This site has a county-by-county representation of the "natural amenities" in the U.S. Natural amenities are the physical characteristics of a place that make it appealing for living, such as climate, topography, and water features. These features are relatively permanent and are not significantly impacted by human activities or settlement patterns, making them useful for studying regional growth and economic change.
Natural Amenity Rank is a composite of six standardized inputs, which can be selected individually, above. Those variables are: January Average Temp, January Sunlight Hours, July Average Temp, July Humidity, Water Area of the county (log scaled), and the amount of Topographical Variation (i.e, mountains vs. plains on a standard scale). The raw data and paper can be found here.
It's a fascinating map to play with. You can choose the map to represent each of the variables. To me, the topographical variation is the most interesting.
The top of the site reads: "Where do you want to live?" It's an interesting grouping of amenities -- not one that I would rank in the same way.
My Year Abroad by Chang‑rae Lee
"Life, friends, is a people business,” Victor Jr. pronounced with a stained tea towel slung over his cushy shoulder.... Val and I assumed he was parroting some philosophical chef in a video he'd watched, but the dappled glints in his eyes made you wonder if another dimension had opened to him, that he was realizing -- as a lot of grown-ups never do -- that what was fundamentally good for you was staying busy, making something new every day, and having kind social contact." (281)
Carl Rogers On Becoming a Person "What it Means to Become a Person" (1954)
I have pointed out that each individual appears to be asking a double question: “who am i?” and “how may I become myself?” I have stated that in a favorable psychological climate a process of becoming takes place; that here the individual drops one after another of the defensive masks with which he has faced life; that he experiences fully the hidden aspect of himself; that he discovers in these experiences the stranger who has been living behind these masks, the stranger who is himself. I have tried to give my picture of the characteristic attributes of the person who emerges; a person who is more open to all of the elements of his organic experience; a person who is developing a trust in his own organism as an instrument of sensitive living; a person who accepts the locus of evaluation as residing within himself; a person who is learning to live in his life as a participant in a fluid, ongoing process, in which he is continually discovering new aspects of himself in the flow of his experience. These are some of the elements which seem to me to be involved in becoming a person. (123-124)
The process of becoming
Getting behind the mask
In this attempt to discover his own self, the client typically uses the relationship to explore, to examine the various aspects of his own experience, to recognize and face up to the Deep contradictions which he discovers. he learns how much of his behavior, even how much of the feeling he experiences, is not real, is not something which flows from the genuine reactions of his organism, but is a facade, a front, behind which he has been hiding. he discovers how much of his life is Guided by what he thinks he should be, not by what he is. often he discovers that he exists only in response to the demands of others, that he seems to have no self of his own, that he is only trying to think, and feel, and behave in the way that others believe he ought to think, and feel and behave. (110)
The experience of feeling
I would like to say something more about this experiencing of feeling. it is really the discovery of unknown elements of the self. the phenomenon I am trying to describe is something which I think is quite difficult to get across in any meaningful way. and our daily lives there are a thousand and one reasons for not letting ourselves experience our attitudes fully, Reasons from our past and from the present, reasons that reside within the social situation. it seems too dangerous, too potentially damaging, to experience them freely and fully. but in the safety and freedom of the therapeutic relationship, they can be experienced fully, clear to the limit of what they are. (111)
What I have gradually learned from experiences such as this, is that the individual in such a moment, is coming to be what he is. When a person has, throughout therapy, experienced in this fashion all the emotions which organismically arise in him, and has experienced them in this knowing and open manner, then he has experienced himself, in all the richness that exists within himself. He has become what he is… (earlier, as part of an example, for illustration:)
he realizes that this has bubbled through, and that for the moment he is his dependency, in a way which astonishes him.(113)
It seems that gradually, painfully, the individual explores what is behind the masks he presents to the world, and even behind the masks with which he has been deceiving himself. deeply and often vividly he experiences the various elements of himself which have been hidden within. Thus to an increasing degree he becomes himself – not a facade of conformity to others, not a cynical denial of all feeling, or a front of intellectual rationality, but a living, breathing, feeling, fluctuating process – in short, he becomes a person. (114)
The person who emerges
Openness to experience
Now in a safe relationship of the sort I have described, this defensiveness or rigidity, tends to be replaced by an increasing openness to experience. the individual individual becomes more openly aware of his own feelings and attitudes as they exist in him at an organic level, in the way I described. he also becomes more aware of reality as it exists outside of himself, instead of perceiving it in a preconceived categories. he sees that not all trees are green, not all men are Stern fathers, not all women are rejecting, not all failure experiences prove that he is no good, and the like. he's able to take in the evidence of a new situation, as it is, rather than distorting it to fit a pattern which he already holds. as you might expect, this increasing ability to be open to experience makes him far more realistic in dealing with new people, new situations, new problems. it means that his beliefs are not rigid, that he can tolerate ambiguity. he can receive much conflicting evidence without forcing closure on the situation. this openness of awareness to what exists at this moment in oneself and in the situation is I believe an important element in the description of the person who emerges from therapy. (115-116)
Trust in One’s organism
a second characteristic of the person's who emerge from therapy is difficult to describe. it seems that the person increasingly discovers that his own organism is trustworthy, that it is a suitable instrument for discovering the most satisfying behavior in each immediate situation. if this seems strange, let me try to stay it more fully. perhaps it will help to understand my description if you think of the individual as faced with some existential choice: shall I go home to my family during vacation, or strike it out of my own? shall I drink this third cocktail which is being offered? this is is this the person whom I would like to have as my partner in love and in life? thinking of such situations, what seems to be true of the person who emerges from the therapeutic process? he has knowledge of his own feelings and impulses, which are often complex and contradictory. he's freely able to sense the social demands, from their relatively rigid social laws to the desires of friends and family (etc.)….. Out of this complex weighing and balancing he is able to discover that course of action which seems to come closer to satisfying all his needs in the situation, long range as well as immediate needs. (118)
In general then, it appears to be true that when a client is open to his experience, he comes to find his organism more trustworthy. He feels less fear of the emotional reactions which he has. There is a gradual growth of trust in, and even affection for the complex, rich, very assortment of feelings in Tendencies which exist in him at the organic level. consciousness, instead of being the Watchman over a dangerous and unpredictable lot of impulses, of which few can be permitted to see the light of the day, become the comfortable inhabitant of a society of impulses in feelings and thoughts, which are discovered to be very satisfactorily self-governing when not fearfully guarded. (119)
An internal locus of evaluation
The individual increasingly comes to feel that this locus of evaluation lies within himself. Less and less does he look to others for approval or disapproval; for standards to live by; for decisions and choices. He recognizes that it rests within himself to choose; that the only question which matters is, “Am I living in a way that is deeply satisfying to me, and which truly expresses me?” This I think is perhaps the most important question for the creative individual.
Willingness to be a process
I should like to point out one final characteristic of these individuals as they strive to discover and become themselves. It is that the individual seems to become more content to be a process rather than a product. When he enters the therapeutic relationship, the client is likely to wish to achieve some fixed state: he wants to reach the point where his problems are solved, or where he is effective in his work, or where his marriage is satisfactory. he tends, in the freedom of the therapeutic relationship to drop such fixed goals, and to accept more satisfying realization that he is not a fixed entity, but process of becoming. (123)
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| Monarda fistulosa or Wild Bergamot or Beebalm |
JKZ Episode #24 minute 24:00
We not merely doing this for ourselves or getting through a tough patch. And we're tapping in as best we can the infinite wells of our own creativity and imagination for how to live in a way that optimizing for beauty let's say and well-being and clarity and insight and compassion, taking care of what and who needs taking care of.
.... at the same time all flowering out of this moment, this timeless moment, underneath thought, before thinking arises, pure awareness embodied. Aware of our interconnectedness, aware of our intrinsic spatiousness that could be called selflessness, a radical act of love in the end.
Your Bergamot is Wild!*
I took these two photos at different times at Fullersburg Woods this summer. It's in the prairie section and along beds by the parking lot. I recently delete a picture that featured it along with yellow rudbeckias -- totally overgrown and lush along the sidewalk in the parking lot. What's funny about it is that I grow it in my backyard... but couldn't identify the Fullersburg species. Mine are deep red. I've seen deep purple flowers, too. This lilac color is beautiful.
It's part of the mint family, according to the internet, and can be used as a dried spice, like oregano. You can make a tea out of it, too. Elsewhere on the internet:
Monarda fistulosa, also known as wild bergamot or bee balm, has various medicinal and culinary uses. Medicinally, it's known for its antifungal, antibacterial, and antiviral properties, often used to support respiratory and digestive health, as well as to treat skin infections and wounds. Culinary, the leaves and flowers can be used to add a spicy, floral flavor to salads, teas, and other dishes.
COMMON USE: Wild bergamot has been utilized by Indigenous communities for its antimicrobial and digestive properties. Infusions made from its leaves were used to alleviate colds and aid in digestion. Culinarily, the aromatic leaves and flowers of wild bergamot can be incorporated into teas, and salads, or used as a flavoring agent in recipes, providing a unique, slightly spicy, and citrusy flavor. Additionally, the herb is valued in the culinary world for its role in creating herbal teas and enhancing the flavor of certain dishes.
Check out this school of herbal medicine site about it to learn how to make tea.
From Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person, "Characteristics of a Helping Relationship"
I have come to recognize that being trustworthy does not demand that I be rigidly consistent but that I be dependably real. The term congruent is one that I have used to describe the way I would like to be. by this I mean that whatever feeling or attitude I am experiencing would be matched by my awareness of that attitude. When this is true, then I am a unified or integrated person in that moment, and hence I can be whatever I deeply am. This is a reality which I find others experience as dependable (51)
Can I act with sufficient sensitivity in the relationship that my behavior will not be perceived as a threat? The work we are beginning to do in studying the physiological concomitants of psychotherapy confirms the research by Dittes indicating how easily individuals are threatened at a physiological level. The psycho-galvanic reflex – the measure of skin conductance – takes a sharp dip when the therapist responds with some word which is just a little stronger than the client's feelings. and to a phrase such as, my you do look upset, the needle swings almost off the paper. My desire to avoid even such minor threats is not due to a hypersensitivity about my client. It is simply due to the conviction based on experience that if I can free him completely as possible from external threats, then he can begin to deal with the internal feelings and conflicts which he finds threatening within himself. (54)
Can I free him from the threat of external evaluation? Curiously enough a positive evaluation is as threatening in the long run as a negative one, since to inform someone that he is good implies that you also have the right to tell him he is bad. So I have come to feel that the more I can keep a relationship free of judgment evaluation, the more this will permit the other person to reach the point where he recognizes that the locus of evaluation, the center of responsibility, lies within himself. (54)
This has raised in my mind the strong suspicion that the optimal helping relationships are the kind of relationship created by a person who is psychologically mature. Or to put it in another way, the degree to which I can create relationships which facilitate the growth of others as separate persons is a measure of the growth I have achieved in myself. In some respects this is a disturbing thought, but is also a promising or challenging one. would indicate that if I am interested in creating helping relationships I have a fascinating lifetime job ahead of me, stretching and developing my potentialities in the direction of growth. (56)
On This Day (07/29):
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| Zinnias in the neighborhood |
From ToDo Institute: Pretty amazing. (Related ideas in a blog post from five years ago: "On 'A Certain Number of Times'")
Warm greetings from ToDo.
Here we all are, in the heart of summer. I hope we all have many summers ahead of us, but there's no way to predict. And any of my own realistic predictions are sobering. I'll take that awareness with me when we meet up with friends for a picnic later. How many more picnics will I go to? Probably not hundreds, maybe dozens, maybe one dozen, maybe one. I'll try to be there for the picnic breeze and every bite of food, and every word of the conversation, but I probably won't, given all of the endless chattering in my mind. I will try, though, because being present to our simple moments, one by one, is the most satisfying way to live, and the best way to coexist with a bewildering world.
With love and appreciation for your company,
From David Brooks: article link
The hard sciences help us understand the natural world. The social sciences help us measure behavior patterns across populations. But culture and the liberal arts help us enter the subjective experience of particular people: how this unique individual felt; how this other one longed and suffered. We have the chance to move with them, experience the world, a bit, the way they experience it.
We know from studies by the psychologists Raymond Mar and Keith Oatley that reading literature is associated with heightened empathy skills. Deep reading, immersing yourself in novels with complex characters, engaging with stories that explore the complexity of this character’s motivations or that character’s wounds, is a training ground for understanding human variety. It empowers us to see the real people in our lives more accurately and more generously, to better understand their intentions, fears and needs, the hidden kingdom of their unconscious drives. The resulting knowledge is not factual knowledge but emotional knowledge.
The novelist Frederick Buechner once observed that not all the faces Rembrandt painted were remarkable. Some are just average-looking old people. But even the plainest face “is so remarkably seen that it forces you to see it remarkably.” We are jolted into not taking other people for granted but to sense and respect the immense depth of each human soul.
When I come across a Rembrandt in a museum, I try to train myself to see with even half of Rembrandt’s humanity. Once in St. Petersburg, I had the chance to stand face to face with one of his greatest paintings, “The Return of the Prodigal Son.” He painted this one at the end of his life, when popular taste had left him behind, his finances were in ruins, his wife and four of his five children were in their graves. I have seen other renderings of that parable, but not one in which the rebel son is so broken, fragile, pathetic, almost hairless and cast down. The father envelops the young man with a love that is patient, selfless and forbearing. Close observers note the old man’s hands. One is masculine, and protective. The other is feminine, and tender.
Though this painting is about a parable, it’s not here to teach us some didactic lesson. We are simply witnessing an emotional moment, which is about fracture and redemption, an aging artist painting a scene in which he imagines all his losses are restored. It is a painting about what it is like to finally realize your deepest yearnings — for forgiveness, safety, reconciliation, home. Meanwhile, the son’s older brother is off to the side, his face tensely rippling with a mixture of complex thoughts, which I read as rigid scorn trying to repress semiconscious shoots of fraternal tenderness.
Experiences like this help us understand ourselves in light of others — the way we are like them and the way we are different. As Toni Morrison put it: “Like Frederick Douglass talking about his grandmother, and James Baldwin talking about his father, and Simone de Beauvoir talking about her mother, these people are my access to me; they are my entrance into my own interior life.”
Experiences with great artworks deepen us in ways that are hard to describe. To have visited Chartres Cathedral or finished “The Brothers Karamazov” is not about acquiring new facts but to feel somehow elevated, enlarged, altered. In Rainer Maria Rilke’s novel “The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge,” the protagonist notices that as he ages, he’s able to perceive life on a deeper level: “I am learning to see. I don’t know why it is, but everything penetrates more deeply into me and does not stop at the place where until now it always used to finish.”
I've been doing some hour-long walks since we got back from the UP. I liked this explosion of zinnias in a yard near Gilbert and Goodman. It's brash, overgrown, unapologetic, profuse. Last year I grew a few in my garden and loved to use them as cut flowers. This year, the seeds were quickly covered by vegetables in the garden. Maybe they'll still bloom since I pulled out the peas and lots of dill. While I'm waiting, I'll add them to my list of things to plant more of next year.
On This Day (07/28):
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| Picked yesterday from the raised bed on the patio. There are 3-4 other handfuls of lettuce. |
from James Clear:
Life is always progressing to the next stage. As you enter a new season, habits that previously served you well may need to be refreshed or adjusted. Which one of your current habits have you outgrown and is in need of a change?
blah blah
From Carl Rogers book On Becoming a Person, an essay titled "The facilitation of personal growth."
I can state the overall hypotheses in one sentence, as follows. If I can provide a certain type of relationship, the other person will discover within himself the capacity to use that relationship for growth, and change and personal development will occur. (33)
I have found that the more that I can be genuine in the relationship, the more helpful it will be. This means that I need to be aware of my own feelings, in so far as possible, rather than presenting an outward facade of one attitude, while actually holding another attitude at a deeper or unconscious level. . Being genuine also involves the willingness to be and to express, in my words and my behavior, the various feelings and attitudes which exist in me.... I have found this to be true even when the attitudes I feel are not attitudes with which I am pleased, or attitudes which seem conducive to a good relationship. It seems extremely importan to be real. (33)
The second phrase in my overall hypothesis was that the individual will discover within himself the capacity to use this relationship for growth. [calls i "toward maturity"]. ... It is evident in the capacity of the individual to undertsand those aspects of his life and of himself which are causing him pain and dissatisfactin, an understanding which probes beneath his conscious knowledge of himself into those experiences which he has hidden from himself because of their threatening nature. It shows itself in the tendencey to reorganize his personality and his relationship to life in ways which are regarded as more mature. Whether one calls it a growth tendency, a drive toward self-actualization, or a forward-moving directional tendencey, it is the mainspring of life, and is, in the last analysis, the tendency upon which all psycho-therapy depends. It is the urge which is evidence in all organic and hyman life -- to expand, extend, become autonomous, develop, mature -- to tendency to express and activate al the capacities of the organiism, to the extent that such activiation enhances the organism or the self. (35)
We know now that individuals who live in such a srelationship even for a relatively limited number of hours show profound and significant change in personality, attitudes, and behavior, changes that do not occur in matched control groups.. In such a relationship the individual becomes more integrated, more effective. He shows fewer of the characteristics which are usually termed neurotic or psychotic, and more of the characteristics of the healthy, well-functioning person. He changes his perception of himself, becomign more realistic in his views of self. He becomes more like the person he wishes to be. He values himself more highly. He is more self-confident and self-directing. He has a better understanding of himself, becomes more open to his experience, denies or represses less of his experience. He becomes more accepting in his attitudes toward others, seeing others more similar to himself. (36)
In his behavior he shows similar changes. He is less frustrated by stress, and reovers from stress more quickly. He becomes more mature in his everyday behavior as this is observed by friends. He is less defensive, more adaptive, more able to meet situations creatively. (36)
... it seems reasonable to hypothesize that if the parent creates with his child a psychological climate such as we have described, then the child will become more self-direcitng, socialized, and mature. To the extent that the teacher creates such a relationship with his class, the student will become a self-initiated learner, more original, more self-disciplined, less anxious and other-directed.... (37)
If I can create a relationship characterized on my part:
by a genuineness and transparency, in which I am my real feelings;
by a warm acceptance of and prizing of the other person as a separate individual;
by a sensitive ability to see his world in himself as he sees them;
Then the other individual in the relationship:
will experience and understand aspects of himself which previously he has repressed;
will find himself becoming better integrated, more able to function effectively;
will become more similar to the person he would like to be;
will be more self-directing and self-confident;
will become more of a person, more unique and more self-expressive;
will be more understanding, more acceptant of others;
will be able to cope with the problems of life more adequately and more comfortably. (38)
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| On a 3 mile walk today: Swallowtail in neighborhood cup plant in overgrown WS front yard |
From Carl Rogers:
In the first place it means that significant learning occurs more readily in relation to situations perceived as problems. I believe I have observed evidence to support this. In my own varying attempts to conduct courses and groups in ways consistent with my therapeutic experience, I have found such an approach more effective, I believe, in workshops than in regular courses, in extension courses than in campus courses. Individuals who come to workshops or extension courses are those who are in contact with problems which they recognize as problems. The student in the regular university course, and particularly in the required course, is apt to view the course as an experience in which he expects to remain passive or resentful or both, an experience which he certainly does not often see as relevant to his own problems.
Yet it has also been my experience that when a regular university class does perceive the course as an experience they can use to resolve problems which are of concern to them, the sense of release, and the thrust of forward movement is astonishing. And this is true of courses as diverse as Mathematics and Personality.
I believe the current situation in Russian education also supplies evidence on this point. When a whole nation perceives itself as being faced with the urgent problem of being behind — in agriculture, in industrial production, in scientific development, in weapons development — then an astonishing amount of significant learning takes place, of which the Sputniks are but one observable example.
So the first implication for education might well be that we permit the student, at any level, to be in real contact with the relevant problems of his existence, so that he perceives problems and issues which he wishes to resolve. I am quite aware that this implication, like the others I shall mention, runs sharply contrary to the current trends in our culture, but I shall comment on that later.
I believe it would be quite clear from my description of therapy that an overall implication for education would be that the task of the teacher is to create a facilitating classroom climate in which significant learning can take place. This general implication can be broken down into several sub-sections.
from James Clear:
life gets harder when you try to make it easy.
- Exercising might be hard, but never moving makes life harder.
- Mastering your craft is hard, but having no skills is harder.
- Uncomfortable conversations are hard, but avoiding every conflict is harder.
Easy has a cost.
Inspired by a NYT piece (What I Learned When I Walked My Age) recently about this woman who did 58 5.8 mile hikes during her 58th year, I've done a few longer walks this week - all about an hour - to get a sense for what those walks might entail. Each time I see a few new things. These past two I saw a lot of broken trees from a recent thunderstorm and microburst in the neighborhood across the tracks. Also I've seen a couple planters that I'd like to reproduce. I saw the swallowtail in an overgrown front yard. I also have listened to big chunks of audiobooks. Today I listened to Richard Ford reading "State of Grace" by Harold Brodkey... which I am hoping to use in AP Lit class this year.
Which is to say: I'd love to do 55 walks this next year. As many as possible with friends. In the article, the author often says that the friends were the ones doing the organizing.
From the article:
My dad had died suddenly, at 59, and our regular walks are a memory I cling to over 35 years later. As I approached a stage of life he never experienced, I wanted to honor him. But I had other goals, too. I hoped to pair two favorite activities — walking and talking — with small excursions around New York City, where I live, and during my travels elsewhere.
Some walks went much farther than the 5.8-mile goal. Sarah and Tony, longtime walking buddies, organized a breathtaking 12-miler, traversing the Hudson River on the longest footbridge in the United States. Sarah brought fantastic chocolate chip cookies. As a bonus, I learned how to spell Poughkeepsie.
I didn’t hold others to the Sarah-Tony standard, though. A few people, because of injury or a lack of appetite for long walks, did their 5.8 miles in stages. Some were creative with the prompt: Patrick, an artist, took me to see a Käthe Kollwitz exhibit at MoMA, where we visited the fifth floor, found Gallery 8 and snapped a photo. I wanted to widen my circle, not limit it.
I walked with close friends and new pals like Dilan, who scheduled a stroll after we’d met only once. A mutual friend fixed us up knowing we were both tuned into all things aging, even though Dilan was two decades my junior.
I hit four of the five N.Y.C. boroughs, crossed eight bridges and took several ferries and a tram. I experienced Flushing with its bustling Asian food halls; the artsy grit of Long Island City; the cobblestones of Brooklyn Heights, Vinegar Hill and Dumbo. I finally made it to the Rockaways and Roosevelt Island. Each walk reaffirmed my belief that nearly every subway stop promises an entirely new world.
But I see my walks as less of an athletic feat and more of a container for everything I value. They fed my desire to convene people without the pressure of a party. They were flexible enough to evolve with other people’s visions, which sometimes fit the spirit but not the letter of the challenge. Most important, at a moment when the world felt unstable, these little pleasures with friends were grounding.
It was a Goldilocks of rituals and felt just right.
Yesterday I began doing 10 days of watercolors. I have two books on learning watercolors. I assembled my supplies and then did the pretty basic practice above. The gradation bars was done by adding some blue to the "palette" tray and adding 2-3 drops of water between each bar. The first real product/benefit/ result of the 10x10 was an idea I developed from the table of contents: each lesson is called a "project," and they get slowly more complex in some way. My idea was to do this non-intimidating and "creative" and productive process in AP Lit class. So, I interacted with ChatGPT to formulate some ideas. I kept playing with the idea during a long afternoon walk. The ideas from ChatGPT are not solid gold, but they are more comprehensive and disciplined than I am (in like creating a list of 20 possibilities of student projects). And the interaction keeps me thinking. For instance, just now I find myself thinking that the analogue can be pretty exact: I show an image -- either a video or a still image -- and ask students to recreate it in words. I can ask them to use syntax, word choice, pacing, metaphor, etc. to do this. I can work with mood, selection of detail, imagery, etc.
My point is that this forced 10x10 has already provided some results
Every great advance — whether in an individual life or the world at large — has come from dreams and attempts.Devise more dreams. Make more attempts.
Mason Currie notes the 3 rules here.
First, some context on the interview: Anderson was talking about her 2015 documentary Heart of a Dog, which she made in the years after her beloved rat terrier, Lolabelle, passed away. At one point, the interviewer tries to ask Anderson about her final months with her late husband, Lou Reed, who had died two years earlier. Anderson doesn’t really want to go there, so instead she offers “some rules that he and I made about how to live,” which she says they spent a lot of time thinking about together. Their premise, Anderson explains, was that life moves fast and is often complicated, so if you had some rules that you could always keep in mind, it would make it easier to navigate confusing situations and life in general.
Here are the rules they came up with:
OK, so the first one is: Don’t be afraid of anyone. If you can imagine: living your life, you’re not afraid of anyone. That’s number one.
Number two is you get a really good bullshit detector, and you learn how to use it. You know, just: “Is that really happening or not?”
Third is to be really, really tender. And with those, you’re covered.
as an addendum:
OK, here’s a possible fourth rule from Anderson herself, via a 2016 interview with the Louisiana Channel.
In Hancock, there's a great place called Small Craft to drink beers and sit in adirondack chairs in a expansive lawn overlooking the bridge, sailboats, and the town of Houghton rising across the water. Small Craft shares a border with Takka Saunas. This sign was in the bathroom. It indicates the coming together of a number of things: yoga, sauna, good craft beer, being outside, a community, a sense of humor. Cost is nothing! Just tip the instructor. It's good for everyone -- Takka, Small Craft, the Instructor, the community -- and all it takes is the gifting of the space from Small Craft and the volunteering of the instructor. Maybe Small Craft pays the instructor a little? Maybe s/he just works for tips. But it creates a little positive "gift economy" -- similar to bike benefits in Madison and similar to the the benefits of bringing food from grocery store waste to people in need (and specifically the "buy one for a friend" model described here.). I love these little economies that create community!
From Rob Walker and Gus Van Sant (film) and, originally, Williams S. Burroughs (link): Do Easy, or D.E.
D.E. is a way of doing. D.E. simply means doing whatever you do in the easiest most relaxed way you can manage, which is also the quickest and most efficient way, as you will find as you advance in D.E. You can start right now tidying up your flat, moving furniture or books, washing dishes, making tea, sorting papers. Don’t fumble, jerk, grab an object. Drop cool possessive fingers onto it, like a gentle old cop making a soft arrest.
July 25th is the 61st day of the Summer 100. Summer 100 is an artificial framing of the "100 days" of summer vacation. (It's actually far shorter than that ... I just started on the first day after Memorial Day (and I had a week of school to do) and ended 100 days later, which is Aug 31 (and by that time I'll have been daily at work for a month!)).
To work with my ADHD tendencies and struggles with finishing things, I've tried a variety of "10x10" ideas throughout the years... I've also called them "short habits." The idea is to build a habit over time and don't give up on "great ideas" after just a couple days. It is a cousin to things I've found online like the 100 Day Project or Austin Kleon's printed calendars to complete a project in a month (maybe he calls them "suck less"?). Here's my "HTML 10x10 coding project". Here's my previous "Watercolors 10x10." Both of these involved both learning/taking notes from the internet/YouTube, then following along. (The watercolor one was from August 2023). Here's a "basement workout 10x10" I reported on. Here's the beginning of Gardening 10x10 - a list of 10 videos about gardening projects.... I might keep these just in a "Scrapbook" now.
Here's a weird one from last year that never got anywhere:
Growing out of the related GTD process I've been developing/accumulating, which features "10 active projects from different domains; each project has 10 steps," I thought of including a few DAILY 10x10s to include in my list of 10.
In general, these could include: listening projects, reading projects, cooking projects, menu/cookbook projects, learning projects, creative projects, physical fitness projects, writing projects. The first couple I'm going to try include a watercolor 10x10 and a "flat feet fixing" 10x10. Oh, yeah, also, I'm trying to do reflective birthday questions: taking 10 10-minute chunks to respond here.
I want these to feel casual and quick... build creative and foundational strength/stability habits into my life that are as easy as brushing my teeth.
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| Headliner Dark Violet Picotee Petunias and Lobularia Lavendear STREAM |
Link to podcast site. Here's my own spreadsheet of all of them that I'm building with the help of ChatGPT. Here are ten that I could use for class:
I've been spending time and effort on building a GTD system, complete with 10x10 projects imbedded, and daily habit building/tracking embedded this summer. I thought it would be worth a couple minutes to create a rationale. First of all, I am a perpetual starter of things (projects, tasks) and have a hard time keeping on to completion. So, I want to have a system that will help me set, define, and work towards defined ends. I want to be a finisher of things. I am also someone who tends to think about and plan things for longer than it takes just to get started with projects. So, I want a system to LIMIT my range of options about things to work on until I finish them.
More to the point: I want a system that provides me -- right now -- an indicator of what I should begin working on. One of my strengths is that I'm able to get to work and work pretty hard. I need a system that will tell me, like a benevolent and wise supervisor or boss: this is what you should be doing now, now work hard for the next 25 minutes and get it done.
In some ways, a good corrective to my tendencies would be to have a SINGLE project that I'm working on and work until I finish it. However, because of my inherent tendencies, ADHDness, I need to do things in gulps. My current system steals from the Pomodoro technique in thinking about a 25-minute chunk of time as a single unit.
Here are some time management/ project management things that make sense to me (and, I think, are part of my system): Pomodoro technique (for 25-minute chunks), GTD (especially for the purpose of knowing what to do now and not storing stuff in your head -- using inbox to get to clarity, but also the idea of horizons of focus and 'responsibilities' and bundling tasks; related: I don't bundle "things to do at the computer, but rather, like the next item in this list, bundle focused work, like house maintenance/chore, garden/landscaping, office/finances), (system where you think of yourself as different PEOPLE throughout the day: world's greatest parent, chef, entrepreneur, athlete, etc. to focus on the immediate goals ahead of you... to clear your mind), timeblocking (to pre-plan the areas that I should be working on at specific times and to move from "list-based" to a "calendar-based" (though also recognizing that lists are important in the mind-clearing idea). One time-blocker I recently read about (a doctor who set a goal to run a marathon per day on 7 continets?) has the next 14 days totally time-blocked. I have daily time allocated for slightly-deeper dives of areas that need repeated attention - cleaning, bill paying, "vacation planning," financial planning, gmail taming.
How do I know if I'm "GTD'd"? What would make me feel totally in control of my upcoming day?
What would I consider some of the untested "essential habits" of my life? Morning coffee? Breakfast? Oatmeal breakfast. Eating some, but not much meat. Morning hour of writing. Keeping a journal. Keeping a Dave's History spreadsheet. Sleeping in a bedroom. Going to bed "early" Running 3x/week. Being pretty complacent in my job.
GET CLEAR
Get “IN” to Zero
Empty Your Head
GET CURRENT
GET CREATIVE
From David Allen website
Ground: Calendar/actions
This is the ground floor – the huge volume of actions and information you currently have to do and to organize, including emails, calls, memos, errands, stuff to read, stuff to file, things to talk to staff about, etc. If you got no further input in your life, this would likely take you 300-500 hours to finish. Just getting a complete and current inventory of the next actions required at this level is quite a feat.
Horizon 1: Projects
This is the inventory of your projects – all the things that you have commitments to finish, that take more than one action step to complete. These “open loops” are what create most of your actions. These projects include anything from “look into having a birthday party for Susan” to “buy Acme Brick Co.” Most people have between 30 and 100 of these. If you were to fully and accurately define this list, it would undoubtedly generate many more and different actions than you currently have identified.
Horizon 2: Areas of focus and accountability
What’s your job? Driving the creation of a lot of your projects are the four to seven major areas of responsibility that you at least implicitly are going to be held accountable to have done well, at the end of some time period, by yourself if not by someone else (e.g. boss.) With a clear and current evaluation of what those areas or responsibility are, and what you are (and are not) doing about them, there are likely new projects to be created, and old ones to be eliminated.
Horizon 3: One- to two-year goals and objectives
Where is your job going? What will the role you’re in right now be looking like 12-18 months from now, based on your goals and on the directions of the changes at that level? We’ve met very few people who are doing only what they were hired to do. These days, job descriptions are moving targets. You may be personally changing what you’re doing, given personal goals; and the job itself may need to look different, given the shifting nature of the work at the departmental or divisional level. Getting this level clear always creates some new projects and actions.
Horizon 4: Three- to five-year vision
The goals and direction of the larger entity within which you operate heavily influence your job and your professional direction. Where is your company going to be, one to three years from now? How will that be affecting the scope and scale of your job, your department, and your division? What external factors (like technology) are influencing the changes? How is the definition and relationship with your customers going to be changing, etc.? Thinking at this level invariably surfaces some projects that need to be defined, and new action steps to move them forward.
Horizon 5: Purpose and principles
What is the work you are here to do on the planet, with your life? This is the ultimate bigger picture discussion. Is this the job you want? Is this the lifestyle you want? Are you operating within the context of your real values, etc.? From an organizational perspective, this is the Purpose and Vision discussion. Why does it exist? No matter how organized you may get, if you are not spending enough time with your family, your health, your spiritual life, etc., you will still have “incompletes” to deal with, make decisions about, and have projects and actions about, to get completely clear.
What would I miss from my life? On returning, what did I miss? Only on returning will you know what you'll miss. The most cherished things are hidden in everyday life.
At the same time, some things aren't missed, some things that are thought essential are not so.
We should be scientists in our lives, testing what things are essentials.
What would I consider some of the untested "essential habits" of my life?
PRACTICE EXERCISE from the ToDo Insitute
“Is there something I can do for you?”
Ask someone you know what you can do for them today. The purpose of this exercise is to make someone's day a little more manageable or enjoyable or satisfying. Just something small and simple would be great. Maybe you could call a neighbor to see if you can pick something up for them at the food store, if you'll be headed that way. If we all extended ourselves just a tiny bit, we would create an infusion of good will in the world today. We could use it, don’t you think? Even if the gestures are minor, the offer itself carries a lot of weight.
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| A sign downtown Copper Harbor showing some of the 40-miles of mountain biking trails in Copper Harbor. |
In Copper Harbor today. Walked Estivant Falls, Horseshoe Bay, did a Sauna through Takka Saunas. The town is milling with mountain bikes, people of all ages slowly crusing on their bikes, most of them pre-or post- trail. It is a mecca. Walkers definitely outnumbered. Here's a blurb from Keweenaw Adventure Company:
Designated as an “IMBA “silver level” ”Ride Center” in 2012, our trail system is ranked among some of the best in the world due to our variety of gateway, cross-country, flow and gravity trails, in addition to being a mountain biker friendly community.
Centrally located in “downtown” Copper Harbor, the principal mountain bike trailhead is conveniently located right across the street from Keweenaw Adventure Company’s retail shop, behind the Copper Harbor Welcome Center. Our system is a well-established network of nearly 40-miles of marked and mapped singletrack trails that include some of the most unique, scenic and thrilling mountain biking in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Additionally, miles and miles of logging roads and jeep trails traverse the uninhabited tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula, with access to remote Lake Superior shorelines, State Forest and conservancy lands, which add another dimension for gravel riding and for the more adventurous explorers.
From ToDo institute - Drops of Wisdom
PRACTICE EXERCISE: Your Team
Whenever you have the presence of mind, think about your support team. If you’re driving, take a moment to consider the factory workers who produced your steering wheel or rear view mirror. If you’re taking a walk, consider who might have paved the sidewalk or made your shoes. Who made the hinges on your bathroom door, or did the electrical wiring in your home? Experience the team effort involved in getting you through a single day. This is a good remedy for loneliness or self-pity.
From James Clear:
If you stay disciplined, you'll always be progressing even on the days you're not motivated.
and
Intensity is overrated. Consistency is underrated.
