Here are some notes, quotes, songs and writing from last month. This is probably my last post before the end of the year. At some point in January I’ll compile all my notes for the entire year.

Thoughts

• Motivation is important, but it’s difficult to drive forward if there’s a part of us that has their foot stamped on the brake. We tend to set a louder alarm clock when there’s a part of us that is tired and wants to rest. 
• It usually comes as a shock when we recognize how similar someone else is to us.
• If technology had a slogan, it would be something like “there’s still a few bugs to work out”. It’s never finished. 
• I think there’s a real cost to watching hours of television every night, especially for younger people. Streaming makes the problem both worse and cheaper. It’s like subsidized rubbish. At least a Blue-Ray is unsubsidized.
• If you can, acknowledge your tiredness. It’s not even unpleasant. What’s unpleasant is ignoring your tiredness or not even knowing that you’re ignoring it. Say to yourself, “Yep, I know, we’ll go to sleep soon.”
• There’s spontaneous conversation and then there’s the pain of wanting and wishing the next conversation to be the same.
• Hell is not giving yourself space between ‘too much’ and ‘not enough’.
• There should be a decent reason you are only giving 40% effort.
• Any time I’m doing something that requires me to wait a few minutes, like boiling a kettle, my hands leap at the opportunity to fidget and scratch.
• A sleep cycle is about 1.5 hours. If you wake at some ‘odd’ hour in the night, translate it to cycles instead: Oh, I’ve just woken up after sleeping for a few cycles. It makes more sense.
• I’m automatically assigned ‘team leader’ for a day. It’s hardly got any power or real responsibility. It’s more a contact person if anything. But almost immediately people emerge from the group who want this job and don’t want me to have it.
• There’s been a stain on my bathroom door for months. I finally look at it closely. It’s mould. I clean it, sand it, wipe it, paint it.
• I swim crawl much better when I breathe despite the water, meaning I don’t adjust my position so much. Usually I’m breathing around the water, gasping to fit a breath in without swallowing water.
• I remember a bumper sticker I saw when backpacking years ago. It said something like “Life: This isn’t practice.” I think you can read this and feel worried, or just read it as an important fact to remember.
• A lot of modern weight loss techniques are about going fast. Whizzing smoothies, interval sprints, flapjack burpees. But you can lose weight doing everything slowly. 
• This year I opted to not be part of my apartment buildings’ committee. Most issues have quietly resolved themselves without any intervention from me. I wonder if wars are what happen when groups of people can’t help but intervene. 
• Kids use great language. A kid playing soccer with his brother exclaims “if you kick it with force it goes like a slingshot!”
• If someone wants to lose weight ask them what will happen once they have lost the weight. Most of the time we don’t actually think about what will happen once we get the thing we want. We are too busy wanting the thing.
• A basic experience of freedom: stop a habit

Quotes

• If the bee disappears from the surface of the Earth, man would have no more than four years left to live. – Einstein
• Even these nihilist guys, they’re trying to provide meaning even if it’s an anti-meaning…they’re enchanting the world with nihilism. – Grant Morrison
• True creativity is when you have a sense that your pleasure could be legitimate wherever it lies. – Alain de Botton
• We’re all put to the test. But it never comes in the form, or at the point we’d prefer, does it? – The Edge (1997)
• One of the best ways to discover what you really believe in… is to watch your own behavior. – Robert A. Johnson
• The moment a friendship feels like it’s a sort of tit for tat, it’s no longer a friendship – My mother
• Jet lag is your soul being dragged around by your body. – William Gibson
• When I am having difficulty getting into a task, when I am writing, repairing something around the house, frustrated by difficulties, or literally breathless from jogging. The phrase will come into my head—“I am just warming up now.” I usually find more energy available after this. – The Teaching Tales Of Milton H Erickson
• True science results when (with common sense)… people know what kinds of experiments to conduct. – Rudolph Steiner 
• They were sending me kids who couldn’t sit still. Well, they could sit still when they were listening to me, because they realized I was giving them something valuable. – John Stokes

Songs

• You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’ – Judas Priest
• Regiment – Brian Eno & David Byrne
• The Coffee Cola Song – Francis Bebey
• I Want More, Vitamin C – Can
• Going Down Slow – Eric Clapton
• I Want It All – Queen
• The Swag – Link Wray
• Can’t lose what you never had – Allman Brothers Band
• County Fair -Joe Walsh
• Amoreena – Elton John
• The Ghetto – George Benson
• The Main Thing – Roxy Music

Writing

Designing like a spreadsheet

Yes? What else?