Tangible Life
2025 Uses Update
I went ahead and updated my Uses page for the first time since I added it in 2024. That page also encompasses my App Defaults, so I won’t need to publish those updates separately.
Here’s the recap:
- No changes to Furniture, Hardware and Coffee sections.
Software Changes
- Stopped using Arc Browser; returned to Safari.
- Stopped using Oku for book tracking; using mymind for tracking and Apple Notes for book notes.
- Stopped using Raindrop for bookmarks; using mymind.
- Stopped using Apple Podcasts; returned to Castro.
- Stopped using 1Password for Families (after 8 years); moved to Apple Passwords.
- Added Shareshot for iOS/iPadOS screenshots.
- Now using Forever ✱ Notes framework in Apple Notes for note taking.
That’s a lot less change than I’d normally go through in a year, which was intentional. I’ve been focusing on only changing something that’s not working, vs. change for the sake of change. The things I’m using are working well and the changes have all been refinement or cost savings.
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.