Tending to Saplings
At any given moment I have more maybe-projects at early, sapling (and seedling) stages than projects I actually work on for a living, or those I enjoy as full-blown habits and hobbies that have matured to the point that I…
Boxes, Tubes, and Shovels
All metaphors are imperfect, as a map that is a 100% accurate representation of the region it portrays would be the region itself, defeating the point of having a re-scaled, simplified version of it. The statistics-world aphorism for this reality is…
Disconnected Thoughts About Reading Books
Books are just one way to consume written information. They’re wonderful in that they’re often optimized for deeper looks at things, but there are other means of achieving the same (there’s gobs of great stuff to read online, these days)…
Informed Opinions
It’s okay to not have an opinion about things. It can be awkward, though, and sometimes people will find it offensive if they share their opinion and you fail to confirm the rightness of their perspective, or if you decline…
Deeper Goals
When you consume alcohol, there’s a good chance your prime goal is not to consume alcohol: you’re looking to socialize, you’re interested in feeling altered, you’re maybe just parched and want something to drink. The same is true of many…
Generosity of Ignorance
Years ago, I dated an Icelandic woman who—among many other accolades—was an enthusiastic linguist. She spoke a handful of languages, and was always endeavoring to further her grasp of them. Which in the context of our relationship often meant her…
Compensation
More than once over the past handful of years I’ve adhered to a contractual rule that my landlord didn’t realize existed. It’s almost always a quibbling, silly little line-item of no interest or importance to anyone, included in the boilerplate…
Resting State
One of my superpowers is figuring out how to do something big and cumbersome and specific, breaking it up into smaller (but still incredibly boring and exhausting) pieces, and then—importantly—settling in to just finish the thing. Imagine being good at…
Discussing the News
The news can be stressful, anxiety-inducing, tribalism-reinforcing, and littered with misleading, misinformed, heavily biased takes. There are things we can do to make our news-consumption habits more productive, including (for instance) avoiding most TV news, avoiding editorial/opinion content, and sticking…
Sharing and Preserving
There’s a tension between sharing enough of oneself to convey complete, round narratives, and sharing too much: stepping over the line into something uncomfortably open, unnecessarily detailed, or embellished till it’s more icing than cake. It’s tempting to aim for…