Tangible Life
Friction is a feature
This post is my entry for January’s IndieWeb Carnival being hosted by V.H. Belvadi.
This is a great theme to kick off the year. I read V.H.’s post and was honored to have my Intentional Web Manifesto quoted as an example of people promoting the right kinds of friction on the internet. Since I think I’ve covered that topic best as I’m equipped for the time being, I’ll focus on a different form of friction for this month’s theme post.
I’ve come to embrace the mantra of friction is a feature. Not only is it a feature of the human existence, but it’s a feature in the same vein as the amusing “Feature or Bug” memes regarding functionality of apps, devices, etc. Friction is a feature is such a simple and pure reframing of a term that therapy talk and life shaped around removal of all inconvenience have weaponized as the enemy of an optimized life. I call bullshit!
Friction is what refines us in the same way that a smooth edge on a beautiful piece of furniture had the splinters and sharpness massaged away with sandpaper and movement. Friction means doing hard things to get good at doing hard things. Friction means not shying away from conversations and people that stretch you. Friction transforms energy from form to form, and the idea that we should remove all of the friction from our lives leaves us small, empty, and unnecessarily fragile. We lack, ironically, what that sandpaper has… grit.
Friction is a feature is what has led me to do several years of “living without” experiments in my life. Life is going to inevitably throw some friction at you at the most inopportune time. While it may be unfortunate, the most unfortunate thing is when someone has allowed the grit muscles in their brain, body, and spirit to atrophy to the degree that any unexpected friction feels insurmountable. If you look at the people in your life that seem to take life in stride, my bet is on those same people having an attitude that friction isn’t the enemy.
Humans need friction, as a feature.
Tangible Tangible
Tangible Life now has tangible (aka physical) goods. I’ve been evaluating print-on-demand platforms for a bit and finally pulled the trigger on one. I have a couple of designs with a limited set of products for each and I’ll add to it slowly as I have designs I feel are worthwhile to offer.
Here’s the link to the store, which I’ll get around to adding to the top nav someday. If you order something in the next 2 weeks, it’s 25% off as an initial promotion the platform offers.
Shoot me an email with your thoughts on the initial design offerings, or with any questions you may have on how/why I’m doing this. I’m always happy to hear from folks.
Year of Living Without 2025
As mentioned in a recent post, 2024 wasn’t a year of living without for me. I took a different approach that I simply didn’t excute on, and rather than regret it, I learned that monthly exercises that can then pivot to multi-month habits is the way to go for my personality. With that in mind, I’m defining the first three months of 2025, but with a twist. Each thing I do without during that month, I’ll attempt to continue doing without in the months that follow. I’m starting with three in this format, because there are some things I want to periodically do without, but these I’d be totally fine to be be without for the foreseeable future or permanently.
- January: No soda.
- February: 16 hour fasting.
- March: No phone in bed.
The one that I’ll carry through to 2025 that I failed at building as a consistent habit in 2024 is no devices in the bathroom. That begins today and I’ll attempt to go the entire year without.
Belief
This post is my entry for December’s IndieWeb Carnival being hosted by Zinzy.
One of Zinzy’s suggested prompts for this month’s theme was:
What is something you can’t know, but that you believe?
I think this is a fascinating way of framing it, because so much of the structures that frame belief exist in a religious context. Many of those transpose knowing with belief to the point that it is foundational that if you say you believe, you automatically have a basis in knowledge or knowing. I think that’s one of the fundamental things that has turned me off to religion over my lifetime, but I’ve never lost my belief in spiritual divinity.
The sciences are rooted in things that are known, or seeking to be known. To balance those concrete yet always evolving through discovery facts and constants, there is belief in those things that are not yet proven or still yet to be fully understood or appreciated. An example for framing purposes would be, there is no physical artifact in our human body that is our soul, yet there is a commonly held belief that something exists within us that makes us more than merely the sum of our parts. Our bones, our organs, and tissue are physical and scientific in what they perform. Our spirit or soul is that which cannot be extracted or donated to science when our human body inevitably and ultimately fails the test of immortality. Yet that spirit transcends the physical form and becomes unbound from the containment that was once so precious.
I believe that our spirit, or soul if you prefer that term, is the energy that we feel but cannot measure through tools or telemetry. It is that which we do not know, but feel. Some people are more in touch with these energy forms because they exist all around us. My wife and I often say to each other, “The world is always telling you things, so long as you’re willing to and actually listen.” Whether it is a physical reminder like touching a tree or seeing lightning do things that can’t be explained, or sitting in traffic and suddenly seeing a message in the form of a license plate that could only have been intended for you if only because you had to be there at that moment to receive it.
Many religions or belief constructs (philosophies) have these concepts embedded throughout. I read things not because I’m seeking to believe in them, such as various ideals from different religions. I read them because I see them as perspectives which to better understand the greater energy that cannot be defined. An analogy that may feel completely out of context would be crime investigation. All witnesses and connections to those witnesses are interviewed and evaluated. Each of those represents a perspective, where the events transpired to all of them, but not everyone experienced it the same way or with the same interpretation of what was occurring. A good detective assumes nothing, but listens to every input to assess and sort out what it means to the understanding being sought.
I have a saying that is framed in my home office that isn’t there for aesthetic or aspirational purposes. It’s there because it is my approach to life and it feels fitting to mention it here in closing. It reads:
Have a mind that is open to anything and attached to nothing.
In / Out
Insprired by Carl, this is my list of how I hope to shape 2025:
IN
- listening
- blogging
- journaling
- yoga
- thinking
- music
- repairing
- selling
- detaching
- reading
- walking
- outdoors
- breathing
- intention
- long-form
- confidence
- experiences
- sleep
OUT
- talking
- scrolling
- thinking about writing
- damaging
- procrastinating
- news “sources”
- short-form
- algorithims
- soda
- complacency
- comfort without effort
- buying
- justifying
- items
- therapy talk
Gradient UI Fun
Gradient UI fun in HEY! - Before & After
Sometimes an idea comes to me and I can’t stop thinking about it until I try it. I’ve been using HEY! for my email since it launched. In they HEY! app, you have a wallpaper at the bottom that covers mail you’ve already read. There are some great included options, but I have always chosen my own image file to customize my email experience slightly.
It struck me that if I edited the image in Figma and added a slight gradient at the top that using the color picker to grab the dark HEY! UI background color, it would make it look like the two panes blend together when I have the wallpaper covering read mail. I dig the effect.
I used the same process on the iOS version of the app (the UI color was slightly darker there) to get the same effect on both platforms. If anyone is interested in how this is done in Figma, reach out!
Impact
This post is my entry for November’s IndieWeb Carnival being hosted by Alexandra.
What a great theme that can be approached from various perspectives. These are my favorite types of IndieWeb Carnival themes since they force me to lean into introspection.
A clip that I’ve seen or heard a few times in the last two weeks is Mike Tyson speaking to a young interviewer about legacy and how it is a meaningless term that (according to Mike) has surged in popularity and is now overly abundant in people talking about themselves or overly dramatizing their existence. I mostly agree with Tyson’s statement, or at least the sentiment. Our time on this Earth is something that we tend to treat with some grandiose purpose when that time has come to a logical conclusion. In reality, the grandiose part is the journey itself, the life we’re living while still alive. The destination is death, since we all reach it and there is no avoiding the arrival. We return to the dust from which we came, and those that are still on the journey continue on theirs without us. It really is as simple as that. Tyson is specifically talking about legacy vs. impact. I think that the time that we spend here can offer profound impact, and that’s why I will choose to focus on that concept.
I never knew the impact that being a parent would have on my life. It should come as no surprise that I, like most, have an appreciation for my parents that has grown exponentially since becoming a parent myself. You learn so much about life through your children, and you learn more about your parents in the process as well. I have amazing parents and am beyond lucky to still have them. They’ve shaped my life at every phase and have had such a positive impact on me. It isn’t lost on me that many people’s parents have an impact on them that isn’t positive, yet it is an impact nonetheless. I’m fortunate and grateful that my parents represent only positive impact in my life.
Interestingly, people’s passing often gets referred to with the term “impact” in the negative sense. It is normal to focus on the loss, the subtraction, the missing piece that it represents to those that are “left behind”. By thinking about the impact of my parents on my life, I hope I have the capacity to frame it with that impact as the basis of my emotions. Mourning is a process, and sadness and suffering are inevitable to the human condition; however, so much of our emotional computation is formulaic. That isn’t to make it sound cold and predictable, but math is math, and emotions have their own arithmetic.
With that goal comes framing for what I hope my own impact is, with a focus on the lives of my own children. I hope to lead a life of similar impact to my own parents. I hope that impact is felt increasingly over my lifetime, not through proximity to me, but through the proximity of life’s experiences. I hope my impact is like that of gravitational pull, vs. that of an asteroid slamming into a planet. When I return to dust, I hope my impact is felt due to the addition I was when I was here and not the inevitable subtraction the event represents in the formula that is our existence.
Year of Living Without 2024 (Update)
I pulled back up my post from January and was disappointed to say that I’ve failed them all.
I still don’t drink soda often, however, I’m far from having done without it in 2024. My nighttime wind down reading habit goes in fits and spurts. I’ll stick to it for months and then one night will use my phone to do something and that becomes the pattern for weeks until I yank myself back to reading. The shame is that I enjoy reading more and know it. While my device usage in the bathroom isn’t constant, I make excuses. I have a short break between calls for work and need to catch up on personal email, so I’ll use it. Honestly, it’s disgusting on more levels than one.
What I recognize is that while it is great to build habits that last more than a month by doing without, I’m not quite ready to say that being inspired by 30 days of something is enough to make it stick for ten times that amount of time. Beginning in November, I’ll take it back to what I know works. I’ll start with these 3 habits, but will outline 2025 with more monthly themes like I did in 2023. Writing about them also seems to help, so that will continue.
I’ve said this before, but I’ll reiterate that these are not resolutions. I don’t think those work for most people, present company included. I do think that themes and exercises form protocols and habits. That’s what I’m after and where I hope to increase stability and consistency. I don’t know what my themes for the next 12-18 months will be, but I’m beginning to think more about it and I have some ideas. Most of them center around the blending of zen and stoic philosophies. Leo Babauta wrote a great article recently on this blending.
The Best of What You Have
If you’ve ever heard Rick Rubin speak, you already know that he has a way of making everything sound profound. That being said, I was listening to Rick Beato’s interview with him, and this bit jumped out at me. This clip is only 52 seconds long, and I’ll beg you to listen to the audio vs. only reading the portion quoted below.
He’s talking about instruments, but the statement is even more impactful when you apply it to people. To characteristics of people. To your own relationships.
I listened to that 52 seconds about 20 times over the span of a day. I trimmed it out so I could listen to just that snippet anytime I want. I’m writing about it here because I can’t shake this feeling I’ve had persist since I heard it on Monday morning.
Here’s the most important line. The line that we should all treat as mantra for our interactions with those that we love (and those that we don’t).
Using the things you have and making the best of what those things are, instead of trying to turn them into the thing you wish they were, is a really good way to go.
Thanks, Rick. For being you and making the best out of what you are for all of humanity’s benefit. Not just in music, but in life.
Cabel Sasser XOXO Festival 2024
This video made the rounds the last few weeks on other popular sites. I had to share it here because it is one of the few vidoes I’ve watched lately that had such an impact on me that I thought about it for days after viewing. Please, check it out. It is a gem, as is the speaker.
Power Underneath Despair
This post is my entry for September’s IndieWeb Carnival being hosted by Matthew.
Matthew frames this month’s writing theme (which ties to September being Suicide Prevention Month) as:
In your darkest hour, what saved you? What helped you find the strength to carry on?
This has been a tough one to write about, which I don’t think is surprising. It’s difficult to write publicly about such things for most people. It exposes a side that our normal fascade is purpose built to protect. A writer is often attempting to transcribe an inner voice to written form. This month’s theme is asking that inner writer’s voice to have a conversation with its evil twin that attempted to eat it in the womb and help the poor sap at the keyboard bleed it out all over the page. Sometimes hard things are supposed to be hard.
My personal experience hasn’t been that I have a darkest time. What I’ve had I’d classify as dark times and they have been at various points throughout my life. They represent a vast spectrum of causes, but I can bucket them into two categories. What I’ve come to realize after lots of thought and introspection is that in an earlier phase of my life I was trying to convince the world of who I was. It’s unclear to me when the shift occurred, but in my current phase of life I am trying to convince myself who I am. I haven’t read anything on the topic, but I imagine I’m not unique in this regard. I also have a hunch that for many people, the order of these two phases I describe may be reversed.
What I can say after thinking about this month’s theme is that my darkest times certainly come from the phase I am in now. Anything I thought was dark or difficult when I was trying to convince the world of who I was pales in comparison to the audience of one that is myself. What got me through those dark times was just projecting confidence. Confidence I thought I had. Confidence and actions that built confidence in me within others. It worked really well, for a long time. Then I began to not care what anyone thought. Not just the facade of not caring. Legitimately not giving a shit. You’d think at that point it would just be sailing the seas of joy and prosperity.
What I’ve come to realize is that in the process of growing past caring what others think about me, it opened the door to becoming my own worst critic. Mind you, from the outside, I’m sure it just looked like I’d gained enough confidence in myself to not sweat the opinions of others. To some degree, that is correct, however, anytime life got hard (or gets hard) I find myself sinking to the depths of self-loathing in a way I don’t ever remember under the old regime. It sucks.
So what gets me through? Matthew’s theme is framed in hope, which is important. Things that have helped me so far include (in no particular order or gravity):
- Giving up social media; full delete of accounts.
- Regularly reading The Manual by Epictetus.
- The love of my children.
- The love of my wife.
- The love of my family as a whole.
- Embracing a mantra.
That mantra goes something like this:
Life is a journey. There will be hardships and dark times. Those times condition you for growth and allow you to measure the good times and feelings. Everyone else is on their own journey. Paths will run both parallel to yours and at intersections with no stop signs. Get home safely. Be intentional. The journey ends when it is over.
If you’re struggling, please seek help. Give yourself grace. Balance is an important function of the world. The dark gives the light purpose.
People & Blogs
I’ve been a subscriber and supporter of Manu’s excellent People & Blogs weekly series since issue #1. It has connected me with new blogs, amazing people and made me think about so many aspects of writing and what an opportunity it is to publish your thoughts on anything to the entire population of the Internet.
Today I received the honor of being the featured person and blog. If you landed here from there, welcome. If you’ve been here before and want to know more about me and the journey of my tangible life, check it out and please consider supporting Manu’s lovely gift to the Internet.
Intentional Web Manifesto
Earlier today I linked to a post and added that I would use the phrase “intentional web” vs. “social web” or “personal web”. I can’t stop thinking about it. I feel compelled to push forward the idea that the Intentional Web is the web myself and many others want to help create and consume. So… here it goes:
Manifesto for the Intentional Web
We the humans of the Internet, promote and uphold the following ideals when it comes to the web content we want to create and consume.
- Written by humans.
- Written for humans.
- Engagement is not a measure, it is an action.
- Algorithms don’t direct our attention.
- We curate our consumption.
- Open discourse is not to be weaponized.
- Our feeds intend to feed the mind, not the machine.
- Attention is our currency; we spend wisely.
- Tools facilitate an action, not a solution.
- Intention is the seed for all we aim to grow.
If you resonate with this definition of the Intentional Web, it is yours to have and to represent. Propagate it and integrate it into your own little node of this web we hold so dear.
The social web
Manu’s recent post plus this one are a great example of working out your ideas, assumptions and realizations in public.
That is the web I’m arguing for. A web that is intentional, where what you consume is curated by you and you alone, where connections with others happen because you made the conscious effort to connect. And at this point, I don’t fucking know how to call that web. Maybe “personal web”? I guess I’ll go with that from now on.
I would suggeest/argue that the best name for it would be “intentional web”, since that (to me) is the part that is most lacking in every other form of “web” being described.
Family-style Dining
I’ve had dogs in my life since childhood. Though we have our first cat now, we consider ourselves “dog people” by natural selection. Our current canine family member is an English Mastiff named Oden. He’s almost 3 years old and weighs in at about 200 lbs. He is unlike any dog we’ve had before in so many ways, but this post will focus on one specific behavior that separates him from the rest.
Oden is a “free feeder”, meaning that we place his food in his bowl and sometimes he eats it then, but more often he gets around to eating it eventually. There are days that he will eat his two bowls at breakfast and dinner times and other days he’ll eat them back to back in the middle of the afternoon. I used to worry that it was an odd behavior because it is so different than all the dogs I’ve had before. His attitude towards food is very much like his attitude in general, which is to say he’s the most easygoing member of the house by orders of magnitude.
What I’ve realized in the past few months is that it isn’t as random a schedule as I’d thought originally. Our life as a large household with many children and many activities they’re involved in is probably the definition of chaos to outsiders. We prepare and eat dinner at varying times depending on the day of the week. At first I thought it may be coincidence, but after paying close attention and mentally logging the data (as I tend to do), I can say with certainty that the behavior is intentional.
Oden eats with us.
He knows he isn’t permitted beyond the boundaries of the kitchen cabinets and adheres to this “invisible forcefield” very consistently. When we start to prepare our meals, he pays attention to what’s going on, but almost in the background; merely an observer. Once members of the family start to sit around the kitchen counter seating and the table in our “nook” next to his custom-built-to-his-size dog crate (more on that in another post), he engages. He looks at all of us eating and then walks over to his bowl and begins to eat his food. I appreciate this act of family every single time he does it.
This may be something that is common to his breed, or to dogs more generally, but it isn’t anything we’ve experienced before. He is our first English Mastiff (and possibly our last… the drool stories are real), but if anyone has experiences like this, I’d love to hear about them.
Rituals Roundup
This is my IndieWeb Carnival “roundup” post. I honestly didn’t know what to expect, as this was my first time hosting the Carnival. I’m amazed that 25 people read my topic and felt compelled enough to write something on their blog and send me a link. What an amazing thing it is to have this opportunity and to get to direct people’s minds to write on a topic. The results are below and I strongly encourage folks to click each submission and read it in its entirety. They’re all lovely and my notes are merely my attempt to shine light on what they struck in me. Thanks to all 25 of you that took time out of your lives to write the posts and the email that shared it with me.
Andrea’s Rituali
Andrea’s ritual of a couple’s massage with Noemi whenever traveling may be one of the best ideas I’ve ever heard for how to make experiences abroad even more soothing and relaxing. Chef’s kiss for this one.
Chris’s Rituals
Chris contrasting “working life” morning rituals with those that took hold once not working was fascinating. Once I’d read the post, I wondered what my “post-work” rituals will look like. Something tells me that my coffee ritual will persist, but so many other portions that are mere routine today could elevate to ritual status once time is less dictated by the corporate overlords.
Sara’s No Internet Ritual
When I first received Sara’s post, I didn’t immediately recognize that her referring to the ritual being “negative” meant a ritual of reduction or removal of something. Once I grasped that, I found this post fascinating. My wife recently discussed that we’re going to be doing “phone free weekends” from time to time with our entire family. I’m looking forward to it because I share some of Sara’s feelings from her “no internet” weekends. I hope she gets back on track with her rituals and they bring her the peace she seeks.
V.H.’s Assorted rituals
My favorite thing about V.H.’s post is the various angles of approach to the topic of rituals. That wasn’t merely my flight simulation pun, but a genuine appreciation for the underlying concept that rituals are about the process more than the output. In some cases, the only visible artifact of a ritual is the output, and therefore to another person’s eye, that’s all it represents. My kids see me drinking a cup of coffee and they say to themselves “Dad really likes drinking coffee,” but to understand the ritual is to understand the value of process.
Ken’s New family traditions
Ken took rituals in the direction of family traditions. I enjoyed the take and reading it makes me want to write about some of my family traditions growing up. I somehow differentiate rituals and traditions in my head, but I’m not sure how to articulate the difference.
Juhis’s Rituals build community camaraderie
Juhis nailed something so meta and ironic that I am a little ashamed of myself for not seeing it earlier. The IndieWeb Carnival is itself a ritual framework in many ways. I’m so glad someone pointed out what may have been so obvious to many of the other participants. I was also intrigued by the thought that “free thinkers” may push against rituals as they may feel limiting. I would define myself as such a thinker, but didn’t make that connection until Juhis highlighted it.
Manu’s Rituals
Manu was not the only person to refer to the Japanese tea ceremony this month. The mention of it has me not only wanting to learn more, but also makes my mind seek out other examples of ceremony that could serve as inspiration for how to hold a ritual in its highest regard. This could be in order to preserve it, or merely to further honor it beyond the simplistic term that it brings “joy.” I can also relate to the feeling Manu shares of feeling like life is a table ready to be flipped. Sometimes chaos leads to cleansing.
Chuck’s Rituals
Since Chuck’s ritual and mine both touch on coffee, I’ll share that I actually have a hand grinder ritual of my own. When we travel (just about anywhere), I bring my “kit”. I have a small hand grinder and an Aeropress for those brews. The feeling of the hand grinder is, I agree, meditative in its rhythmic processing of the beans.
Antonio’s Morning Coffee Ritual
Antonio’s morning ritual sounds luxurious to me. My ritual was based on making coffee but his is about experiencing coffee along with something mentally stimulating.
Bob’s Rituals
I respect both stances that Bob outlines. I think that his ritual of limiting variation in his life resonates with me as I’ve often wanted to create such boundaries for myself to simplify. I also like that he’d be open to a new ritual that looks to stretch himself, from time to time.
Jeremy’s A Dearth of Ritual
When it comes to the ritual of death, I agree that it is more for those left behind than for the person that has passed. That being said, I’d caution Jeremy to consider prescribing the rituals that are to be conducted. Not for himself, but as a final act to simplify the decisions they’re having to make in that hard moment.
Tracy’s Ritual Creation
Tracy’s submission was such a lovely way to remember someone who made an indelible mark on her life. After reading this, I feel a sense that the kids that got to be part of Coach Taylor’s rituals were overwhelmingly better for having the experience.
James’ Saturday morning reading
James hits so many great points in this post. His ritual is reading fiction, and this post highlights how he fell back in love with that act and then turned it into a ritual. I can relate as I’d loved reading as a child, but fell out of habit and last year started to read fiction at night as a way to “wind down” and it’s something I now look forward to throughout the day.
foreverlikethis’s VHS to Digital
What a trip down memory lane this post was for me. Not because my family has a vault of memories locked away in some form of media. My mom and dad never made home movies or recordings. We were a 35mm camera clan and so my memories of VHS centers around two realms. Taping of and then re-watching an uncomfortable number of times to admin the show C.H.I.P.S. is the first. The second is my 2 years of employment at Blockbuster Video during the end of the VHS era. DVDs took up only one aisle in our store, but the end came quickly after I left the gig.
Lindsey’s Rituals
I’m so glad Lindsey participated in the Carnival for the first time during this month. The phrasing of “there are no neutral practices” really hits for me. This is a phrase I couldn’t have put my finger on when coming up with this topic nor when I wrote my own. It’s the compliment to the statement around intentionality. Seeing so many mentions of religious context and then an expanded concept of rituals from this exercise has also been a joy for me.
Martín’s Rituals
Martín touches on something I’d not thought of when mulling over rituals as a topic. I definitely thought of the corporate project management connotations of “rituals”, but never the very clear connection to the world of sport. There are so many fascinating examples of rituals that teams or individual players/athletes perform. Sometimes they are rituals of luck and other times they are simply the rituals that set forth the mentality to achieve (in this case, to win).
Soren’s Rituals
Great to see another blogger jumping into the Carnival mix during my month! Soren’s researching of those terms feels very familiar. I will admit that it wasn’t a topic that I landed on easily for my hosting duties, but posts like this one have made me so glad that it was not only well received by the community, but so many amazing posts have come from it.
Marisabel’s Rituals: then & now
Parenting is hard. Like really hard, sometimes. I love that where Marisabel has landed is such a pure distillation of why being a parent, for me, has been the single most rewarding thing I’ve done with my life. I feel like printing her ritual quotable on cards and handing them without judgement to all the parents I see at events with their kids, yet mindlessly scrolling on their phones while they are missing out on something they can never get back.
Mel’s Rituals
One of my favorite parts of the IndieWeb Carnival is that it shines light on parts of this world I knew little to nothing about. I had to do a bit of research just to be able to come back and understand Mel’s post. Finding rituals that connect to importance in your life seems like a win for all involved.
Barry’s Routine
It is ironic that Barry talked about the “typical” version of parents wishing their kids would return to school. I was just talking to someone at work and telling them that I missed my kids being home and I was dreading the return of school. That routine is much less zen for our household, but it is a necessary evil. I can’t wait for them to be back home when I come out of my office during breaks.
Dario’s Rituals
Dario speaks of rituals and ceremonies relating to Scrum project management methodology. I thought of this when I picked this theme, because I often hear the terms used in that context at my day job. I agree with the concept that these are examples of “illusions of control.”
Paolo’s Lack of Rituals
Rituals may not be for everyone and this post by Paolo distills that nicely. I would, maybe, are that Paolo has a ritual of reduction that is thinly masked as habits or previous rituals falling away. It is beautiful in a way because as we have things we do regularly that no longer fit our lives, it is like trimming away branches that no longer need to be on a tree and pruning them away leaves the tree free to grow further in another direction.
Britt’s Rituals
When reading Britt’s post, I came away realizing that our similar ritual of preparing tea or coffee is almost equivalent to a breath. I never would have seen the analogy so clearly had it not been for this lovely submission.
Rees’s Rituals
I’m so glad that Rees decided to start submitting to the Carnival this month! A word that has come up in several submissions is intension. Choosing to derive things in life that are worth designing rituals around by looking through the lens of intentionality is great.
Zinzy’s Rituals
Zinzy nails a feeling I struggle to write about. The feelings of failure from rituals you wish you could break. She also really challenged me to think about how easy it is to hold up the “golden rule” when thinking about how you treat others and how you’d encourage them to treat you, but we rarely hold ourselves accountable to the same standard in how we treat ourselves.
Carl’s Rituals
Carl’s description of savoring that first sip of coffee sounds so familiar to me. The smell and the warmth plus the taste all create a symphony of experience.
PenPals With Jarrod Blundy
Jarrod Blundy writes over at his blog HeyDingus. I got on with Jarrod from our very first interaction. The name of his blog immediately resonated with me from my many hours listening to Merlin Mann’s podcasts. Jarrod’s posts are interesting and span a wide variety of topics.
Jarrod mentioned to me that he had been running a monthly PenPals series where he and another person he’d met on the internet would email back and forth about whatever was on their mind and then he’d post the full conversation on his blog for folks to read once the month concluded. I thought it was an awesome idea and was happy to participated.
Here’s the link on Jarrod’s site to the full exchange. He formats it so nicely, I’d prefer people read it over there than embedding it here.
Jarrod, if you’re reading this post, thanks man. It was my honor to be your July PenPal.