trellis

One of the first things you can learn (and clearly observe) about growing grapes is that you need a trellis to bear any fruit. Without this formative tool, grape vines will not catch enough sun light, they will shoot off in the wrong directions, and they will not spread evenly across the area they inhabit.

A trellis gives space to the vine to hang off the wood a bit, but always be kept safe by lines and framework built into the grapevine's life.

A Rule (or Way) of Life was an early monastic practice of creating a trellis of habits and disciplines by which to live life. Similar to keystone habits, this Rule, to steal the sculptor Elizabeth Kings line, "guards us from the poverty of our intentions." When committed a Rule of Life protects your daily whatever by reinforcing its integrity to your being.

Practically, this looks like daily, weekly, quarterly, and annual practices that give life, grow goals, and gain purpose.

Now, this is usually the biggest contention point- routine sets free.
There are those who disagree vehemently and those who agree but believe written goals and detailed outlines are taking it all a bit too far.

Re-enter Elizabeth king.

Process saves us from the poverty of our intentions.

Like the grapevine that climbs past the trellis to the sun, we desire to rebel from that which is good for us (at least till we re-habituate our desires), but we will find, like Icarus, we cannot leave our "groundedness" without getting burned.

A trellis to put our lives on gives consistent, daily groundedness and fluidity to pursue our deepest desires without the pressure of perfection.

16,000

How do we say 16,000 words per day (on average)??
With frivolity (I say, using 0.0001% of my limit).

Aaron Burr may have been onto something with his "talk less, smile more" mantra, as smiling improves livelihood and silence saves oxygen.

I admit many of these 16,000 fall into important categories like encouragement, building relationships, or sharing information.

But how much more conscious can we be of the quality of our words further than the quantity?
7dc.

cease

At a garden on campus, I see a bluejay pecking at capsules holding meaty pecans high above. She flits between branches to remove her prey from its branch. Nervous, she glances left, right, up, down, seeking out predators with a literal flight or flight response intact and spring-loaded. Her's is a world of dangers and threats too innumerable to avoid long-term. She and those she nurtures await a life of constant fearing and ceaselessness.

How often do so many of us live this way?
How many of us forget that we are blessed to be able to cease?

cease; v.

Bring or come to an end.

environment

You are a product of your environment...

This is only half a truth.

A truth that allows people to stay shaped by their environment in a vicious cycle of false desires to change that aren't enough to escape more self-suffering.

The other half of this truth is antithetical and seemingly contradictory.

...who is able to change and grow past your past.

heart and mind

Our passions lie at the intersection of heart and mind when our calling taps into deep love and intense intellect.

Our mind is not bored but challenged to a developing point (flow), and our heart sees the restoration of a thing, but not yet its perfection. These margins let us sing freely and create passionately.

When we discover this crossroads, we should be prepared to sacrifice. Leisure, career, and acquaintanceship are held here with an open hand. Our work calls for a greater sense of purpose and urgency in our commitment to it. If it becomes a daily practice, space must be created.

We stoke the flames of our passion, carefully, seldom letting the blaze increase past a controlled burn. When fire goes out, it leaves embers to be coaxed and fanned as we work to realign the places where heart and mind are leading.

resume of failure

"This might not work". Want that on a t-shirt? Seth Godin's coinage and philosophy behind this idea already made that happen.

Here's a problem in society: our proportion of failures to ideas is too balanced. An abundance of ideas is great, as long as we're trying them all. Remember-

Failure is not terminal.
This might not work.

Adam Grant keeps a resume of his failures. Everytime your startup goes bust. Everytime you create an album nobody likes. Every time you get shot down during an interview.

Nobody gets lucky first try (at least we can't count on that).

So, we try and push and run and run our ideas into the ground to build a tiny, but vital, resume of successes and a long, long resume of failures we knew "might not work".

foreword

I knew I wanted to write about an idea the moment I heard it, but I wasn't there.

Having to set it aside when I felt so convicted and so ready to share was a painful part of the process. There was a disconnect in what I could say and what needed to be said. The disconnect had to be bridged.

I read, I thought, I reasoned, I read some more. All throughout desiring to begin on this piece and be able to share it. It still wasn't ready.

Then I realized the gift I was creating needed "motion" to be realized.

A breakdown. A unifying voice. A start.

Here is that start.

gift

"Hobbits give presents to other people on their own birthday. Not very expensive ones, as a rule, and not so lavishly... but it was not a bad system."

The Fellowship of the Ring

What a simple change. Reversing the direction of giving to recenter the focus on others.

Let's play this out.

Pros:

• Chips away at our entitlement and pride.
• Batches your gift-gathering to one day.
• Spreads the gifts you receive on other's birthdays over the whole year (practice delayed-gratification).
• Gives ample time to be as intentional and prepared as you want.
• Necessitates more thought behind each gift.
• Subtly influences a closer connected circle of relationships.
• Instead of reinforcing selfishness and individualism, encourages belief in the perpetual reciprocity of the gift spirit.

Cons:

• Can become a contest of "self-righteous selflessness."
• Reduces the days you give which may lead to lower net generosity.
• Increases social pressure in the comparison of gifts given.

Let's look closer.

Instead of reinforcing selfishness and individualism, encourages belief in perpetual reciprocity of the gift spirit.
I once wrote about Jimmy Carter's 'Crisis of Confidence' in the American people who he accurately diagnosed to be "worship(ing) self-indulgence and consumption." That was forty years ago. We are much farther along that path because of technological progress and the national prosperity.

I ran into a friend who was stressed and anxious about the political orientation of our country. I was anxious too and empathized. I asked my friend if he would ever talk with someone from "the other side" about why they believe the things they do. He would not.

We have to get outside ourselves and our privileged echo chambers to un-sequestered ground for conversations. With polarization and partisanship deeply rooted, there is no limit to the examination and uprooting our practices and beliefs should undergo.

For restoration, we can look to a native mindset-
"If all the world is a commodity, how poor we grow."

Perpetual reciprocity of the gift spirit expects that when a gift is given, it will continually pass on to sustain the life of generosity in a community. Lewis Hyde writes about this and its connection to the creation of art and its personality and intentionality towards the recipient of gifts (producing another benefit in this system- the encouragement of artists!!).

Imagine giving the gift of paint made from seashells and then receiving on the recipients birthday a painting endowed with the same love you poured out in grinding the shells, and more! Imagine giving a book that changed you and does the same soul work in another, or giving a hand-made instrument that ignites a flame of future balads to be shared!

The spirit of an artist's gift can wake our own.

The Gift

It might require more thought and work, but I believe that right now, in the middle of a pandemic and after, we will have to give more effort and love than ever before.

---

Every practice requires intentionality. How we do birthdays now can be good and beautiful as we appreciate those who are in our lives.

I don't believe we can do away with this tried tradition.

I do believe that we can practice Tolkien's reversal in small ways- even in our own families. I can't help but dream of a celebration to give and celebrate giving in spite of ourselves.

The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him- it cannot fail...

Walt Whitman

Originally, I wondered about societal implications, now, I see only familial thriving.

While not perfect, played out in certain groups, ultimately, this reversal is better than our current system. If your argument is about tradition, implementation, or idealism, please comment below holes, fallacies, alternatives, and arguments you have against this idea.

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Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

Lewis Hyde, The Gift

J.R.R Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

essential but not precedential

My parents drilled a mantra into me:

First things first.

It tells the important difference between essential and precedential.

"You may have a snack, after your bed is made." Eating is essential but it's not precedential. "You may play outside, after you finish your homework." Plodding up and down the neighborhood 'ditch' was crux to my day, but it wasn't a first thing.

This repeated mentality shaped me as I grew, rehabilitating an instant gratification mindset that rules many because of technology, individualism America, and entitlement culture that has grown. It also raises awareness of a subtlety that puts the spheres of life in their proper orbit.

What precedential task needs to be done, so that you can create, do, be what is essential? While I readily support having a "drop out of college for this" moment, I am strung to a belief in education and career's merit in today's world. These become linked to a creative's journey.

There are three options for an artist needing to serve his credit alongside his art:

• Get a second job
• Find a patron supporter
• Monetize your work

Commercializing my art has never appealed to me, so I'm left with side hustles and supportive households. These become precedential to our essential work. Logs that stoke the fire. It's a balancing act, trying to do work to fuel your work..

Money is the means for making art, but it must never become the master.

Jeff Goins in his guidebook, Real Artists Don't Starve.

Our art is so essential to our being. But at the same time, every artist must fight for the margin (just enough) to create. Finding the middle ground is where long-term, fulfilled artistry thrives.

mediocrity

I was listing things that held me back. Fear of judgement, of stepping on toes, of duplicity; all valid, but not the thing I fear the most.

Becoming mediocre to the world haunts my working and pondering.

Many of us never begin what we should because of this fear. The ultimate perfectionist-paralysis that grounds important work with horribly impenetrable logic. "I'll never be as good as..." or "I can't make money from doing work like this."

Or maybe we do begin, but when we see the result, we throw down our brush and storm away in disgust. The ultimate perfectionist-pointlessness that says "I don't have the ability to do this."

From personal experience to begin and overcome perfectionist-paralysis, you only need one cheerleader, one decent painting, one free hour.

Then it begins.

Sarah Wilson addresses our perfectionist-pointlessness like this:

All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, its just not that good. Its trying to be good, it has potential, but its just not. But your taste, the thing that got you in the game, is still killer.

And your taste is why your work disappoints you.

We have the highest standards for ourselves, so we let ourselves down.

"The gap" between mediocre and good seems too far to cross, so we shut down any bridge-building that might work.

Before we learn to be good, we must shift our paradigm, so we start creating for the sake of creation itself.

the beat

Our routines are not made for when we are doing fine. We always implement new habits when we have succeeded at maintaining old habits. This is right. This is the best way to ensure momentum and commitment to our practices.

But our misconception is in the purpose of our process. Process safeguards us from our inevitable depletion of willpower. When the noise gets too loud, we need an internal rhythm to rediscover the beat.

I fail at this consistently. Time to turn up the volume...

enlist

The most essential skill we can take on is learning how to share our passion so others enlist.

When we master this skill, we also build our speaking, writing, and storytelling skills. We develop insight and gratitude for somethings in the world that the majority doesn't see like we do.

Here's the catch about "enlistment''-it doesn't require all of us becoming painters (or taking on any daily whatever). Patrons enlist with their vote, money, or network. Fellow creatives enlist with their criticism, challenging, or experiences. Your mother enlists by not only supporting your art, but seeing all art in a higher and more inspired light.

This is the primary way we want people to enlist: through showing up not just to your art display, but to the art display of artists everywhere. Change takes root and forms the desires of our culture for good.

your dream

Goals are easy. We've learned the systems needed to finish the marathon, eat the greens, or say the prayers.

Research and experience have made us confident to write the goals down and be clear about how and when we'll achieve them.

But we won't write our dreams down. At least not publicly- they stay locked in a diary stagnating as life pulls us into the habit of making money, building skills, and completing jobs, never stretching us enough to open the untapped reservoir within.

We're caught in quicksand, slowly losing sight of that sunny-bright vision we once deemed sacred.

We're waiting for dire boredom to shake us out of our dreamlessness or for a catalyst to enter and ignite the flame from our past. There is no timeline for this process so we think we are forever at the mercy of the world's dictates and systems.

Here's your new timeline:

1. Share your dream with someone- now
2. Create your daily whatever- right after now
3. Begin toiling- (you know when)

your daily whatever

Mine is writing.

Yours could be painting or dancing or making coffee or doing yoga or building computers or creating font or mixing music or planting trees.

Do it everyday. Not just to establish 10,000 hours. Not just to be ready for failure. Not just to work out exactly how it will produce down the line.

Do it because you have to. Your daily whatever is the thing that holds you together as a person. You bleed your art, and when you're done for the day, it displays your bloody fingerprints.

My advice is to not worry about its monetary or cultural worth yet- if you do it as yourself, it is enough.

triangle bathtub

I once conceived an idea to create triangle-shaped bathtubs. This was amidst a flurry of creativity and caffeine and, looking back, this may not have been my brightest idea.

Maybe there was absolutely no value in having this idea, or maybe it brought someone a sliver of joy when I shared it as a joke.

Two things:

• Failure is not terminal.
• Every idea bolsters creativity in its conception or future development. Don't let one bad idea stop you in your tracks.

the motions

Going through the motions is not always a bad thing.

We often think this mode of operation lacks authenticity or true desire- doing a thing just to get it done.

But what's the alternative? Not going to dinner with your significant other, not doing the analysis for your company, not writing your blog post for the day?

Sometimes, we genuinely want nothing to do with these things.

Why are we so afraid of being inauthentic when our "authentic selves" so often want to be inconsistent? Routine is the tried and true gutter bumpers that keep our shots inbounds and moving forward. It is the only way we will be able to fight our base instinct to not.

the question they ask

"Why did you get rid of your social media?"

A more fair question to ask back is, "why didn't you get rid of yours?" We're at a place, informationally, where the second question makes more sense.

I haven't written much about the Attention Economy, but slowly have been buying back my shares. We are the product in the Attention Economy. Tech and social media companies are paying billions for our time and attention.

And the things we lose when we sell our attention and time to the altar of the screen...

So, why haven't you gotten rid of yours, I ask, genuinely.

Some get rid of their smartphones for the same reason- "there has to be a better way", they say.

And there is.

Because how long do you think it will be before the majority begins to ask," why didn't you get rid of your smartphone..."

what square do you land on?

This question provides context to a journey we are on. I like it for the structural end, middle, and begginning it implies. It is grace for the Wanderer, and freedom for the Novice.

We aren't on anyone's timetable, which is a grace- figuring out the meat of life doesn't require being swift.

The questions we're asking take time. Time that is available, and if we remember this we are freed from the social desire to pick a side before truly considering.

But do we all land somewhere?

I think, sometimes, it's okay to not get to the final opinion on a subject. Finality in "knowing" doesn't determine our success in life (thank goodness).

And the final square is only that for as long as the game stays the same.

place

How we think about "place "can quickly become our current paradigm. Where we are in life always tries to dictate who we are.

If you're climbing the corporate ladder to provide for your family, you become a rung. If you're in school preparing yourself for a knowledge career, you become a database. If you're a contractor fixing up homes because it's natural work, you become a hammer.

The problem with this thinking is a view of "loci", internal or external, that dictates your response to the world as either passive or active.

The problem with this thinking is in its passive nature. It tells us to stay bipartisan to the issues in culture, academia, and work.

It's an unhealthy invitation to exchange purpose for work.

The real problem is that we can't see past this place to envision how our work fits into the grand scheme and helps us achieve our goals.

The more deeply a thought or action is tied to your identity, the more difficult it is to change it.

James Clear, Atomic Habits

This identity change isn't easy. We are temporal creatures, so place matters, and it effects us deeply. But we have the power of conscious choice and habit to uproot our desire to be acted upon, and begin to act.

the cure

Is technology the disease or the cure?

It's clearly a little of both right now. Literally and metaphorically, tech saves and tears down lives. Ultimately, will it be our undoing or our unchaining.

Is it a vehicle for salvation or slavery?

This is the battle the few tech ethicists today have taken up space around. The pervading belief they purport is that tech has incredible power to give us more-fulfilling lives, unless grossly misused.

It has been grossly misused.

Here's the nuance: technology is the cure, in the hands of the right people.

The CHT let us know how the wrong people have created the disease.

What we need now is a revolution of technology ethics- a reformation movement for the "cultural churches" of Apple, Google, and Facebook.

The first whistle has been blown.

Here are the 95 theses.

Here are the disciplines: tech-wise // Newport.

Spread the cure.

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read // stripped

read // stg 3...

read // lp2