Alexandersmap

    Category: Writing

    • On to 901

      This is my 900th blog post. That seems a lot and not many at all, depending on your perspective. From my perspective it’s a benchmark of progress akin to checking your weight on the scale or assessing where you landed at the end of the quarter or fiscal year. In other words, it isn’t an end to blogging, it’s just a point in time to look around and see what you’ve done. And where you need to go from here.

      From a cold numbers standpoint, this may be the 900th published, but there are another 56 drafts stacked up awaiting judgement behind it. And countless highlighted passages and quotes at the ready should I find myself tapped out. There’s never really been a shortage of things to write about. It’s always been about finding your voice.

      According to one random source I found, there are 152 million blogs on the internet, and 75 millions using WordPress. Generally, I fall into the micro-blogger category because my average blog post is less than 1000 words. This is by design, as I blog daily and feel a long form blog post is more of a weekly or monthly output. This makes me more of a Seth Godin-cadence blogger than, say, a Tim Ferriss-cadence blogger. I’ve considered starting a second blog of long form content and keeping this one as it is. Instead, I’ll just mix in longer posts on those topics that warrant a deeper dive or break it up into daily nuggets.

      Simply put, I’m not advertising, I’m not aggressively trying to gain followers through blogging. But I appreciate the followers I have, enjoy receiving comments and new followers, and generally try to keep things interesting enough that you don’t throw your hands up in frustration and go off to read one of the other 152 million blogs out there. Thanks for sticking around on this journey.

      I’ve discovered fascinating places and stepped off the beaten path through the blog, and have a long list of places yet to see. Alexandersmap started out as a regional travel blog, after all, and the travel bug still has a hold of me. As with everything, it continues to evolve, and surely will transform over the next 100 posts, and (hopefully) the 1000 after that. Who knows? With luck and a sound mind maybe I’ll hit 10,000 posts. At this pace that would be in 28 years… just imagine what we might be writing about then.

      You know what? I think I’ll just focus on 901. And hope I get there.

    • Developing Oneself

      “If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone.” – John McPhee

      Now and then I re-read that quote to shake myself out of my own head. The implications of that McPhee sentence are profound enough on the merit of “marine limestone”, but wait; there’s more. There’s also the craft of forming a sentence so starkly beautiful, so elegant in its simplicity, that it inspires you to be a bit better at your own writing.

      “No one will ever write in just the way that you do, or in just the way that anyone else does. Because of this fact, there is no real competition between writers. What appears to be competition is actually nothing more than jealousy and gossip. Writing is a matter strictly of developing oneself. You compete only with yourself. You develop yourself by writing.”
      ― John McPhee, Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process

      I have this McPhee book, partially read, in my virtual stack of books to finish this year. I began reading it, was pulled towards some weighty books that demanded attention, and keep looking back at it wanting to finish what I’d started. Another case for reading one book at a time, as if it were required to build a case at all.

      Ryan Holiday writes about this time during the pandemic through a Stoic lens. He’s a prolific reader, and also a prolific writer. His mentor is another prolific writer in Robert Greene. What he said rings in my ears as this crazy year spirals towards an end:

      “I remembered a piece of advice I had gotten from the author Robert Greene many years earlier. He told me there are two types of time: alive time and dead time. One is when you sit around, when you wait until things happen to you. The other is when you are in control, when you make every second count, when you are learning and improving and growing.” – Ryan Holiday

      I note the challenge, and accept it. We’ve all wasted too many seconds in 2020, and the years that preceded it. Focused action, high agency, and discipline matter more than ever. You don’t get down the path if you keep detouring off to view every distraction along the way. To ship the work you must complete the work.

      Reading inspires action, but it also distracts. If you’re caught up in the greatness of the work of another you can get cavalier about your own work. Reading is alive time, but so is productive action towards a goal. There’s time enough for both in a day, should you use your day wisely, and with urgency. You develop yourself through the work. Embrace it.

    • Small and Green and Hard

      “At first the fruit is small and
      green and hard.
      Everything has dreams,
      hope, ambition
      – Mary Oliver, Someday

      I was thinking about a post I made on social media three years ago next month. Newfoundland. I’d gotten up early, as I usually do, and drove to the eastern edge of the continental North America for sunrise. A month after that photo I was on the western edge of continental Europe taking in the the crashing ocean and looking back towards where I was from.

      I looked like quite a world traveler on social media, but a week after that trip to Portugal I was unemployed. I didn’t post that on social media. I just scrambled to reach out to my contacts and find meaningful work as quickly as possible. We tend to amplify the positive: trips, events, big meals, relationships… the highlight reel stuff.

      That month of unemployment transformed my writing from a once in a while thing to an every day thing. I switched from Blogger to WordPress, found my voice through repetition and trips to local places, read a lot, and mostly just wrote. The fruit of my labor is still small and green and hard, but I see it ripening. At least I believe it to be so.

      We’re all works in progress, they say. Mastery is elusive. Ten thousand hours elusive. Lifetime elusive. But the art is in the doing, day in and day out. When the fruit is small and green and hard and you’re hungry it seems like it will never ripen. But being a bit hungry is where the art comes from. There’s nothing burning inside when you’re well-fed and satiated. The mind says maybe this is enough.

      In the spring my apple trees were a wonder of showy blooms. I was thrilled and dreamed of a rich harvest. But the dry summer transformed that bounty of blooms into a few deformed, tiny apples. By contrast the grapes were bountiful this year and fed the birds and yellow jackets when I couldn’t keep up. Funny the way two plants of the same age react to the same conditions, isn’t it?

      Everything has dreams, hope, ambition. We never know what will ripen and bear fruit. How the seasons will shape us. But fruit withers without focused energy. So we must keep at it.

    • Graced with the Ordinary

      “Let the world
      have its way with you,
      luminous as it is with mystery
      and pain –
      graced as it is
      with the ordinary.”
      – Mary Oliver, Summer Morning

      Today, for his birthday, I used the camel hair shaving brush while shaving. He gave it to me in a ceremonial way, as if turning over command of the Bridge, about eighteen months ago. Hard to say when, really, but it was clear it meant something to him and he wanted me to have it. And to use it. Well, old habits die hard, and when you shave your face every day you form deep habits. Still, I’d use the brush now and then because it performs. Nothing lathers your shaving cream like a good shaving brush.

      The small, ordinary things stand out for me. Maybe it’s the writing that draws my eye to the commonplace, but honestly I think it may be the other way around. I’ve always had an inordinate focus on the small things around me, and those small things seek a voice in the universe. We honor the things we amplify.

      The old Navy pilot would pull me aside and talk of my writing, such that it is, and encourage me to keep going with it. He read a lot, he knew good writing, and he saw something in mine that sparked his interest. It was shortly after that that he gave me the shaving brush. Maybe he had it in mind for me all along, but it felt connected. And I feel the connection with him when I use it to shave.

      Happy Birthday Pops.

    • Towards Remarkable

      “What is the purpose of writing? For me personally, it is really to explain the mystery of life, and the mystery of life includes, of course, the personal, the political, the forces that make us what we are while there’s another force from inside battling to make us something else.” – Nadine Gordimer

      I don’t know much about Nadine Gordimer that you can’t find in her obituary or on Wikipedia. She was a South African writer who helped expose the darkness of apartheid for the world to see. She won a Nobel Prize for her writing and was on the short list of people that Nelson Mandela wanted to see first when he was released from prison. By all accounts she was a pretty remarkable woman.

      “…with an understanding of Shakespeare there comes a release from the gullibility that makes you prey to the great shopkeeper who runs the world, and would sell you cheap to illusion.”

      You know remarkable when you see it. There’s a life force exuding out of certain people that pulses. It’s not celebrity, though some celebrities, athletes and leaders have it (certainly not all). You learn to spot the authentic energy from the great shopkeepers and cons. It’s an intangible force from inside that is magnetic but genuine. People are drawn to them, because they see something in them that they haven’t quite let out of themselves.

      “If I dreamt this, while walking, walking in the London streets, the subconscious of each and every other life, past and present, brushing me in passing, what makes it real? Writing it down.” 

      I understand Nadine Gordimer better through her words. And in her words she shows us the way. Learn from the great observers of the past. Write it down (Rolf Potts recommends a “commonplace book” where you can record the best ideas you find – blogging certainly helps achieve this too). Keep improving over time. With patience but earnest effort.

      “Your whole life you are really writing one book, which is an attempt to grasp the consciousness of your time and place – a single book written from different stages of your ability.” 

      I’ve come to focus on remarkable recently. Having come across a few people with that extraordinary life force exuding out of every pore, you begin to think about how you might reach some level of that yourself. Gordimer hints at the journey we’re all on with this last quote. We’re all climbing at different paces, at different stages of our ability, towards our own peak. Towards remarkable.

    • Life As You See It

      “Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music—the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.” – Henry Miller

      “The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.” – Julia Cameron

      Paying attention is a gift, and writing about it sharpens the focus. I believe that blogging has done more to wake me up to the wonders of my immediate world than anything save the birth of my children. Having children developed my habit of capturing moments in pictures, but the years my kids were growing up were also years the writing quietly lay dormant, biding time. You don’t have much quiet time when the mad dash from diapers to packing school lunches to soccer and dance recitals to driving to away games to picking colleges is happening. And yet I wish I’d written it all down anyway.

      Now, after the mad dash, the writing stirred awake from its slumber. I look around at all there is to see in this world. All there is to learn about the world. All there is to read and taste and see and most importantly, to do. Faraway places will have to wait once again, but there’s so much to see right outside.

      Read a Mary Oliver poem and you see that you’ve been blind the entire time. Chastened yet challenged, you look more deeply at the world in front of you and deeper into the soul. And you write.

    • Process and Persistence

      “Process saves us from the poverty of intentions.” – Elizabeth King (via Seth Godin & Tim Ferriss)

      “You begin with a subject, gather material, and work your way to structure from there. You pile up volumes of notes and then figure out what you are going to do with them, not the other way around.” – John McPhee, On The Writing Process

      Blogging is a process that saves me from my poverty of intentions. I’ve intended to write for years, but pushed it aside in pursuit of everything both worthy and irrelevant. Sure the site needs work, the writing has typos now and then and Yoast SEO is fixed in a permanent frown, but so what? If you’re along for the journey, welcome, you’ve apparently overcome a ton of SEO blunders on my part to get here.

      If there’s a common theme throughout life, its the fact that we can never do quite enough to reach perfection. I’m nowhere near it myself. But I walk the path one step at a time, writing, editing, publishing and starting again at the beginning every day. And that’s a victory in itself. Screw perfection – give me process and persistence.

      “Mastery is the process of narrowing your focus to a tiny element of success, repeating it until you have internalized the skill, and then using this new habit as the foundation to advance to the next frontier of your development.” – James Clear, Atomic Habits

      And that’s where I am, focus narrowed and repeating daily towards a level of mastery I may never achieve. But I’ll be closer for the effort. There’s some measure of the Pareto principle in that James Clear quote. Focus on the 20% that achieves the goal. SEO doesn’t necessarily matter. Likes and follows don’t necessarily matter. The work matters. So do more than focus, do the work.

    • The Cumulative Force

      “Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it.”
      – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

      Re-reading Self-Reliance is always a pep talk with the Master. Sometimes I wonder at (and have written before about) the conversations Emerson and Thoreau must have had taking a walk about Concord, Massachusetts back in the day. Emerson, a dozen years older than Thoreau, might have offered more insight early on, but Thoreau measured up over time, diving deep into Transcendentalism and immersion in Nature (with a capital N). Thoreau was undoubtedly influenced by Emerson, and Emerson by Thoreau, yet each brought their own gift to the world.

      I’ve wondered at the writing lately. The content is a collection of many topics jumbled together, and much of that is by design. The scattered thoughts of one person marching through time. I’ve debated a shift to a once a week newsletter, which inherently would be more refined, more substantial and less clutter in the inbox of those who follow. But changing to a weekly post would change my habit loop in ways I wish to avoid. No, I subscribe to the Seth Godin school of daily blogging.

      So what then? Narrowing the focus to specific topics? Specializing for the pursuit of 1000 true fans? Instead of the trivial many blog posts, focus on the vital few, as Joseph M. Juran would say? If I were to monetize this site, I’d surely do that. But the goal of Alexandersmap is to seek adventure, to understand the place I find myself in (both physically and mentally) and write about it. And so it will continue as it always has been. The rest of the writing necessarily will evolve into a more focused pursuit of those vital few. But there’s something to be said for habit loops and cadence and Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours theory. Just write, often, on a diversity of topics, and the process will necessarily change you and improve the writing.

      And so here we are, one day at a time, building the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation, and seeing where it takes me. Is it a talent to write every day? Or accumulated skill? It would be brash to declare the former, and modest the latter. There’s a mix in there somewhere, but I do believe in sweat equity and making the most of the time we’re given. I’m a writer as long as I’m writing. There are plenty in this world doing the same. Whether the writing is that which I can do best? That will have to sort itself out. But I’m better for cultivating it.

    • The Hard Bit

      “You write. That’s the hard bit that nobody sees.” – Neil Gaiman

      “I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found.” – Kurt Vonnegut

      Travel writing is easy by comparison. Experience a place or an event and then convey that bit of magic to others in words. I enjoy travel writing – consuming it and better, writing it. I think fondly of driving about in Scotland close to a year ago or Portugal the year before that and the many adventures I had, most of which never made it to the blog. Writing about places you go is easy. Like you’re sharing tales of an adventure with friends. And documenting it for yourself to remember someday when you aren’t traveling anymore… like now.

      Writing a daily blog becomes harder when you find yourself in the same room for an entire day, with breaks to get the mail or see what the sun looks like. That’s where the hard bit comes in. Tapping into your brain and finding the stories. Doing the work. Some days it goes well, some days it peters out. But I find it easiest when, as with travel, I have something to share with others. A poem that stirs the imagination. A bit of local history that was particularly fascinating. A bear walking in the woods behind the house. Some stories practically write themselves.

      I was talking to a colleague who is struggling with depression. He has much younger children, is used to being out on the road for business and is struggling in this year of years to keep it all together. I’ve heard from several people this year having similar struggles. And I understand. Everything is different, the very foundation of our being sometimes seems to be crumbling. I don’t believe I suffer from clinical depression, but I’ve had moments of despair when the whole thing seems too much. How do you deal with the hard bits? I suppose it’s different for everyone, but for me getting out of my own head does wonders. Walk more. Read more. Have more meaningful conversations with people of consequence. And write it all down. Writing draws the noise out of your head and onto paper… or whatever data center WordPress utilizes for my ramblings.

      I have a friend who calls the blog my “dear diary”, and I suppose there’s truth in that. But for me the writing solves a lot of mind games I play with myself. Processing information consumed in books or translating a poem into my own experience in writing is a form of conversation with yourself, nudged gently along by the author or poet. Long walks solve a lot of problems for me, but so does immersive reading and writing. I read the Vonnegut quote above and understand immediately where he’s coming from. I’m not the only one.

      Gaiman reminds me, whispers in my ear: I’m behind in my writing. Not blogging, but the other writing. And sure Neil; it gnaws at me. Jabs me in the ribs when I’m not looking. It waits impatiently for me to do the other things, the less important things. The easier things. And I look it squarely in the eyes and see myself dodging the truth. I have more to say. More to contribute. And there I am; back in my own head again. Perhaps a walk is in order. And a bit of writing after that. The hard bit.

    • Choosing the Mindset

      “Your mindset is the filter through which you see the world. It determines how you spend your time, what decisions you make, and where you invest your resources.

      There’s an old saying in business that you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

      If you want to be fit, hang out with friends who exercise.

      If you want to think big and aspire to change the world, hang out with people who have Moonshots and a massively transformative purpose (MTP)….

      As an entrepreneur, answering these questions is a critical part of your journey to be successful during this era of exponential change.

      The next step on that journey is choosing the mindset(s) that works best for you.”
      – Peter Diamandis       (from his Twitter thread)

      I found myself lost in PowerPoint for the last two days, creating a presentation well into the evening for a meeting on Monday afternoon. You might think being lost in PowerPoint is a bad thing, and we’ve all suffered through plenty of really bad PowerPoint presentations, compounded by webinars that eliminate the human-to-human interaction that makes them more engaging. But in this case, I was taking a large topic and boiling it down into concise slides. And the time flew by as I researched crime data and regulatory requirements and other such things that make a slide deck come alive. It occurred to me that I actually loved the creative aspect of creating slide decks. And then it occurred to me that it isn’t using the Microsoft product that I love, it’s finding creative ways to tell the story that I love.

      How to best leverage that creative energy remains (always) the question. And I think about Moonshots and massively transformative purpose in the way that Diamandis suggests, and find myself challenged to perform at a higher level still. Blogging every day seems to be a good direction, but I’m not seeing it as the community of writers I thought it would be. I suppose it was never going to be that. Blogging may not be a Nitya Puja, but it is a daily step on the journey that pushes aside the accumulated clutter of life for a time. Writing becomes a meditation of sorts, and brings you closer to the truth… so maybe, in a sense, it is a Nitya Puja after all.

      Jim Rohn said, and Diamandis references in the quote above, that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. In a pandemic that generally means being inside your bubble of family and a few close associates. Every other relationship and engagement with others seems to be remote: Zoom, Facebook, InstaGram, Twitter, TikTok and all the rest. Are those people raising your average or dragging you down? Increasingly it feels like the latter. Watch The Social Dilemma on Netflix and see how manipulative the world of social media is, and ask whether it should be a significant part of your life (Netflix has mastered manipulative distraction itself). And yet I pulled the Diamandis quote from Twitter, so there’s value in social media platforms. But little value in distraction.

      All that noise is clogging the mindset filter, and I find myself wanting to cut the cord once more. When you start checking how many likes your last post had or figuring out how many views you got on your last blog post it can drag you into the depths of distraction. How do you get anything meaningful done if you’re always distracted? And getting things done seems to be the real purpose. Not meaningless things, but the purposeful things that make you a better human. To contribute more. To be more. To reach your potential in this maze we call life. And it begins with your mindset.