Month: December 2020

I watched a YouTube video last night, a cartoon illustration of an Alan Watts talk.

He illustrated the meaning of “the present” by striking a gong.

He described exactly how I view myself in the world: a giant hourglass bringing the future to me, through the bottleneck of the present, which then produces the past.

I had a weird sensation when he struck the gong, and let it reverberate until the sound disappeared. I experienced, indeed, the present. All I did was listen to how the sound changed.

How do I stay there? How do I live in the experience of the resonating gong? That’s all there is, so why do I go elsewhere? How do I ignore (well, not ignore, but see the concepts for what they are) past and future?

The yearning this has created in me is startling.

I read that somewhere and I like it.

Sometimes I get agitated about wanting to finish a task fast. The more I’m agitated, the harder it is to finish. And a lot of times I will bail out and start something else instead.

Right now I’m doing a task that is slow and boring. (Reconstruct the past for bills received vs payments made). I’m doing it slowly.

First I hand-wrote the plan of action. How am I going to collect the old bills? What will I do with them when I get them? Same for payments. How will I find proof of payment?

Then I did an email search for what I could find. It took a little while to set up a filter, search, label sequence in GMail but I think I have a complete set of emails from the vendor. (Assuming the emails were archived, not deleted). Slow.

Then I downloaded all invoices as PDFs from the vendor to GDrive. Slow. Lots of duplicates, drafts. Confusing but it’s all in one place.

Now I’m building a GSheet with invoice data. It hyperlinks back to the individual PDF files for each invoice. Slow.

There is a second email address to search as well.

It’s slow. But smooth. I didn’t jump in halfway using someone else’s summaries. (I have two of those, which will be useful for quality control. But they aren’t reliable.)

There is a second task (this one my own). I am taking an online class. I came to the end of week three. Realized, doing the assignment, that I didn’t really digest the lessons of previous weeks. So I’m starting over, this time taking notes. Slow. I didn’t go slow before.

Slow the fuck down. Speed comes later. Be solid at every stage.

Nothing is quite so instructive as seeing someone perform a task that is easy for you.

You are skilled. You know what is happening, and why, and what lurks behind the physical manifestations of the task, seen to the expert but unseen to the noob.

Watching the noob, it is easy to get frustrated. “It’s so obvious!” That’s what my head screams, at least. My head screams other things, too.

Patience. You, too, were a noob. You still are, in fact. Other people are looking at you right now, with a screaming voice in their heads.

Empathy. Calm down. You know the XCKD comic strip? Be excited for them and yourself. Today is a day to learn a new cool thing.

Be one of the lucky 10,000 today.

What if they don’t want to learn, don’t want to put out the effort? Let them be. That’s not your problem.

But realistically most people are just hindered by fear and not wanting to look stupid. You’re are overestimating the probability that the person you’re dealing with is malicious or lazy, and even those sources of resistance can be weathered away with kindness and generosity.

This was written while contemplating a few routine tasks facing M. Logging into her G Suite admin panel to check on which credit card was attached. Dealing with the usual blizzard of bullshit paperwork that afflicts all business owners. Don’t underestimate how hard these things are for people who haven’t spent decades doing them.

It takes action action action.

From a Jocko Willink podcast, where he quotes a friend. Thinking is good. But action is what changes things.

To get accurate feedback from the world:

• Make yourself accountable.
• Make your success or failure measurable by some objective metric, not a bullshit subjective metric.

I think I have the seed of a good self-evaluation method. A way to do an employee performance review on myself. Not just for work stuff but life.

I’m going to try it out. I’m pumped.

I read this passage from Meditations and went “ouch”:

For how could we do what justice requires if we are distracted by things that don’t matter, if we are naive, gullible, inconstant?

Meditations, 11:10.

Ignore what he is talking about when he talks about justice (Nature’s highest aim, from which all other virtues flow).

What struck me is the bigger point. How can I do anything of value if I am gullible and naive?

And in real life, I am. I praise myself heavily (inside my head) for being willing to take people as they present themselves to me. That’s honorable in one way: don’t discard a person because of an opinion formed in your head before you even meet that person for the first time.

But it’s naive in another. People live in facades. They wear disguises. Sometimes the facades are deliberately intended to hide a truth from you, for good reasons (“Love me!”) or bad (“Trust me and let your guard down, so I can steal from you”).

Let’s acknowledge a truth here. I am not a shrewd judge of character. In fact, I’m terrible at it.

How can I be not naive, not gullible?

Time solves many of these problems. In time, a person’s true nature reveals itself.

Maybe learn to be cautious, wary. Wait for the reveal. And don’t dismiss the signals when they are given. Because that is something I do all the time. Second, third chances.

For myself, I want to live without a facade. I want to present myself to the world as I am, like a boxer in the ring, standing with his arms at his side.

Only by action do I figure out what I think. Only by action do my ideas improve. Only by action do I find peace.

You can’t think your way into right actions, but you can act your way into right thinking.

Someone, long ago, somewhere

Extremely busy life over the last few days: a very long road trip.

Interesting things to note:

• The reading falls away.
• The difference between the first day, which was a day of energy and deep peace (the promises have come true) compared to the last, which was a day of deep fatigue and stupor.
• How deep sadness correlates with fatigue and poor food choices.
• How inspiring it is to get out of the city and into the wilds, the empty spaces.
• How close that living in those open spaces is for me, and yet so far away.
• How good fortune has favored me.
• How I arrived here, from 100,000 tiny choices made with clear intention over the last 30+ years. What is my primary purpose? It has been consistent from the beginning.
• Such a clear beginning, evident in my life. A single decision, followed through with consistent actions, and look at what happened.

Yes, I know that the outcomes could have been wildly different. You’ve seen people make the same decision and seen the wildly varied lives that resulted.

Just remember the power of a single decision. Make a decision and cling to it the way you did to that first decision decades ago.

I am overwhelmed by the road before me. Too much work. Looking up, I cannot see the pinnacle I seek to climb. Am I up for the journey?

I read Meditations and find an answer.

He deposits his sperm and leaves. And then a force not his takes it and goes to work, and creates a child. This … from that?

Or: He pours food down his throat. And then a force not his takes it and creates sensations, desires, daily life, physical strength and so much else besides.

To look at these things going on silently and see the force that drives them. As we see the force that pushes things and pulls them. Not with our eyes, but just as clearly.

Meditations, 10:26

The task before me is work-related. I am building in an entirely new direction. It seems overwhelming, and it is so much easier to revert to old ways. I am afraid.

Remember what I do and what I don’t do. Apply the small pressure, relentlessly, like a wedge in a log. How the log splits? Not my decision.

Those memories of wedges and a sledgehammer, as a teenager. It is hard work, splitting logs into firewood, but satisfying. Bring down the hammer, again and again. That’s all you do.

Let gravity take its course. My job is to show up every day and do the new work behind the hard boundaries I have set.

“The Father in me doeth the work.” Isn’t that how the phrase goes? Marcus Aurelius would say nature, but it’s all the same.

This new path, if it works, promises a freedom that I don’t have right now. I yearn for that freedom. Will I achieve freedom? I don’t know. All I know is that I am not free now.

Just do today’s work today. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Except it isn’t evil. It’s just action, chosen by me, directed by my choice. And the consequences? Nature (or, in this case, The Market) controls whether it will be successful or not.

And anyway, that word “success” is misplaced. Success is a word to describe things within my control. Success is me doing what I intend to do.

Outcomes? That’s not a matter of success or not. Desired outcomes happening or not? That doesn’t mean success or failure. That’s hope.

If I accomplish an intended action, that’s success. If a desired outcome does not result from those actions, I am still successful. Now my choice, within my control, is to see the outcome and adjust my actions, trying again to hit my intended target.

Remember. Scale and relativity.

Good. Now you know, again, who and where you are. You forgot again, didn’t you?

Now, take action and do not measure your happiness by the outcomes. If the outcomes are pleasurable, take pleasure in them of course.

But do not take credit for the outcomes, just as you don’t take credit for the fine young adults that your children have become. You provided the start. The rest? Not so much up to you.