly live the life we were meant to live. The question to ask ourselves is, are we settling for the familiar and comfortable so much that we aren’t challenging our perspective?

      How will today be different than yesterday? Go do the unusual: live and tell about it. There is so much untapped within. We ought to shake that tree and see what falls out.

    • More Movingly Visible

      “What are the needs and impulses that make a man spend years of preparation, and then months of labor, to produce a work of art? Presumably because he wishes to express himself, his ideas, and his moods; because he longs for distinction and reward; because he has a keener sense of beauty than most of us; because he aspires to combine the partial beauties and veiled meanings of actual but transitory forms in a vision of clearer significance or more lasting loveliness. Usually he sees more than we see, in fuller intensity or detail; he wishes to remove some of these perceived aspects in order to leave the essence and import of the scene more movingly visible to our eyes and souls.” — Will Durant, Fallen Leaves

      Empathy is a conditioned response. We are empathic when we live and struggle, find our way around obstacles or alternatively, find no way around it and find some other way to live, knowing deep down that that other way was closed to us. Those “not for you’s” burn inside as a driving force or a ready excuse for other behavior. If we’re lucky, we find a person who encountered a similar obstacle in their life and made something of themselves anyway. The world is full of examples of people who rose to greatness and also those who spiraled into darkness. Empathy is seeing ourselves somewhere in each.

      The artist learns to see through similar conditioning. Art is a daily struggle to express ourselves in a world that wants us to shut up and fall in line. It takes courage to put oneself out there under such circumstances, but the art takes on a life of its own. The very best artists turn the lens over to us to see what they saw, and maybe something more. Art, like music and prose, is digested and interpreted by the audience. We work through some things, run into our own share of “not for you’s” and produce some time stamp of the person we were at the time. Some work resonates, some falls flat, but the work continues for as long as we choose to dance with the universe.

      Writing, like my amateur photography, helps me to see. Each attempt expands my idea of what’s possible, and I lean into it a bit further with each session. I’ve read books I’d never have read otherwise in my pursuit of more, taken side trips that I might never have considered, and most essentially, turned my gaze outward. We all have an internal dialog happening within us, the artist trains themselves to open that dialog to the universe and expand the conversation. The art is thus a transcript of the moment, a scene made more movingly visible for others to see.

      The thing is, the universe reveals itself to us on its own terms. We learn to be patient, to do the work, to engage and observe. We may be witness and yet not have the wisdom to see the beauty in our moment. Some art is not for us to express. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t express what we can in our time. Like sketches in a student’s notebook we mark our journey to a higher place.

    • On Changing a Routine

      “The next few minutes or days or months–sure, you own them, and you can put them to whatever use you choose. But just because you’ve been using your time in a particular way for a long time doesn’t mean you need to keep doing that.” — Seth Godin, The Best Possible Use

      Normally I won’t read a blog before writing my own, because it often pulls me away from whatever I was going to write towards something else entirely. But today I read Seth Godin first specifically because I’m changing up the routine and what does Seth do but reinforce exactly what I’d been thinking anyway. As Tao Te Ching put it, “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

      Everything is habit and routine stacked upon intent. When we want to make a specific recipe, we pick up the ingredients necessary to make that dish and get to it right away. When we have no plan, we stare into an empty refrigerator wondering what in the world we’re going to eat for dinner tonight. Worse, we’ll purchase a bag full of great ingredients without a plan and throw them all away a week later when they’ve rotted in the produce drawer because we stuck to the same old things while that fresh thing slowly lost all its vibrancy. Even as I write this I can hear once-fresh ginger and red peppers screaming for attention. A bit of pre-planning goes a long way when we make changes in our lives.

      Seth’s post calls attention to a question we all face in our lives. Are we using our time in the best possible way? Is this what we should be doing today and again tomorrow? Are Tuesdays forever destined for taco’s or might we change things up now and then? We know the answer, we just need to stack the deck in our favor with a new plan, well-executed. We don’t own the future, but we surely can influence our little corner of it in small ways.

      For years now, writing first thing in the morning has been my tried and true way of ensuring that I write every day. The day soon floods in to greet me, and other habits are washed away. James Clear would suggest habit stacking as a way to build off the one good habit. A trusted way to stack a workout or reading on to my writing habit is to get up even earlier.

      “The reason I wake up at 4:30 in the morning is because no one else is awake yet, so that gives me the opportunity to do things that I need to get done, kinda selfishly for myself, and the big one in that category is working out.” — Jocko Willink

      Now we know that everything in life has a price. The price of getting up earlier is going to bed earlier, lest we suffer the consequence of burning the candle at both ends. Sleep deprivation is not an aspiration of mine and I’m not sure 0430 is my magic number. We’ll see whether this habit stack grows or tumbles. The only thing assured is change, and we must be willing to try new things now and then to learn what is possible for us beyond the norm.

      What drives us to become all that we might be? Habits and routines and the discipline to get up and meet our commitments to ourselves. When we build our days with intent, great things may happen in a lifetime. When we settle for more of the same day-after-day, we are destined to meet regret someday sooner than we expected. Completely changing a routine that’s working well for us makes little sense, but layering on new positive habits to that routine freshens the recipe now and then. What might we produce with a bit more creativity in our days?

    • To and Through

      “There’s goal setting to and goal setting through… do we want to simply land the people on the moon? I would like to return them safely to Earth. When JFK said, “By the end of this decade, we will have landed a man on the moon and returned him safely to Earth,”… the most important part of that mission was the returning the person safely to Earth. That’s to and through: to the moon; through the moon was bringing the person back. So your goal wasn’t to make it to the NBA. Okay, so you got drafted, made it there on day one, and they cut you on day one. Is that what you actually wanted? No, what you wanted was to make it to the NBA and have a 10-, 12-, 15-year-long career where you were a leader on the team and you were a top producer as well. And then some people might go, ‘“’And I want to be the legend; I want to be the greatest of all time.’ Maybe that’s it.” — Todd Herman: The Power of Identity [The Knowledge Project Ep. 182]

      Increasingly, my own goals fall into a five year plan. The five years are what I plan to do, year 5+ is my through. When I reach that point, I will arrive at a starting place, having finished the last five years of focused effort. As we know, the world throws all sorts of obstacles and surprises our way in the interim, but the point is make the journey and course-correct as necessary along the way.

      Five years feels like a long time, but it flies by like all the rest. Knowing what our through is going to be is to have a vision for ourselves at that future point in our lives. From there we break down the years and months into a steady progression plan. What needs to be accomplished in the next 90 days? What needs to be accomplished in the next 30 days? And of course, this breaks all the way down to “what needs to be accomplished today?”

      The thing about identifying the through is we aren’t simply reaching a goal and celebrating it, we’re identifying the true success metric of who we want to be on the other side of that goal. The goal isn’t to lose 20 pounds, but to be a fit person who can do the fun things in life now and who has laid the foundation for a healthier journey through that next phase of life and the one after that. The goal isn’t to write a single novel, it’s to establish an identity as a writer with a future body of work that spans the rest of our life. The through matters a great deal for us. What good is landing on the moon if you can’t finish the journey home safely again?

      Big visions are fine things indeed, but once established, we must roll up our sleeves and get to work on crafting that vision into the piece of fine art we wish ourselves to be. We get lost in our day-to-day and need a vision to show our true north, but we won’t arrive there unless we take this next step and the one after that. Each step is a push on the flywheel, building momentum and the exhilaration of progress. All that momentum shouldn’t suddenly stop when we reach that goal, it should be the wind in our sails for what’s next. That’s the thrilling thing about designing the journey—when done well we may just yet make it a heck of a ride.

    • Easier vs. Harder

      “Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life.” ― Jerzy Gregorek

      It’s easier to defer. I’ve been deferring a project for two years that I’ve done twice before and know deep down just how time-consuming it will be for me. But I also recall just how fun it was to do, and how much pride I had in the finished product once complete. Yet I watch the time tick away, days turn into months, months pile into a couple of years now and counting. And what was once a small project is growing into an albatross around my neck.

      The easiest way to start a hard project is to simply begin with the first step. The next step will become apparent, and it turns out it’s not all that big a step. Which brings to mind a holiday tune that may be out of season but never fully out of my brain:

      You never will get where you’re going
      If ya never get up on your feet
      Come on, there’s a good tail wind blowin’
      A fast walking man is hard to beat
      Put one foot in front of the other
      And soon you’ll be walking ‘cross the floor
      — Jules Bass, Put One Foot in Front of the Other

      This blog is a good example in my own life of something that was nagging at me for years before I simply began. One post turned into many, and soon I began a streak that is well past two thousand. Some posts are better than others, but the journey is clearly towards improvement and progression. We are what we repeatedly do, as I repeatedly quote, as much a reminder to myself as to the reader, who is generally a step ahead of me on the concept.

      We began one project this weekend that had been nagging me for years. I mentioned it to my bride, she immediately agreed (relieved no doubt that I’d finally decided to take action) and we’ll finish it this weekend. It turns out the project isn’t as painful as thinking about doing the project. Which brings us full circle back to that albatross I referenced earlier. Now that the one project is done, the other remains, mocking me for the time it’s taking to just leap. Just decide and get to it already.

      The thing is, there will always be projects when we consistently move forward in our lives. The only people without projects are those who choose to linger in the identity they once had. Life is hard enough without us getting in our own way. It will be a whole lot easier in the long run if we do the hard work now.


    • On Pace

      “Everything and everyone at their own pace. Flow with not against yourself.” ― Akiroq Brost

      There’s no doubt some days are busier than others, but barring the random crisis that falls from the sky, in general we create the conditions within which we live our days. So when our pace of life feels frenetic, in general that’s on us for choosing a lifestyle that is perpetually reactive and jammed. Most of us have the agency to change our state over time.

      In general, I write and publish blog posts early in the morning before the world has a say in how I spend my time. When the world comes a-knockin’ it becomes exponentially harder to write. So protecting that time with minimal sensory download from the world allows me to honor the quiet space my mind enters when writing. Once that door is cracked open, it’s all over.

      I’ve thought about changing to a long-form blog post, published weekly instead of daily. I haven’t done that mostly because clicking publish every day is one of the primary reasons I write every day. The moment I take that tangible check box away (publishing), the moment my sense of urgency to write fades. My identity as a blogger is very much associated with publishing.

      Pace is a mindset as much as a physical output. Our capacity and limitations determine our pace, but so too does our decision-making. We can run at top speed until the wheels come off or we can make a pit stop now and then. We know the wheels are coming off when we start to wobble a bit. And we know when the tank is running dry when our engine starts to cough. It goes without saying that we don’t want to run at that pace if we’re in it for the long haul.

      Ultimately, pace is determined by deciding what the finish line is and adjusting our day-to-day accordingly. We can sprint until we stumble and fall flat on our face, but what good is that if we’re only a mile into a marathon? Pace becomes as essential to finishing as starting in the first place. We decide what to be and can go be it, but only if we set a sustainable pace from here to there.

    • The Rhythm of Routine

      “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” ― Will Durant, The History of Philosophy

      We get into a rhythm of routine in our lives. When we travel frequently this becomes our rhythm. When we hike or sail or play pickle ball every free moment we’re in a rhythm of routine. And when we do nothing but stare at a computer monitor all day we’re most definitely in a rhythm of routine. We find a rhythm that works for us and we dance with it for as long as we feel the beat in our souls.

      We’re just past two weeks into a new year as this is published. It’s a good chance to review progress thus far and ask ourselves, are we getting where we thought we’d go when we rounded the corner on last year? Does that rhythm of routine feel right or do we need to change the playlist? Are the weekends filling up with joyful pursuits, or are we stumbling through to Monday? Does the work feel right or are we looking towards Friday?

      We are reminded now and then that we need the right dance partner or we never quite feel the rhythm enough to dance with it. Sure, we can dance by ourselves, but what’s the fun in that? Any adventure in life is better together. With the right partner, we become accountable, and push each other just enough to go that much farther into the world. And surely, the right partner also keeps us from charging off the cliff when we get ahead of ourselves.

      Looking at my own daily habit tracker, I see a pattern very similar to last year’s habit track. Some things I defined as absolutely essential to the rhythm I want to be dancing in aren’t being checked frequently, if at all. Some are tracking nicely to firmly establish themselves as part of my identity. Nothing speaks more clearly than the truth staring back at you in black and white. We must measure our progress, that we may reconcile our beliefs with our behavior.

      Indeed we are what we repeatedly do. Does the rhythm of our routine feel right for us to reach personal excellence? The answer lies in progress—incremental or in big leaps forward. Are we getting there, or settling into a routine of excuses and complacency? We can reset ourselves at any time, really. Why not now?

    • Evolving the Spirit

      “The monotony of life contains a reservoir of ways to find relief, if we can only muster the courage and energy to dive in instead of opting out. If today you find yourself bored with your work—perhaps surfing around and reading some random essay on happiness—you may have just gotten a signal from the universe that it’s time for your spirit to evolve.” — Arthur C Brooks, “Kierkegaard’s Three Ways to Live More Fully”, The Atlantic

      Within the rhythm of living our lives, we may get stuck in a routine that strikes us as boring. Same menu for dinner, same commute, same seat at the same desk we’ve sat in front of for long enough that the thrill of new is long gone. What are we to do in such moments? Change everything? Paint the entire inside of the house again? Get another dog? Travel to faraway places that are fresh and new and distinctly different in every way from the norm? Perhaps. There’s a time for such changes in a lifetime. But there’s also a time for staying put and wrestling with the restlessness of routine by looking inward.

      There’s a secret in blogging every day different from, say, journaling. It’s a daily reconciliation of the writer with the blank page that must be transformed into something substantial. Like each day itself, we are faced with making something of it when we begin again each morning. What is interesting in the universe today? What have we encountered that is a distinct step away from from boring? What surprises and delights us? Scratch that itch and see where it takes us.

      I write this savoring the last of a magnificent cup of coffee. It’s the first of the day, and truly, I hate to see it end. Sure, a second cup is just around the corner should I need it, but it isn’t about having more and more, it’s about savoring what I have in the moment. Sometimes that’s more than enough to carry the day.

      If this sounds like a retreat from the pursuit of rich experience, let me assure you that’s it’s just the opposite. We can’t run from one thing to the next without diving deeply into the experience we’re having at the moment. That’s not immersing ourselves in living a rich life, that’s nothing but a buffet of casual indulgences. Empty calories that we may come to regret one day. ’tis better to choose our daily diet of experience with an eye towards a more nutrient-rich, enlightening way.

      As Brooks points out in the article linked above, Kierkegaard recommend immersion in pursuits of substance like reading, meaningful relationships and our life’s work. Lectio Divina, or divine reading, is not just reading something, but following the steps of lectio (reading), meditatio (meditation), contemplatio (contemplation), and oratio (prayer). We may naturally adapt this methodology to our lives beyond reading: That cup of coffee has been consumed, savored, reflected upon and expounded upon. Isn’t that a better life experience than absent-mindedly sipping it to empty and realizing afterwards that you forgot to savor it?

      Blogging isn’t just documenting everything that we stumble upon in this life, but taking those steps of participating in it, immersion, contemplation and finally, talking about it (oratio). This process may not feel efficient in a multi-tasking, harried world, but it’s surely a better way to live. When we break ourselves of the need for constantly new entertainment for the senses, we learn to live more and savor the moment at hand. We find that what we have isn’t at all boring, but something to dive deeper into.

    • The Communal Nature of Creativity

      “Your dreams don’t belong to you. If you hold on too tightly to them without recognizing the mutual and communal nature of creativity, your work will probably not have significant impact in the world.” — Drew Holcomb

      Writing a blog doesn’t feel communal, it feels more like a drawing out of oneself something internal and placing it out in the world for the reader to do with it what they will. The fact that almost 8 billion people will ignore it isn’t even the ego hit one might believe it to be, it’s not even the fact that it won’t ever reach the level where it’s a blip on the radar for those almost 8 billion people. Ego isn’t creative, it’s only role is to fuel the audacity to publish anything at all, and then let people in on the secret. After that it awkwardly gets in the way and is best pushed aside.

      The communal part of blogging is when you click publish. The work is then out there for others to interact with. For random strangers who stumble upon it, it’s a chance to hear a new voice and accept or reject that voice on their own path to finding out. For the loyal subscriber, it’s a choice of whether to let the steady drip, drip, drip of a daily blog become a part of their daily conversation. And for the inner circle of family and friends who read what this character has to say, it’s a chance to reconcile the person they know with the words they might be surprised by. I’m just as surprised, some days.

      Writing a blog isn’t thought of as collaborative. It’s the writer’s thoughts and opinion put to page, and not generally the product of the community with which that writer engages in. And yet we are the average of the five people we surround ourselves with. The influence of my community is as clearly reflected in the work that I produce as any book I’ve ever read or experience I’ve had. In fact, many of those same books and experiences are being had by that community and discussed over beverages now and again.

      There’s no doubt that music is one form of creativity better expressed communally. Lennon had McCartney and was the better for it. And then he had Yoko, and took his work to a different and far more personal place. When one looks at his entire body of work, we see his transformation as the influence of those around him ebb and flowed. The chorus naturally reverberates more than the solo artist. That doesn’t take away the power of the individual artist, it amplifies it. For art to speak, it must engage with others, which means that the artist must also engage with others. So, hello and welcome! Nice to have you here. Drop a comment.

    • Unfailing and Habitual Consistency

      “Remember we wrote in Good to Great that big things happen by pushing on a giant, heavy flywheel. You start pushing in an intelligent and consistent direction, and after a lot of work you get one giant, slow, creaky turn, but you don’t stop. You keep pushing and you eventually get two turns and four and sixteen and thirty-two and sixty-four and one hundred and one thousand; pushing; cumulative, consistent momentum; and at one point it’s one hundred thousand and then a million turns in that flywheel. Big things happen because you do a bunch of little things supremely well that compound over time. This is what we learned. We see tremendous consistency in any truly great enterprise. The signature of mediocrity is not an unwillingness to change—although, and we’ll get to this, if you don’t change, you become irrelevant—but the true signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency.” — Jim Collins

      If the signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency, then the signature of personal excellence (Areté) is unfailing and habitual consistency. It’s staying to task, every day until something more essential to our being becomes our task. Blogging every day is pushing the flywheel. So is exercise and changing the engine oil and washing the dishes and doing the most tedious-but-essential things in our chosen path. We do these things not because they’re always joyful, but because they are part of our identity today and ensure that we continue from here to our future identity. The opposite of order is chaos.

      There were several times writing this blog that I thought it would be my last post. There’s so many things to do, and beginning each morning with writing delays some other essential habits from forming. But the writing has taken me to places I hadn’t anticipated when I began, and the path forward looks promising. That’s not a reason not to question the flywheel I happen to be pushing (who wants to run around in circles for nothing?), but to embrace the process of becoming what’s next that the writing offers. The trick is to stack other positive habits into this routine to ensure success. The writing isn’t pushing me away, it’s those other habits that need attention that are pulling.

      Systems and routines are our salvation or an albatross. We are what we do. We must therefore keep pushing.