My head is good again today. A combination of peace and energy is the best way I can describe it.
More and more I’m learning who I am, and accepting it. What I look like? Accept it. Strengths and weaknesses? Accept them.
Another good day.
A good day to do something!
Another good day today. So many tasks ahead of me but I’m in a good brain-space.
Remember that you can be at peace even when surrounded by commitments.
But try to make fewer commitments. OK? It will make future you glad.
The compounding benefits of reading, writing here, sitting and talking with another human being about good stuff, the deep stuff, the stuff that matters. I’m experiencing these benefits.
Again with the lessons taught long ago but finally becoming evident. “The first thing to go is the reading.” “Don’t talk to yourself, talk to God.” “God is not enough. You must have human help.” “We are slow learners and quick forgetters. That’s why you need the daily maintenance.”
It’s not a coincidence that these emergent truths came from old men. It’s not an accident that these truths, delivered to a younger me, took so long to become real to me.
Humility. Action, not intellect. But intellect is useful! Open-mindedness.
Wow.
There is a view I have of myself: mostly suffering, struggling. Not happy, not at peace, agitated, dissatisfied with my own performance, and usually a bit irritated at everything around me.
And yet, day after day recently, I have been ok. Do stuff at work or at home. Deal with stuff as it pops up, like the unexpected car repair needed.
Is it too much to ask? Dare I hope for the dominant mindset mode to be like this? Not taking myself too seriously, remembering scale (who I am in the big scheme of things), remembering relations (who am I in relationship to other people around me), remembering time (soon enough this little flame of consciousness on the planet will be sniffed out)?
Is it really true that it’s just a matter of spiritual maintenance?
Input/output. Whatever I’m doing now seems to be working. Keep doing it. Read. Write a little note or two here when something pops into your head.
Related: the Gary Vaynerchuk comment about the worthlessness of ideas/knowledge and the value of action. “The difference between knowing you have to do push-ups and doing push-ups.”
Which reminds me. The Tens has fallen off recently. Let’s get back to it.
Making a note because today was a good day and sometimes I forget this when I’m in a funk.
Hard boundaries. I didn’t get frozen yogurt today again because I told myself I had hard boundaries.
Gratitude list, just for drill:
That last bullet point shows the limits of writing in this way. In fact the whole list is vague because of the medium I am using.
But the feeling of gratitude is real in spite of the vagueness.
If you took it all away tomorrow I would be sad (unlike a stoic) but I believe I could start over from nothing, like a stoic, and continue to live a good life.
Keeping that last bullet point would be a necessary ingredient to a good life in those circumstances, but that is within my control.