Parenting a toddler is getting up at 1AM for your toddler with an ear infection and at 3AM to help them find a squishy ball they lost in their bed but it all being worth it for the endless joy it produces.
Short week, Thanksgiving. We’ll see if I can get some inertia.
Reading
I finished The Bullet Journal method for the second time. I got a lot out of it again, even though this time was more of a skim. One thing I’m focusing on is logging more than just simple tasks and events. This stood out (emphasis mine)
You can view your Bullet Journal as a living autobiography. It allows you to clearly see what the rush of life tends to obscure. You can track the decisions you’ve made, and the actions you’ve taken that led you to where you are. It encourages you to learn from your experiences. What worked, what did not, how did it make you feel, what’s the next move
If I could sum that up, it’s probably: slow down and think about it. That’s a lesson we can all learn, but one that I’m particularly thinking about for how I log in my journal.
That used to be something came so naturally, especially in my college years, when I considered a future in academia. And I’m not sure if its the natural distractions of life or the interruptive modern era that makes that so hard these days.
Some hope for the future of the web? A good point made in in Today in Tabs about a decade or so ago, when publications like The Awl began to break through with a new form of independent media:
The Verge seems to be doing fine, some of the others kind of still exist, pretty much everyone is laying off staff and making ominous noises about replacing the rest with AI soon. But if I know one fact (and I do) it’s that there will always be people with no other interests or life skills except finding out what’s happening and writing it down. You can give them big paychecks, but it won’t make them work any faster. You can fire them, but it won’t make them work any less. The moneyfolk come and go from media for reasons I will never understand, but when they’re gone—when things look the most bleak—that’s when your true reporter goblins come out to play.
Who knows what the future of the web holds, and who knows what journalists and creators will do? The only thing that’s certain is that once a generation, they are counted out, and once a generation, they find a new path no one had thought of.
Drive is a bit repetitive, but it certainly… drives… home its point. Intrinsic motivation is a very really think and it can be encouraged and it is a bit counter-intuitive. But once you wrap your head around it, it starts to make a lot of sense.
Writing
Maya Angelou, echoing the kind of thing you hear all the time from writers:
Writing is a part of my life; cooking is a part of my life. Making love is a part of my life; walking down the street is a part of it. Writing demands more time, but it takes from all of these other activities. They all feed into the writing. I think it’s dangerous to concern oneself too damned much with “being an artist.” It’s more important to get the work done. You don’t have to concern yourself with it, just get it done. The pondering pose — the back of the hand glued against the forehead — is baloney. People spend more time posing than getting the work done. The work is all there is. And when it’s done, then you can laugh, have a pot of beans, stroke some child’s head, or skip down the street.