Reality Laughs

Saturday morning. Not a weekend day off.

Work. Last minute deadline task. (A) Continue refining the fat outline on Plan A, until you’re satisfied. (B) Figure out a Plan B with a fat outline.

If I have time: Some work and writing for the long term project I want to accomplish. (A) Grab and save the document that is going to be the center post of the book. (B) Outline what you want to say, and don’t make this a fucking encyclopedia on the topic. It’s a practical Field Guide for the weary. At least do (A) to keep momentum.

In with this: (1) call to bookkeeper for interview, and (2) launch the Pentathlon.

Busy!

Let’s start the day slowly: water before that first jolt of coffee.

Let’s work at a measured pace all day, with care and consideration, completing each task before moving to the next.

Let’s complete the afternoon with a run: no particular care for pace, running the pre-determined distance.

And then home. Shower, light dinner, and sleep.

Each day a new beginning.

Let’s go.

As for the big picture? Measured actions there, too. None today. Maybe tonight if I have the energy. Today is a “do the ordinary” day.

I want it all now. It all does not exist now. I am creating it. So have it all, create it all, but spread over time.

Small example, running. I have better than doubled my comfortable running distance in six weeks, admittedly from a modest base. This has been accomplished with a defined schedule and program of running: this much, when, no more. I will get to half-marathon distance by the end of August/early September with ease.

I have business plans. They have a three year horizon on them. I cannot accomplish those goals as well as meet my other commitments now but I can in three years.

Three years for a reason: that’s the remaining term on the lease and the IT contract.

Plan because I have wanted to do this and I think it will work. Not in a grandiose way, but good enough.

Accomplishing this goal will be easy with the same methodical approach I am taking to the half-marathon training. The fact that I am up early this morning tells me how to do it and when. I don’t have a sustainable system but I have a clue on what it looks like. And a vision of what fully fleshed-out will look like.

It is still dark outside. I can hear the street sweeper truck a few blocks away: it’s loud. The day begins.

A new day.

It’s a bright, sunny morning
Each day a new beginning

Lifeboat, by Miranda Lee Richards

That song is lodged in my brain permanently. How many obscure (let’s be kind to Miranda) artists have written small gems like Lifeboat? And those gems are hidden forever by time and an avalanche of average vomited up by the machine, invisible even to the persistent Seeker.

I heard the song once. Jason Bentley played it and I was driving around doing something and that was enough to place the gem in my open hand.

How many Lifeboats have I never heard? And not just songs. Books. Poems. People. Sunsets. A stranger’s laugh. A sky filled with clouds on a windy day. How many of these glories of life were invisible, within reach, and yet passed by unnoticed?

As many as I have missed, there are yet in front of me to experience. If I see them.

How do I see them? By doing what I did on Monday. Stop. Go to the beach. Have a corn dog. Walk around with no purpose in mind. Go down that street and see what is at the end of it. Nothing! The harbor. Some workmen eating lunch. Boats.

Slow down. This morning, slowly drink your coffee. Hear the sounds of the birds, the neighbors, the distant hiss of the freeway.

None of it is going anywhere. There is enough.

Sleep. Was I sleeping or not? I felt awake and restless. The tracking device will tell me I guess.

I now have a Whoop on my right arm and wear a watch on my left. An Apple Watch.

It’s a bit much.

I’m going to have to start wearing the Apple Watch to bed to cross-check the performance of the Whoop. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? It’s tracking devices all the way down.

I will experiment for a good while with the tracking device lifestyle. Is it useful? Is it interesting? Patience. Give it a year or two. See what happens.

At the moment, the Whoop is providing noise: I don’t know the meaning of what it tells me. What is “recovery” in Whoopspeak? Let’s wait to see. Maybe my ancient Apple Watch plus an app will give me better sleep data than the Whoop.

100 days in a row of writing a minimum of five minutes and publishing something—anything—every day.

Publishing started on Twitter. Now it’s here. I had The Third Site to write on as well. Now it is dormant and I will abandon it. I write here and I write professionally.

https://laststanding.app

Thank you, Ultraworking crew. This is transformative.

Day off today.

The plan: road trip to a nice town and have lunch in a nice restaurant.

Let’s start. The usual “new day” tasks, and now I sit, with my morning coffee, writing for the new day. Day 100 of 2023 as it turns out.

This is a test of resolve. In the same way that the methodical training schedule for running is paying dividends, it is time for the methodical schedule for business. Give it a breather today. Soak up the sun.

I will explain.

I have a set schedule for increasing my stamina and distance in running—in preparation for a half-marathon. The plan is boring, normal, and doesn’t push the envelope of effort. I didn’t think it up—it’s the building block of every recommendation I saw.

I am emphasizing these points: (a) no genius involved, only copying; (b) underperformance, underwhelming efforts; and (c) time. T

hree days a week, short/short/long. Rest days between.

No Push the Tempo.

And it’s working. My aerobic performance is great. Yesterday I could have gone much longer than my set target, but I stopped. My joints, muscles, and tendons need time, too. I don’t let the driver push for More.

More distance will come in time.

That same approach is now to be deployed with the business. Relentless, achievable, methodical, measured effort—with intentional rest days included.

That is how I will approach the building of a new capability, a new line of business.

And that is why today is a rest day.

There are basics. Earnestly pursued they create contentment.

Be honest

With others, of course. But especially with yourself.

Cash register honesty is easy. Telling yourself the truth about yourself is hard.

Be kind

With others, of course. But especially to yourself.

Petting kittens and playing with puppies is easy. Entertaining a toddler is easy.

Knowing when to push, when to hold back, when to cut—with the objective of what is best for the other person—is hard.

Especially it’s a matter of kindness to yourself. It’s too easy to be too hardcore (my one “10K every day” exercise routine mantra is an example) or too soft (“why yes I will eat half a cheesecake, I can eat less tomorrow”).

Physical exercise and diet are the easy examples. Interactions with people? Hard. What is best for them? For me? For the group, community, society?

Get good at something

This is underrated and so important.

Pursue something—really, it could be anything—and become really damned good at it.

This will take time. You will realize that there is no “there” there. The pursuit has no finish line.

You will, from a position of mastery, respect other masters (in your own field and elsewhere) as peers, fellow pilgrims. They are not competitors.

You will recognize hidden masters all around you, in plain sight. They are special, because they seek nothing, they want nothing, they just are. You can become one if you choose. This is the highest calling.

This to me is every man’s fate: to deliberately choose the path of apprentice, journeyman, and master of a difficult endeavor. Or . . . emptiness.

One chooses this path in the same way that a man chooses the path of Father—not for himself, but for his children yet unborn, for whom he willingly and quietly bears a lifetime of responsibility.

It’s early—before dawn. My mind has been working for a while, even before wakening. Dreams of work. Those dreams of logic and process that don’t quite make sense but almost make sense so I obsessively return to the start and replay the sequence to make it work better and it doesn’t so I return to the start . . . .

All while telling myself, in dream state, that I will remember this when I wake up and it’s all extremely valuable. Which of course it’s not. It’s just a fever dream without the fever.

I get these dreams when I have work pressure. This one is about a current project.

So my mind is cranking and I awaken and there is no going back to sleep.

A bite to eat, early. Let it settle for a couple of hours, then run.

See how the rest of the day turns out. I have Plans.

I am quietly streaming Scriabin’s complete piano sonatas while I’m working on my laptop. Me and PDFs and Keynote and Word and my head full of decades of technical stuff. And Scriabin.

From nowhere a passage muscled itself from background to fully occupying my consciousness. Stopped me dead cold. I could do nothing but listen. It brought to mind Evie’s funeral, and Hal’s anguish. And then, the music released its grip and allowed me to return to work.

Music can make me weep. Misere does it. So does Ebben? Ne andrò lontana.

And that ancient opera recording (1910s? 1920s?) that I have sought for decades now. Heard in the car, on KUSC and played by Jim Svejda I would guess. A Sunday night. I remember that. A soprano, an old, tinny, scratchy recording, all of the musicians long dead of course. I often wonder who or what I heard that night.

But a few minutes of piano that can command front and center of my consciousness at its will? That’s a first.