Alexandersmap

    Category: Writing

    • The First Cup Is The Deepest

      Yeah, I know, the lyric is the first cut is the deepest, not cup… but it applies equally well to both. Hear me out. I’d contend that there’s far more meaning, more depth, in the first cup of coffee, tea or alcoholic beverage than there is in any subsequent cup. Let’s use coffee as our example. It’s dark outside as the sun catches up with the early risers. I’ve just brewed my morning coffee, robust dark roast, thank you, and carefully monitor the temperature for that magical first sip. This is the most zen-like moment of the day for coffee consumption, and a moment when my mind is most open to new ideas. This is the magic cuppa, the most clear-headed and open my mind will be all day, undistracted by the clutter of life. This is where the deep thoughts happen.

      This morning I’m re-assessing my daily routine after the magic hour. The first hour of the day is by far the most productive, and I push to do everything that must be done before the muse fades into the ambient noise of life. For me that means writing, reading, and a quick survey of the bullet journal tasks I need to accomplish that day. That “magic hour” tends to be more like 90 minutes, and then I’m feeling the restlessness build with the volume of the ambient noise around me.

      The coffee cup is empty, the darkness of the morning has given way to light, and any moment now the night owl’s alarm clock will chirp upstairs. It’s time to shift gears to that first bullet in the journal, and the game of putting an X through as many as possible before the day ends. The ambient noise kicks in: What’s the weather today? Who won the Iowa Caucus? Why did the Red Sox trade one of the best players in baseball? Do I even care about the Red Sox anymore after the off-season they’ve had? And so on. Noise.

      I consider another cup of coffee, but I know it won’t be the same. Better to get moving, literally and figuratively, and get into the flow of the work day. Such is the daily battle. I feel the crush of things to do, sigh and get on with it. I wish that first cup would last all day.

    • Meeting Luck

      Last night I won $225 in a Super Bowl office pool I didn’t participate in, from an office I don’t work in, and had little knowledge of before I was told I’d won. My wife picked a random square at her job, wrote my name on it and the score aligned with that random number. That’s random luck for you.

      Saturday I watched my son’s basketball team pull out a win as they broke the press in the final minutes and hit clutch free throws as time ran out for their opponent. The game could have gone either way, but key individual matchups and years of practicing how to break the press (get to the ball!) and shooting free throws made all the difference when the game mattered most. That’s making your own luck for you.

      It’s now Monday morning, the sky is slowly brightening, and I‘m well into the day already. I have a morning routine that, like practicing free throws, becomes muscle memory. If luck is random, it’s also fickle. I’ve never won millions of dollars in the lottery, but I know good luck when I see it. Like breaking the press, you’ve got to get up and meet it.

    • Measuring Out Life in Coffee Spoons

      “Do I dare
      Disturb the universe?
      In a minute there is time
      For decisions and revisions which a
      minute will reverse.

      For I have known them all already,
      known them all:—
      Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
      I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
      I know the voices dying with a dying fall
      Beneath the music from a farther room.
      So how should I presume?” – T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

      I wonder if I would have enjoyed the company of T.S. Eliot.  I’m fairly sure I’d have hit it off with Mary Oliver, and with Robert Frost, but I don’t always click with old T.S.  But this poem, one of his most famous, offers that bold question; Do I dare disturb the universe?  and I smile, for I too feel like I’ve measured out my life with coffee spoons. Maybe there’s more to T.S. than I originally thought. The better question would be whether he’d enjoy my company? That has to be earned too: Want to be in the conversation? Have something to say.

      To write publicly is to answer the call.  Whether the universe chooses to pay attention or not is another story, but in chipping away at it one small measure at a time, we see more, and put more out there to be seen, we get better. Roosevelt’s man in the arena comes to mind. Be on the field doing it. Nothing else matters. Is there futility in the work? Perhaps, but the work offers its own path in the universe. I write knowing there’s so much more to it than this. This is showing up, it’s not poking the bear and disturbing the universe. Provocation requires more skin in the game. Blood and sweat mixing in the dirt. There’s more to do.

    • Fading Tracks Across Time

      Yesterday morning I stood outside, barefoot, on the deck scanning the woods.  A dozen deer were moving silently through, silhouetted by the sun reflecting off the rapidly melting snow.  Unusually warm weather has created this opportunity to stand barefoot for me, and given the deer access to acorns and other edibles that should be locked into a frozen vault for a couple more months.  The deer don’t worry about climate change, only food and safety, and they graze uninterrupted as I walked back inside.

      Late morning we met friends for a walk on the Windham Rail Trail.  The trail changes every day, and today brought slush mixed with large bare spots.  We discussed using micro-spikes, but they would’ve been overkill on most of the trail, with just one section of about 100 meters testing our decision to leave them in the car.  No, this was a day for water-resistant footwear, good socks and focus on where you stepped next.    The week ahead brings more mild temperatures, and it’s likely this trail will be all pavement by next weekend.

      As usual on this trail, there were many animal tracks crossing this way and that.  Wildlife has their own trail system, but crossing paths with human roads and trails is inevitable.  Deer tracks mixed with turkey, squirrels and the other regulars.  But one set of tracks stood out from the rest; like a small child doing handstands across the snow, beaver tracks punctuated the softening snow.  Their front paws are very defined and human-life.  The back paws are more like a ducks.  The combination convinced me it wasn’t a racoon’s tracks we were looking at.  Beaver don’t hibernate, but they usually aren’t moving about that much this time of year.  Looking around there was no apparent evidence of tree damage from beaver, but we were right next to a pond.  Beaver store their winter food underwater near their nest.  Nest building isn’t a winter activity.  So I wondered what the beaver was traveling through here for.  Visiting friends?  Booty call? Or like me earlier just stepping outside to see what was new in the world?

      Yesterday was a big news day with the death of Kobe Bryant.  Social media and traditional media alike erupted in a flurry of reaction.  It’s a jolt when someone so young and vibrant is killed so abruptly.  Stoicism points out that it could happen to any of us at any moment, so live this moment fully.  So many forget that until a famous person or a loved one shocks the system with a reminder.  Living this moment starts with awareness of everything around you, feeling the changes in the air, seeing the deer moving through the woods, seeing the tracks in the snow, and having an extended conversation with people you care about while you navigate a slushy trail.  Life is now, today, whether it’s a Monday morning or a Friday night.  Bryant, and the other people on that helicopter were taken unexpectedly, tragically, but they were living a full life.  If you aren’t fully alive in this moment, fully aware of the magic around you, are you really living?

      As we left the trail yesterday, our own tracks marched along for 3 1/2 miles in one direction  and back again, covering seven full miles of conversation, observation, exercise and being alive.  Many of those tracks were turning to slushy mush even as we took them, and disappeared with the thousands of other tracks that have walked this path over the years.  Our time here is limited, the memories are made now, so what shall we do with this day before it too disappears?

       

    • Something More

      “…I don’t believe

      only to the edge
      of what my eyes actually see
      in the kindness of the morning,
      do you?

      And my life,
      which is my body surely,
      is also something more—
      isn’t yours?”
      – Mary Oliver, from The Pinewoods

      Reading this, I thought of the familiar analogy of a stone dropped in a still pond and the ripples it creates. We aren’t our bodies but a sum of the actions and interactions we have with it over our time in it. The more we learn, the more we offer to the world, the bigger our ripple.  I think of people in my own life who offer a pretty large ripple, and I hope I’m doing the same. Mary Oliver offered an example of a tsunami with her work, and this excerpt from The Pinewoods demonstrates her keen awareness of her own something more.

      I think of living a larger life as well.  Something more involves more, and more meaningful, contribution over time. Acquired skills and knowledge enable a greater contribution.  Something more also means showing up and doing work that matters.  It’s the unseen, uncredited things you do for your family, friends or complete strangers that make a small or sometimes significant difference.  And it’s sacrificing the immediate gratification for the long term vision in daily actions.  What is your contribution?  What are you offering the world in this moment?  And how can you improve today?  I ask myself these questions every day, and sometimes I have the answer readily at hand.  Other days it’s more evasive.  But I do believe being present is a large part of the answer.

      My life, which is my body surely, is also something more – isn’t yours?  I’m watching people I care about age in different ways.  The body aging is a natural, if not always welcome, condition of being alive longer.  Something more when your older seems to be either left in your legacy of previous contributions or in your ongoing contribution.  As long as the mind is sharp, there’s no reason for contribution to stop.  If Stephen Hawking can leave such an incredible wave across the pond for centuries after learning he had a slow moving form of Lou Gehrig’s disease, then why shouldn’t someone who has full speech and much better, if slower than it once was, mobility not contribute as well?  I’m not elderly yet, but I’ll be damned if I just sit in the corner watching Wheel of Fortune when I get there.  I’ll be moving at a modified version of full speed as long as the mind and body allow, and if the body doesn’t allow, then my writing might accelerate even more.

      Don’t believe only to the edge of what your eyes actually see.

    • Sick Day

      My collection of streaks was disrupted by the flu yesterday. I managed to get the writing in, and the Duolingo French lesson, and the reading too, but the 10,000 steps petered out at the halfway mark, and work goals mostly pushed into today. I’ve lost six pounds in an involuntary fast, and the expectations for today have been modified by how long it took to drag myself out of bed. Such is a bout with the flu. It changes your priorities pretty quickly.

      We take our health for granted. I felt great and accomplished X the last couple of months in a row, so why shouldn’t I expect the same today? I have people reading this who are chuckling that the guy who never gets sick is conceding to the flu. So be it, the virus has asserted itself, now it’s time for my body to push back. I’ll try to check each box today anyway, beginning with this one.

    • Doing Things That Matter

      A little more than a year into my focus on daily habits, the overall the results are encouraging.  James Clear’s Atomic Habits poured gasoline on my focus on doing things that matter every day,  beginning with small things like reading more, writing every day and exercise.  It started with changing the routine when I got up in the morning, where once I’d consume sports media, check email, scroll through social media or play Words With Friends first thing in the morning, I started focusing on the very small habits that might move me forward.  Exercise to get the blood flowing, reading to get the brain matter firing on all cylinders, and writing, to finally do what I’ve been putting off for most of my life.  These aren’t everything that matter in my life, but they were the things I was pushing aside to focus on the other things.

      Priorities remain: family and work obligations come first, but following close behind are the daily habits. In fact, each habit improves the quality of my life, which improves the whole. Pretty simple, really, if you just incorporate the right habits and build them into your routine.  I’ve seen tangible momentum in all three, with the writing on this blog a measure of proof to consistency.  You’ll have to take my word for it on the exercise, and just like the writing daily habits add up over time.  I’ve seen the scale slowly – painfully slowly – showing consistent improvement.  I’ll take that.  I write a lot about writing, and walking.  And then there’s the reading….

      Once again the books are piling up, with four in the cue already I just purchased a Kindle version of Siddhartha by Herman Hesse and revisited Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath 1938-1941.  It would be far better to finish one of the original pile before adding more, but so be it.  Books tap you on the shoulder and tell you “It’s my turn” when they feel you’re ready.  This morning Hesse and Steinbeck were both bullying their way into my reading time, and I welcomed them with open arms.  My reading is accelerating, not by speed-reading (which I’ve tried but don’t enjoy), but through focus and occasional multi-tasking (reading on the Kindle app on the iPhone while in line at the store, and more frequently, reading with maximum font on the treadmill while churning out steps).  Consistent, daily reading has been one of the best things I could’ve done for myself.

      So what else matters?  Plenty.  The world is getting exponentially better in many ways, and sliding into the abyss in a few ways.  If you want to improve the world around you it starts with contribution.  The more you do, the more capacity you have to contribute more; more effort, more money, more intellectual horsepower, more empathy, more credibility, and more time.  Ironic, isn’t it?  The more you do the more time you’ll find for the things that matter.  And there’s plenty that matters, if you take the time to think about it.  And that’s where I find myself today, thinking about it and taking a small measure of action, one step at a time.

    • Rising to the Occasion

      “It might be possible to do something that’s not ordinary.” – Tom Petty

      I’ve heard this Tom Petty quote in my head since I heard him say it in an interview, released well after his death.  Do something that’s not ordinary.  Don’t just read about the accomplishments of others, take some action yourself.  And this blog is a step towards that.  You’re witnessing a bit of the doing something part, and eventually maybe it will be well beyond ordinary.  But not ordinary takes time.  10,000 hours kind of time, and likely much more than that.  Action repeated over and over until it becomes… something.  I keep reminding myself of that during these moments of grinding it out.  A blog is by nature a public-facing announcement to the world (hello, by the way – thanks for stopping by) that you’re doing something.  It’s a daily cadence of record, sometimes better than other times, but documented publicly that you’re putting in the time so that maybe you’ll get a little better over time.

      “Desire is the difference between where you are now and where you want to be in the future.” – James Clear

      More writing behind the blog offers an opportunity to accelerate, to pour gas on the fire and go beyond the ordinary.  I ask myself often, blogging is great and you’re showing progress, now what more have you got in you?  How will you rise to the occasion and do something…. more?

      “Writers should realize that the novels that are remembered, that become monuments, would in fact be those which err on the side of audacious prose.” – Chigozie Obioma

      Now that’s a challenge, isn’t it?  I’ll concede there isn’t much audacious prose in this blog, but then again the intent of alexandersmap was never audaciousness, only consistency of effort and a challenge to myself to make it consistently more interesting with fewer typos.  To use writing to master the habit of showing up, to borrow James Clear’s phrase.  In 2018, when I started this blog, I was inconsistent and unsure of the direction I wanted to take my writing.  In 2019 I became very consistent (writing every day, posting sometimes twice a day).  In 2020 the goal is to keep that consistency and take the writing to another level, something not ordinary, if you will.  I’m well aware that I’ve strayed from the original focus of the blog (local history and regional travel), but it’s a journey and the thing about journeys is you change course now and then.  I still love the original focus of this blog and will return to it often, hopefully in new and compelling ways.  But I know I’m on the journey too and the writing takes me wherever the muse wants to go.  Where will it take us next?  Time will tell.  The trick is to rise to meet it.

    • Playing Parts

      “All the world’s a stage,
      And all the men and women merely players;
      They have their exits and their entrances;
      And one man in his time plays many parts”
      – William Shakespeare, from As You Like It

      If New Year’s Day is the day of hope and dreams and resolutions for the future, then January 2nd is the day when the rubber hits the road.  It’s the day after that first day at the gym, that first day of not eating carbs or that first day of writing in earnest.  On the journey of becoming more, it’s when you feel the pull of gravity from the pile of distractions.  And sure enough here I am on the day after the New Day, working through my morning routine, slightly modified for location, with a look at the clock and the tasks ahead.  The sky is dark and the glow from the laptop shines a spotlight on the actor, still unsure of his lines but chipping away at it nonetheless.

      This morning I am still on Cape Cod, with the sky brightening and the jetty calling.  The writing incomplete, the day job tapping me on the shoulder saying “get going” but that jetty calling, so I bundled up and went out anyway, task list be damned.  It was one of those mornings where the cold breeze cuts deep through your layers, mocking your attempts to control Mother Nature.  I walked all the way out and watched the clouds turn from gray to blue to pink.  The pink is viral, starting in the east and spreading across the sky, deepening to a rose as it moves, and then almost as quickly it begins to fade as the light grows.  Such are the sunrises.  You have to embrace the moment at hand before it all fades away to the waking world.

      There’s always something to distract you here.  But I’m grateful that this visit has shaken me loose from the cobwebs of routine.  Really, that’s why I come here.  Today is a back-to-work day, and I confess I’ve already checked the numbers, scanned the email and taken note of people to call.  The day job waits impatiently for the actor to return to the stage to read his lines.  As with all of us, I’m one man in his time playing many parts, and it’s time to turn into that other character for the next act.  Now what was that first line again?

    • Better For Having Done So

      2019 was a year of change for all of us, as every year is, but it felt more profound this year. That has everything to do with writing about it. I know people who made changes on a massive scale, and others minor, but change happens whether we choose it or not. In the spirit of self-improvement as we enter the New Year, here are some small changes in routine that offered a profound return on time invested:

      Coffee consumption doesn’t seem like a big thing, but ever since I switched to the AeroPress I’ve reduced my daily coffee consumption, favoring one or two amazing cups to savor over multiple cups of average coffee from a Kurig or drip coffee maker.  I’ve reduced my personal plastic waste significantly as well.  I’d estimate that I’ve subtracted about 500 used K-cups from the landfill just making the switch.  I wish I’d done this years before, both for the reduction in waste and for the exceptional coffee the AeroPress makes.  On a side note, since the London and Scotland trip I’ve increased my tea consumption, switching coffee about half the time for tea, and find it a nice enhancement for my daily steaming hot beverage.

      Reading every morning, beginning with a quick read of The Daily Stoic for a jump start and moving to whatever book I was chewing on at the time, has built a routine and habit streak that has greatly enhanced my personal philosophy, helped me to know more about the history of the place I live and places I traveled to, opened my mind to spirituality and changed my perspective on a few things. I’ve read more and better books in 2019 and chewed through a few brilliant books that mocked me for years sitting on my bookshelf.  Nothing improves the mind like active participation in The Great Conversation.

      Educated travel in 2019 was enhanced by the reading, as you might imagine, but became a mission in itself.  Major trips to London, Scotland and Chicago were enhanced with educating myself about the places I was going, adding things I would have missed and subtracting things that may have been good but replaced with things that were amazing.  But this really became powerful for me in local travel.  Local travel took on new meaning for me with quick side trips to see the Saratoga Battlefield while I was in the Capital Region in New York and Fort Niagara in Buffalo, New York and Fort Western in Augusta, Maine.  I’ve hiked the trails in Ithaca, New York to see the stunning waterfalls in winter and spring, stopped at lonely graveyards to see the tombstone of Revolutionary War heroes and walked in dress shoes on soggy battleground sites deep in the off-season.  Educated travel offers a greater sense of place, and I’m better for having made the time to learn about and then visit these places.

      Writing every day has changed me completely.  The daily cadence, the skills acquired, and the deliberate action in the previous two habits to enhance the daily writing offered far more to me than any other daily routine.  We’ll see where it takes me in 2020, but wherever it goes, you’ll read about it on this blog.

      Walking has always been a part of my life.  I used to walk home from school four miles instead of taking the bus just to get away from the noise and secondhand smoke that was a part of bussing teenagers home back in those days.  When my dog Bodhi got older and passed away in 2019 the walks had decreased in length, and I found myself missing the nightly routine of walking for an hour with him looking at stars.  So I started walking again to get that minimum 10,000 steps, but also to come alive again.  Doing those steps on the beach or the rail trail or walking around the block at a random hotel somewhere became a mission.  I’m currently on a 19 day streak of 10,000 steps per day, managing to get my steps in through the holidays and hopefully for a long time to come.  I know I won’t always have the time to do it with work, but then again, what’s more important than maintaining a base level of fitness?  Walking is easy, and hasn’t caused nagging injuries like the burpees did for me.  When I can’t walk outside I’ll read on the treadmill, magnifying the font to crazy sizes so I maintain good posture.  But I double down on two habits and feel better for having done so.  So I’ll keep moving, and add other activity to enhance my fitness whenever possible.

      Looking at 2020, I’m not looking at resolutions as much as what can I add to my daily routine that will pay off over time?  And the answer for me is language acquisition.  Being bilingual or multilingual is nothing unusual in the rest of the world, but in American we tend to stick with English.  I think I’ve got my head wrapped around that one already.  Nothing improves travel like knowing the local language, and nothing challenges the brain like learning to speak it, so it’s time to get back on track.  I’ve dabbled in French, Spanish and Portuguese over the years, and it’s time to double down on learning two of them.  French and Spanish are the leading candidates, but I have a soft spot in my heart for Portuguese and may explore the language a bit as well.  Let’s see where this takes me.