It’s what you DON’T talk about that is the most important part of the conversation.
I don’t talk — even to myself — about aging. I actively reject the topic and the implications.
It is a frantic refusal to look at truth.
Here is a Tweet from 4/8/24:
It’s never what you see. It’s what you’re unwilling to see. It’s what you refuse to see that sees everything.
Paul Portesi
But he has lots of variations on that idea.
Trust.
Rare, priceless, hard to accomplish.
And the other person has “trust” — not you. You don’t own it, you don’t control it, you don’t create the mindset of trust in your customer’s head
Yet simple. And easy, if you have made a decision to be trustworthy.
You cannot create trust. You can only behave in a trustworthy manner. Marcus Aurelius strikes again.
Jerry Seinfeld quote (allegedly) from Twitter:
“No one’s really that great. You know who’s great? The people that just put tremendous amount of hours into it. It’s a game of tonnage.”
Put in the work.
Ground to a halt. Fatigue. Mid-afternoon. I need a nap.
Be picky about what you read
Be picky about what you write
@dineshraju
This is a drum that needs to be beaten all the time.
As a man thinketh . . . .
Focus on what you want more of.
Ignore what you want to see less of.
If you dwell on “ain’t it awful” and conspiracy theories, guess what! You get more awful and the conspiracy theories come true. “They” are doing “that” to “us” kind of conspiracy theories, I mean. If you dwell on those type of thoughts, “they” have taken over your soul.
Displacement.
“Write well” does not correlate with “smart”.
“Smart” does not correlate with “got yer shit together.”
I have been self-delusional here. (A) That I write well. (B) That the correlation exists, implying I’m smart. This fallacy I’m seeing daily, now that I am willing to be humble. (C) And I certainly don’t have my shit together in any meaningful fashion.
But.
(D) So what?
Acknowledge these truths: I overestimate my skills and my intelligence. I’m average in the shit-together department. And it doesn’t matter — on a cosmic or lifetime scale.
I’m OK.
It’s 1 a.m. I can’t sleep (jet lag), and I’m at peace.
We are all privates in this army. Even me.
If I consider all of the things in the world I don’t know, and will never know . . . am I smart? Nope.
If I consider the new things I come across daily and struggle to understand—or am oblivious to their existence . . . am I smart? Nope.
If I consider how writing is a struggle and how often thoughts I want to speak come out obviously wrong or new and different thoughts erupt spontaneously from my brain . . . do I have any particular skill? Nope.
Through earnest and dogged persistence I have found a plateau on which I rest, mid-climb. Yet the mountains call me to rise and trudge upward. Why, I cannot say. Yet, climb I must.
This is for future me, in case I look here.
You’re in Milan again. It’s mid-day, rainy and chilly outside. You’re in an AirBnB in your familiar neighborhood. I will go get lunch soon.
An endless series of coffees has done nothing for me. I am jet-lagged despite a full night’s sleep.
And starting, ever so slightly, to perceive the shadows that I shy away from, driving me this way and that.
It has taken a lifetime. A spiritual awakening of the educational variety—that’s my path, apparently.
“One day, he decided to be happy.” This works when I remember to make that decision.
“One day, he decided to be at peace.” That should work, too. Because why not?
I write stuff here as a journal, yet I never go back and read what I wrote. Same same business website: I hate looking at it. Same same life: I ignore the past utterly. I only look forward; occasionally I am present in the now.
Why?
When I’m working I can be at or beyond my current limits of skill and ability.
That’s stressful. It could be a happy stress or a fearful stress.
Or I can be operating below current limits of skill and capacity.
That’s not stressful. That’s effortless. Calm.
If I operate at or above current capabilities, I grow. I am learning something new. I’m getting stronger. So it’s good to be there. It’s fun and invigorating to learn something new, to develop a new capability.
The stress comes from external factors. What are the stakes? Is someone relying on me to get them out of a jam? Am I imposing arbitrary expectations on myself, for example to develop mastery in a new field in an impossibly short time?
I’m going to aim for awareness in selecting projects to work on. Try to operate below my limits at all times when advising people. Expand my limits by writing and learning. Then backfill into those limits by doing projects.