Alexandersmap

    Category: Writing

    • On Purpose

      “Find out who you are and do it on purpose” – Dolly Parton

      “Do it on purpose and you’ll find out who you are.” – Seth Godin

      Ten days seems a short time to accomplish much of anything, and the last ten days have whirled by in a flurry of moments great and small. But isn’t that all our days? This sampling, more than a week and less than a fortnight, offered a chance to focus on a few key activities to see what might happen.

      And so I exercised a bit more, rowing and hiking and snowshoeing my way across time. And wrote a bit more, offering another 5000 odd words of tribute to the Cloud. And read a bit more, finishing two books that were impatiently tapping me on the shoulder to immerse myself in.

      I’d wanted to lose a few pounds and watched five of them fall away, half of what I’d wanted but a handful less than I’d started with. I’d wanted to summit two 4000 footers but instead summited a single mountain shorter in stature than I’d envisioned but more than up to the task of changing my perspective. While there I crawled behind a waterfall and saw the otherworld there. And found myself wanting to linger behind the ice longer than I did. The whispers in that ice haven’t yet diminished in the din of work days.

      Incremental improvements such as they were, it doesn’t seem appropriate to boast about such things as losing a couple of pounds and reading a couple of books. It isn’t a boast if it’s less than you wanted, is it? But if you end in a better place than you started isn’t it a success anyway? The point, I think, is to keep raising expectations of yourself. Keep doing things on purpose and you might just find out what that purpose is.

      Purpose. What a heavy word. There are bookstores filled with thoughts on finding your purpose in life. We all contemplate what it’s all about, hopefully stumbling upon a few insights on our walk through life. Why do we do anything? Why shift in this direction over that one? Why is just purpose by another name. We generally have so much noise in our lives that we can’t hear the whispers of why anyway. I think mine might be locked away in that icy waterfall, or it could be in the next conversation I have. Or in the silence in between.

      Pulling a random ten days out of a lifetime and seeing what you can make of it with intention, you might just find that ten wasn’t quite enough to get all the way across the finish line. But you’re closer than you were without the focus and intent. If you play them well, you might just shuffle a few interesting cards into your deck of days. And find that purpose is just the direction you’ve set yourself on. For now, or for a lifetime.

    • Coming to Light

      “If a man has any greatness in him, it comes to light, not in one flamboyant hour, but in the ledger of his daily work...

      ‘All the pieces are put together, and the whole is yours …’ A word grows to a thought — a thought to an idea — an idea to an act. The change is slow, and the Present is a sluggish traveller loafing in the path Tomorrow wants to take.”
      – Beryl Markham, West With The Night

      This coming to light through the sluggish Present, changing over years of work, is the tricky part. It’s the part you don’t always see in yourself and in the work you do. It’s the grind, the paying of dues, the 10,000 hours, the sweat equity of life. We gain experience in our work, and with a bit of luck, grow in prominence. But really we grow either way.

      Experience is a devilish word. We gain experience through doing the work, and we chase experiences outside of our work. Really, shouldn’t they be one and the same? Not to live for your job but to have your work be an integral part of your life. Writing a blog reminded me that the living part is every bit as important as the writing part. You don’t offer much in prose without experiencing the world a bit.

      The mistake most people make is in making the work their life, instead of an integral part of their life. “Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living Barely gettin’ by, it’s all taking and no giving” as Dolly Parton put it. That’s not meaningful work, that’s checking your soul at the door and inserting your self as a cog in a machine. Trading life for dollars.

      What Markham writes about is different from what Parton was writing about. Markham saw that spark of light, imagined something bigger and built it for herself. That’s the coming to light over a lifetime. Of course, Dolly Parton did the same thing, her life hasn’t been the character she played in a movie. And neither is ours.

      And here’s the thing, the dream isn’t about work at all, it’s about the vision you have for yourself and the world around you. The work is what you do to realize the dream – not a trade-off of hours away from living your dream at all, but the building of it one small step at a time. It all starts with a spark of light, your “why”, and then filling in the work necessary to reach for the vision.

      “Without effort, your talent is nothing more than your unmet potential. Without effort, your skill is nothing more than what you could have done but didn’t.” – Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

      Duckworth jabs us in the ribs with that statement: what you could have done but didn’t. Don’t let your vision die on the vine. Whatever your vision – sailing around the world, hiking a summit or a list of summits, breaking a time in a marathon, building a company from scratch, writing a novel… it requires change and wading through the sluggish Present to get to that Tomorrow you want. Do the meaningful work that gets you there.

    • To Roam the Roads of Lands Remote

      “To move, to breathe, to fly, to float,
      To gain all while you give,
      To roam the roads of lands remote,
      To travel is to live.”
      – Hans Christian Andersen

      Good God I’m ready to roam remote lands again. Exploring faraway places in a world that has shaken off the pandemic and opens its arms in welcome. We aren’t there just yet, we know, but every day we get a bit closer. A year into this and I’m chomping at the bit for the quirky randomness of faraway travel.

      Such thoughts are low agency conspiracies, for the world is right outside, awaiting our arrival. Crossing borders to lands remote may be just out of reach, but crossing thresholds is still very possible. And so the question isn’t the roaming, the question is the focus. I can row a million meters away (and be a different person when I arrive) right in my house, I can time travel in the chair behind me, and I can fly above the earth on snowshoes just outside the door.

      The secret all along? To push through our own borders, wherever we are, is to live. To become by working through. To move. To breathe… to gain all while you give.

    • What Are You Waiting For?

      “Dare to be wise; begin! He who postpones the hour of living rightly is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.” – Horace

      When you really think about it, what are we waiting for? The right time? That river keeps on flowing by and never runs out. We run out.

      Of time… opportunities lost watching it all run by. So then what of this hour? What shall it launch?

      Begin. Do you feel the urgency of time? Do what must be done.

      “Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can” – Arthur Ashe

      Easy for me to say, right? Who am I to challenge you? Make no mistake, I’m dipping a toe in that water myself. For I have my own chasms to cross. The only way across is by putting action where words are and getting to it.

      I like a good challenge. Do you? What can you accomplish, see, or become in ten days? Focus on living rightly in each moment, getting across whatever your river is. From today to March 4th and written about right here on March 5th. Comment on that post if you’ve taken the challenge yourself. What are we waiting for? Hurry! For it’s already slipping away.

    • The Business of Choosing

      I’m not a surfer, but I imagine them bobbing about in the swells, deciding which wave feels like the best for an epic ride to the beach. On some mornings writing feels a bit like that, with a series of false starts and bits of poetry and verse toyed with then put aside for another day. Each is wonderful and you eagerly want to share them, but they just don’t feel right for this proverbial ride to the beach.

      Writing is a way to sort it all out, of course. Deciding which swell of bubbling thought energy to surf. Once committed, you either ride it to glory or watching it sputter out into nothing much to speak of. But there’s glory in being in the swell too.

      “Your job is to collect good ideas. The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by.” – Austin Kleon

      This business of choosing applies to everything we do. Picking the right mate, the right career, the right friends and business associates, the right place to live, the right strategy, the right fitness and nutrition plan for your lifestyle, or the comparatively simple right ideas to explore in a blog. Sometimes the well runs dry, and sometimes the ideas stack up so high you can’t see the forest for the trees. When you’ve reached the bottom of the barrel or conversely when you can’t see the horizon anymore because you’re buried in ideas, a quick change of perspective does wonders for the mind.

      I’ve managed to get out on the snowshoes three times this work week for a quick lap around one of the trails. Twice at lunch and once at the end of the day with the sun setting and a headlamp at the ready should I need it. The cold air and crunchy snow quickly do a number on whatever was scrambling my brain. A rising heart rate always seems to clear a mind that’s turning on itself. In each case I returned home renewed and ready for the next wrestling match with work or words.

      Choosing is the tricky part, but I agree with Kleon, the more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from. Get out and experience life. Read more material that stretches you in new directions. Get your heart rate up to push it all to the side so you can see where you need to go. And then do it. Even if the wave sputters out on you, you’ll still gain something from the ride.

    • At That Moment

      “I felt at that moment that it was my chance to do one thing supremely well.” – Roger Bannister

      The extraordinary – mastery – starts with that feeling. That spark of excitement at the possibility that just maybe I can do this. And as they say, all it takes is a spark. True, but once the fire is lit, all it takes is fuel to make it roar. For it is just the beginning. There are more moments to come.

      The time before that moment aren’t full of sparks, they’re full of stumbles and awkwardness and frustration. The paying of dues. The long slog. The apprenticeships that turn novices into prospects and prospects into rising stars. All a precursor to that moment when you finally know that this, this is it. And once you realize it, you do whatever you must do to, well, realize it.

      “You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.” – Michael Jordan

      All of us experience that other it. Those moments when you realize that this is definitely not it. Sometimes that it is our it masked by the long slog to get to it. But usually we know the truth of something before too long down the path. And the truth is that most its aren’t our it. So we try another it. And another. Many never find it at all. Plenty experience maybe this is it. And really, it might just be it, but the climb is long and the friends are calling to go out for a few drinks to celebrate the end whatever isn’t their it, and before pretty soon that maybe isn’t your it either.

      The relatively few who do find and fully realize their it may experience the extraordinary. For it, by definition, lies beyond the ordinary. Finding your it requires singular focus on achieving it. Which brings us back to that moment. And what you feel. And what you do with your chance.

    • The General Union

      “The happiest fate is that of the author who, as an old man, is able to say that all there was in him of life-inspiring, strengthening, exalting, enlightening thoughts and feelings still lives on in his writings, and that he himself now only represents the gray ashes, whilst the fire has been kept alive and spread out. And if we consider that every human action, not only a book, is in some way or other the cause of other actions, decisions, and thoughts; that everything that happens is inseparably connected with everything that is going to happen, we recognize the real immortality, that of movement – that which has once moved is enclosed and immortalized in the general union of all existence, like an insect within a piece of amber.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

      I stood out in a three inch deep puddle at the end of the driveway, chipping away at an ice dam that was keeping the water from flowing into the catch basin and back on its journey to the infinity of the Atlantic Ocean. It’s funny to think about the icy water I stood in as part of the infinity, but then again so are we. All part of an endless loop of the water cycle. We humans trap a bit of that water for ourselves to mix with some carbon and energy for a time before releasing it back on its way. And our own time soon comes to an end, leaving memories and examples and maybe an insight or two.

      The thrill of writing is still with me, as much as ever really. The streak of writing every day almost ended over the weekend when I struggled to stay awake to finish a post written piecemeal over the course of a busy day of hiking and socializing. Would it really matter if I missed a day? The world surely wouldn’t stop, but I’d know. I’m not ready to break the streak just yet thank you. Every day we wake up is a continuation of the streak, and there’s a thrill in getting up and out there to greet the world when you know you’ve got things to contribute to it. If only a few words that relatively few will read.

      Being active and adding to the conversation is the root of the thrill for me. Being in the mix and doing things. Will anyone care that I wrote this post? Perhaps not many, but the act itself is enough for me. A few thoughts and actions that ripple while using up my three billion heartbeats during this life, to be enclosed and immortalized in the general union of all existence. Like a puddle reaching for the ocean, and welcomed back warmly by the whole.

    • Leaning Towards High Agency

      “When you’re told that something is impossible, is that the end of the conversation, or does that start a second dialogue in your mind, how to get around whoever it is that’s just told you that you can’t do something? So, how am I going to get past this bouncer who told me that I can’t come into this nightclub? How am I going to start a business when my credit is terrible and I have no experience? You’re constantly looking for what is possible in a kind of MacGyverish sort of way. And that’s your approach to the world.” – Eric Weinstein on The Tim Ferriss Show

      I was brought up to follow the rules. Thinking that adults knew something in this world, I would follow rules of behavior and take no as the answer. Fall in line, do your part, don’t question things… passive, low agency characteristics.

      But I also grew up bending the rules ever so slightly in my favor, or breaking them outright. At four taking my three year old sister for a walk to visit my grandparents a mile or so away across a busy road? Let’s do it. At eleven or twelve taking my dad’s Playboy magazines and trading them with the neighbor’s dad for his Penthouse magazines and charge money for the other kids to read the articles? Seemed okay to me.

      But somewhere along the way you slip into the workforce and pick up obligations. Maybe you enter middle management and start following the HR playbook. And slowly, over time, you become passive and decidedly low agency. You become… sheepish. But somewhere inside you that inner maverick chafes at the wool coat. And then you listen to a guy like Eric Weinstein talk about high agency, you hear the example of the main character on The Martian finding a way. And you understand.

      “It’s important to be willing to make mistakes. The worst thing that can happen is you become memorable.” – Sarah Blakely, Spanx

      We generally accept things the way they are. But what if we questioned things a bit more? What if we tried a different way to do the thing that didn’t work the first or second time? What if we developed higher agency within ourselves to set our lives in the direction we want it to go? To be more Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sara Blakely or Elon Musk or Steve Jobs in our own careers? In our own lives?

      “Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.” – Elon Musk

      I think it starts with where we are right now in our lives. Living through a pandemic in our own way with Zoom or Teams, a laptop and a mobile phone at the ready. We’re all dealing with restrictions on travel and social distancing, some with a much harder hand to play than others, but as the stoics would tell us, we must play the cards we’re dealt anyway. And what do we do next?

      “What we face may look insurmountable. But I learned something from all those years of training and competing. I learned something from all those sets and reps when I didn’t think I could lift another ounce of weight. What I learned is that we are always stronger than we know.” – Arnold Schwarzenegger

      While we were complaining about shortages of toilet paper there were thousands of people figuring out a vaccine to make this problem go away. Right now, there are people building companies, writing the next great novel, inventing things or doing critical research that will outlive us all. The next big thing, created in the same time of COVID that you and I are living through. So what are we doing with our time? How are we going to work through whatever it is that isn’t working and finding a way through? A way to finally get it right?

      “There is an awful lot of fails before you get it right.” – Elizabeth Isabella, Scripted Fragrance, an Etsy business featured on CBS Sunday Morning

      I heard the Eric Weinstein interview on Tim Ferriss a few years ago now. I had the High Agency dogma reinforced in a George Mack Twitter thread a while back now too. In general I’ve leaned into higher agency in my own life. But still have a lot of fails before I get it right. Don’t we all? Keep trying.

      “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.” – Steve Jobs

      We might not ever get to a point where we’re mentioned in the same list as Schwarzenegger or Jobs or Blakely or Musk, but then again, maybe we will. But only if we pivot more, find a way forward or through, and shake off the passive. Time marches on. Will we?

    • The Future is Implied

      “It takes time for an acorn to turn into an oak, but the oak is already implied in the acorn.” – Alan Watts

      January is a funny month. Plans for the year generally completed, we look at the climb ahead and take our first steps into the unknown. Where will it take us? What will we accomplish? How will the world change these grand plans we’ve wrestled with in our minds and on spreadsheets? How exactly are things going to play out?

      The future is implied by our actions today. We turn plans into action one step at a time, one toe in the water, one conversation after another, one moment to the next. And in each step, we discover the truth about the world.

      I look back a year and laugh at the plans dashed against the rocks in the COVID storm. We all had to bushwhack when the path washed away last year. Extreme, to be sure, but it demonstrated the nature of plans. They do change.

      Words we used too much in 2020 included adapt and pivot and new normal. What words will we use in 2021? 2022? What is implied by the trends we see in the world? What is implied by our daily habits? We might not see everything in the future but we can surely see the path we’ve set ourselves upon.

      I wonder sometimes at the future, but it isn’t mine to ponder. Plans are made and revised, such that they can be. Focus on the first step, small as it might seem in the moment. And go.

    • Sharing Meaningful

      “Sometimes the best writing gets no recognition in its time or gets censored. This is the price of art.” – Neil Strauss

      I’ve written a few blog posts over the years that keep popping back up. Someone will like a post I’d written a year or two ago about some place I went or thing I did, click the like button and remind me of that moment when I see the notification. It feels like those moments when you’re having a conversation with an old friend who brings up some shared experience or character from your past and instantly you’re flooded with warm memories of it.

      You never know what will resonate with others. That would be a horrible way to write anyway; trying to write something just for the clicks and follows. Writing then becomes a rather cynical job, doesn’t it? I’ve been playing the WordPress game long enough to know immediately what someone is trying to accomplish with their own blogs. Generally I’ll follow people who are trying to capture something meaningful – for themselves first, and shared with the world second.

      This entire experience of writing a blog has been about paying the price of art. Some people paint pictures and stack them up in their garage to gather dust, gradually marking the progress of an artist as the pile grows. Writing a daily blog is taking that stack and displaying it for the neighbors. Some art garners attention, some grows dusty and brittle by neglect. But all of it marks the journey, like breadcrumbs on the forest path or footprints on the beach. And like each, art is fragile in nature. Here but for a moment. Mine currently resides in some data center somewhere in the world.

      Whatever direction this blog goes in, it always starts with sharing something meaningful, if only to me. Whether that’s grilling a pizza or visiting a battle site from 350 years ago or just a pile of words that resonated with me in a particular way, it’s all just sharing meaningful, and locking it in my own mind for another day. Released by a random like at the most unexpected moments.

      Thanks for the like.