Alexandersmap

    Category: Writing

    • A New Day

      “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

      Emerson wrote a version of this quote as advice to his daughter in a letter. Over time it evolved into this bite-sized quote that makes the rounds in our sound bite world. It’s a lesson for the writer, for our long form thoughts will eventually be boiled down to their very essence by the reader (if we’re bold enough to assume we’ll be referenced at all). Life is short: get to the point.

      The older I get, the less I worry about blunders and absurdities. We’re simply humans doing our best in a complex, hurried and harried world. Try as I may, I still post blogs that are incomplete, with typos or words that clearly don’t belong in the sentence. If I catch it the same day I’ll fix it, but plenty of older posts have mistakes that will linger for as long as this platform exists. So it goes.

      Today is a new day, full of possible adventure and meaningful leaps forward on our quest to become what’s next. It’s possible there might be a blunder or two along the way. Most every one of them can be an opportunity to laugh at the situation and get right back to living a bold life. The only real choice is to get out in the world and see what’s possible. We must be zealous when we’re writing our own history. Someday when we’re gone we’ll be summarized in a few concise words as well. What are we writing for those who will remember us? Carpe diem, friend.

    • Processing Time

      “Wash the dishes relaxingly, as though each bowl is an object of contemplation. Consider each bowl as sacred. Follow your breath to prevent your mind from straying. Do not try to hurry to get the job over with. Consider washing the dishes the most important thing in life. Washing the dishes is meditation. If you cannot wash the dishes in mindfulness, neither can you meditate while sitting in silence.” — Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: A Manual on Meditation

      The writing of the blog post started late this morning, with fresh snow to clear from the driveway a priority, and a relatively subdued morning to follow. The words will come, as they always do, and they’re often better for having changed up the routine. I know I was the better for having done a small bit of exercise in the cold air with a pink and orange kaleidoscope of dancing clouds greeting me through the bare trees.

      The driveway and I have an understanding. If the snow is heavy and wet and more than two inches, I use the snowblower. If light and fluffy and less than four inches, I alway shovel. All other conditions fall somewhere in between, but I default to the shovel when it’s a reasonable ask of myself. I do this because so little in our lives is analog or manual anymore. We’ve got engines and batteries and computers for everything nowadays. These things do the work for us, but rob us of time to process anything in our minds. How many drive to the gym to walk on a treadmill, watching the screen in front of them take them to another place? How does that stir the imagination? I have a friend who walks through the woods to work every day and consider him the luckiest commuter I know.

      We must design a lifestyle that allows us to contemplate things, and to dream and discover things about the world and ourselves. There must be time in our daily lives for us to reflect on the world and our place in it, or we will remain nothing but distracted souls like all the rest. That’s not us, friend. Carve out and protect that processing time. As a bonus, we’ll be greeted with a job well done and a wee bit more clarity.

    • Countdown Days

      I dabble in spreadsheets. It began (and continues) as a necessary skill in my career, but really I love the story that numbers tell you. Not too long ago I mapped out the next five years on a spreadsheet, just to see what I was working with. Using a specific date of relevance as a target date for zero, I created a countdown to that date. It turned out to be a nice round number: 1900. That became my five year plan number, and so a countdown began.

      A countdown to what? Why, the person I want to be at that number. What I want to be doing and where I want to be doing it. All sorts of things come into play then: fitness level, financial goals, career accomplishments, places to be visited, books to be read or written, and yes: daily blog posts (who’s up for 1900 more?!).

      You can fit a lot into 1900 lines on a spreadsheet if you try hard enough. I have many goals in my life, and I started plugging in events and trips and milestones onto that spreadsheet. It turns out there’s a lot to do in 1900 days, and one can’t very well waste them. But 1900 is a big number, best broken down into bite-sized bits. 90 days is something many of us can relate to. It’s a quarter of a year, three months, one trimester. 90 days is a number we can grasp and work with. Divide 1900 by 90 and you get 21 and change. It turns out 1900 wasn’t optimal after all, but it’s the number and loose change be damned. That loose change is full of days of ripe experience, or at least they ought to be, and who’s going to complain about a few extra days as a buffer against the curveballs of life?

      90 days offer countdowns within countdowns. We can break it down to 30 days and weeks and single days, and do what we can with them in their time. Life is a countdown, and we all know the score. The end game isn’t the zero we reach on our expiration but the blank spaces we fill up along the way. Putting things in black and white offers a clear imperative. Do something with today lest it slip away. Tempus fugit.

      Upcoming events become countdowns within a countdown too. Some trips I’m looking forward to are counting down as I write this, and I calculate the things that must happen between now and then, adding to-do items to a growing list and get to it. There’s growing excitement in a countdown, and I feel the stir of faraway places and future goals and tasks accomplished in each entry on the spreadsheet.

      The key to a blank spreadsheet is filling in what we’re measuring. We aren’t just counting down to nothing after all: we’re creating a lifetime of memories, filled with all the things that make up our days. A countdown merely brings focus to an otherwise ambiguous stack. Like any great salesperson, we must sell the vision. In this case, we’re selling ourselves on the vision, that we might take the necessary steps to get from here to there. When we finish, we can see all the things we did to get there, and celebrate the journey all the more.

      But why five years and change? Haven’t we got so much more left in the tank than that? We must set a fixed date in our future that we might strive for more in that timeframe. Sure, we all anticipate many more days. If we’re lucky enough we can add a few more countdowns after this one is done. But that’s a much longer spreadsheet, isn’t it? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

    • Stars and Snowflakes and Would-Be Poets

      Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
      That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
      But on earth indifference is the least
      We have to dread from man or beast.

      How should we like it were stars to burn
      With a passion for us we could not return?
      If equal affection cannot be,
      Let the more loving one be me.

      Admirer as I think I am
      Of stars that do not give a damn,
      I cannot, now I see them, say
      I missed one terribly all day.

      Were all stars to disappear or die,
      I should learn to look at an empty sky
      And feel its total dark sublime,
      Though this might take me a little time.
      — W. H. Auden, The More Loving One

      The indifference of the universe to our lives offers lessons. It’s seen characters like us before and will again. Sure, like snowflakes there may never be another just like us in all of time, but how many snowflakes stand out? I cast them aside by the shovelful. Yet every now and then one shows up that delights. The first and last of a season, surely, but also that rare character who sticks to a cold windshield at just the right moment to make a lasting impression. Blogging isn’t so very much different than the life of that one snowflake, is it? So it goes.

      I don’t write all that much poetry, but I aspire to write like a poet. My writing isn’t so different from Thoreau’s, in that I ramble on for a spell before getting to the point. With Thoreau we can forgive the technique as he casts insights about like grass seed in his best work. My own technique is to keep my blog posts to a few paragraphs lest I lose you forever.

      The last two nights I’ve been up late, crossing the midnight hour with a walk outside to give the pup some relief before bedtime. The ritual is always the same: flip on the spotlight, look for skunks or other critters that would ruin a perfectly good bedtime ritual, then walk out into the starry dome to let the pup do her business. My own business at such a time is simply to wonder at the stars as Auden did in his day.

      What will come of all this? There’s no doubt that the would-be poet is the more loving one in their time, aware of so very much in an indifferent universe. To be more than a snowflake on the windshield of time is too bold an aspiration. Isn’t it simply enough to be aware and celebrate the miracle of reaching one more night? Words may live on or simply melt away, but they’ve been released to dance with the universe nonetheless.

    • Words That Will Last

      Now I’m a reader of the night sky
      And a singer of inordinate tunes
      That’s how I float across time, living way past my prime
      Like a long lost baby’s balloon
      So I hang on to the string, work that whole gravity thing
      But when my space ship goes pop, back to the earth I will drop
      Into the sea, or the limbs of a tree
      Or the wings of my love
      And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do
      Maybe invent me a story or two
      I’ve got coastal confessions to make
      How ’bout you, how ’bout you?
      They say that time is like a river
      And stories are the key to the past
      But now I’m stuck in-between here at my typing machine
      Trying to come up with some words that will last
      It’s so easy to see that we live history
      And if I just find the beat, I know I’ll land on my feet
      I always do, hadn’t got a clue
      Does it come from above?
      — Jimmy Buffett, Coastal Confessions

      On those occasions where I debate the merit of Jimmy Buffett to the catalog of great lyricists, I generally point to Coastal Confessions or A Pirate Looks at 40 as examples of a writer tapping into magic. As a person trying to tap into magic now and then myself, I appreciate a great poem disguised as song. We’re all trying to find words that will last a beat longer than the average sound bite, aren’t we?

      Lately I’m caught up in refining my habits and routines, that I might be more efficient and such. This betrays a desire to do work that matters with the urgency of a quarterback who’s seen that this game is all about clock management. We can be the most brilliant player on the field and it won’t matter a lick if we run out of time before we complete the drive. The thing is, even when we do everything perfectly, sometimes the kick goes wide right. The universe has its own say in how things play out. Memento mori, Carpe diem. Amor fati.

      This blog remains a line of breadcrumbs between where I started and where I am today. The path ahead is only hinted at. Breadcrumbs have a way of being swallowed up in time. I’m not naive enough to believe any of these words will last as they are published. In the end, it’s the ripple, not the splash that lingers. A splash is immediate, the ripple may touch people who were never aware there was a splash at all. The thing is, the world is full of people trying to make a bigger splash than everyone else. That leads to a confused sea state, with ripples coming from all directions. Best to set our own course and invite others along for the ride. I’ve set my own course for the coast of somewhere beautiful.

      Speaking of confused sea states, I’ve just lumped a few analogies into one short blog post. What else is new? Some of these themes have repeated over and over again. That’s inevitable with a couple of thousand blog posts, but it’s mostly just me reminding myself to keep going with it. The story is still being written, after all. We can’t control the result but we can manage the clock a bit, and discover that we love the game.

    • 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.