not my tsuruhime

My favorite television show as a little kid was 'The Kakurangers', the 18th season of Japan's 'Super Sentai' series. It was the last of three seasons I watched. American readers are likely familiar with the 'Power Rangers', an adaptation based on the protagonists from the 16th season of 'Super Sentai', the Zyurangers - the Kakurangers was basically the same thing except in Japan (and therefore, much better).

A remarkable bit of trivia about the Kakurangers was how its leader, Tsuruhime, was the first female leader in the history of the series. Or, at least, that's what you'll learn if you read about the show on Wikipedia or ask the barely informed about the series. Though I was only six years old at the time, I can tell you, reader, that when I moved to America I knew one thing about Tsuruhime: she wasn't the leader!

I should note that although I wasn't quite the world's sharpest six-year old at the time, I did understand a few simple things. I knew that she was supposed to be the leader. Hell, all I remember about anytime I watched was hearing about how Tsuruhime was the leader. There was even an episode where she passed a 'test' by allowing hyper-realistic wind-up dolls of her fellows ninjas to 'die' for the sake of the mission (1).

But as a six-year old, I also noticed other clues. Color, for one. Traditionally, the leader of the group always wore red. Guess who wore red among the Kakurangers? (Hint: one of the four dudes.)

Another was position. Throughout the series, the leader always stood in the center whenever the group posed together (which was often). The other four group members would flank the leader, two to a side. Guess where Tsuruhime stood? (Hint: ask Beyonce.)

But the big one for me at the time was super powers. Super powers - what else matters to a six-year old, right? I've listed the five super powers below - have a look, reader, and then guess which one belonged to The Great Leader, Tsuruhime:

-The ability to multiply at will and bring clones into a fight

-The ability to run underground

-The ability to run on water

-The ability to enlarge

-The ability to turn into a paper crane and fly around

I mean, we all know the answer, right? Right? RIGHT??

(Let's just take a moment to watch the opening sequence and get on the same page... and pay attention the order they come out, which further... oh, never mind.)

Now, all of the above is kind of suspect to my memory. And since I was six, it's a spotty recollection. Still, I think my point is clear - if you are going to have token leadership, you might as well not have it at all. If the series wanted to make a point about having a female leader, they should have just done the simple thing and had a female leader. Have her wear RED, give her a useful super power, and make sure she stands in the middle anytime they take a selfie. Easy, right?

The half-baked approach 'Super Sentai' went with might have been able to fool a four or even five-year old version of me, granted, but that's probably not a great benchmark to go by, is it?

Footnotes / do I have anything else to add about the Power Rangers...?

0. Like, who is this idiot Sasuke?

The ridiculous decision making employed by The Not Leader But Wears Red And Stands Centrally, Sasuke, is worth noting. The guy is completely inept! He can turn into literally hundreds of multiples of himself at any time. But what does he do in battle? Uh, usually something else, something not involving turning into a 100x stronger version of himself. Go get 'em, Lone (Power) Ranger...

I think this brings me to a realization about why I liked the Animorphs series so much. After the initial suspension of disbelief - that kids can turn into any animal they touch so they can fight aliens who control people by slithering into their brains - author K.A. Applegate doesn't ask for much more from us readers. Jake, the leader, and may I say The Leader, has a tiger morph. What morph does he use in every land battle? The tiger morph. Every time. Why? Because it's his best f'ing morph. If Sasuke was the leader of the Animorphs, he would probably turn into a golden retriever for a decisive battle and bark like a fool while getting everyone eaten by Visser Three.

1. I bet this was never required of the previous seventeen male leaders in the series...

Apparently, proving you would allow the rest of the team to die was a condition of leadership - great lesson to teach the youth of Japan if you ask me.

tales of two cities, vol 8: dec '16

12/02/2016
One Broadway / Kendall Sq at Main St / 3rd St (2:23 pm)
Porter Square Station (2:47 pm)

Drivers and pedestrians watch bikers run red lights frequently enough to sometimes ask me if this is legal. It is not. My usual response is to link it to jaywalking against the crossing signal or texting from behind the wheel - just because it happens every moment of the day doesn't make it legal.

On this day, I watch a biker zoom past me and through a red at the intersection of Galileo Galilei Way and Broadway. This usually happens once or twice every time this particular light turns red. What happens next is new - a police motorbike turns onto the road behind it and pulls the rider over at the next intersection. I'd love to hear the conversation but by the time I reach the next light, both parties have moved on.

Still, progress... right? The crazy riders zooming through lights need to be stopped! It's only fair, I think, because if we aren't pulling bikers over, then how will we ever justify pulling drivers over for...

-Rolling through stop signs
-Failing to pass with at least three feet of clearance
-U-turning across double median lines
-Driving while texting
-Cutting bikes off to pick up ride-share passengers
-Opening the car door without looking
-Doing karaoke while driving
-Reversing suddenly on a one-way street
-Double parking their vans on moving day
-Texting while doing karaoke while driving
-Driving with an elbow on the wheel while threatening to run me over
-Leaning out the car window to yell a (technically not applicable but still offensive) racial slur at me
-Taking their eyes off the road to yell 'HELMET' and almost swerving into a parked car as they do it
-Gravely referring to their crashes as 'accidents'
-Pissing away our clean air and natural resources
-Contributing to a national dependency leading to the Cheetos mascot being elected...

...never mind. Let's just focus on nabbing those wild bikers going three miles per hour through a red light at an empty intersection first. If these people are whatever it is I was called, maybe we can deport them, too. Broken windows theory, I think this is known as.

12/14/2016
Harvard University River Houses at DeWolfe St / Cowperthwaite St (3:59 pm)
Danehy Park (4:14 pm)

Danehy Park (8:22 pm)
Cambridge Main Library at Broadway / Trowbridge St (8:41 pm)

When I first started on Hubway, I was constantly aware of the clock. The thirty-minute timer, if exceeded, resulted in a fine of at least one dollar. Additional increments would send the fine ever-higher. As I became more comfortable, I found myself less concerned about this. Generally, I knew when my time limit was approaching and made the adjustments necessary to get my bike docked without penalty. But if I lost a buck, well, Hubway, thanks for nothing...

In some cases, I stayed on the bike past the thirty minute limit. Sometimes, I just decided paying the fine was worth the minutes saved docking and unlocking a bike to reset the timer. In others, I recognized docking the bike was a potential mistake because others could take the bike away before Hubway would allow me to take out a new bike during my one-minute waiting period.

This pattern is not unique to biking. In fact, I suppose it is a universal feature of many things. We become better at something and, over time, lean less on the rules and definitions guiding our beginnings. A seed always looks the same as any other. It's growth and light and understanding fusing with underlying characteristics which ultimately determine how things take shape.

Hospice volunteering is no different. On this day, I stay well past my six PM end time. When I leave it is almost eight. There is a new resident there and my instincts suggest leaving would be a mistake. I have the time and so I stay.

The visit ends up being one of my most memorable. The resident is originally from another country. We seem to share a kinship of spirit. By the end of the night, I'm accused of being both a healer and a writer.

I'm not so sure about her conclusion. When I leave, we agree to aim for one out of two.

is the business bro ambitious or unfocused?

What's the difference between an ambitious company and an unfocused one? It sounds like a silly joke (or just a silly question) but I think the answer leads to a key insight about how companies make decisions.

A lot of organizations seem to get into trouble when they disguise, excuse, or reframe a lack of focus as ambition. A company with multiple product lines or offerings in many industries could describe themselves as 'ambitious' - after all, look at all the work going on!

But it is just as likely that the company is unfocused. If they have no plan for how to dominate their industry or no consistency in how they allocate resources for investment purposes, then short-term profit-seeking might become the dominant factor in decision making. Why invest in the future if the future is undefined?

A few days later, I was doing some 'business bro' reading (specifically, about Amazon buying Whole Foods) when I came across this little snippet of insight:

If you don’t understand a company’s goals, how can you know what the strategies and tactics will be? Unfortunately, many companies, particularly the most ambitious, aren’t as explicit as you might like.

This was written in the context of Amazon, one of the world's largest companies yet one that Wikipedia helpfully classifies as being in the 'Internet' industry. Internet industry???

Is Amazon the exception that proves the rule? Who knows. With the drones and the two-day shipping and that guy that shoots you in your own house, Amazon does seem like an ambitious sort of place to me. But I would also understand the point of view that Amazon has so much going on it could easily fall into the 'unfocused pretending to be ambitious' category I invented just moments ago.

If I had to pick one or the other here, I would lean toward focused. From my very limited understanding of Amazon's company history, they never sought short-term gains 'just because'. This seems consistent with a focused approach. However, given their massive reach into so many different areas - and now into grocery shopping! - the evidence of being unfocused is there for anyone willing to play Devil's advocate.

Perhaps the Amazon case shows it is OK to appear unfocused so long as the temptation to seek short-term profits is ignored. Just having the resources available to buy Whole Foods shows that they are reaping the rewards of their ongoing focus on investment over the last two decades. If at some point the true focus of the company does emerge, aligning resources and focusing attention on this new purpose will not be distracted by a loyalty to past successes or a need to maintain existing profit streams. Maybe a better way to think of what Amazon is doing involves a combination of the two characteristics - as long as the temptation to settle for short-term gains can be ignored, it is OK to remain ambitious and unfocused.

reading review: bluets

Bluets by Maggie Nelson (December 2017)

Maggie Nelson’s memoir about, among other things, the color blue was one of the books I most looked forward to rereading all through 2017.

I’ve mentioned before how the surest sign I’ve enjoyed a book is if I go out and read more of the author’s work – let’s call this ‘the second helping’ rule. In the case of Bluets, you could say I cleared off the entire table – all I have left is Women, The New York School, and Other True Abstractions, a book I just got for Christmas.

I’ve also noted how any book that inspired me to write something must have meant something – this post from the early days of TOA is evidence of how Bluets fit this particular criteria.

From this recent re-reading, I was struck by a number of simple observations. One I enjoyed was the realization that some of our most treasured objects come to us completely out of the blue. These unexpected gifts we stumble across in our daily routines refute the insistence that we always know what we want. The temptation of being in control is significant but in the origin stories of how we first came into contact with the objects we eventually cherish is a lesson – instead of seeking out what to acquire next, look for activities that put us in the path of spontaneity and serendipity.

A darker yet more interesting note acknowledged the temptation to be jealous of the suffering or sadness others have overcome. I’m not sure this is a thought I would have taken down had it not spoken to some of my experiences but, well, there you go, reader, breaking news is that sometimes I’ve been a jealous little monster, too. I’m not referring to anything cruel here, reader, just simpler thoughts like I would have played through that injury or I would have tried to rebuild instead of moving on or I would have gone up and said something. Tucked away under all of this, of course, is the quiet reality - we're probably all going to go through it, at one point or another - and maybe this jealousy reflects the sense of wanting to 'just get it over with' that I've come to know so well over the years (1).

What all these thoughts share is the singular focus on my own perspective and, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve thankfully cultivated the ability to see things from more points of view. As Nelson points out in a different context, a liar who wouldn’t have lied doesn’t exist. In the same way, a fellow human who would have done something the way I would have done it doesn’t really exist, either, except in the restless corners of my imagination, and understanding this is undoubtedly evidence of my own expanding empathy.

I take responsibilities for these thoughts and temptations from my past but I don’t think I’ll feel this way again. Part of this is a reflection of my personal growth. Having suffered my own share of losses, disappointments, and setbacks in recent years, I know that moments of great sadness or suffering allow us only to do what we can. I also suspect I’ve reversed some of society’s negative conditioning in terms of how to approach these matters (a topic I cover in more detail below) and as I’ve come to discover myself in terms of how I relate to others in suffering, I find the temptation referenced earlier has given way to more pragmatic thinking centered on determining what I’m able to do (2).

A final thought I enjoyed from Bluets is best left in the author’s own words – loneliness is solitude with a problem.

One up: I was delighted to see in Bluets some connections to the ideas I especially liked from some of my other recent reading. In reference to the process of writing an emotionally draining passage, Nelson observes how the grief or shock or joy an author feels at the time of writing soon gets lost as the words disappear in the flow of the work. It reminded me of the observation Tobias Wolfe made in his introduction for Andre Dubus’s Broken Vessels – a gifted writer expresses shock, rage, and grief through meticulously detailed observation.

I also enjoyed the admittedly looser connections back to my own writing. Longtime readers will surely recall this rather confounding post about indigo – one of its main themes (editor’s note: ‘themes’) was how indigo is a color we simply never hear about. Well, reader, I suppose ‘we’ in the previous remark is not inclusive of those who’ve read Bluets as Nelson makes several references to the forgotten color throughout. One note I took down on the matter referenced how indigo blue was once called the devil’s dye. My intelligence broadened by this trivial fact, perhaps I should reconsider my opinion that indigo deserves greater prominence in the coming years (3).

One down: As mentioned above, I’m skeptical about society’s strategies for dealing with grief. I’m sure I’ve shared my (sarcastic) endorsement of companies that offer to extend up to a full week of bereavement leave, for example. But the widespread acceptance of such policies does reflect how most people approach their hardships with a renewed commitment to staying busy, perhaps with an eye on full distraction, and resigned to relying on time to do a lot of the work required for healing, recovering, and moving on.

And yet, I do think we should find more time for grief. Nelson brought this sentiment to mind (and I’m inclined to suggest she shares my view) when she referenced President Bush’s suggestion that time for grieving 9/11 had passed. These comments were made on September 21, 2001. I’ll note for you math wizards out there, that’s ten full days of grief – one day for every two hundred people, just over seven minutes for each person – who perished in the terrorist attack. Good grief, indeed.

One of Nelson’s thoughts I definitely agreed with was how rejecting the hierarchy of grief is a form of enlightenment. Loss is loss, I suspect, and I notice varying understanding of this fact in my hospice volunteering. For those experienced in grief and loss, there is no hierarchy, just a shared knowledge that people are standing in uncharted territory and an empathic commitment to helping them find their way back.

The power of life, the will to live, the joy of existence - these are forces that are near impossible to contain. For Nelson, suicide is therefore only possible by ambush or by a long-term suppression of these forces. The challenge presented by her ‘ambush’ point of view is beyond my limited perspective; the task to reverse another’s suppressed zest for life is one anyone can take on by bringing their fullest self to the task of being present with another.

Just saying: I suspect one reason people struggle to talk with those who are grieving is a form of sympathy – at some level, people know saying the wrong thing will be hurtful, perhaps violent. Those who suspect they might hurt someone with their words are, perhaps, well advised to steer clear of those still writhing in pain from their most recent loss.

The default for many is to use common clichés and empty phrases with those who are still struggling with pain or loss. I think these expressions have tremendous value to help break the silence during a difficult time. But using these platitudes to try and explain events to someone who is in pain feels like a step too far for me. I agree with Nelson in this one, in fact – framing the worst that can happen to another as a 'learning opportunity' or whatever else is a form of violence. As she asks in Bluets - what spiritual lesson is so important to learn from becoming a quadriplegic?

I’m remind here of an Emerson quote Nelson uses in Bluets – I grieve that grief can teach me nothing – it strikes me that perhaps suffering, too, suffers from its inability to always impart wisdom on the hurt.

Footnotes / just get it over with, an example / a potshot at the zen-sei / there is a thing called ‘zen hospice’, fyi / pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name...

1. This also applied to grueling workouts for team sports…

A loosely related example I thought about comes from how I used to feel when I was in the latter half of a test-taking group.  I might see people finish up ahead of me and think – ah, lucky them – even though we all were taking the same test and, therefore, going to endure the same struggle. It didn’t matter if I was well-prepared or if I hadn’t studied at all – I always felt the same way, exemplifying the ethos of just getting it over with each time.

In these moments, it didn’t matter that we all on the same choppy sea, coming from the same port, headed for the same dock. It just mattered that my boat was a little further behind, that I could see my companions stepping onto shore while I was still bobbing among the waves. I suppose in a certain way I was being ‘fully present’ in these moments but suspect this isn’t what the local zen-sei means by the idea…

2. Another Dubus reference?

Andre Dubus – mentioned in the main post just after this footnote – once commented on how people often do not stop to help others in need simply because they do not know what to do. It’s a good instinct, I think, but makes me wonder why we do so little to teach people what to do. Surely, our educational system has some room to teach techniques for helping students learn the best ways to support the depressed and communicate with the suffering?

I guess this goes back to a post from months ago where I rambled recklessly wrote eloquently on the way the current educational system prioritizes helping students develop a comfort with ideas at the expense of developing a comfort with other people.

3. I heard he offers favorable terms, at least…

The other option here is to become more satanic, I guess. The devil’s dye!

ben f’ing franklin puts things into their places

I’ve worked quite a bit over the years at become better organized. This process has mostly involved drawing on lessons from my reading to form my own personalized organizing philosophy. These days, I’m feeling pretty… well, organized… and so I thought I would highlight a few of the more important bits of wisdom I've accumulated over the years on this space.

But before I get into that, I want to talk about time. Specifically, how much time should I spend organizing? It’s tricky because I could spend all day organizing if my heart so desired (editor's note: it doesn't, but bear with us). Surely, there is an optimal amount of time I could spend organizing but, despite all the reading I’ve done, I’ve yet to come across a recommendation for a daily standard.

Recently, I realized one answer to this question could have snuck past my otherwise watchful eye. Daily Rituals – a book detailing the various routines of artists and creators throughout history – included a blurb about Benjamin Franklin’s personal schedule. At the end of his highly productive day was a two-hour block dedicated to ‘putting things in their places’ (1).

Wait…

Two f’ing hours?!? I got better things to do than spend two hours putting away chopsticks, opening my mail, and hanging up my clothing, right? But if it was good enough for Ben Franklin, one of our nation’s greatest thinkers, surely it is good enough for me? I suppose I should compromise and admit that, at the very least, his routine indicates that everyone should devote some time every day for the mundane task of Putting Things In Their Places.

Now, modern reader, unlike Mr. Franklin we do have some good alternatives for how we spend time (we can watch The Bachelor, for example, and we should). I don't want to spend the entire night ‘organizing’ by moving everything I own three feet to the left. But I am going to apply his idea in a limited way, just to see how it goes. Can’t hurt, right?

For now, I’ll start by scheduling some time at the end of certain activities strictly for ‘putting things in their places’. I suspect this will lead to some unexpected insights with my routine. Just like those who cannot afford the tip will not buy the meal, I wonder if considering the clean-up and organizing steps as part of the activity will help me make better decisions about what activities to start in the first place. I’ll keep you posted, reader.

Footnotes / the editor is here?

1. Let’s put Tim in his place

Editor’s note: the actual phrase Franklin used is 'put things in their places'.

He also includes 'supper, music, or diversion, or conversation; examination of the day' in the same section and devotes four hours total to the space instead of just two. As long time readers around here will know, Tim’s ability to recall quotes from memory is, shall we say, a little disorganized.

Those interested can follow this link to another blog post that examines Franklin's daily schedule.

2018 toa book of the year award, may update - part five

Though this month's eliminations are being revealed here in no formal order, I do want to point out that after today there will only be six books remaining on the shortlist.

More to come in the June newsletter...but today, to business.

August - The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz

Some books inspire thinking while others prompt action – over the course of two separate readings, this book did both for me. Though the book is tailored to the aspiring CEO, the lessons within were valuable for me years ago in my own role as a rookie manager and the ideas proved indispensable last summer as I prepared my pitch for upcoming job interviews.

Parting thought: Business books tend to focus only on successful companies – these make for interesting stories but serve no purpose in explaining success.

September - Impro by Keith Johnstone

Johnstone’s 1979 classic hardly requires my recommendation – the target audience is already well aware of this book and its overall quality. One pleasant surprise about Impro was its significant insight into teaching – speaking more generally, this book is valuable in fields very much unrelated to improv theater.

Parting thought: A good story is a routine interrupted.

leftovers: two posts about traffic lights

In 2015, 5,376 pedestrians and 818 cyclists were killed in motor vehicle collisions. I was not sure if those totals were included in the figure I cited in the main post - just in case I forgot, I thought I'd share it today for reference purposes.

I'm always baffled by the casual acceptance of road fatalities. A mathematical breakdown really highlights the absurdity. It's usually a progression like this: bringing down speed limits by, say, five miles per hour everywhere would make the roads safer. If the roads were safer, at least one life would be saved every year (and probably more). But it would also add extra time to everyone's car trips. If the average American drives at thirty miles per hour, bringing everyone down to twenty-five miles per hour would add about twenty percent to each person's driving time. So... I guess since I never see speed limits go down, this must mean the status quo is OK?

You could call me pessimistic about my expectations for future changes in driving norms (1). It seems like the votes are in and we've settled on a plan - in exchange for every driver spending a little less time on the road each year through higher speed limits, some people will continue to die in crashes as an indirect result of all this extra zipping around.

Footnotes / sources cited...

0. Sources for some of the numbers...

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration via this link.

The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (apparently different from the above) via Wikipedia.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention via Livestrong.

1. But is Cambridge a good representative for America as a whole?

Boston and Cambridge, the two cities I spend the most time in, recently implemented new 'citywide' twenty-five mile per hour limits. That will probably help. But I recognize these two cities hardly represent the mean, median, and mode of driving policy.

2018 toa book of the year award, may update - part four

Let's burn through two more books from last year's shortlist...

August - Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

The premise of this 'dystopian' novel becomes more unlikely by the day. I don't feel this way because I think the idea of ‘fire fighters’ burning books (and book owners) is preposterous - I feel this way because with each passing day more people voluntarily trade in their books for a high-tech Game Boy that beeps and whistles every eleven seconds.

As the written word cedes center stage to digital content, our society finds a different path up the mountain to Bradbury's summit where the shallow observation serves as an acceptable substitute for deep thinking.

Parting thought: It is not intelligence that we fear but rather the inherent unpredictability of the intelligent – who knows what could be on someone’s mind?

November - Broken Vessels by Andre Dubus

This was a great essay collection and I really enjoyed Dubus’s measured, understated writing style. I’m looking forward to digging into more of his work in the coming years.

Parting thought: Express grief, shock, and rage through meticulously detailed observation.

reading review: the four elements

The Four Elements by John O'Donohue (January 2018)

John O'Donohue's life was cut short by a motorcycle accident in 2008. The silver lining to this tragedy was this book, The Four Elements, that O'Donohue's brother put together in his memory.

The essays in this collection were all published early in O’Donohue’s writing career. The resulting work was a true delight to read. In some of the essays, I noted the seeds of what would bloom in his later works – Anam Cara, Beauty, and Eternal Echoes. In others, I found myself guided safely into new territory by a familiar voice. Consistent throughout is the presence of a writer who thought a great deal about the world around him and devoted his life to work on the writing that would bring his understanding of the world to his readers.

Over the many short essays in The Four Elements, a handful of consistent themes emerged. Below, I’ve rearranged my notes from the book to bring a number of those themes together.

Thanks for reading.

Tim

*********

Beginnings

Any beginning is innocent for the destination is known only to itself.

I would love to live
Like a river flows
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding

Death

God is not an answer. God is the greatest question in the known universe.

A baby is fresh from eternity and thus needs time to get acclimated to the physical world. In Conamara, when a baby smiles into the air, it is said that the baby is talking to the angels.

A newborn always forces me to consider one of life’s great questions – where do we come from? One moment, there is nothing; in the next, there is a new personality, fully formed, fresh from nowhere.

There is so little I understand. But in the presence of a newborn, I understand better. I respond naturally to each gesture or movement. I hear the smallest cry cut through an impenetrable wall of noise. I embrace the selflessness required to serve a higher power and recognize that to help someone live is God’s work.

Exile

Perception is the birth of empty space around us and, as a result, the moment we become separate from one another. Perception is the source of our loneliness.

The soul is a shy presence and chasing the soul will only send it into hiding.

Silence is the mystery within, the voice of the dream, but if we crowd it out with busyness and noise we will come to fear what it might say to us about ourselves.

If birth is the entryway into the physical world, the moment of perception is the first step over the threshold. Perception sends the soul into hiding, into safety, as it leaves behind the eternal assurance of the beyond.

The physical world does not make room for the soul. Here, the soul does not belong. The day’s sounds and activities drown out the soul’s discomforted cry. Thought, feeling, and emotion become subordinate to the demands of the most unfamiliar vessel, the body.  In this space where the soul does not belong, it contorts itself into the most unnatural shape in order to fit in.

The soul’s repressed call echoes through the dream world. Its chilling knowingness is a nightly reminder of what is freezing over. Every contradicting day buries it further into the coldest recesses of the mind. One day, we awake unburdened in the physical world. One day, we stop dreaming.

Colonization

Materialism is an obsession with the visible. It ruins our relationship with the invisible world, a world that contains our spirit selves, and makes it difficult to cultivate a healthy friendship with our interior lives.

To get used to looking at objects endangers us of becoming unable to look at space.

It is vital to try and look at our lives and the lives of those around us with fresh eyes. This strips away the numbing of perception that sometimes comes with knowing.

Disconnection with the dream world steers our appetites to what can be seen, felt, and heard. These establish the boundaries of daily living and help us replace the singular, trusting existence of infancy with the communal, suspicious existence of maturity.

Existence becomes the process of claiming enough space and occupation becomes priority ahead of all else. Intuition becomes subordinate to knowledge and the subtle rhythms of hidden patterns are washed away by a tide of details. By claiming all there is in front of the horizon, we lose our gift to perceive the beyond.

Community

Each person is burdened by the gift of uniqueness.

In uniform, theocratic, or fundamentalist cultures, those who are different or dissenting are the most vulnerable.

Creative art requires the tension that comes from our failure to never fully belong anywhere.

The price for unity, brotherhood, and community is the loss of individuality. The more urgent the need for a singular life, the less tolerant the group is of uniqueness.

The price for belonging is the pain of fitting in. The more urgent the need for natural self-expression, the less tolerant the soul becomes of the many contortions required to fit into the physical world.

Art sheds the heavy burden of the self and relieves the ceaseless tension between the part and the whole. Through creativity, the humanity bursting at the seams fashions its own container. Through inspiration, we ponder once more the eternal question – where do we belong?

Emergence

To change your life, change your way of thinking.

Great thinkers look at their subjects from strange angles.

Michelangelo felt sculpture meant to release a figure hidden in stone.

The creative urge reestablishes the lost trail connecting the physical with the eternal. Every new thing emerges from the inventory of infinity and each new thing heightens understanding.

The answers we were once surest of come under new scrutiny. Are the walls a safe haven or merely a shell to break through? Do we stop at the line or step across? Is there ever a right time to look back?

Transformation

Anger burns and blazes like fire. It can be easily directed into negative manifestations such as depression, indifference, or powerlessness. To awaken someone’s anger and harness its innocence and immediacy through action is the wisdom of living a creative and healing life.

The ability to handle fire is an exclusive human ability, more so than even speaking a language or handling a tool.

Transformation by fire causes what clings to the ground to suddenly and irreversibly defy gravity.

A world without limits no longer enables oppositions. To go forever left brings us to the end of the world, and right back to the beginning; to go forever right brings us to the same. It is the journey that leaves us forever transformed.

When we bring darkness into light, build weakness up to strength, or harness destructive energy to construct, we achieve a new dimension of existence and find our potential freed from life-long shackles.

When we are ready to let go, what ends can begin again. When we harness our transformative power, restraints become suggestions for our next burst of humanity.

Flight

We cannot take back our words because the air stores what is said for infinity. What is given to the air cannot be taken back.

It is amazing that we cannot see music.

The gradual, invisible flow of time is what affects us most deeply.

The great mystery of sound is how quickly the ear loses what it has just grasped. And yet, we can never reverse what echoes in the air. Like smoke, it is created merely to go away, leaving behind the forever transformed. And yet, the whispered word, the friendly greeting, the beat of the drum – each remains with us until it is gone. All we are left with is an echo and the eternal question – where has it gone?

Like music, time is an ever-present mystery. It was just here and touched us so deeply. How can what affects us so profoundly move on so quickly? How can moments so fleeting as heartbeats leave the irreversible in its wake? A lifetime could be lost wandering, wondering - where has it gone?

Recall

There is a great deal of healing energy in the spirit of memory but people seem to make less use of it. A collective amnesia contributes to the modern poverty of the spirit.

A memory is the seed for the future.

Technology does not have memory, only storage, and this distinction epitomizes the rootless experience of those who come to rely too much on technology. With too much connection to technology, a person becomes a shadow, the equivalent of one without memory, and life reduces to a long series of moments and sensations.

The spirit long isolated in the physical world understands perception only through the experience of isolation and loneliness. Memory reconciles the experience of the physical through the lens of innocence and recollection brings the soul back to its long-lost roots.

Each recollection is a return to the inner work that once came without question. Through memory, the inner voices long silenced by the outside world come through with a renewed clarity. The unity of spirit and the shared work of recall bring us back to the days when dependence on another brought security, energy, and community. As each of us weaves our own threads into eternity, every memory is revealed at long last to be a beginning for the healing energy soon to come.

Return

Thoughts are the inner senses.

Meister Eckhart – Nothing in the universe resembles God more than silence.

In silence and stillness, the mind and spirit are cleared of the clutter and accretions that have caked around the emotions and the soul. In this place, we will find God waiting for us to return to Him, to return into the eternity from where we once came.

The blind are said to have a heightened sense of touch, feel, and hearing. What many mourn as lost is often returned through a heightened perception of the physical world’s other communications.

Old age is often described as a series of these losses. The eye clouds, the touch dulls, and we increasingly lose contact with the river of time as it flows relentlessly downstream. The silence and stillness needed for the inner sense is imposed on us, gradually, as the river empties into the sea of eternity and brings us back into contact with the beyond.

Birth

Since life is the process of loss, it is vital to become creative with loss. What is loved and let go returns time and again; what is clutched to in vain was never ours to hold in the first place.

In County Clare, a mirror was held up to the breath to test for death.

Death brings with it one of life’s great questions – where do we go? One moment, there is a full person, inhabiting every corner of the room with presence; in the next, there is nothing, gone.

There is so little I understand. But in the presence of death, I understand better. I feel what it means to respond to each gesture or movement. I hear how a small cry can cut through an impenetrable wall of noise. I embrace the selflessness required to serve a higher power and recognize that to help someone die is God’s work.

Beginnings

Any beginning is innocent for the destination is known only to itself.

I would love to live
Like a river flows
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding

leftovers - life changing books: sql for dummies

Now, one thing I did not do was to use this book to ‘teach myself SQL’. This is one of the great myths about me, albeit one I’ve willingly perpetuated over the years – it’s even on my resume – but there is more to the reality of my foray into database programming.

A better way to describe my progression was that I was conversationally fluent at the time I checked this book out. When I got my hands on SQL For Dummies, it allowed me to go through the book, note what I did not know, and beg our resident programmer to explain it to me in the context of our team’s current projects.

The spirit of the idea that I taught myself SQL is accurate. I never sat down in a classroom or hired a tutor. There is no SQL-intensive computer science on my college transcript and no SQL learning programs were offered in my first job experience. What I learned came mostly through my initiative and follow-up effort. For many, this is what ‘teaching yourself’ means and I happily use the expression as it suits my purposes.

But I didn't teach myself anything, really. It’s more like I just sat down one day and I could program. I suspect I learned SQL a lot like the way I learned English when I came to America. I arrived in an environment where I knew some of the basic vocabulary but didn’t really understand complete ideas. All I knew was that what I heard did have an equivalent in a language I already understood (Japanese). Each day, I tried to make some sense of the little patterns and correlations of the new language. Eventually, exposure enabled mimicry and successful mimicry fed natural curiosity. As I grasped the basics, I started up in first grade and began the long process of formalizing my budding conversational fluency into the formal definitions of grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

In the same way, I turned my intuitive understanding of the database into the specific syntax of SQL code. SQL For Dummies was, without a doubt, a huge help. It helped me translate a concept I understood – the Excel spreadsheet – into one I grasped only abstractly – the relational database. It gave me the vocabulary I needed to ask the right questions and formalize my ‘conversational fluency’.

To conclude that all of the above means I taught myself SQL is fine, I suppose. I won't argue. But learning rarely works in such a neatly defined way. Those who ‘teach themselves’ might actually have many more teachers than those who are taught by one teacher in a traditional setting. The self-taught simply learn a tiny bit from a huge range of sources and find ways to stitch all the loose threads together into a full understanding of the topic at hand.

leftovers #2: the four agreements

Some more leftover thoughts from The Four Agreements:

5) Accepting someone's opinion of you is to agree with it.

6) Real love is acceptance. Trying to change someone you love is an admission that you don't actually like them as they are right now.

7) Resist the temptation to becoming addicted to what you already are.

8) The warrior has awareness that being yourself is a constant war.

leftovers: chuck klosterman x

Those who see the Roman numeral ten in the title of this work demonstrate strong evidence of being crazed pro-Chuck readers while those who read the letter 'X' are probably just casual supporters at best. This is because the title of this book is a reference to his fourth book, Chuck Klosterman IV (which itself is a reference to how Led Zeppelin titled their albums). You could say Klosterman's tenth published work is a litmus test for anyone wondering how big of a Klosterman fan he or she is.

While I'm here, I might as well comment on how much I liked his piece on the future of sprinting. I found it interesting that some in the extreme-distance running community speculated that the popularity of sprinting is driven merely by the fact that men are better sprinters than women. The human body is designed to thrive at long distances; sprinting is perhaps the most unnatural act of locomotion. And yet, the focus of the male-driven entertainment industry shines a spotlight on the 100 meter dash, where men dominate, rather than extreme distance events, where the difference in men and women even out.

Of course, anytime the 100-meter dash is discussed, the focus must eventually turn to Usain Bolt. The Jamaican sprinter is (at time of writing) the fastest person ever to run one hundred meters. The paradox about him is that all of his apparent disadvantages - long limbs, height, and relatively modest background - became unassailable advantages once he overcame them.

Or, at least, they seemed like disadvantages because everyone else 'blessed' with his body type failed to become the fastest person ever. For some reason, Bolt overcame it. This insight reminded me of Paul Graham's advice to small companies competing against the established giants - run upstairs:

Use difficulty as a guide not just in selecting the overall aim of your company, but also at decision points along the way. At Viaweb one of our rules of thumb was run upstairs. Suppose you are a little, nimble guy being chased by a big, fat, bully. You open a door and find yourself in a staircase. Do you go up or down? I say up. The bully can probably run downstairs as fast as you can. Going upstairs his bulk will be more of a disadvantage. Running upstairs is hard for you but even harder for him.

I can't say this is the best advice I've ever seen - if every small company blindly followed this idea, the only thing that would happen is a faster rate of bankruptcy. But the thought doesn't mean 'run uphill no matter what' - it means run uphill given you are the right size (small, nimble) and in the right situation (a bizarre scenario where you open a door and are surprised to see a staircase). I'm not sure what makes a given company succeed but it does seem like knowing when to 'run upstairs' is perhaps among the most decisive factors in terms of how a company might eventually turn out.

2018 toa book of the year award, may update - part three

Let's cross two more off the shortlist today...

June - The Four Agreements by don Miguel Ruiz

This simple, thoughtful examination of Toltec wisdom has struck a chord with legions of readers and I proved to be no exception. Of the four ‘agreements’, the one about assumptions proved the most valuable idea for me.

Parting thought: Don’t make assumptions.

August - Animal Farm by George Orwell

I enjoyed reading Orwell’s classic for the first time this past summer. Though many rightfully worry about current events and speculate about the worst-case scenarios, a country simply cannot descend into totalitarianism if the citizens remain empowered to create value based on their ideas, initiative, or effort.

Parting thought: Basic necessities must be divided up equally because the question of who 'deserves' more will never resolve itself in any meaningful way.

reading review: the wind-up bird chronicle

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (December 2017)

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was one of the books I reread in December. Of all the books I reread during the month, it was perhaps the one I remembered the least about from the first time around. Even Mr. Honda – a character I liked so much I started using him as the answer for security questions on internet accounts – turned out to play a role different from what I’d recalled.

It was, overall, an excellent book. There is a chance I read this book again, of course, but I say this in the sense that there is a chance I might do anything again. For one, the book itself checks in at over six hundred pages and that’s a big commitment to make for any type of reading.

It's a difficult task to write any kind of review for such a long book. So, I thought I'd do something a litter different with the review. In the spirit of the book's meandering style, I got the whole, err, staff here at TOA together and asked them to also read the book. Once they were done, I had them comment on their favorite note, lesson, or observation from the work. The results are below.

(Editor’s note – specific references that may ruin aspects of the book for the new reader have been removed from these observations).

Thanks for reading.

Tim

*********

The Business Bro: Without question, the idea that the surest route to independence is to learn a useful skill. It’s best exemplified by (editor’s note – name removed) but many of these characters demonstrate the same quality – (editor’s note – name removed) on the computer, (editor’s note – name removed) and the ability to speak a foreign language, even (editor’s note – name removed) demonstrates the idea in action at times. I understand a lot of Murakami’s characters, in general, tend to have a streak of independence and so I recognize that this is not a surprising observation when put it the context of his other work.

Still, it's a good lesson. I think most people struggling early in their career track would do well to heed this advice. Learning how to ‘do what the boss says’ isn’t a useful skill, or at least, isn’t useful in the context of paving the road to independence. Like any complex problem, the solution lies in thinking through the simplest aspects first. Almost all successful careers are defined by a significant degree of autonomy. And which people are most likely to get autonomy? Those who have a unique skill. So, the worker should always find useful skills to learn that are a little different from what others on the same career level are working on. The more time or detail put into this new skill, the better, because the harder it is to learn, the harder it will be for others to catch up later.

*********

TOA: I liked the brief glimpses into childhood development. In one section, it’s noted how kids who solve everything for themselves become very lonely since they stop turning to others for guidance or advice. It’s followed up a bit later with a comment about how the real world differs from the academic world through its insistence on communal group action. The progression is pretty clear – by learning, possibly in school, how to become self-reliant, a child puts him- or herself in danger of not just isolation and loneliness but also of becoming a somewhat redundant variable in the real world’s problem-solving equations.

A follow-up question I mulled over here is why this thought would apply only to kids. And although it does make a specific reference to schooling, I don’t think it has to, really. A reader can see this in how Murakami blurs the line between some of the adults and kids in this book - it probably isn't his intention for this thought to apply strictly in the context of kids growing up into adults.

I could be wrong, of course. Everything starts in childhood and maybe this is important to keep in mind. But on the other hand, most kids are adults, anyway, just a little dumber than their older counterparts but with a stronger innate sense of justice.

If you are interested in just adult-focused ideas, I would suggest two. First, it seemed throughout the book that the adults who don’t seek counsel end up seeming pretty lonely. And it was a recurring theme that the difference between people who get big things done and those who just talk about getting big things done was the ability to pull people together for a group effort.

*********

Master Poo: Communicating face-to-face prevents misunderstandings, preventing misunderstandings keeps people from becoming unhappy, therefore communicate face-to-face to keep people from becoming unhappy.

*********

The Editor: The comment that sometimes meeting a new person is more like running into a long-lost friend was pretty amusing. At first, it seems pretty neat, but there is also a reason why we fall out of touch with certain friends.

I guess it’s not entirely clear to me exactly what this idea wants to convey.

*********

Moya: Money, money, everything is about money, if you are bald, money, money, it will make your hair grow, if you have pain, money, money, it will make your pain go, it’s insane, sit, have a whiskey, sit, of course it costs money, but I’ll buy it, just have the whiskey, money, money, it’s all about it, homeless people are homeless because of money, they don’t have it, so they get a label, and it isn’t even about them, it’s about their money, ridiculous, such a materialistic thing to say about someone, to define them by their possessions, and yet their hair, Moya, the homeless, some of them with the most beautiful heads of hair, fuller than the rush hour train, if they have hair and not homes, how could a product cure baldness, money, I spit on it, drink, Moya, drink, they say money, some things it cannot buy, well I say if you can buy it, money can buy it, right, otherwise how could I buy it, silly these talkers are Moya, silly, what money can buy, buy, and save up your energy for what it cannot buy, that’s the secret, little by little we learn these secrets, Moya, because little by little a secret is built, no one lies all at once, but we just say, oh, I’ll hide this little detail, and the next time, another, and soon, a whole world disappears down the well, oh the pain of it Moya, and how can we live with it, how can we live knowing some still have faith in others, complete faith, as they get cheated and deceived, it’s the finest quality, Moya, to have faith in someone else, unquestioning faith, unrelenting faith, and to know these people exist, the pain of it, how can they have faith, like the miser in his money, faith in his money, oh, and money, money, it cannot solve the pain, Moya, the pain, but have this whiskey, it does help, doesn’t it, maybe whiskey is what money can buy for the pain…

the real reason i'm not running

I wrote in January about how I was eliminating ‘medium distance’ running from my routine. I thought these runs – any distance greater than three miles and fewer than eight – were having a negative impact on my overall running fitness. This was because I thought I improved as a runner when I (a) pushed my lung capacity with near-sprinting or (b) I challenged my endurance with long distances. The ‘medium distance’ was too long to run fast yet too short to run far and therefore I decided to experiment with cutting it out for a few months.

It was a simple thought and looked good on paper but it just hasn’t worked out. My running didn’t improve at all – if anything, I regressed. I spent a lot of time this winter thinking up other routines or approaches. However, after much deliberation, I decided early in April to shut down my running and take a break.

This is my first break from running since April 2015 – and that one was, like almost every other break I’ve ever taken, enforced through injury. If I think back to when I’ve simply decided not to run for this long, I would need to go all the way back to 2008.

At the time of writing, I’m on day fourteen of my running sabbatical. More importantly, there is no end in sight. I don’t think I’m done for good but I do think I’m going to extend this as far as I can tolerate. Reader, you must be wondering – what happened? I think a few things came together at just the right time to bring me to a stop.

First, the timing for a break is really good. For the first time in four years, I have a five to six week break from my weeknight basketball league (though I did have to skip one game in the middle to pull this off). This gives me a great opportunity to have a long period without doing any of the basic ‘fast twitch’ basketball movements – jumping, making quick changes of direction, complaining to the referee. I don’t have a ton of evidence that this impacts my ability to complete ‘slow twitch’ activities like running long distances but I’m also well aware that there is not a single marathon training program in the world that incorporates basketball into its program. Hopefully, this break will give me a chance to recover from any of the lingering effects basketball is having on my body.

Also, with the calendar (allegedly) turning to spring, the timing is great for using cycling as a cross training alternative. I’ve decided to keep it simple and easy during my sabbatical by aiming for a casual two-to-three hour bike ride every other day. The idea is to keep some of the long distance muscles fit while also giving my joints a chance to recover through a no-impact activity. On the days I don’t bike, I do a basic body-weight strength workout tailored to running (I can do this in my apartment because I don’t use extra weights). Ideally, this combination will build up muscle in my core and my legs in preparation for a return to the pounding and impact of running.

Finally, though, is… The Real Reason. Isn’t it a fact of life that whenever someone talks about ‘many things coming together’ or ‘the timing being really good’, there is a single, simple ‘Real Reason’ lurking in the background? Well, I think there is, and at the very least in this case it applies to me.

At some point in late March, I realized I needed a break. I figured this out because I was spending a lot of time thinking, planning, and talking about taking a break. Now, the catch here is that I was always conceptualizing this break as something to do in the future – around mid-December, to be exact. The big ‘ah-hah!’ moment came when I spontaneously named the break as I was describing it to a friend – I called it my ‘annual fallow running period’.

As soon as I said those words, I thought to myself – what the hell am I talking about? It was a ridiculous way to describe something most people usually do for at least twenty-three and a half hours a day (not running) and I wondered what prompted such an outburst (and in public, no less). What I quickly recognized was how I was guilty of something I’ve often been quick to note in others – when people talk on and on about long-term plans that involve some kind of rest or break, what they are really saying is that they need a rest or break right now. A few days later, I skipped that aforementioned basketball game and officially went on my running sabbatical.

In a sense, I suppose what I’m saying is that planning ahead isn’t really planning at all, it’s really just an excuse to ignore doing what needs to get done. It’s one of those silly truisms in action, reader, a lot like the concept that really good ideas don’t go on the backburner because if the idea was any good it would get implemented right away. I suppose one way to look at this is to say my plans for a ‘fallow’ period were so good I had no choice but to do it right away (using cycling instead of swimming).

The more basic version of the story is that I was lying to myself and probably doing so for a long, long time. This part of me ignored the misery my injured foot caused over the last two years and would come up with all kinds of ways to explain the long-term soreness or fatigue I’ve felt in my thigh, hamstring, or hip over the last few years. This liar was convinced I could run on and on, forever and ever, without ever taking a break.

At some point – which I guess was early April – I had to throw in the towel and, along with it, any lingering illusions I harbored about my (running) immortality. The Real Reason I stopped running was that I finally called myself out on my own bullshit. Everyone who pushes themselves, at some point or another, will need to take a break, and if you think you are an exception, reader, I suggest maybe trying to push yourself just a little bit harder.

2018 toa book of the year award, may update - part two

OK – a few more to chop down from the shortlist along with a parting thought I took away from the reading…

July - Essays in Idleness by Yoshida Kenko

The book of essays written by a man who, ‘having nothing better to do’, went up into the mountains and wrote for two years. Like any centuries-old book from Japan, it was full of insights, wisdom, and bizarre tales about court life.

Parting thought: When painting, follow the brush...

October - Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy by Tim Harford

This book’s appearance on my shortlist reveals my interest in both the topic and the author. As I wrote about in a number of reading reviews, I think there is a lot more to talk about here than read about.

Parting thought: The paper money system will fall apart once people stop trusting each other to create new value.

December - Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami

I was very impressed by the way Murakami created the desolate mood of his nether-world in this book. I also enjoyed the extended analogy about living with or without a shadow. However, I also read M Train in the same week and I think Patti Smith’s autobiographical account accomplished, more or less, the exact same thing.

Parting thought: When someone builds a wall, there must be a good reason to get to the other side.

leftovers: the four agreements

Don Miguel Ruiz's Four Agreements was based on his pillars for throwing off the negative influences of the external and instead living a life serving one's internally-created demands. I outlined these in my original summary of the book. Accompanying the foundation were additional smaller insights that I found useful.

Here are some of those thoughts:

1) The attention of others is the most desirable reward. Soon, we become copies of other people's belief systems because we see how similarity gets attention. In seeking the reward of attention, we become something other than ourselves.

2) Justice means paying once for a mistake. We often deny ourselves justice by paying over and over for one mistake through our thoughts, feelings, and attitudes.

3) The fear of not being accepted drives us away from our true selves and toward filling the roles or caricatures demanded by another's point of view.

4) Self-abuse sets the limit for how much we tolerate from someone else. Those who do not value themselves at all will tolerate endless abuse at the hands of another.

2018 toa book of the year award, may update - part one

Since I forget to do this every month, let’s just cut a few books from the shortlist here and there whenever the idea pops into my head, shall we?

In no particular order, here are a few books that failed to make my final three along with the one big idea I took from it last year.

January - Small Is Beautiful by Ernst F. Schumacher

A great book to ‘check in’ on every couple of years to make sure I’m on track with some basic life principle. But on the other hand, I already do this annually on Patriot’s Day with Maniac Magee!

Parting thought: Without education, organization, and discipline, nothing sustainable is developed.

May - Epitaph of a Small Winner by Machado de Assis

One of the most enjoyable reads of the year, this book was notable for reshaping how I put TOA together. Highly recommended for the reader looking to get off the beaten path (unless, I guess, TOA is what you consider 'the beaten path').

Parting thought: There are a million ways to write something worth reading.

June - The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes

Taubes comes under fire for many different reasons but let’s all step back for a minute and acknowledge the basic fact – the guy thinks all this sugar is killing us and he thinks sugar companies are complicit in it. Relative to his beliefs, I actually think writing several books filled with research and reasoning is a fairly calm and understated way to present his case.

I wonder if the first anti-cigarette crusaders were put under the same public scrutiny…

Parting thought: Seventy pounds of sugar per capita - or roughly 87 grams per day - seems like a rough cutoff point for diabetes prevalence to sudden increase in a population.

life changing books: the 4-hr workweek

The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss (Spring 2013)

I initially read this book back when I was experiencing work overload for the first time. What had been a fairly mundane 9-5 routine was slowly expanding into a 730am - 545pm workday. I made my manager aware of the problem and he responded nobly by becoming unusually difficult to reach. Clearly, my inflated hours were the new norm and I wasn’t going to get much outside help to reverse the trend. If the strain was going to ease anytime soon, it would require some ingenuity with how I approached my work.

The application of Ferris's 'batching' strategy was the big breakthrough for me. Batching means doing similar tasks together so that setup steps are not repeated. Or, to put it another way, batching eliminated the time used when switching from one task to the other. The 4-Hour Workweek used workplace email as one of its examples for how batching worked in the real world. This was convenient for me because my inbox was quickly becoming my most time consuming problem (1).

The way I applied batching to email required that I change my decision criteria for responding. Instead of replying to an email when I was ready to reply, I started replying when waiting was no longer a reasonable option. In the context of my role and the company I worked for, this meant waiting between one and two full days to respond.

This small change made a big difference. Waiting a full day cut down on the 'instant messaging' that cluttered my inbox (and often created more confusion than clarity). It gave me time to collect more information before responding and allowed me to revise my initial response if I came up with a better thought during the day. Sometimes, enough similar emails would come in during my waiting period and I would answer all of these emails at once. Most importantly, the batching mentality allowed me to take responsibility for my own failings and set the course for my improvement as a communicator.

My inbox battle would run for a couple of years after I returned this book to the library. But knowing that I was going to determine the absolute minimum frequency with which I would respond to my inbox was a crucial step. Slowly, I stopped wasting my own time by over-responding to email and found I could fit my expanding set of responsibilities into a more reasonable daily work schedule.

Footnotes / the organized one speaks

0. Just saying…

This book also opened my thinking to the limits imposed by domain dependence. Batching as described above isn’t all that complicated and most people do a form of it in one way or another. When I first read The 4-Hour Workweek, I used to grocery shop once a week because I knew daily shopping would add a lot of extra commuting time to my supermarket trips. I didn’t think of this as batching – I just thought of it as obvious.

But it wasn’t so obvious that I could readily extend the logic to how I opened my email inbox. I've seen a similar sort of thing fairly often over these past few years. A lot of people are capable of brilliant new ideas or creative solutions to existing problems once they are able to link their problems to an area that they already understand. The challenge in life isn’t coming up with lots of brilliant ideas - the challenge is applying the one or two brilliant ideas you've already had in a new context.

In its own way, this book challenged me to look for the universal truths that linked otherwise unrelated topics. It forced me to challenge my own assumptions about what it means to truly understand something. Instead of worrying about all the details (which have a nasty habit of changing at the most inconvenient time, anyway) I started to concern myself more with basic principles, natural rhythms, and universal truths.

1. It ain’t me, man, it’s you, and him, and her, and them, and…

Back then, I approached my inbox like everybody else – with a process devoid of any thought process or impulse control. I logged in whenever I felt the urge and responded to the most urgent messages until I thought of something else to do. Occasionally, I 'organized' my inbox by color-coding notes or recklessly creating folder after folder. Every once in a while, I deleted a bunch of long-ignored messages and hoped not to suffer any consequences for my sloth.

At no point did I make any real effort to evaluate my process and organize my daily approach. And it never crossed my mind that I was the prime culprit for my inbox problem – I took it for a given that I was The Organized One. If you had asked me at the time, reader, to describe why my inbox was such a mess, I would have explained that everything except me – the workplace culture, our clients, my colleagues, the ever-present Powers That Be – was to blame for the incoherent digital mess I dealt with each day.

south to west: from a flip phone

Good morning (or good whenever-you-read/delete-this),

Back in April 2017, I went down to New York for the weekend. This was my last trip down of its kind, so to speak, and I thought it might be fun to commemorate the occasion by writing ('writing') about it.

I left early that Friday morning like any esteemed journalist self-important travel writer - backpacked, eyes open, clear heart. Can't lose, right? I probably should have had a notebook as well but, improvising as all great travelers must, I used my flip-phone to store drafts of unsent text messages and referred to those later for my 'notes'.

For most of that weekend, I liberally took notes. Some of them were even... good. But it occurred to me that there was nothing New York about most of it. I decided against writing and opted instead to try and sprinkle the half-assembled (digital) scribbles into my future thinking, talking, or writing. Had I taken the notes on paper, I probably would have thrown them away - instead, I just saved a file in the deep recesses of my Gmail account.

A short while later, I wrote a quick post about Joan Didion's South and West: From a Notebook. This book claimed to be a series of notes and observations for two pieces Didion never wrote - one about a trip south, another about a trip west.

Being the humble sort that I am - and knowing that New York is south and west of Boston - there was only one logical thing to do next.

5:44 A.M.

Huh?

6:01 A.M.

Goodness.

6:17 A.M.

I'm up, I'm up!

Atul Gawande - travel expert

My experience reading Atul Gawande's Checklist Manifesto several years ago changed my life in a number of ways. This groggy morning, I reap the benefits of perhaps my most useful application of his techniques - I take out my 'travel checklist' and line up everything for my upcoming trip to New York City, one by one, on my table. When I confirm everything is there, I pack each item in the order of its appearance on the checklist into my bag.

I used to forget one thing whenever I went on any kind of trip. It was often an easily remedied oversight and quickly became a bit of fun for me on these trips - what will I forget this time, an unnecessary pair of sunglasses or a worn-out toothbrush? The trivial nature of these neglected items made my forgetfulness seem irrelevant, like ordering a Coke from the server even though you've already been told the place only serves Pepsi.

Then came the day I forgot the book I wanted to read, forcing me to talk to some guy who was sitting next to me on the train. Oh, the horror! I wrote out my checklist the next day.

I haven't forgotten a thing since.

Older and bolder are inversely related, it seems

My ticket instructs me to board the train at South Station. For the first time in my life, I realize South Station probably seems like a strange name for the northern terminus of the east coast Amtrak line. I think about it a little more - actually, it's kind of strange in a purely Boston context as well since most of the city lies south of South Station.

I leave my apartment and walk through the north part of Boston toward South Station. One block away from the station, a man ranting and raving falls in step with me and starts talking. For some reason, I tend get into many unsolicited conversations, one-way or otherwise, in Boston. I think this is related to my walking speed, which some have generously described as 'slow'. My feet hurt, sue me. Maybe I should remember to read a book the next time I go for a walk.

Today's conversation is decisively one-sided. If there was a scoreboard, I would have zero and this guy would have... well, apparently this guy has a gun in his backpack, a fact he screams into the morning air, so I'm suddenly not so worried about my scoreboard analogy. Sadly, his screams convince no one - maybe he does this every morning. His backpack looks deflated, so who knows?

As his walking picks up pace, his voice intensifies; as his voice intensifies, his walking picks up pace. His voice feeds his pace and his pace feeds his voice. I hold both my voice and my pace and eventually the shouting man outpaces me. As I walk through the northernmost entryway in South Station, I catch the man shouting incoherently in the background.

What is this, your first trip on the Amtrak?

The train cars are usually half-filled on these morning rides but today the train car is close to full. It occurs to me that, this being Easter weekend, it is perhaps a particularly good Friday to travel. The holiday explains the difficulty I had weeks ago in getting a reasonably priced ticket to take me all the way to Penn Station.

Since I have six hours to travel four hours, I dust off my cheapskate playbook and plan to get off the train in New Haven. From there, I'll switch to the local train line and ride it all the way to Grand Central Terminal. The idea saves me about forty bucks at the cost of thirty to sixty minutes.

The problem with 'The New Haven Switch' is the moment when I get comfortable on the Amtrak train. At that point, I could probably be talked into paying the extra $50 or so to finish the trip on Amtrak. Today, though, the train is so crowded that I don't think I'll get comfortable. I resign myself to sitting next to someone else.

Generally, I don't have a problem with sitting next to anyone. I do have certain preferences, however. I do like to get a window seat on the left-hand side, for example, so that I have a clear view of the Connecticut coast as the train makes the switch from traveling south to west. This goal is not possible today - the natural pattern of solo train travelling is to take the window seat first, leaving only aisle options for late arrivals like me.

I do not have any patented moves for picking out a person to sit next to. There are no size considerations to make since riding the train guarantees my long legs enough room regardless of who I sit next to. There is a certain logic to finding the most attractive person but that runs counter to my interest in not speaking throughout the trip. Really, what I'd like to do is sit next to myself - someone who is quiet, doesn't take up a ton of room, and gets off at New Haven for some unknown reason.

Then I figure it out - find someone else reading a book! I learn something new on every one of these trips. I find a fellow reader and settle in.

In the future, the cafe car will be expected to have coffee

There are some illogical things I do before any trip. One of them is to get cash. Why I bother to carry about a hundred bucks cash anywhere is a mystery - I have a flip phone, for crying out loud. If I ever got mugged, there's a chance the thief would hand me his loose change out of charity.

Plus, a hundred? At most, I never need more than twenty bucks for any reason. At this point, I suppose it is just habit. Last night, I went to TD Bank just before midnight to visit the ATM. Now, I'm nodding off in my seat.

Luckily, if I need a coffee, the New Haven train station has me covered. It boasts one of the strangest design features I've ever seen in mass transit - there are two Dunkin' Donuts within fifty feet of each other. One is on the first floor and the other is a flight of stairs above it. They are like my eyes - they serve identical functions yet cannot see each other.

I think there are some later in the day options in New Haven, as well. I suppose I would know better if I ever stopped in New Haven on the way home. But I never do that.

America runs by Dunkin

The train to New York leaves New Haven every half hour. Since Amtrak's arrival at New Haven is always a little less predictable than I would prefer - unless the prediction is simply 'late', in which case it is perfectly predictable - there is always the potential for an exciting transition at the station as I run back and forth trying to figure out where to catch the local train bound for Grand Central. Today, I arrive with four minutes to spare, just enough time to run past two Dunkin Donuts, buy a train ticket, run past the same two Dunkin Donuts, and board the next train.

All the excitement of the trip's second leg is condensed into those four minutes.

The only other notable moment of the remaining two hours is when I notice the guy sitting next to me is wearing the same brand of sneakers (Nike Air Max Torch 4) I used to wear a year ago. Don't get me wrong, reader, those were great sneakers, but something hurt my feet, you know?

But... what makes a lie... a lie, really... if you think about it?

My other patented travel move is to notify people that I am arriving at Grand Central fifteen minutes later than I am actually scheduled to. This allows me fifteen minutes to stand and look around the station. I don't do this out of any malice. I just like looking around the station. Plus, everything happens a little later in New York, right?

The best place to stand and look around in the main concourse is by the railing next to the artfully ugly Apple store. That way, you can have your back to the stupid-ass Apple store while you look at the station. God, I hate this Apple store in Grand Central.

Anyway...

It occurs to me while staring at the clock tower (well, sort of a tower, anyway, since from my vantage point it is twenty feet below me) that in order for a clock to accurately mark the change in time, it must remain unchanged. A clock marks change only if it remains unchanged.

This thought strikes me as deep but perhaps too burdensome to type out into my phone for later use. I should have brought a notebook. I could probably buy one in the Apple store for, like, what, a grand? Maybe the Apple store is an appropriate thing to have in Grand Central, after all.

It is easy to lie in a text message. Not that I'm ever lying, but still

I finally resign myself to wasting a minute typing in my phone these thoughts on clocks, time, and the relentless accumulation of age. I hope no one from the Apple stores notices my ancient device and comes over to try and replace my hands with new iPhones.

I take out my phone and see that I've received a text. It is from my host.

Running late. Meet at my place instead?

I respond:

Sounds good. Also running late, around 15. Meet around 145?

I assume he knows that when I say 'meet around 145', what I mean is that I'll get to his apartment around 2pm. Everything happens a little later in New York.

Whoops!

The first thing I notice when I step out of Grand Central Station is a TD Bank branch. Pretty convenient. In fact, according to TD Bank, TD Bank is America's most convenient bank.

I should add to my checklist: eat breakfast

I'm getting a little hungry and I'm starting to notice that there is fast food everywhere. This makes sense. A proper downtown area is always full of fast food - it's only away from the city centers where a savvy local can find those less generic options. Luckily, being a seasoned New York tourist, I know a pizza place that does not advertise on NBC. And even better, it's hidden right in the middle of tourist central by Madison Square Garden. I orient myself on a nearby map - south, then west - and make my way toward NY Pizza Suprema.

This place came to my attention years ago when The Slice Harvester, a NYC blogger, sampled every pizza-by-the-slice location in the city. He named NY Pizza Suprema his number one pizza spot. I've stopped by on every trip since. The great thing about their slices is that, just when I expect grease, there is no grease. I have no idea how these magicians do it.

I liked his approach to blogging - pick one topic and write only about that. It is like my blog, only the exact opposite.

Fine, I'm officially a liar

While waiting in line to order my slice, I get a return text.

'Maybe meet at 2?'

I return the text.

'Sounds good. See you soon.'

The line is taking a little longer to move than I expected. Everything happens later in New York, right? I'll be sure to text my host if I'm running late for our 215pm meetup.

the toa newsletter - may 2018

Hi all,

Welcome to the May newsletter! Hope everyone’s been well.

Let’s just skip past the pleasantries and get right to business today, shall we?

I don’t do resolutions – an update

Let’s briefly update a couple of previous newsletter items.

First, longtime readers will recall that I’ve occasionally dropped by to share my rules of thumb for various activities. I have a new one for writing (a rule I’m sure to violate several times in this paragraph post alone) that I think will be valuable going forward: verb ‘to’ verb is no good.

What is verb ‘to’ verb? It just means connecting two verbs with ‘to’, a construction that I’ve noticed creates a lot of unnecessary verbosity (and thus, admin) in what might otherwise be a simple sentence.

There is an example in this section: …I’ve occasionally dropped by to share…

Why not just – I’ve occasionally shared? No one knows, especially me, and I wrote that stupid f'ing sentence. I'll try to stop doing it, patient reader.

The other change involves running. Back in January, I dropped by to share shared some changes I was planning to make making to my routine. Unfortunately, it’s been all downhill from there and at the time of writing I’m actually in the midst of my longest non-injury related running break since… 2008? I really can’t remember, it’s been so long.

There will be more about my (non) running in an upcoming post.

Leftovers, Newsletter edition - March was Made of Yarn

My brother and I – among many others, now that I consider it – have often joked about our unusual combination of grandparents. On our father’s side, our grandparents were Irish immigrants who arrived in America around a century ago. On our mother’s side, both grandparents were Japanese and lived their entire lives in Japan.

As I read the mini-bios for each author featured in March Was Made of Yarn, I came across an unexpected note – Bonnie Elliot’s background includes an Irish-American father and a Japanese mother. What were the odds? I wonder if her middle name is something extraordinarily Japanese like ‘Honda’ or ‘Yasui’.

Maybe I’ll check out more of her work at some point.

2018 TOA Book of the Year Award 

I forget to do this every month and this month is no exception. I’m just going to update readers on progress over the course of the next couple of months whenever I can. I think if we can finalize a winner by the end of the year and hand out The Most Irrelevant Prize In World Literature before Christmas, we’ll all be happy, right?

What is the goal of email? A preview…

I wrote an extended series on how I use email that I will probably share during the latter half of the summer. For today, I thought I’d provide this sneak preview for those readers who may currently be overwhelmed by their inbox.

So… SPOILER ALERT… here goes...

First - ‘The Goal’ of email is to delete it from your main inbox.

How do we achieve this goal? Consider the following tactical flowchart:

DELETE means permanent deletion right away.
-> If we cannot DELETE, try to DO

DO means permanent deletion after a defined action.
-> If we cannot DO, try to DELEGATE

DELEGATE means permanent deletion of all similar emails in the future
-> If we cannot DELEGATE, try to DEFER

DEFER means temporary deletion
-> If we cannot DEFER… it must mean we are DELETING, DOING, or DELEGATING

Keep those eyes peeled for the full series – summer fun on TOA!

May links

I enjoyed this episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast – The Infocalypse Pod, if you will – where he spoke with Buzzfeed's Charlie Warzel about a variety of topics related to the internet's past, present, and future.

I did not enjoy this Japan Times article but thought it made a related point to what I’ve said a lot over the last year and a half – America’s worst case scenario isn’t turning into some throwback World War II era totalitarian state, it’s turning into modern-day Japan. We’re much closer than some realize – I mean, what’s the difference between Cosplay and dressing up like this to go to to a helmet football game?

Finally, it wouldn't be April 2018 without some reference to Liverpool being back in the latter rounds of the Champions League for the first time since I was in college. It’s been incredible, really, and almost impossible to believe. This article from The Guardian isn’t quite about Liverpool – it’s about the development of one of their current players from before he signed with the club – but I thought it was a fascinating look into how some people are approaching the challenge of player development.

Ha, Liverpool. They in the final?

Actually, they wrap up the semifinal tomorrow, so fingers crossed.

I see. You gonna write another dumb post about Champions League Finals, then?

Well, not if you are gonna ask with that kind of attitude.

Oh, lighten up. No jokes this time around?

Why would I make a joke? You didn’t even get the one from last time.

Which was…?

That Foundation could actually make my ‘Book of the Year’ shortlist.

Right, well, whatever, some people have the brain power to understand that Foundation was good… anyway, a summer blog series about email? Watching Liverpool games? Surely, you didn’t leave the apartment?

Not really, no. April really was a slow, boring month. No running, no nothing. I did have to go to the bar to watch soccer, but that was only for two hours at a time. I did read Maniac Magee again, I suppose, but I’m not going to write about it.

Oh, thank goodness! Anything else?

Folks, I’ve been hinting at it almost from the day I started this silly little venture but here it is in official form – I’m finally committing to shrinking this thing down a little bit. Starting tomorrow, I’ll cap a week of posts at around three thousand words. For those interested in the admin, a ‘TOA week’ will run from Monday to Sunday.

Why the change? The big reason is that I think the space becomes inconsistent when I post a few hundred words one week and follow up with consecutive two thousand word blogs the next. This change should get us to between twenty and thirty minutes of reading a week on TOA and I think that will make for a small but important improvement. We all (allegedly) have better things to do than read TOA, you know?

The good news is – this all starts tomorrow! So, for you audit-inclined readers out there, don’t bother counting these words. There will be plenty of opportunity to pick on me in the coming months...

See you in May!

In the next month of... True On Average...

1. I put Ben Franklin in his place.

2. I avoid going north, or east.

3. Does buying groceries prove focus or ambition?