“Whatever this life is, it’s all we have. And we don’t want it to end.” Mark S
I have this stuck in my head too from the Season 2 finale.
#Severance
“Whatever this life is, it’s all we have. And we don’t want it to end.” Mark S
I have this stuck in my head too from the Season 2 finale.
#Severance
Sure, there’s a difference between writing a poem and cleaning up a garbled email, between writing a love letter and a Google ad. For some tasks, employing the use of an A.I. assistant might save time without levying a commensurate cost in humanity. Maybe.
We’re working every dread day that is given us
Feeling like the person people meet
Really isn’t us
Like we’re going to buckle underneath the trouble
Like any minute now
The struggle’s going to finish us
Kae Tempest - People’s Faces
All phones are getting bigger. Everyone knows the 5.4-inch iPhone 12 and 13 Minis weren’t hits, sales-wise, but the people who preferred them absolutely loved them. I’ll bet some of you are reading this, nodding your heads, with your aging 12/13 Minis still in your pockets, dreading the day you upgrade — knowing that the longer you wait, the ever-larger the “smallest” new iPhone will be.
Daring Fireball: Allison Johnson Reviews the Samsung Galaxy S25 and S25 Plus: ‘Incredibly Iterative’
Yup.
Pete Brown said it well, “the vast majority of iPad owners are using the device to read Kindle books, play Candy Crush, and take bad photos.”
“The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem. Do you understand?” - Jack Sparrow
“It’s possible to have strong, lasting regrets about a life choice while ferociously loving — and caring for — the fruit of that decision.”
https://time.com/6966914/parental-regret-children-ro-kwon-essay/
What Are You Actually Teaching Them? - The Daily Dad
And of course, you didn’t mean to. But that doesn’t really matter. It’s what they hear that matters. It’s what they see that matters. How easily we end up sending the exact opposite message that we intend!
Not using a phone taught me what a phone is really for. It’s not for communicating with other people, getting directions, reading articles, looking at pictures, shopping for products, or playing games. A phone is a device for muting the anxieties proper to being alive. This is what all its functions and features ultimately achieve: cameras deliver you from time, GPS abstracts you out of space, and an all-consuming screen that keeps you a constant safe distance from yourself. If there’s something you’re worried or upset about, you can simply hide behind your phone and it will all go away. One third of adults say they’re on their phones almost constantly. Their entire waking lives are spent filling time, plastering over the gaps, burning up one day after another, waiting for something to happen, and it never does.
I have that bold text and ‘screening out consciousness’ stuck in my head.
Loving almost everything about the new Gladiators on the BBC. All the positivity from the Gladiators is great. Legend’s pure arrogance and Viper as the new Wolf are so much fun too. 📺
Say goodbye to the ‘tiger mom’. Welcome to the school of jellyfish parenting
I feel this. In China too, so many of the students in my class have countless after school lessons/clubs/activities.
I read it in Alfie Kohn’s Unconditional Parenting too, which I really need to get around to finishing.
“Few parents have the courage and independence to care more for their children’s happiness than for their success.”2 In extreme cases, the “press for success” can reach a fever pitch, such that the child’s present is essentially mortgaged to the future. Activities that might bring meaning or enjoyment are sacrificed in a ceaseless effort to prepare for Harvard (I’ve come to refer to this process as “Preparation H”). The bottom line is never far from the minds of such parents, who weigh every decision about what their children do in school, or even after school, against the yardstick of how it might contribute to future glories. They are not raising children so much as living résumés, and by the time high school arrives, the kids have learned to sign up for activities strictly to impress college admissions committees, ignoring (or, eventually, losing sight of) what they personally find interesting in the here-and-now.
Now is now, it can never be anything else wrote Laura Ingalls Wilder. It’s all we have. We should never wish a minute of it away. Not even when we’re tired, when we’re excited about what’s next, when we’re frustrated with how things are going. We never get this moment back. When you find yourself rushing, remind yourself, as we’ve said, where you are rushing towards. And remember that someday you would do anything to get back here to this very thing you are wishing away.
You need to honor work by not working. You need to not be all about business.
What kids actually want is you. What kids actually need is Dad. As Dear Abby quite brilliantly put it in a column back in the 1950s, “If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money.”
Ha! I haven’t watched BCS but this made me chuckle, comments are good too!
Found this interesting. We want people doing exercise, especially as adults, but how do we get there?
As well, it’s currently the CrossFit Games currently and it reminds me that what the top, top, TOP athletes do in a given sport is nothing like what a ‘normal’ person who does that sport for fun/health does.
Yes to this, I don’t know how people can put the kids to bed and then do more work. I just can’t. As well, after working for 45 hours, I don’t have more work in me at the weekend.
I do not put the kids to bed and then crack my laptop to write. The gates of my brain roll down at 7 p.m. like a mall food court Chik-Fil-A on Sunday. time freedom and brainpower and then I had that additional kid.
If I’m on deadline, then I remove myself from the house to do it. Usually a bar on a weekday evening, because I struggle to bring professional energy of any kind to a weekend.
A nice reminder for parents.
You think you’ve got your act together, then you have kids. You think you’re someone with a good handle on their emotions…then toddlers and teenagers alike disabuse you of this notion. Because that’s what kids do, they stress test us,
For example:
If I wake up and check messages and social media … would I like to spend that time in meditation and journaling instead?
Source: We’re Always Training Something - zen habits zen habits
The biggest barrier to creativity is feeling that it’s not for you. We were trying to bypass criticality and encourage them to be as free in making as they could be.
‘It’s manic!’ Turner-winner Mark Leckey’s dream comes true as he opens an art school in Cornwall
The other thing I would like to say is that once you have kids we often think that once they get in a good sleep pattern, the problems go away. Kids/family always put a kink into training, no matter what age they are at. Just ask any father of a teenager. There is always “something” - school shit, sports, social issues, etc. Fitting what is important to you (for all of us, that would be training) requires some balance and communication with all involved. And it also requires that you prioritize. One of the best things that having kids will do for a successful, driven person is give them more focus on what is important (this is not one of those “KIDS ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER!” speech…I hate those.) Life is what is important - your life, their life, the life of your family. And YOUR passions drive your family. Your commitment to being “more than human” drive your family.
A while back, I read a quote that said something to the effect of “all of us have experiences, but very few of us have stories.”
The author’s point was that we’ve all lived rich and varied lives, but very few of us have spent the time turning our essential experiences into stories we can share with others. A single, well-articulated story about ourselves can tell other people a whole lot of what they need to know about us. [www.stewfortier.com](www.stewfortier.com/p/many-ex…]
The cheat codes for life are worth reading too from the link.
The point is, when you’ve been conducting your working life at the speed of a freight train, it takes quite a long time to roll to a stop and/or point yourself in a new direction—toward a new way of being, living, and working.
If your role requires you to be emotionally available and empathetic, then your cup needs to be filled and not completely broken. If student academic achievement is your focus, you can’t afford to enter the classroom in a depleted state for days on end. If you still want to be in the classroom in five years time, then you will need a safe workplace. Perhaps it’s time for us to start a conversation about teaching as an industry where employee wellbeing needs to be proactively managed, rather than triaged.Source: On compassion fatigue
As a parent, you need to let go. You need to let your child blossom. You need to think of your child like they’re a plant that you want to foster and grow in its most natural form and not hinder in any way. You have to let your child go in whatever direction he or she wants. When the child reveals a proclivity towards something, encourage them to go in that direction. Because that proclivity reveals something extremely powerful from within—it reveals what I call a primal inclination. Do not get in the way of their primal inclinations in any way, shape, or form. That’s the most important thing you can do.
Do Not Get In The Way Of Their Primal Inclinations – Daily Dad g
How do you know if you genuinely need rest, or you’re just using that to avoid having to go work out? He said you should go to the effort of going to the gym, because then you’ve already overcome the lazy part, and now you’re making more of an unaffected choice.
“Warning; before beginning a program of physical inactivity, consult your doctor. Sedentary living is abnormal and dangerous to your health”.
Frank Forencich
Via Nicholas Bate
Be a good steward of your gifts. Protect your time. Feed your inner life. Avoid too much noise. Read good books, have good sentences in your ears. Be by yourself as often as you can. Walk. Take the phone off the hook. Work regular hours.
The feeling comes so fast and I cannot control it
I’m on fire, but I’m trying not to show it
As it picks me up, puts me down
It picks me up, puts me down
Picks me up, it puts me down
A hundred times a day
But I hear the music, I feel the beat
And for a moment, when I’m dancing, I am free
- When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
Ten Commandments For Living From Philosopher Bertrand Russell
This job is hard enough. You are flawed enough. You have screwed up and will screw up enough. We don’t have room or time or the luxury for guilt. We have to focus on right now.
We get so wrapped up in numbers in our society. The most important thing is that we are able to be one-to-one, you and I with each other at the moment. If we can be present to the moment with the person that we happen to be with, that’s what’s important. Fred Rogers
There’s no reason to rush. There’s no reason to rush through bedtime or dinner or the game. There’s no reason to rush through anything or to anywhere. Because what we’re rushing from is our children and the limited time we get with them—the amount of which is never guaranteed.
So slow down. Time flies. Time flies fast enough on its own. Appreciate any time you get with your kids. Don’t rush away from it.. Savor it.
“I’m a believer in the ordinary and the mundane. These guys that talk about ‘quality time’ — I always find that a little sad when they say, ‘We have quality time.’ I don’t want quality time. I want the garbage time. That’s what I like. You just see them in their room reading a comic book and you get to kind of watch that for a minute, or having a bowl of Cheerios at 11 o’clock at night when they’re not even supposed to be up. The garbage, that’s what I love." Jerry Seinfeld
The point is not to discourage you about being a parent with these descriptions, of course. You already bought your ticket and now you’re on the ride. It’s just a reminder: If you go around expecting this to be an unending series of Hallmark moments, you’re fooling yourself. If you’re comparing how you’re doing to what you see on television, you’re being unfair to yourself.
This thing is hard. Really hard. There are dark moments. There are moments when you think you’re the absolute worst. There are moments when you’ll be told you are in fact the worst. But you have to keep going. You can’t give up. You can’t despair.
They’re counting on you. And remember: it’s these moments that exist between the brighter, happier, more photogenic moments. Could you have one without the other? Maybe, but the former should make you appreciate the latter while you have them…and help you endure the former while you’re in them.
Source: Daily Dad
One of the things [Uncle Alex] found objectionable about human beings was that they so rarely noticed it when they were happy. He himself did his best to acknowledge it when times were sweet. We could be drinking lemonade in the shade of an apple tree in the summertime, and Uncle Alex would interrupt the conversation to say, “If this isn’t nice, what is?” So I hope that you will do the same for the rest of your lives. When things are going sweetly and peacefully, please pause a moment, and then say out loud, “If this isn’t nice, what is?”
I think about this a lot. Though not as much as I should.
How much do we do this? Think about, how, what we are experencing is, nice…
Not as much as we should.
Kurt Vonnegut // “Nobody will stop you from creating. Do it tonight. Do it tomorrow. That is the way to make your soul grow… The kick of creation is the act of creating, not anything that happens afterward. I would tell all of you watching this screen: Before you go to bed, write a four line poem. Make it as good as you can. Don’t show it to anybody. Put it where nobody will find it. And you will discover that you have your reward.”
It will no doubt get me into trouble with the medical profession, but it is not too much of an exaggeration to say that you can eat as much as you like, drink as much alcohol as you want, slob about as much as you fancy, fail to do your exercises and live in as polluted an atmosphere as you can find, and you will barely notice the difference. But having no friends or not being involved in community activities will dramatically affect how long you live.
This Is How To Make Emotionally Intelligent Friendships: 6 Secrets
I’m currently reading Exhalation by Ted Chiang. One of the short stories involves the interactions between a missionary and a child he has met. They talk about writing.
“Moseby explained to Jijingi how each a person spoke could be indicated with a different mark on the paper. The marks were arranged in rows like plants in a field you looked at the marks as if you were walking down a row, made the sound each mark indicated, and you would find yourself speaking what the original person had said.”
Then words.
“… But you need to leave spaces when you write.” “I have.” Jijingi pointed at the gap between each row. “No, that is not what I mean. Do you see the spaces within each line?” He pointed at his own paper. Jijingi understood. “Your marks are clumped together, while mine are arranged evenly.” “These are not just clumbs of marks. … Where I come from, we call them ‘words’. When we write we leave spaces between the words.” “But what are words.” “How can I explain it?” He thought a moment. “If you speak slowly, you pause very briefly after each word. That’s why we leave a space in those places when we write. Like this: How. Many. Years. Old. Are. You?” He write on his paper has he spoke, leave a space every time he paused. “But you speak slowly because you’re a foreigner. I’m Tiv, so I don’t pause when I speak. Shouldn’t my writing be the same?” “It does not matter how fast you speak. Words are the same whether you speak quickly or slowly.”
It just struck me.
As a Year 1 (kindergarten) teacher, these are things we support students to learn every day. It was interesting to see a discussion that included someone who had never been exposed to the idea of writing or ‘words’.
“The idea of “boundaries” has become so porous when it comes to cultivating work/life balance that it’s lost all meaning. People don’t respect boundaries. You don’t respect them. Even when the pandemic is over, it’s going to be very, very difficult to try to rebuild them. What we actually need are guardrails, big and sturdy ones, to protect us from the runaway semi-truck of work.
In our current framework, boundaries are the individual’s responsibility, and when they’re broken, it’s because the individual failed to protect them. But guardrails? They’re there to protect everyone, and they’re maintained by the state, aka your company. There are a lot of ways to actually build guardrails around employee’s lives,”
https://annehelen.substack.com/p/imagine-your-flexible-office-work
I liked yesterdays Daily Dad
It’s not fair to subject your kids to all the things that have broken your heart in this world. It’s not fair to let your experiences deprive them of the hope and belief they need not just to survive but to be happy.
We have to stay positive. We have to keep trying. We have to remain strong—against the pull of bitterness and anger and hopelessness.
It makes me think of a couple of things that often come to mind. The first is them knowing my fears, or the things that I find difficult. The second is how I’m feeling and how they are aware of that - particularly the negative emotions.
The funny thing is all I ever wanted I already had
There’s glimpses of heaven in every day
In the friends that I have, the music I made
The love that I feel, I just had to start again
Hospital for souls - Bring me the horizon
Having someone to go with makes it harder to not go and more fun when I do.
Having someone working a different level has been good too, in that it forces me to consider what I’m doing more. As I creep towards 40, I’m making choices about working out so I can work out again this week and next month and for the foreseeable future. I’m happy with the programme I’m doing, I like this quote from their website.
It is for these reasons and more that Linchpin focuses on long-term health and fitness. We want you (and your back, knees, and shoulders) to be fit, happy, healthy, and extremely capable for decades to come.
“She’s a grown-up, isn’t she? Grown-ups and monsters aren’t scared of things?”
“Oh, monsters are scared,” said Lettie. “That’s why they’re monsters. And as for grown-ups…” She stopped talking, rubbed her freckled nose with a finger. Then, “I’m going to tell you something important. Grown-ups don’t look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside they’re big and thoughtless and they always know what they’re doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. The truth is, there aren’t any grown-ups. Not on, in the whole wide word.”
…
I thought about adults. I wondered if that was true: if they were all really children wrapped in adult bodies, like children’s books hidden in the middle of dull, long adult book, the kind with no pictures or conversations.
Not sure why this passage struck me but it did and has me thinking about grown-ups and how we grow up and we’re the same but different.
stand up for what is right
prioritize your mental health
being flexible brings success
your voice makes a diffeerence
do not hide from your emotions
hard moments do not last forever
healing yourself makes life better
pursue your goals no matter what
embracing change eases your mind
young pueblo
“My relationship with the entire world in this moment depends entirely on the relationship I have with myself.“ – Paul Ferrini
In this email talking to a mindfulness teacher was a quote that struck me and now I can’t stop thinking about.
“How many other people need to be doing their jobs well for you to do your job well?”
A strange truth about communicating is that we don’t get to choose whether we do it or not. In the presence of others, we are always sending messages, as helplessly as a star emits light.
via > Drawing Links
To my boy, all that energy, so wild
Love your hues and your blues in equal measure
Your comings and your goings-away
My mission is to keep the light in your eyes ablaze
To my girl, all your innocence and fire
When you reach out, I am here hell or high water
This nest is never going away
My mission is to keep the light in your eyes ablaze
To my boy, my precious, gentle warrior
To your sweetness and your strength in exploring
May this bond stay with you through all your days
My mission is to keep the light in your eyes ablaze
Alanis Morrisette - Ablaze.
I will not live in fearvia [swissmiss](https://www.swiss-miss.com/2020/07/an-unlived-life.html)
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.
— Dawna Markova
I’m aware how much I gloss over most of what I read online, taking the time when there’s some more scrolling to do. With that in mind, I’m copying some of the poems down into a notebook to help me take more time over them.
I’m sorry I have to say it but you look like you’re sad Your smile is gone; I’ve noticed it bad The cure is if you let in just a little more love I promise you this, a little’s enough Angels and Airwaves - A little’s enough
I know it’s cheesy but I’ve always loved this. 💬
It doesn’t make sense to me that you wouldn’t want to remember your life. This concept of partying, it’s like you’re sweeping up after yourself constantly. You’re just sweeping away your memories. I like to be present, and keep it with me. Some people think of straight edge as a tee-totaling sobriety movement, but in my mind it was just about self definition. I found it unimpeachably positive. But people always find ways to be derisive. You’re in England – you fucking know that, right? It’s an extremely snarky society.
http://www.huckmagazine.com/art-and-culture/ian-mackaye-survival-issue-interview/
I tell my girls this every day whether is teaching them to ride their scooters, working on their swimming or simply coloring. Paralysis prevents most people from ever realizing their dreams. And I want to instill in my kids fear is something you face head on, you never turn your back on it. As Hunter S. Thompson said, "never turn your back on fear. It should be always be in front of you, like something that might need to be killed."
http://johnwelbourn.powerathletehq.com/2015/01/02/lessons-learned/