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| author | luxagraf <sng@luxagraf.net> | 2024-04-21 09:37:09 -0500 |
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| committer | luxagraf <sng@luxagraf.net> | 2024-04-21 09:37:09 -0500 |
| commit | 9617fdbc9954ca896b065611373ef2ba2a84b3b6 (patch) | |
| tree | fb35336562b13ace6d2f53002388775c2351cff7 /scratch.txt | |
| parent | a206a8e2906e30bc2451198650f75f8b3ad1d355 (diff) | |
added lastest stuff ahead of flight as backup
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diff --git a/scratch.txt b/scratch.txt index 3f7d752..e769f86 100644 --- a/scratch.txt +++ b/scratch.txt @@ -2,8 +2,294 @@ Your power is proportional to your ability to relax. Nothing can be more useful to a man than a determination not to be hurried. +"The next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines." -- Wendell Berry, An Essay Against Modern Superstition + +"what you contemplate, you imitate." + +"The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution." Igor Stravinsky + +“Be cheerful, do good, and let the sparrows chirp.” - john bosco + + # Scratch +requirements for property: + +at least 10 acres. Water. existing well. ability to capture water. Spectacular views. on a slope to + +pleasure in the job, puts perfection in the work -- Aristotle's prescription for excellence + +every essay needs a story to hang it on. And an audio/visual podcast of it. + +Is something good because God wills it or is it good because god willed it? + +God is not a being, but being. + +The good and the true are convertible with being, they are fundamentally the same as being but as related to our faculties of reason and will. The good then is simply being as it relates to will. It is being under the aspect of its desirableness. Something is not good because god wills it, neither is it some standard outside of god which he is measured by. God who is the ullness o being simply wills his own goodness, the goodness that he is, he himself is the highest good. he wills himself. - Aquinas. more or less + + +The counter argument is that God should not be constrained by his own nature. Therefore something is good because god wills it. (voluntarism). But this then leads to the idea that Not the nature of a thing, its being goodness and truth, determine reality, but the sheer act of a will. e.g. Schopenhauer. The problem is overemphasis on the will leads here, where we are divorced from the world as it really is. If I decide entirely what is true, then I can decide what is true then I can weigh 600 pounds and declare myself healthy. I can say I'm a cat and force my employer to provide a litter box. + + + + +## Seems Like a Lot of Folks Gave Up or Got Out, Except For the Truly Devote + +Spend a some time in the environment around you, really spend some time. Lose the headphones. Maybe put aside some of the plastic sports gear. Just walk with no plan, no goals, not for your health, your mental health any of that stuff. Find a quiet place to sit, somewhere near you. Sit with the rocks, the trees, the dirt, the sky, the plants, the animals. Then think of all of it, pretend for a moment, that these things are valuable to you like other people are valuable, and more importantly, that you matter to them. That your presence is important to the rocks, to the trees, to the sky, to all of it. Now what sort of life would you lead if you really believed that? Go live that life. + + +We have so little time to engage with the world around us compared to people in pre-industrial times. + + +There is a baseline of financial success you need before you can start to be more spontaneous. + + +I think the view from your window when you’re writing really does inform what you’re writing about quite a lot. I need to stare out of a window whilst I’m writing. That helps me find where I’m going. I was by the harbor, so I could see people coming and going in boats, and I could look out at the sea. There was a fun fair that would pitch up in a field to the right of the restaurant every June, so for a while, I had a fun fair outside my window. I’m sure that contributed in some way to Rid of Me. There was a wonderful collection of furniture and also Russian vinyl 78s. The restaurant owner’s mother had lived there previously — she was Russian — and it was all her furniture and things. Not so long ago, I borrowed the Russian 78s back off the restaurateur so I could record them, because they’d been so much in my memory. I used a sample of one of them on the 4-Track Demos [on “Hook”]. At the time I was listening almost exclusively to those Russian 78s, along with Howlin’ Wolf, Tom Waits, and the Pixies. I’d also been reading a lot of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories, and J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey. I might’ve also been reading [Friedrich Nietzsche’s] Thus Spake Zarathustra. Some light reading. [Laughs] It was a wonderful period of time because I did suddenly have my life back again. That was the period when I was really writing the record. - PJ Harvey + + +## Notecard System + +I don't think anything I've written for Wired has generated so much interest as a throw away comment I made about notecards in our [guide to paper planners](https://www.wired.com/story/best-paper-planners/#indexcards). Every time that article is updated I get more email asking for details. Here are the details. + +--- + +First, lets make sure we're all on the same page: if you want to accomplish things in life you need to make plans. + +Not *a plan*, plans are useless. You need *plans*. + +Many plans means you go through the process of planning. That's what's valuable, the process. Planning requires thinking deeply about life, your life, and what you're doing here. What you want to do here, what you were put here to do. + +I can't help you with that part, but after you've made some decisions about what you want do do, where you want to go, it's time to plan how to get there. That requires lists. Lots of lists. Lists of goals, lists of outcomes you're aiming for, lists of things you need to do to get from here to there, lists of what you did to get from where you were to where you are, and so on. + +If you step back a bit, you'll see that there are several levels of stuff you need to keep track of -- long terms goals, shorter term projects aligned with those goals, and day to day stuff you need to accomplish to complete the projects that get you to the goals. Life isn't nearly this simple or neat, but at a very broad level that's three things to keep track of: long term things, medium term things, short term things. There's one more important element: a way to record ideas as they come to you. + +I use notecards for two of these four things: to track day-to-day tasks and to capture ideas. Medium and long term planning I do in a notebook (more on that below). + +The notecard system started when I was in my early 20s and was pretty much spinning my wheels. Working in a restaurant, drinking too much, not sleeping enough, never working out. Living without direction. It's good for you sometimes, but I think I maybe enjoyed it a little too much and maybe spent a little too much time in this stage, but I digress. + +One of my good friends at the time, who lived more or less the same way I did, nevertheless managed to run a successful business, play in a band, and otherwise be a much more effective person than me. All while doing all the same bad things I was doing. I asked him one day how he managed get so much done. "I make a list of all the stuff I need to do," he said, "then I do it." + +That this was revolutionary to me tells you everything you need to know about me in my twenties. But it was. I asked him, okay, but like, what do you *do*? It turned out he took whatever paper was handy and wrote down what he needed to do. Then he did it. Naturally I focused on the first part: how he wrote it down. That was the easiest thing to copy. Actually doing stuff? That's hard. + +I wasted a week or so deciding what sort of paper to use for my lists. I chose index cards because they were small, cheap, fit in your pocket, and wouldn't get mixed up with other paper. The fact that they're small also meant my todo list would never get to more than twenty or so items. That's manageable. + +Finally, paper decision behind me, I started writing things down on index cards. Then I had to do them. That was annoying. But there they were, on the list. Needing to be done. It turned out that crossing stuff off the list was fun. Almost addictive. It was like a game in a way. Could I get everything crossed off in a day? I got moderately obsessed with lists. + +One night at sushi with my then-girlfriend and her father (also a very successful person) I happened to mention my notecard system (see, obsessed, as in bringing it up at dinner). "I do that too," he said. "Every night before I go to bed I write down everything I have to do, and all the extraneous things I've been thinking about. I try to completely empty my head. Helps me sleep," he said. + +Notice that he did not say anything about what sort of paper he used. Only idiots like me obsess over paper. Focus on the craft, not the tools. + +This idea made sense to me, so I took this craft and incorporated it into my life as well. I didn't even obsess over what sort of paper to use. I started writing out my todo lists in the evening, along with anything else that felt like it needed to get off my mind, which I also wrote on notecards since I had them around. These cards I threw in a shoe box and, to be honest, didn't do much with them, but they helped clear my head, which was the important part[^1]. + +This system, tracking what I needed to do, and clearing my ideas at the end of the day, was far more powerful than I expected. The notecards themselves are incidental. Use whatever scraps of paper work for you, the point is the craft. The system works. I started getting more stuff done. Lots more stuff. To the point that I ended up going back and finishing college because I realized I had enough time in my day to do that, in part because I knew what I had to do each day. + +Over the years I have experimented with other ways of keeping todo lists, including notebooks of various shapes and sizes, probably a dozen different digital methods, including two I wrote myself. None of them stuck. I keep coming back to notecards. They are the single most effective way to keep track of what you need to do without introducing unnecessary complexity. + +This is a flexible enough system that I've used it as a chef, a computer programmer, a writer, a father, and more. I honestly think it would work for anyone in just about any job where you have to keep track of what you need to do. + +[^1]: When I had kids I kind of gave up on this habit to spend my time reading to them before bed. In practice it accomplishes the same thing -- it clears my head by sticking a story in it -- I just lose whatever ideas might have been rattling around. The only notecards I really use as a filing system anymore are reading notes. + +## The Importance of Notebooks and Time blocking + +There's only so much you can do in day. There is what there is, use it wisely. I have a full time job, three kids, and live on the road. I also manage to not work all the time. In fact I rarely work past 3. It's not that I'm so great at anything, it's that I can focus, and I can focus because I block out time in my day to work intensely rather than haphazardly throughout the day. + +I had been using notecards for years before I encountered David Allen's Getting Things Done, which inspired me to expand my daily system (which was already close enough to his that I didn't change that) into longer term thinking and planning. To me the core benefit of Allen's system is clearing your mind of trivial details so you can thing about the big picture stuff. + +This may also have had something to do with getting older, and it coincided with me wanting to accomplish longer term goals. While notecards are a key part of a big project like writing a book, they aren't enough. I found note cards to be less ideal for longer term planning. It's hard to fit much about a multi-year project on a single note card. For a while I used multiple cards when necessary and kept them all together with little binder clips. That worked, but it was difficult to carry around and hard to see everything at once without a large table, which I didn't always have. + +I bought a notebook and started keeping my projects (to use David Allen's terms) in that, then making my daily lists of things to do for those projects on the notecards. When I moved from freelancing to full-time at Wired, I started evolving this system because most of what I do at Wired is very long term and needs to be broken down into more manageable bits. Most of my planning for work starts at the seasonal level, then moves to monthly, then weekly. If find it easiest to track this flow in a notebook. + +To give a practical example, consider my tent guide. This is something I update every Spring, Summer and Fall, which means it's on three different pages in my notebook. March 1st or so I flip to the spring projects list, review it, note that Best Tents is on there, and move it to my list of things to do in March. Both lists are in the same notebook, but the season lists I don't cross things off or mark them in any way. I revisit the same list next spring. The actual list of things to do that gets crossed off is the monthly list. I review my monthly list at the start of every week, and move whichever things I want to work on that week to a weekly list. Then I break that down by day. That's where the notecards come out. + +I write down what I need to get done the next day in the evening and then the next morning when I brew my coffee and sit down to work, I pick up the notecard and get to work. + +tk + + + + +I rarely buy books. I rely on libraries so just writing in the book isn't an option. Also, writing in the book means to find anything I'd have to do get the book, open it, thumb through it looking for the quote. All I have to do is flip through my note cards, which are archived (VERY loosely) by subject. + + +He gave me some more details about his system, which had simple priority rankings for tasks. And by "file" he meant toss it in a shoebox. Not perfect, but I started to do both things. Amazingly, I too started to accomplish more. + +To this day when I read a book I kept a stack of note cards nearby, writing down things that catch my attention[^1]. I do the same for things I read online, conversations I have, and ideas that come to me though out the day. + +and a way to file stuff that might be useful in the future, for me that's reading notes, story ideas, observations and so on. + + + +The last two became a problem. There was no way to know at a glance which index cards were valuable insights gleaned from a book or meditation and which were just reminding me to get paper towels at the store. This is when I stumbled on extra-sticky post-it notes. They're like regular post-it notes. But they actually stick to stuff. Pretty much forever from what I can tell. They also come in this very attention-getting yellow. So I started writing todos and grocery type lists on these little yellow post its. I know that + +## The Nothing That Is + +> For the listener, who listens in the snow, <br /> +> And, nothing himself, beholds <br /> +> Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. <br /> +<cite>-- [Wallace Stevens][1]</cite> + +Long leaf pine bark is a patchwork quilt of overlapping grays, reds, browns, flaking to leave bluish tinged valleys between them. It reminds me of the canyon country of the Colorado plateau, a miniature world of mesas and canyons turned on its side and drizzled with rivers of sap. + +Some of the same forces of wind and water are at work on the pine as they are in the canyons of Utah and Colorado. An echo of the endless in the finite. + +<div class="cluster"> + <span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2024/2024-02-26_163406_fort-pickens.jpg" id="image-3910" class="cluster pic66" /> +<img src="images/2024/2010-07-10_141628_dinosaur-national-park.jpg" id="image-3909" class="cluster pic66" /> + </span> +</div> + +The sound is the same. The rush of pine needles catching the wind. From damp maritime forests to box canyons in the southwest, the under story may change from palmettos to red-barked manzanita, but the over story remains the same. The pines are always singing. + +The breath of the world. Air rushing from one place to another, a force we can only see the effect of, never the thing itself. The nothing that is. + +On cool nights I leave the windows open to hear the wind. When we lived in a house I would sleep on the couch on windy nights. Only a few of our windows opened, the best was right next to the couch. I propped it open with a dowel and would fall asleep to puffs of wind on my face. + +Before dawn, before the birds are up, there is only the sea and the wind. I lay awake in the 5 AM darkness, listening to the pines softly roar. The low music of the pines is joined by the dry rattle of oak leaves, the snap of a towel left out to dry over night. The wind like fingers tracing over the land, feeling their way through our small slice of the world. + +I think of going out into it. It is warm under the covers, but I always think of Marcus Aurelius, "what do I have to complain of, if I'm going to do what I was born for -- the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?" I get up. + +Outside there is already a pink and yellow glow on the horizon. The wind comes in gusts, swaying pines, rattling oaks. I stand facing east, watching the sun. Just before dawn the wind dies down, the temperature drops noticeably, as if the world draws in a deep breath and holds. And then there is light. + + + + + + + +When there is no wind the world is wondrously silent. + + + +Life is about the ineffable presence in the silence of stone. The smell of rain in dry lands. The taste of salt before you can see the water. What you know before you know it. The presence in the absence of everything else. + + + + +[1]: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45235/the-snow-man-56d224a6d4e90 + +I try to spend some time each day "doing nothing". That is, not working, not writing, not reading, not even meditating, not engaged with anything but the world as it is. To sit and listen. + +This started as a way to get better at birding, listening intently to all the different bird calls that are always all around, but get filtered out -- to stop that filtering and listen consciously to everything, picking out individual sounds, trying to identify them. + + +I found that concentrating this way had a hypnotic effect, it was like gaining access to a new world. I wanted to do more of it, to go further somehow. + + +All my life I have sought these wild, isolated places. I'm not entirely sure why, but I think the +<<< +Draw people in here, and make the language more compelling. +>>> + + +It may be that that's already a part of us if we stop long enough, become still enough and work hard enough to find it. + +We stare at campfires almost every night. + + + + +[3]: http://www.pnas.org/content/112/28/8567 + + + +The 50mm lens forces you to dissect what you're seeing and figure out a way to tell the story you see by combining fragments back into a narrative. It forces you to cut up the story and re-arrange it into your own, which is the beginning of creativity -- the destruction. The narrower field of view of the 50mm lens forces you to sequence and narrate your way into the experience you are trying to communicate. That's what I love about it. You can't contain the story in one shot like you can with a wide lens, you have to go deeper in and see what you can pull out as the essential elements. The 50mm make you work for it. And yeah the 50 part isn't that important, 40, 45, 50, 55, 58, they all have the same effect + +1) Think about framing first. The 50 lends itself to simple direct framing. Figure out what's important in the scene and get rid of the rest. +2) Use depth of field wisely. Don't go nuts with the bokeh. Lenses have f/8 for a reason. I get it, the falloff can be pretty awesome, especially in portraits, but go easy here. +3) Move around. Ansel Adams: A good photograph is knowing where to stand. To dissect a scene you have to move around in it. Like move your body. +4) Think in narratives. The 50 tells stories in pieces, you don't have to get everything in the frame. Be less reactive and more intentional. +5) Think in triptychs: establishing shot, then what's the action, then some detail within the scene. + + + + +## Art + +The past and future of art is patronage. The past is one person giving you thousands, the future, as Kevin Kelly famously put it, is thousands of people giving you $1, but either way, selling direct to your audience has always been the way to support yourself by making stuff. + +The future is unevenly distributed though. We are living in an aberration where a lot of art is not supported by patronage, but instead is corralled on platforms to serve algorithms that turn everything into a popularity contest. + +It won't last. Aberrations never do. But when you are in it, this current aberration is an all-consuming one that seems to be destroying people who are trying to create good, thoughtful, intelligent, disciplined art. That is a problem. + +The solution is to better distribute the future into now, which is why I am writing this. My solution here is not new solution, but I think it's going to take some more people pointing it out to make it catch on. + +### How We Got Here. + +The problem of the current aberration is an inevitable result of the democratization of distribution that happened when the internet came along. There's nothing new conceptually about the internet. It's the Gutenberg press on steroids. It brought the cost of distributing art very close to zero, which effectively means anyone can make art. But not really. Because there is more to it than distribution. Now though everyone has the capability to reach an audience with their thing, whatever it may be. + +That is both the brilliance and curse of a zero cost distribution network. There's no gatekeepers. Yay! But wait a minute. Servers are not free. They're cheap, but not free. There might not be a gatekeeper in the since of an editor sifting through a slush pile of manuscripts, but someone has to keep the servers running. That's the new gatekeeper. Same as the old really, though the close have changed. + +In order to pay for the servers the platforms have to do something. The model that some early efforts stumbled on is to capture viewers' attention and then sell that attention to advertisers. The platform then has a need to always be increasing the number of eyeballs staring at the ads. This is why everything has been engineered to be addictive. + +I know you already know this, I'm only laying this out because it's the next part people seem to miss. The algorithms that serve up your creations on these platforms need your creations to serve their needs. That is, they need your creations to be addictive. Again, this is not new. The patrons supporting art throughout the ages have always had agendas and some of them where pretty shady. + +The problem is that the distribution platforms have turned everything into a competition to see who can get the most eyeballs. Even this is not inherently bad. I don't know about you, but I want to reach as many people as I can. But that quest for eyeballs turns into your quest. Your work exists primarily to feed the algorithm and it's treated as food essentially. + +The way this plays out is that even if people start off making things for the love of it, they get sucked into the world of the platform. Soon people aren't making things because they love them, they're making things because they're hoping you'll love them and that never works. + +Unfortunately, even if you can get past that temptation and keep making things you love to make, even if you really pour all your energy into something, it ends up being eaten by the same algorithm. It ends up on these platforms alongside everything else, no matter if that else is someone's energy and love distilled, or a 30 second flippant rant about tomatoes. + +The modern platform, be it YouTube, Instagram, or whatever is big now, is the equivalent of going to the Louve and instead of curated artwork, the walls are plastered with every scrap of art everyone had ever created. + +At first this would be amazing. You would discover all kinds of wonderful art. Sure there would be some really bad stuff, but look at this one... this is amazing. You would wander in rapture. + +This euphoric discover phase would eventually become overwhelming. You would reach a saturation point. It would be too much to look at another wall of art and try to wade through the hundred pieces you didn't like to find the two you did. You'd retreat to enjoy what you'd already found. You'd look for more by those artists. You'd, dare I say, follow them. You'd begin to encourage them to feed the algorithm. + +### Finding a Way Out + +There are two widely accepted solutions to the overwhelm problem. There's also a less used, more interactive, third option that I think points the way forward, but first let's talk about the two solutions most widely employed: professional curation and machine curation. + +Professional curation kicked off with the relative democratization of publishing back in the late middle ages. As soon as the printing press started cranking out more books than you could read in a year someone popped up to offer suggestions on which ones you should read and which you should skip. Fast forward a bit and you have the professional curator. To my mind this encompasses everything from editors picking works to publish to critics telling the wider public which pieces of art to consume, as well as all the people in between those points. + +It's worth mentioning that I grew up under this system and watched it gradually collapse and fall apart to be replaced by machine curation. I don't completely love either system, both have trade offs. + +The professional system works to a point, after which it becomes cliqueish, ego-driven, and self-defeating. Once it crosses that threshold it tends to be circumvented. In art you get the rise of the gallery to showcase those that can't make it into the museum. Then you get the pop up gallery to circumvent the gallery. Presumably this keeps going though I will admit I exited that scene at the pop up gallery stage because I felt like I saw where it was going. I saw the same thing happen in publishing. In publishing the independent presses circumvented the big publishers until they turned into them, and then the zine makers circumvented the independent publishers until they turn into them. Presumably this would have gone on in these loops forever where it not for the rise of the machine. + +Professional curation is valuable. People who spend their lives thinking about what is good or bad writing, good or bad art, good or bad music, if they do it well, and I have worked with many who do it well, they really do have a better sense of what is working and what is not. They're not perfect. For every Rembrandt that's discovered when they should be there is a Basquiat who is not. This is the downside to professional curation. Everything has its trade offs. + +The main alternative to professional curation is machine curation. This is where we are today. There is too much on YouTube for professionals to curate. This is the realm of the machine. As with the professional, when the machine works for you (as a lover of art seeking it) it works quite well, but even when it works it is feeding the algorithm and potentially killing the thing you are there to see -- the art. + +### What Is Art + +Let's back up, what is "art"? I think what people mean by "art" is when people try to turn scenes, moments of life, into something larger than they are, to be able to communicate ideas to other people. + +To me this is not "art". This is something far deeper and more primeval. This is the basic human need to communicate with each other. To tell people what it was like on the mountain top as it were. You can do this at any time. No one is stopping you. Seek transcendence until you experience it. Rinse and repeat. You don't need a platform, you don't need a patron. + +Now if that transcendence drives you to make something to explain it or share it in some way, that's where patrons come in. Making stuff usually takes at the very least time, time that can not be spent putting food on you table. You either need to have a lot of food on the table already or you're going to have to figure out a way to sell whatever you've made. + +To me this is where the noun "art" comes in. I define "art" as turning the act of transcendence into a paycheck. + +Here be dragons. + +### The Gatekeeper Gauntlet + +I know you think you want to make your living making art. But do you? Do you know what that's going to do to the feeling you were trying to convey? I don't care what platform you put your work out on, be it feeing the algorithm on Instagram or publishing it in Wired magazine, it will not come out the way you want. It might come out better in some ways, but either way, it's not you anymore, it's you and the platform working together. + +I have turned in pieces of writing that were intended to convey one thing that ultimately failed to convey that thing because an editor pushed me in another direction. I still don't know if that's good or bad or neither, but it will definitely happen. And oh, by the way, your ego will shattered into tiny little shards you can maybe collect up when the paycheck arrives. Maybe you never find them, they're still lying there in an office somewhere. I've seen it go both ways. + +I have gone this route and continue to go this route when I think whatever idea it is I am trying to convey is one that will survive the crucible of editing in which the perceived unnecessary is seared away. The truth is editors are often right. Not always, but more often then even I want to admit. + +This is why I don't write about those moments of transcendence for gatekeeper publications. That stuff goes here and makes me no money. That's fine. I have a day job. It's still writing. I write about my experiences with products. My title is Senior Writer and Reviewer, but really what I do is write a string of personal essays, 3-4 a week, about my encounters with the stuff other people make. Sometimes this is fulfilling, sometimes it is not, even when it's not it's still pretty fun. Last week I shot about 300 photographs with $20,000 camera I would never in a million years get to touch in any other scenario. This even I cooked up dry aged grass-fed filets to see what a meat subscription box with like. It's a pretty sweet gig. + +That's great for you Scott, but I have to slave away over TPS reports in a cubical and I want people to by my six dimensional crocheting, how come I can't do that? In a word: because that's not how it works. + + + +The issues of patronage only arises if you try to turn those moments of transcendence into objects of some kind and then you try to earn a living from them. + +What then is so different from turning transcendence into a paycheck and turning a selfie of your lunch into a paycheck? Why call one art and the other content? + +I do think there is a difference. + + + +Once upon a time I followed a great community of photographers and writers on the early web. + + +--- + +One of the horrors of the online world is the way in which it cuts off the senses. The energy of chaos is required to change the existing order. @@ -11,7 +297,6 @@ The energy of chaos is required to change the existing order. --- - We're sliding toward a post-political mode of government, in which expert administration replaces democratic contest, and political sovereignty is relocated from representative bodies to a permanent bureaucracy that is largely unaccountable. Common sense is disqualified as a guide to reality and with this disqualification the political standing of the majority is demoted. -- Matthew Crawford Anti-Humanism and the Post-Political Condition First Things Lecture https://yewtu.be/watch?v=pC0bxPbk5nw @@ -37,11 +322,63 @@ Technology is a means to an end, not an end --- -### Yuma scene. +## UG Monk Review + +Every morning I do the same thing. Rain, shine, wind, snow. Doesn't matter. I get up, go outside, and either submerge myself in cold water (if we're near some) or use a bandanna to dowse myself in cold water. Then I do some spiritual exercises, between 200-400 kettlebell swings (depending on the day), and then make some tea and eat breakfast with my family. + +This ritual is a tether from which I rarely deviate, but the rest of my day is not structured at all. My job requires flexibility. Some days I need to sit and write, other days I need to be out wandering around testing cameras, paddle boards, backpacks, and other things. + +To give some additional, useful structure to this chaos I recently added a second ritual at the end of my day, mostly thanks to a little wooden box called [Analog](https://ugmonk.com/pages/analog). + +### Analog, a Japanese tea ceremony for your todo list. + +My work day usually starts around 9 AM. I pick up a note card that has the tasks I am focusing on that day and start doing them. I don't have to think about what I should do, spend any time planning what to do, and I don't for the love of god start my day by looking at my email. I don't even open my laptop. I pick up a notecard. At the top of the card today it says, *write UG Monk Analog review*. I start writing. + +I have been doing this for decades. I wrote a [short blurb](https://www.wired.com/story/best-paper-planners/#indexcards) about how I use note cards as a "planner" for my friend Medea Giordano's [guide to paper planners](https://www.wired.com/story/best-paper-planners/). I was surprised by how much email I got from this little thing I contributed. Eventually I wrote a more extensive guide to [how I use note cards as a planning tool](). This led someone to email me and ask if I had tried something called Analog, from a company with the curious name of UG Monk. + +I wrote [a review of Analog for Wired](), so if you want more on the nuts and bolts of what Analog is and why I like it, read that. What I want to talk about here is something I only mention in passing in the Wired review, that is the potential usefulness of ritual in everyday things. + +Back to the notecard I picked up about 10 minutes ago, the one that said, write Analog review. This notecard which holds everything I need to do, gets filled out in the evening of the day before, when I stop working. + +Before I got the Analog Starter Kit, this process was somewhat haphazard. For someone whose morning ritual is well honed, my afternoons are more chaos. Analog changed that to some degree. The process I go through did not change, but the way I did it and the focus I bring to it now is greater than before. Why? Because I have a beautiful walnut box now. + +Ritual is important because it it makes mundane activities sacred. Eating a cracker is nothing. The ritual of the Eucharistic makes the cracker more than a cracker. + +I would never want anyone to think that going over the stuff you need to do is a religious ceremony, but if you can bring a little of that intensity to other things it can help. Ritual is both a way of focusing, and a way of reinforcing the behavior. Pick the right rituals, the right behaviors, and you can change your life. + +I think ritual is important because if you look at something like Analog, which is $108 plus tax, it might seem like a lot to spend on something for your todo list. But if the money spent, the object acquired, raises the level of respect you have for what you're doing, if it helps bring a ritual aspect that inspires you to sit down and use them then $108 is nothing. + +This is why I say Analog is a Japanese tea ceremony for your todo list. + +If you're not familiar with a Japanese tea ceremony it's an extremely ritualized way of preparing and drinking tea (matcha). It started in the 16th century as an artistic hobby of the upper class and warrior elite, and eventually spread to wealthy merchants and others looking for formal ways forge and reinforce strong social ties. The ceremony itself is highly choreographed and to do it right requires years of study. It's usually done in a small room, modeled on a hermit’s hut, with room for four or five people. The point is to pull people out of the mundane world of their busy lives to temporarily focus on the tea and conversation. + +Creating a ritual around a todo list can have the same effect, helping you to withdraw from the busyness of actual doing, and focus on why you're doing anything at all, and what you hope to get out of it. Do you need this for everything? No, there are some things you just have to do and you know why, like the emails you need to send and phone calls you need to make. But then, why are making those phone calls and sending those emails? Uh, because I have a job. Okay, but why do you have *that* job? What do you get out of it that you don't out of any other job? + +These are the sorts of higher level questions that are worth thinking about on a regular basis.Not everyday, maybe not even weekly, but once a month it's worth reflecting on why you're doing what you doing, not just what you need to get done. This is what Analog has made me thing about more. + +### Daily Reviews With Analog + +At the end of the day -- which might be anywhere from 3 to 8 depending on the day -- I sit down with my notecard and I see what I didn't get to that day. I decided if those things are things I am still committed to doing, and, if so, I write them on a card for the next day. I also mark them as deferred by using a >, which I think I stole from bullet journaling. + +Then I pull out the notecard that holds my weekly tasks, another with monthly tasks, and another with seasonal tasks (quarterly tasks if you prefer), along with a notebook that contains my longer term, strategic goals and list of projects. I review all these lists and make sure that tasks are getting done so projects are moving forward. Based on all this I write down my goals for the next day. + +Once I have the next day's todo list filled out, I put it on top of my Analog box and go do something else for the remainder of the day. + +This little review ritual might sound complex, but it's not. It took longer to write it than it does to do it. I spend about five minutes on this each afternoon. Sunday mornings I spend about an hour going through the same process, but at higher level, looking at my longer term goals and figuring out what needs to get done in the next next season, next year, next five years. + +Analog does two things that I think are important. The first is physical -- it gives me a place to put my notecards. I put everything in the box, then I can put it away and my work day feels done. Pull it out again the next morning and I know it's time to focus. It's a good way to bookend my days, which is particularly helpful for people whose work varies from day to day. + +The second is the ritual aspect. I think a lot of times I get caught up in rushing to do stuff without putting in the more difficult, higher level thinking that ought to precede putting items on your todo list. Why am I doing this? That kind of thinking comes out more when you turn your daily review into a kind of tea ceremony, which, at least for me, Analog very much helps to do. Everyone's job is different of course. I'm not sure a ceremonial ritual around my todo list would have been as helpful when I was running a restaurant. But it might have. It might have been a faster way to figure out that running a restaurant wasn't what I wanted to do with my life. So maybe I take that back. Maybe we could all use a little tea ceremony in our days. Whether Analog fits into that is your own decision, but it's definitely working for me. + + + + + +## Yuma scene. lemon yellow Volkswagon Dasher. smell of radiator fluid. hot wind. simba on the floor in the only scrap of shade. inside the diner, air conditioned, cool. eating ice cream. laying down in the backseat, the windows wrapping around above me. -### stoic journal: +## stoic journal: 1. Prepare For The Day Ahead: Each morning you should prepare, plan and meditate on how you aim to act that day. You should be envisioning everything that may come and steeling yourself so you're ready to conquer it. As Seneca wrote, "The wise will start each day with the thought, 'Fortune gives us nothing which we can really own.'" Or think of Marcus’s reminder: "When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil." @@ -230,16 +567,32 @@ People have forgotten how important the sun is. You can die from lack of sun. +# Stories to Tell +## Fortified +From Edisto we worked our way south, stopping off a Hunting Island for a few dismal days in the cold and rain, camping in a site that was just a smidge above actual bog, then on down to Fort McAllister, the first of a string of forts on the Georgia and Florida coast. +These are the sea islands, a string of over a hundred barrier islands along this stretch of the Atlantic coast. From the mouth of the Santee river, just south of Myrtle Beach, all the way down the coast of Georgia into Florida. +We've spent quite a bit of time in the South Carolina barrier islands, but we never made it here to the Georgia coast until this year. The Georgia coast lacks any of the maritime forests like you'll find in some sheltered spots in South Carolina, but makes up for my having quite a few more forts, which makes it a great place to explore early American history. +We started at Fort McAllister and worked our way back in time, more or less. For McAllister is a civil war era fort, built by the Confederate army to defend Savannah. There were three forts defending the river leading to Savannah, for Fort McAllister was the first as you came up river.The interesting thing about the fighting here and at Fort Pulaski just up river (more on that in a second) was that this was where both armies tested their latest and greatest in both naval armament and coastal defenses. +For most of the war the main enemies here were heat and disease, but toward the end the Union navy came, and it came with some of the first iron clad gunboats. No less than four ironclads with huge 15-inch cannons bombarded the fort for 5 hours... and did next to nothing. The earthenware walls absorbed them and men rushed out and shoveled the dirt back in place. The fort shelled the ironclads and also did little. The shells bounced off the ships, though that had to be incredibly loud to those inside. +Eventually the fort fell, but not because of the navy, because the army swung around south, bypassing Savannah to attack McAllister first. McAllister fell with very little fighting and the navy advanced to our next stop, Fort Pulaski, which I think of as The Last Fort. + +Fort Pulaski was made of brick and withstood an incredible amount of shelling during the war until it met the new rifled cannon. At the moment the day and age of the fort ended. The rifled shell was too accurate and too devastating. The commander of the fort surrendered because the wall was breached and next shot would have hit the magazine killing everyone. + +Fort Frederica, GA + +Castillo de San Marcos National Monument at st augustine, FL + +## Something Needs to Change + +We sprinted across Florida in two quick drives over to the far end of the panhandle. We stopped in the middle at the Tallahassee Car Museum, I weird little museum that has a few campsites out front (not everything in Harvest Hosts is a farm) -# Stories to Tell -One of the horrors of the online world is the way in which it cuts off the senses. ## Darktable shortcuts: @@ -258,110 +611,6 @@ alt + - zoom out (custom) alt + = zoom in (custom) 0-5 rate pics -## Winter Storm - -The afternoon of the day we decided to leave the Jeep behind a ranger stopped by to tell us they were closing the campground the next day due to a large storm front that was headed our way. Winds were expected to be in the 50 MPD range, with gust even higher. We've sat out a storm with [winds like that in New Mexico](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/01/eastbound-down). It wasn't fun, but we're still here. But that wasn't an option this time. Fortunately we were planning to leave the next day anyway. - -We crammed all the backpacking gear and misc stuff from the Jeep in the back of the bus and hit the road the next morning. We cut inland and headed south for somewhere to sit out the storm. Driving the bus in the rain sucks and I wasn't about to do it with everyone on board. - -<img src="images/2023/2023-12-16_114717_driving-wilmington-battleship.jpg" id="image-3880" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2023/2023-12-16_114721_driving-wilmington-battleship.jpg" id="image-3881" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2023/2023-12-16_134123_driving-wilmington-battleship.jpg" id="image-3882" class="picwide" /> - -I also wasn't crazy about camping anywhere with pine trees when the forecast was for days of soaking rain followed up by high winds. Unfortunately nearly every campground on the Carolina coast is full of pines and oaks. I've seen too many trees come down in too many campgrounds to risk it when I don't have to. We found a hotel south of Wilmington and booked two nights. - -The storm came on slowly. The first morning not much happened. I decided we probably had time to check out the nearby battleship North Carolina before the brunt of it hit us. The kids and I grabbed an Uber over to the battleship. We had the place to ourselves, which was fun. We wandered around below decks for a couple hours, getting hopelessly lost a couple of times, but having fun nonetheless. - -<img src="images/2023/2023-12-17_103934_driving-wilmington-battleship.jpg" id="image-3889" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2023/2023-12-17_101816_driving-wilmington-battleship.jpg" id="image-3888" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2023/2023-12-17_094154_driving-wilmington-battleship.jpg" id="image-3883" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2023/2023-12-17_104335_driving-wilmington-battleship.jpg" id="image-3890" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2023/2023-12-17_101451_driving-wilmington-battleship.jpg" id="image-3887" class="picwide caption" /> -<div class="cluster"> - <span class="row-2"> -<img src="images/2023/2023-12-17_100800_driving-wilmington-battleship.jpg" id="image-3886" class="cluster pic66" /> -<img src="images/2023/2023-12-17_094901_driving-wilmington-battleship_HJI4PiJ.jpg" id="image-3885" class="cluster pic66 caption" /> - </span> -</div> -<img src="images/2023/2023-12-17_105724_driving-wilmington-battleship.jpg" id="image-3891" class="picwide" /> - - -By the time we came back out the parking lot was starting to flood and I was a little worried about getting a ride back. It took a bit, but eventually we found someone as nutty as us and made it back to the hotel safe and sound. - -I alternated between hanging out in the hotel, taking the kids to the indoor pool, and checking on the bus. Just to the south of us North Myrtle beach took a beating, and up to the north of us Wilmington flooded. The outer banks had plenty of overwashed roads and high winds as well, but nothing nearly as bad as had been predicted. Curiously, where we were, other than a good steady rain for 24 hours, nothing much happened. - -The next day we hit the road again bound for Edisto, winding our way through Charleston and then the marshland to the south. - -<img src="images/2023/2023-12-18_150107_driving-bus.jpg" id="image-3892" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2023/2023-12-18_151035_driving-bus.jpg" id="image-3894" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2023/2023-12-18_150251_driving-bus.jpg" id="image-3893" class="picwide" /> - -Two days later Elliott turned nine and I turned forty-nine. - -It was a very revolutionary war themed birthday -- army men, books, costumes, anything at all related to the revolutionary war. His sisters' carved him wooden figures as well, two british and two patriots. The only non-revolutionary war gifts he asked for were bacon and chocolate. - - - - -## Repair Fail - -One of the most underappreciated, least talked about aspects of repair is the hierarchy. There are repair wizards and there are newbies and there are the rest of us, somewhere between those two poles. This hierarchy of skill and experience requires that you earn your way to the top. Experts in repair are experts because they have done it, not because they think they can do it, or they say they can do it. There's no way to fake expertise in car repair. The thing either starts or it doesn't. - -It's a long road to expert. The more experience you gain, as you work your way up that hierarchy, the more you see the summit recede in front of you. You start to know how much you don't know. It's one thing to be able to do basic things like [replace a head gasket](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/10/going-down-swinging), it's a whole other thing to be able to listen to an engine and know a head gasket needs replacing. The latter is a kind of total understanding of the system that takes years, possibly decades to obtain. - -<img src="images/2023/jeep.jpg" id="image-3871" class="picwide" /> - -To really understand a system all the way from top to bottom is to hold a total cognitive model of the thing in your mind and be able to access it intuitively. To get that is a hard won process with a steep learning curve. You will fail. You will fail over and over until you learn. I find this dynamic interesting because those are two things I truly dislike -- failure and asking for help. Both are essential if you want to repair things. - -I hate asking for help more than I hate failure, so for me, learning to repair anything is a trial and error and error and error and error and error and give-up-and-ask-for-help process. - -This process is important. You can't shortcut it. You need those moments of crushing failure and ineptitude. Otherwise your sense of yourself can outstrip what you're capable of, which is usually referred to as "having an ego." Or worse that self-image becomes so fragile you avoid situations that might force you to alter it, and when it is inevitably punctured you go all to pieces, which is worse than ego -- no ego. - -Fail early, fail often. - -Still, it's one thing to understand this process intellectually. It's another to live it. - -<img src="images/2023/2023-11-29_125854_oregon-inlet.jpg" id="image-3872" class="picwide" /> - -About two weeks into our stay in the outer banks the Jeep started acting funny. There was no definitive thing I could put my finger on, just an intuition that something was wrong inside the engine. Deep inside the engine according to my hunch. I did what anyone would do. I ignored it. Until one day it became audible on the way home from the grocery store. Thunk thunk thunk when I accelerated. - -For a long time there had been a tapping sound that I somehow instinctively knew was a bent rod. Despite two mechanics telling me it wasn't. I took off the valve covers and sure enough, there was a bent rod. But that wasn't all, I ran the engine with the covers off and realized one of the exhaust rods was no longer lifting the tappet. This was on one of the two cylinders that always had slightly sooty spark plugs when I checked them. So far it all made sense. I ordered some rods and some new lifters. - -Unfortunately the heads on the AMC 360 engine do not allow you to extract the lifters. I had to pull the intake manifold off. I didn't want to do that at a campsite in the sand dunes so I rented a storage unit to work on it and had it towed up. - -It took me two days to unhook everything and get the intake manifold off. I pulled out the lifter in question. The bottom of it, which rides the cam lobe, was worn down a good 3/16th of an inch. It was then that I realized my original hunch was right, the problem was deeper, I was treating symptoms. The nagging suspicion that I was out of my depth and plain wrong began to set in. - -Since I was waiting on new lifters I thought I might as well take off the passenger's side head. The Jeep had always leaked oil toward the rear of the engine on that side. It was almost impossible to see where the leak was coming from, but I thought maybe the head gasket was bad. It turned out I was wrong. Fail number one, but that one was minor, a wasted morning and $40 for a new head gasket. I put the head back on and torqued it down. - -At that point I'd spent the better part of three days hanging out alone in a storage unit, talking to my GoPro as I recorded everything I did. Still, I was optimistic, I was having fun. We weren't due to leave for another five days. I had time. - -Then the parts got delayed. Thoughts about opportunity costs started to creep in. I spent a day thinking about all the other things I could be doing. Everything has opportunity costs. I could be playing with the kids in the dunes, visiting with friends, writing things I wanted to write. Instead I went back and forth between the storage unit, the mailbox to check on parts, and various parts stores. Still, I was optimistic. - -Long before I ever did any vehicle repairs I rationalized not doing them by saying that I could earn more money working the hours I'd be working on the vehicle, so it "made more sense" to pay someone else to do it. This kind of "sense" only really makes sense on a spreadsheet though. The truth is I was scared to try repairing anything because I didn't have a clue how to do it and knew I'd probably screw it up. - -I started to think about that rationalization from the opposite direction though -- does it make sense to spend this much time working on a vehicle when what I really want to do is enjoy a warm day with my family or taking pictures of the dunes at sunrise? - -One day I was sitting in the storage unit drinking coffee and I realized, I am done with this. This isn't the way I want to spend my time, my family's time. The Jeep is an incredible vehicle and I love it. If we lived in a house and I could work on it when I felt like it, it'd be perfect. But that's not how it works on the road. There's the added pressure of time, the need to move on. The outer banks was getting colder every day. We were waking up to frost on the windows and clouds of breath in the air. We needed to be in Edisto for Christmas. We're supposed to spend January on the Georgia coast. All of these things felt like they might be slipping away, and for what? So we could drive the Jeep? Is that what we're doing here? - -And yet, the Jeep is by far the best car I've ever driven. It is an absolute joy when it's running well. The kids love it. We all love it. I hated to give up on it. - -The lifters finally arrived and I put everything back together. I left the valve covers off so I could make sure the new lifter was working. The kids came with me that day, and I let my daughter start it so I could watch the engine. It turned over and caught. But the thunking noise was still there. And that was when I realized oil was only coming out the rod that I'd replaced. Not out of any other rods. That's when I knew something else was wrong. I was out of my depth. I had failed. It hadn't even occurred to me that oil should have been shooting out of all the rods all the times I'd started it with the valve covers off. That should have been extremely messy and it never was, something else was wrong. My uncle suggested the oil pump was probably dead. Either way, I was out of time, we had to get moving if we were going to make Christmas down south. - -I punted. I called the mechanic I'd almost called to begin with. He said he didn't have room for it on his lot and couldn't get to it until after the holidays. Damn. I called some other mechanics, none of whom really grabbed me but I had to do something. I settled on one, called a tow truck, and sat down to wait for it. The original mechanic called me back. He said he'd make room, bring it on by. I took that as a sign, redirected the tow truck and dropped it off. - -I took everything out of it, somehow found room for it in the bus and we hit the road with everyone in the bus, something we haven't done in years. It's fun to travel that way, but not terribly practical for us right now. - -A few days later the mechanic called with bad news. The engine was a mess, the cam was blown and half a dozen other things had gone wrong. It needed to be completely rebuilt. Corrinne and I talked. Then we talked some more. We love the Jeep, but in the end, it was just too much to keep going with our life on the road. One engine to repair is enough. We decided to move on and put it up for sale. I'd like to see someone else rebuild it. It's a great car. But it's not for us right now. I'll miss the Jeep, but it's time to get back to what we do. - - - - - - - - - - ## Before The Motor Laws @@ -569,6 +818,138 @@ https://amazingribs.com/more-technique-and-science/grill-and-smoker-setup-and-fi https://www.vagabondjourney.com/you-cant-get-lost-anymore/ # jrnl +## Low + +Oak leaves shimmer and dance in the wind. Morning sunlight filters in through the trees, the rays fighting their way through wisps of Spanish moss. + +<img src="images/2024/2024-01-01_074904_botany-bay.jpg" id="image-3908" class="picwide" /> + +You can find this scene anywhere in South Carolina below the fall line, a vague geographic boundary that runs along the southeastern part of state, where the hard rock of the mountains gives way to the softer sand of the coastal plain. This is what they call the lowcountry. Marshes and ribbons of water. A place where everything is a little bit different. Dolphins in rivers, moss in trees. + +<img src="images/2024/2024-01-01_074556_botany-bay.jpg" id="image-3907" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2024/2024-01-01_072800_botany-bay.jpg" id="image-3906" class="picwide" /> + +We've been coming here off and on for decades. Always in the off season. Usually to Edisto, a small island at the edge of the world. A small island that is slowly, inexorably being pulled into the new world that has previously ignored it. + +Nearby Charleston swells. Eddies of retirees swirl in from New England, the mid Atlantic, all weary of winter. The old southern culture is sinking like the land, pulled under the rising tides of something new. + +<img src="images/2024/2023-12-24_134109_botany-bay.jpg" id="image-3905" class="picwide" /> + +People like to say they want to go somewhere different, but it's been my experience that most people, the minute they get there, set about making it just like the place they left behind. + +One day all that will remain of the old lowcountry culture will be like the dead, weather-worn trees on the beach at Botany Bay, making a lonely stand against the inevitability of the waves. + +<img src="images/2024/2023-12-24_120641_botany-bay.jpg" id="image-3903" class="picwide" /> + +For now there are still pockets to be found. Hidden places. If you know where to look. + +<img src="images/2024/2023-12-24_120157_botany-bay.jpg" id="image-3902" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2024/2023-12-24_132113_botany-bay.jpg" id="image-3904" class="picwide" /> + +Don't ask me. I'm not from here. I have no secrets to give. I am just passing through. +## Winter Storm + +The afternoon of the day we decided to leave the Jeep behind a ranger stopped by to tell us they were closing the campground the next day due to a large storm front that was headed our way. Winds were expected to be in the 50 MPD range, with gust even higher. We've sat out a storm with [winds like that in New Mexico](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/01/eastbound-down). It wasn't fun, but we're still here. But that wasn't an option this time. Fortunately we were planning to leave the next day anyway. + +We crammed all the backpacking gear and misc stuff from the Jeep in the back of the bus and hit the road the next morning. We cut inland and headed south for somewhere to sit out the storm. Driving the bus in the rain sucks and I wasn't about to do it with everyone on board. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-12-16_114717_driving-wilmington-battleship.jpg" id="image-3880" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-12-16_114721_driving-wilmington-battleship.jpg" id="image-3881" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-12-16_134123_driving-wilmington-battleship.jpg" id="image-3882" class="picwide" /> + +I also wasn't crazy about camping anywhere with pine trees when the forecast was for days of soaking rain followed up by high winds. Unfortunately nearly every campground on the Carolina coast is full of pines and oaks. I've seen too many trees come down in too many campgrounds to risk it when I don't have to. We found a hotel south of Wilmington and booked two nights. + +The storm came on slowly. The first morning not much happened. I decided we probably had time to check out the nearby battleship North Carolina before the brunt of it hit us. The kids and I grabbed an Uber over to the battleship. We had the place to ourselves, which was fun. We wandered around below decks for a couple hours, getting hopelessly lost a couple of times, but having fun nonetheless. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-12-17_103934_driving-wilmington-battleship.jpg" id="image-3889" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-12-17_101816_driving-wilmington-battleship.jpg" id="image-3888" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-12-17_094154_driving-wilmington-battleship.jpg" id="image-3883" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-12-17_104335_driving-wilmington-battleship.jpg" id="image-3890" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-12-17_101451_driving-wilmington-battleship.jpg" id="image-3887" class="picwide caption" /> +<div class="cluster"> + <span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2023/2023-12-17_100800_driving-wilmington-battleship.jpg" id="image-3886" class="cluster pic66" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-12-17_094901_driving-wilmington-battleship_HJI4PiJ.jpg" id="image-3885" class="cluster pic66 caption" /> + </span> +</div> +<img src="images/2023/2023-12-17_105724_driving-wilmington-battleship.jpg" id="image-3891" class="picwide" /> + + +By the time we came back out the parking lot was starting to flood and I was a little worried about getting a ride back. It took a bit, but eventually we found someone as nutty as us and made it back to the hotel safe and sound. + +I alternated between hanging out in the hotel, taking the kids to the indoor pool, and checking on the bus. Just to the south of us North Myrtle beach took a beating, and up to the north of us Wilmington flooded. The outer banks had plenty of overwashed roads and high winds as well, but nothing nearly as bad as had been predicted. Curiously, where we were, other than a good steady rain for 24 hours, nothing much happened. + +The next day we hit the road again bound for Edisto, winding our way through Charleston and then the marshland to the south. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-12-18_150107_driving-bus.jpg" id="image-3892" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-12-18_151035_driving-bus.jpg" id="image-3894" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2023/2023-12-18_150251_driving-bus.jpg" id="image-3893" class="picwide" /> + +Two days later Elliott turned nine and I turned forty-nine. + +It was a very revolutionary war themed birthday -- army men, books, costumes, anything at all related to the revolutionary war. His sisters' carved him wooden figures as well, two british and two patriots. The only non-revolutionary war gifts he asked for were bacon and chocolate. + + + + +## Repair Fail + +One of the most underappreciated, least talked about aspects of repair is the hierarchy. There are repair wizards and there are newbies and there are the rest of us, somewhere between those two poles. This hierarchy of skill and experience requires that you earn your way to the top. Experts in repair are experts because they have done it, not because they think they can do it, or they say they can do it. There's no way to fake expertise in car repair. The thing either starts or it doesn't. + +It's a long road to expert. The more experience you gain, as you work your way up that hierarchy, the more you see the summit recede in front of you. You start to know how much you don't know. It's one thing to be able to do basic things like [replace a head gasket](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2022/10/going-down-swinging), it's a whole other thing to be able to listen to an engine and know a head gasket needs replacing. The latter is a kind of total understanding of the system that takes years, possibly decades to obtain. + +<img src="images/2023/jeep.jpg" id="image-3871" class="picwide" /> + +To really understand a system all the way from top to bottom is to hold a total cognitive model of the thing in your mind and be able to access it intuitively. To get that is a hard won process with a steep learning curve. You will fail. You will fail over and over until you learn. I find this dynamic interesting because those are two things I truly dislike -- failure and asking for help. Both are essential if you want to repair things. + +I hate asking for help more than I hate failure, so for me, learning to repair anything is a trial and error and error and error and error and error and give-up-and-ask-for-help process. + +This process is important. You can't shortcut it. You need those moments of crushing failure and ineptitude. Otherwise your sense of yourself can outstrip what you're capable of, which is usually referred to as "having an ego." Or worse that self-image becomes so fragile you avoid situations that might force you to alter it, and when it is inevitably punctured you go all to pieces, which is worse than ego -- no ego. + +Fail early, fail often. + +Still, it's one thing to understand this process intellectually. It's another to live it. + +<img src="images/2023/2023-11-29_125854_oregon-inlet.jpg" id="image-3872" class="picwide" /> + +About two weeks into our stay in the outer banks the Jeep started acting funny. There was no definitive thing I could put my finger on, just an intuition that something was wrong inside the engine. Deep inside the engine according to my hunch. I did what anyone would do. I ignored it. Until one day it became audible on the way home from the grocery store. Thunk thunk thunk when I accelerated. + +For a long time there had been a tapping sound that I somehow instinctively knew was a bent rod. Despite two mechanics telling me it wasn't. I took off the valve covers and sure enough, there was a bent rod. But that wasn't all, I ran the engine with the covers off and realized one of the exhaust rods was no longer lifting the tappet. This was on one of the two cylinders that always had slightly sooty spark plugs when I checked them. So far it all made sense. I ordered some rods and some new lifters. + +Unfortunately the heads on the AMC 360 engine do not allow you to extract the lifters. I had to pull the intake manifold off. I didn't want to do that at a campsite in the sand dunes so I rented a storage unit to work on it and had it towed up. + +It took me two days to unhook everything and get the intake manifold off. I pulled out the lifter in question. The bottom of it, which rides the cam lobe, was worn down a good 3/16th of an inch. It was then that I realized my original hunch was right, the problem was deeper, I was treating symptoms. The nagging suspicion that I was out of my depth and plain wrong began to set in. + +Since I was waiting on new lifters I thought I might as well take off the passenger's side head. The Jeep had always leaked oil toward the rear of the engine on that side. It was almost impossible to see where the leak was coming from, but I thought maybe the head gasket was bad. It turned out I was wrong. Fail number one, but that one was minor, a wasted morning and $40 for a new head gasket. I put the head back on and torqued it down. + +At that point I'd spent the better part of three days hanging out alone in a storage unit, talking to my GoPro as I recorded everything I did. Still, I was optimistic, I was having fun. We weren't due to leave for another five days. I had time. + +Then the parts got delayed. Thoughts about opportunity costs started to creep in. I spent a day thinking about all the other things I could be doing. Everything has opportunity costs. I could be playing with the kids in the dunes, visiting with friends, writing things I wanted to write. Instead I went back and forth between the storage unit, the mailbox to check on parts, and various parts stores. Still, I was optimistic. + +Long before I ever did any vehicle repairs I rationalized not doing them by saying that I could earn more money working the hours I'd be working on the vehicle, so it "made more sense" to pay someone else to do it. This kind of "sense" only really makes sense on a spreadsheet though. The truth is I was scared to try repairing anything because I didn't have a clue how to do it and knew I'd probably screw it up. + +I started to think about that rationalization from the opposite direction though -- does it make sense to spend this much time working on a vehicle when what I really want to do is enjoy a warm day with my family or taking pictures of the dunes at sunrise? + +One day I was sitting in the storage unit drinking coffee and I realized, I am done with this. This isn't the way I want to spend my time, my family's time. The Jeep is an incredible vehicle and I love it. If we lived in a house and I could work on it when I felt like it, it'd be perfect. But that's not how it works on the road. There's the added pressure of time, the need to move on. The outer banks was getting colder every day. We were waking up to frost on the windows and clouds of breath in the air. We needed to be in Edisto for Christmas. We're supposed to spend January on the Georgia coast. All of these things felt like they might be slipping away, and for what? So we could drive the Jeep? Is that what we're doing here? + +And yet, the Jeep is by far the best car I've ever driven. It is an absolute joy when it's running well. The kids love it. We all love it. I hated to give up on it. + +The lifters finally arrived and I put everything back together. I left the valve covers off so I could make sure the new lifter was working. The kids came with me that day, and I let my daughter start it so I could watch the engine. It turned over and caught. But the thunking noise was still there. And that was when I realized oil was only coming out the rod that I'd replaced. Not out of any other rods. That's when I knew something else was wrong. I was out of my depth. I had failed. It hadn't even occurred to me that oil should have been shooting out of all the rods all the times I'd started it with the valve covers off. That should have been extremely messy and it never was, something else was wrong. My uncle suggested the oil pump was probably dead. Either way, I was out of time, we had to get moving if we were going to make Christmas down south. + +I punted. I called the mechanic I'd almost called to begin with. He said he didn't have room for it on his lot and couldn't get to it until after the holidays. Damn. I called some other mechanics, none of whom really grabbed me but I had to do something. I settled on one, called a tow truck, and sat down to wait for it. The original mechanic called me back. He said he'd make room, bring it on by. I took that as a sign, redirected the tow truck and dropped it off. + +I took everything out of it, somehow found room for it in the bus and we hit the road with everyone in the bus, something we haven't done in years. It's fun to travel that way, but not terribly practical for us right now. + +A few days later the mechanic called with bad news. The engine was a mess, the cam was blown and half a dozen other things had gone wrong. It needed to be completely rebuilt. Corrinne and I talked. Then we talked some more. We love the Jeep, but in the end, it was just too much to keep going with our life on the road. One engine to repair is enough. We decided to move on and put it up for sale. I'd like to see someone else rebuild it. It's a great car. But it's not for us right now. I'll miss the Jeep, but it's time to get back to what we do. + + + + + + + + + ## In The Dunes @@ -3977,7 +4358,7 @@ We're going to start with the basic stuff. I did most of the steps in this part --- -## **Rule One: Throw Your Television in the Nearest Dumpster** +### **Rule One: Throw Your Television in the Nearest Dumpster** Yup, we're going to start with the hardest one. You'll notice that I am more sympathetic to not going cold turkey with other things below. Not this one. This is the absolute requirement. Kill your television. Now. Tough love people. @@ -3989,7 +4370,7 @@ Now cancel Netflix, Hulu, or whatever other subscriptions you had. If you subscr --- -## **Rule Two: Make Something** +### **Rule Two: Make Something** If you watched television for 3 hours in the evenings, congrats you were already watching less than most people—and you stop doing that you have just reclaimed 15 hours a week. FIFTEEN HOURS! That's enough to get a part time job somewhere. It's enough time to do, lord, there's no limit to what you could do really. Start a business, write a book, read the entire canon of Russian literature. The paradox of choice can get you here and you'll end up watching YouTube for hours on your laptop. I know, I've done it. @@ -3999,7 +4380,7 @@ Do what you want, but do something. Deliberately carve out some time to make som --- -## **Rule Three: Delete Social Media Apps** +### **Rule Three: Delete Social Media Apps** Yeah, now we're getting real. I know it's going to be hard. But you know what, take easy, start small. You probably have Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, a bunch of stuff in other words, on your phone. Just pick one and delete it for one week. You can always reinstall it so it's not like there's too much to lose here. @@ -4013,7 +4394,7 @@ If you decide that this wasn't the best use of your limited time on earth, repea Oh, and the ones you keep, don't feel bad about those. If you're feeling a sense of guilt about them still it might be worth repeating this experience, but if you really do enjoy them then don't feel guilty about them. -## **Rule Four: Track What You Do When You Use a Screen** +### **Rule Four: Track What You Do When You Use a Screen** Far to much of our lives are lived in a kind of automated mode. Think back over everything you did in the last five minutes before you started reading this. If you're like me, you probably struggle to remember what it was you were doing or how you ended up precisely here at this moment. Some of this autopilot living is a good thing, especially, I've found, morning routines, but I do it far too much. @@ -4051,13 +4432,13 @@ Let's assume though, that, like people who email me, you want to use your phone **Luxagraf's Rules for Screens, part deux.** -## Rule Five: Know Yourself +### Rule Five: Know Yourself If you want to use your phone less, you need to know how much you use it. There are some tools to figure this out built-in to both iOS and Android, but I never bothered to figure those out because I had already downloaded and used Your Hour ([Android App Store](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mindefy.phoneaddiction.mobilepe)). Space appears to offer similar features and [works on iOS too](https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/space-break-phone-addiction/id916126783). The app isn't really important, just get something that records how much time you spend and how often you unlock your phone. That will give you a baseline and let you know how much you use your phone. Personally I disabled tracking for maps and music/podcasts because although I'm using my phone, I'm not really staring at the screen. There's an element of gamification to these apps that's easy to get sucked into. I had Your Hour on my phone for about a week before I got pretty obsessed with how little I could use my phone in a day. -## Rule Six: Adapt to Yourself +### Rule Six: Adapt to Yourself If, like me, you discover that you use your phone to check the time throughout the day, consider getting a watch. Or, if you hate wearing a watch, and live in a small bus with your family like I do, just encourage everyone else to wear a watch and ask them what time it is. @@ -4065,13 +4446,13 @@ The point is, most likely Rule Five will reveal some habits that you can break, A few things I have heard of people doing include, putting your phone in a bag to make it more of a pain to pull out and use, using it as a coaster so you can't pick it up, and using a pen and paper to make notes rather than using your phone. -## Rule Seven: Turn Off All Notifications +### Rule Seven: Turn Off All Notifications I think the reason we are bothered by how much we use our phones has to do with agency. We like to think we are the rulers of our days and are conscious of all our decisions and actions and phones are stark reminder that we are not that guy/gal. The best way to grant yourself back some agency is to get rid of all notifications. Notifications are really just little serotonin agitators. Check your email when you feel like it, not when a notification badge agitates your serotonin level past the point of resistance. Turn them off, all of them. -## Rule Eight: Practice Doing Nothing +### Rule Eight: Practice Doing Nothing This does not mean meditating. It means doing nothing. Or at least do nothing productive. When you were a child you were probably happy to lie in the grass all afternoon doing nothing. At most you might pick out shapes in the clouds, but you were fine doing nothing. Or at least if you're over 35 and actually had a childhood then you might remember doing nothing. If not. Well, learn. Practice. @@ -4079,18 +4460,18 @@ Of all the rules in this list, this is the hardest for me. I have this need to a It might take some time to figure out the way you do nothing the best. If you do get stuck on this one, I highly recommend a hammock. -## Rule Nine: Record Your Practice +### Rule Nine: Record Your Practice Write down when you do nothing. Write down when you don't do nothing. Write down how you miss notifications if you do. Write how you overcome your strange screen habits and most of all, write down when you still use screens. Don't judge yourself for it, step back, detach and just record what happened, what you did, and for how long. Try to be a disinterested observer of yourself, this will be much more helpful than berating or congratulating. -## Rule Ten: Get After It +### Rule Ten: Get After It [^1]: This is not meant to disparage AA or anyone struggling with alcoholism. Most AA members I know are fully aware of the irony of swapping one addiction for another, but when alcohol has taken over your life to that point, it's not a bad trade to make. -## Rules for Screens, Part Three +### Rules for Screens, Part Three Did you know there's a Reddit for people who want quit staring at screens so much? Also a true story. @@ -4384,6 +4765,7 @@ Consolidate data on a schedule, publish one thing on a schedule. ## Step Back, Detach, Ask Better Questions + The consumer education system has conditioned you to think in terms of products, you need to step back in ask bigger questions to find more interesting and sustainable answers. For example, the question, *should I buy this camera?* has no good answer without first asking *how to I create photos that make me happy?* It may be that some particular camera really does help in that quest, but more likely, it doesn't. More likely what you need to learn is technique and acquire skills like composition and reading light. @@ -4542,7 +4924,6 @@ Who were the friends of a long year? What were the friends of a long year? When ## Hard Times - It was a hard time. My wife took a job teaching English to Chinese five year old. It was a degrading business for someone with a master's in education, dancing like a monkey (I mean that literally) for tech companies whose "training materials" had more typos than a teenager's messaging logs. It was a dark time, but one you have to put somewhere else so your children don't realize how thin the line between having food and not can be because that's stress you try to keep your children from, even if you ultimately can't. Better your child be hungry than be hungry and have to wrestle with why. There's a surface level of why, the obvious, the because we have no job, that's easy enough to explain and we did, what's harder is to look the whole system in the eye and consider it, this thing humans have built where in fact there needs be nothing of the sort. Why force people to earn paper tickets, really electronic tickets these days, not even real tickets, that can be exchanged for food, shelter, etc. Why allow such a small number of humans to own all the land? Why allow anyone to own the land at all? These are much harder questions for children to face, for anyone to face. The rest of us have time and effort already invested in ignoring these questions, in pretending that the way things are is the only way they could be, that we don't have to face them the way children do, we simply look the other way and hang our heads and dance like monkeys for the foriegn kids and collect our digital tickets and buy food for our children, or try anyway. The stupid thing is we know this isn't the only way. The status quo only seems inevitable if it's all you know and we, creators of a culture that is obsessed with past cultures, know for absolute surety that there are other ways. Pretty much any tribal society for instance—which is a huge negative value judgment in that phrase that I'll be coming back to -- |