… just finished this book… i liked it very much and found it inspiring at times… its idea about time management is that it is less about your system for moving to do’s to done, than about choosing what is truly important to you and limiting your focus to a small selection of that at any given moment in time…

… it felt to me that there were some places where the philosophy presented was not completely worked out… in particular, the suggestions on how to execute appendix seemed a little anticlimactic… even so, i think it is well worth spending a few of your limited hours of attention on it…

… these are my main take aways…

• life is ridiculously limited… the average human has four thousand weeks to live and we burn through them at the rate of 52 a year…
• you can’t do it all… be a perfect worker, spouse, parent, solve all the worlds problems, write the great American novel… you must choose a few things on which to focus your attention and energy and each choice leaves any number of other choices behind…
• a meaningful life is one in which you make choices and leave possibilities behind… you make peace with your limitations and choose a few important-to-you places to apply time, energy and attention, and let go of all the other possibilities… you let yourself be mediocre at some things… you live as much as possible in full appreciation of the present moment…

First notes…

227.8 lbs

… first day of following No S diet… weight loss… it’s one day… i will see if i can keep it up…

… last night, as i was lying in bed i wrote a note… “i am beginning to imagine the unimaginable”… that is, i am beginning to imagine the United States as a failed democracy… i have started to give up hope that the ship can be righted… i did this partly on the advice of Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks, and partly out of real despair that the political stars are aligned against democracy right now…

… this morning i read Heather Cox Richardson’s posts from yesterday and today… hope flickered to life… the stage is set… a battle for the soul of the country will unfold in the coming weeks and months as the January 6 Commission makes its case to the public… and the Senate will try to amend the filibuster in order to protect voting rights… if enough people believe the findings of the J6 Commission, and the Senate passes voting rights legislation, all may not be lost…

… in the meantime, what i can do is help make sure the small levers of democracy where i live aren’t corrupted and make genuinely good information available to anyone who will read/listen… and, of course, i will vote like democracy depends on it…

… more broadly however, in the department of letting go of hope, i acknowledge that this democracy may well be reaching the end of its run… the cosmos, as Burkeman and so many before him have pointed out, really doesn’t care if democracy continues in the US or not… it simply unfolds and humanity responds in whatever way helps it survive… it may even be that the welling up of intelligence on the planet is pointed to an advancement that will have little to do with human freedom… i prefer to think not, but this is the trend of the “dominant culture”, for a few powerful elites to be in control and for the rest of us to be subsumed in effective slavery…

… i think to myself, nobody asks to live in a time when the social order turns itself upside down… i think to myself, i did not plan for my old age to be lived out in times of social order dismantling… i planned for it to run out in relative peace and quiet… i wonder if senior citizens overtaken by WW II felt this way?… looking forward to a little peace and quiet and not being challenged by the rigors of making a living and what happens?, a devastating war… as a white, middle class male, am i one of the few to have this blessing?… it did not feel that way as my life unfolded… there were certainly disappointments and challenges… but was i ever really challenged the way, say, a black man is challenged in our society?… we all have troubles… some of us from positions of relative advantage… even with that, there are troubles…

… i was thinking yesterday, why do people write?… originally, to express and communicate, to develop and record collective wisdom… i was thinking about this because i was thinking about how the dominant culture turns writing from expression and communication into a means for economic ends… we are made to believe that we must have an audience because we can’t monetize if we don’t have an audience… for this reason, we don’t accumulate wisdom and share it freely… we put a price tag on it… and because the ability to put a price tag on it means the work must be marketed, we start to see a world in which wisdom doesn’t prevail, only what is marketable prevails… words are useless if one can’t monetize them in this society… but really, reading and writing is about developing and communicating wisdom…

… we started watching Station 11 last night… central to the narrative is a graphic novel written by a young black woman… she writes and draws, but nobody has ever seen more than little bits and pieces of what she writes and draws… one day, she delivers a copy to her ex and says, “i finished it”… until that moment, she does it only for herself… this to me is the purest form of creation… work done entirely for its own sake… work done because we feel compelled to do it… that is what this blog, this Notes On Attention Paid is… something i do trying not to hope anyone will read it and doggedly pursuing it even though nobody reads it… i apply time out of my precious 4K weeks to doing it largely because i don’t seem to be able to not do it… it anchors me… it gives me something meaningful to do…

First notes…

228.4 lbs

… read two depressing articles in The Economist yesterday… one a broad discussion of how the United States might loose its democratic government, the other a discussion of how 45 stands a good chance of becoming president again, should he decide to run… i imagine he will… he has too many scores to settle… and, just like that, we are an authoritarian government… the news out of the Biden/Harris administration isn’t good… one wonders if Mitch McConnel will step in… perhaps he will help with voting rights… i struggle to maintain hope that things will turn out well…

… yesterday i began, after first notes, by reading a book rather than articles in my feed… it was a much more satisfying way to begin the day and i will do it again today…

… i have made the change over to Obsidian as my main writing app… i am refining my use of drafts as a note taking throughout the day app… yesterday, i reorganized the location of apps on my phone to reflect the apps i most use… i am feeling i have a near perfect suite of tools…

… we watched Don’t Look Up… it seemed an utterly useless movie… i understood it’s satire, it’s metaphor, but i suppose it hit too close to home on the stupidity of humankind and the present moment without offering anything that might compel change… i don’t find the present moment in time a laughing matter… H really liked it and claimed i don’t understand satire, and, as she often does, that i have no sense of humor… i have a good if somewhat dry sense of humor, but humor isn’t really what is called for in this moment…

First notes

228.8 lbs

… the new year in NOAP officially begins… i sit here, wondering what to write, knowing that i should just start writing and something will surface…

… the salient features of yesterday…

… my traditional new year’s day walk by the river interrupted by the escape of Fiona… situation resolved by the time i get home…

… after making a french omeltte for breakfast, i go out to the back yard and repair the hole in the fence through which Fiona escaped and reinforced the bottom of the fence in places not previously reinforced… i recommend to H that she still escort the dogs out to the back yard… Fiona is fiendishly clever about escape… it’s a horrible feeling when a dog you love escapes and goes for a walkabout… it’s happened a number of times with her… a number of times she has been contained by neighbors who call, or bring her back… speaking of dogs… Chas is whining to be let out of the bedroom…

… when i go out with the dogs i discover it is still raining… it’s been gray and dreary since we returned from our southern sojourn… it will get cold tonight… even colder Monday night… down into the teens…

… dogs let out, treated, returned to bedroom with H… the next few hours are mine… i put on my headphones, cue up Bach Cello Suites, Paul Tortelier the performer… i should have them memorized by now and on a certain level they are, on another level, they are not…

… yesterday i was thinking about books i have recently read, about Etel Adnan’s lovely book, Shifting the Silence, that i can’t remember a single detail of… nothing… is it that they weren’t significant enough to me to emblazon some message on my brain?… or, is my mind getting old and not retaining the way it used to… possibly a combination of the two…

… and so the year has begun… i have trepedation about this new year… i believe the political situation will continue to get worse… the climate will continue to get worse… the world situation will continue to get worse… possibly the only challenge that may not get worse is the pandemic… how much worse could it get?… at any rate, the new and really contagious variant does not seem to be as virulent… that can be a sign that it is burning itself out… one can hope… H was wondering if we should restart instacart for most groceries… i am not fully there yet… i think i will try going to markets at times when there are few people there… early in the AM… that’s my super power… being able to get going earlier than most…

… we did some shopping and food making for a young family, half of which is down with covid, despite being vaccinated, boosted and cautious, masking up when appropriate, avoiding crowds as best they can… they are frustrated, something about parents at daycare being antivaxers… we offered to continue to help, bring food, run errands…

… i notice there is snow forecasted for Friday, 3-6 inches… that is far enough out that it could easily change before then…

… what do i want to get done today?… photo walk… writing… make breakfast… farmer’s market… family zoom call… clean stovetop… vacuum… read… more writing… what should i pay attention to?…

Fiona goes for a walk about…

… having a nice walk by the river when H calls and in a panicked voice tells me to come home, Fiona had escaped the back yard… i can report that heart and lungs are good to go… quite the uphill hike from the river done double time… as i was getting close enough to join the search she called to tell me she had found and coraled her… what a relief!…

… this brief message about how quickly life can be rerouted brought to me by the cosmos…

Happy New Year!… may your year be filled with attention paid to all the right things, whatever those may be!

As is traditional, we are watching the Twilight Zone New Years marathon and cooking a Timpana for dinner. Happy New Year everyone!

2021: Farewell to a Stupid Year, David Corn, December 30, 2021, Reason.com

… this essay by David Corn summarizes the precarious state of affairs in this country pretty much the way i believe it to be…

Ignorance can kill. And ignorance and anger are a lethal combination. Particularly in politics. The pro-Trump anti-vaxxers have placed themselves in danger; the 1/6 deniers and Stop the Stealers have put the nation’s political system in jeopardy. The year 2021 delivered a tough message: the suspicion, hatred, and paranoia flamed by Trump and his crew remain potent forces that can propel millions to make bad decisions. It’s a clear warning for 2022 and the stupidity that lies ahead.

In 2022, Pay Attention to Right-wing Authoritarianism, Veronique de Rugy, December 30, 2021, Reason.com

… talks about the rise in Authoritarianism around the globe and urges us to pay attention and resist…

So, as I wish you a happy New Year, I also ask you to join me in opposing illiberalism in all its forms. It means opposing the draconian regulation and unsustainable government welfare advanced by the left. It also means opposing rising right-wing illiberalism that is hostile to LGBTQ and immigrant cultures, itches to ban books, and generally wants to use government power to achieve its cramped vision of an American society.

How Biden’s Agenda Is Causing Inflation, Nick Gillespie, December 30, 2021, Reason.com

… talks about the relationship between the money supply and inflation…

We’ve seen absolutely massive increases in government spending over the past two years, which have been paid for by printing money and historic boosts in the money supply. When you print money it means that there are more dollars chasing basically the same amounts of goods and services, which causes prices to rise.

Unselfing into Oneness with the All: Transcendentalist Queen Margaret Fuller on Transcendence, December 26, 2021, Maria Popova, The Marginalian

… ode to Margaret Fuller, an uncommonly intelligent and determined woman who acquired an education and professional position at a time when neither were commonly available to women…

From the platform of her precocious girlhood, Margaret undertakes an inquiry into the building blocks of character. “Nothing more widely distinguishes man from man than energy of will,” she writes in a six-page essay, positing that a conquering will is composed of imagination, perseverance, and “enthusiastic confidence in the future.” But these elements are not weighted equally — she prizes above all perseverance, which fuels the “unwearied climbing and scrambling” toward achievement. “The truly strong of will,” she writes, having lived just over a decade, “returns invigorated by the contest, calmed, not saddened by failure and wiser from its nature.”

Against Illusionism, Jorg Colberg, Conscientious Photography Magazine, December 27, 2021

… about a group of photographers in Poland who created Archive of Public Prostests… shoestring budget, public good, what photography should be… JG is increasingly questioning the world of art photography and photobooks, as am i… too tied to the rarefied capitalist art market it has become an elitist proposition that struggles to offer meaning to the world at large…

First notes…

… we got home safe and sound with, i guess, 1 near miss when a car suddenly decided to change lanes and almost pulled in front of us with no time for us to stop… swerved around, crash avoided… having done that myself days earlier, i realized that shit happens, humans make mistakes, no car or person was hurt, just move on… well, not quite, i did utter a bunch of explatives…

… i keep thinking about the possibility that i am related (distantly?) to James Earl Ray… i am tempted to tell people but i keep thinking that my reason for doing so is to attach myself to the notoriety of it… make myself interesting through it… the man shot and killed Martin Luther King… why would i want to attach myself to the notoriety of that?… yet, i know the universe has shifted for my consciousness with this small piece of information… what do i do with it?… what is the message it is delivering?…

… i keep thinking about Ancestory.com commercials that tempt you to explore your family tree with the idea that you will discover some interesting, possibly even famous, ancestor that shared an interest you have, even a profession… they never posit a finding of being related to a notorious murderer, which of course, is going to happen to some people… of course, that i am related to such a person in whatever way says little about me… i am not prejudice beyond the ways in which most white people routinely and largely unconsciously are… i am not violent, don’t own a gun, have no desire to own a gun… well, that is not quite true, the volatility of the current political situation has me wondering every now and again about whether i should have one for self defense should anarchy unfold…

… i read the Wikipedia article about JER and discover that through the Ray side of the family (my grandmother on my father’s side), i am of Irish, Scottish and Welsh descent… i also discover that there was controversy over whether Ray committed the crime and that the family of MLK ultimately came to believe that Ray was not the assassin and that there was a plot involving government and the mafia that had set him up to take the fall… in 1998 AG Janet Reno opened a Justice Department investigation of the conspiracy claims and released a report in 2000 saying there was no conspiracy… Ray is buried in Ireland…

… whatever the truth is, and the evidence seems to favor him as lone assassin, JER was a “bad apple,” as they say… he was in and out of prison for a number of crimes committed prior to assassinating MLK… i have decided that i need to ask M about this connection and explore the history of it further… my cousin also sent us a link to Ancestory.com that has the Kriegh side of the family tree…

Savannah, GA…

… beautiful city, the deep shade of the public squares in the Historic District, the history and historic buildings… then we sought lunch and things went south fast… popular restaurant with hostess that wasn’t being honest… name on list… wait a long time before discovering that two large groups are being seated before us occupying all the outside tables which are the only tables that would accommodate us and our 2 dogs, we leave our phone number and go exploring… Forsythe park with bathroom in sight, H trips on a raised slab of concrete and smashes up their face… no serious damage but our Savannah day has come to an end… the restaurant calls to let us know they set up an extra table for us… my wife has smashed up her face in the park i tell them… hope we see you next time you are in Savannah… not likely i think… we start to make our way slowly back to the car… we find lunch at Parker’s Market which is really a high end convenience store… we return to car and then to motel… all the while we are checking for signs of concussion…

First notes…

… 11 hours on the road yesterday… another interminable amount of time unloading car, procuring food and beer… i don’t know when i have been more tired…

… we are outside of Savannah… food was found at Cracker Barrel… a curious place… we stopped in one or two on our trip to Illinois to get Fiona… they consist of gift shop and restaurant and seem designed to lead to lots of waiting in the gift shop to get access to food… the gift shop is filled with stuff, practical and whimsical related to “country culture” of the place they are located in… here in Georgia Harry Potter and the sitcom Friends seem to be on the list, along with cast iron pans chicken paraphernalia and moonpies…

… as i waited for my food i noted big bellied white men and their generally more trim women as the bulk of patronage, some Blacks and Spanish and Aisians too… no signs of racial animosity… this being Georgia i somehow expected tensions to be massive and visible… everybody seemed to mingle comfortably… and that is the thing… the impressions we get of places through national news is enormously skewed to the tensions of the country as manifested by shenanigans of a few… the bulk of the population just wants to get on with their lives and that is what they do…

… the more i think about politics and the difficulty of conversations the more i think one should not speak about candidates or parties, one should talk around issues only… what do you think about immigration, abortion rights, the best way to secure prosperity for the majority of the population, gun rights, voting rights, not what does your party think, what do you think?…

… i found a municipal parking garage on the edge of the historic district in Savannah so we know where we can park now… we point our car to the garage and move out from there… now we need to figure out bathrooms…

First Notes

227.2 lbs

… the traditional overeating happened yesterday without much weight gain… we made a lovely dinner of crab meat strudel, roast rack of lamb and roasted root veggies… we played a yule log on the TV all day, went for a nice walk with dogs, had nice chats with M… i feel sad to be turning around and leaving so soon… H and i agree, we would structure our trip differently if we did it again…

… Christmas isn’t as noticeable in Naples… not as much decoration… not cold and gray… hard to think Christmas when it is beach weather… still, the world did stop for 24 hours…

… learned a little sadness about D… we had a nasty exchange years ago… it was entirely their fault… M tells me that over the years it morphed into my abuse of them in their mind… they were so angry with me… to the point of hatred it sounds… they’er dead now but still casting a shadow on my life… not sorry i wasn’t present when they died… there are some positive reverberations of D’s being… i have a coat, a sweatshirt of theirs… when i put them on i find myself feeling them as the warm embrace i never could have got from them when they were alive…

… M put out a couple of small Christmas Tree scenes D bought… the kind of thing i considered getting for H and me to travel with… these gave me the sense of D being present in a good way… i connected with them…

… when M told me about the morphing of D’s perception of “the incident” i wanted to tell them my theory of the case, that D was jealous of me because of my close relationship with them… Oedepal, i know… i was a rival for the affections of the person they cared most about in the world… my goose was cooked a long time ago all the way back to when i was in my 20s…

… M liked the portable twinkle lights we brought so we left them…

Morning walk, Christmas, Naples, FL…

Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!📷

First Notes

227 lbs

… Christmas eve with M, H and Dogs… we are told about an extremely poisonous toad that inhabits bushes in Florida… now we will keep dogs away from bushes and i will have night and daymares about the dogs getting hold of one until we clear the lands of poisonous toads… dogs behaved pretty well yesterday… M seemed to like them well enough…

… we watched Love Actually together last night… today it is breakfast, presents such as they are… the prep and consumption of Christmas dinner… rack of lamb, roasted root vegetables…

… starting to think about logistics for the return trip… not as well prepared on the food front… not sure how to get prepared… need to get some wine for sure…

… research into Savannah Historic District… looks like a fun day will be had…

… still looks like weather will be good…

… it’s been a little sad being here… i get the feeling M is not sure what to live for… i have my own struggles with that… what do we live for?… especially as we get older and less relevant to the people we live amongst…

Hope everyone has a terrific Christmas day!

Naples, FL, Christmas Eve…

Christmas Journey

… three days of longer, harder driving than expected… we learned that whatever the map app says about travel time, add two hours… we had no time to enjoy any sights along the way… we are in Naples now… will be able to walk around a little…

HCR meter…

… the big news is that January 6 committee may be considering criminal referral of 45 to the DC Federal courts… they are not compelled to take it up, but…

… the 45 admin’s involvement in creating the riot on January 6th is getting clearer… if anything is proven i fervently hope there will be consequences…

First Notes

225.7 lbs

… i knew my weight would be down but almost 3 lbs is amazing!… next two days will add some of that back but nice work me!…

… the drive from Savannah to Naples was, in its own way, easier than either of two days before, but, the rule of add two hours to what the map app says held… i am convinced that this trip should have three overnights, not just 2… we will do that on way back, stopping two nights in Savannah… it won’t make a difference in time spent on the road driving each day, but at least we will see something… will be a busy couple of days and then we will head back… this trip will have to be configured differently if we do it again…

… H and dogs sleeping…

… i was so exhausted last night… couldn’t put two thoughts together towards end of dinner…

Defacing our national parks…

… there is a long list of stupidity in this article about the desecration of our national parks… i concur with the thought that wilderness shouldn’t be easy to get to…

First notes…

… the first two days of travel have been brutally long… yesterday, it wasn’t completely clear why other than some slow spots of traffic… on Tuesday, the trip was 2 hours longer than indicated by google maps when we started out… yesterday it was three hours longer… and this was the indication as we started the trips!… what we had planned to be 7 hr days of travel were, in fact, 9 and 10 hours respectively… we are at 19 hours of a trip that was supposed to take 21-22 hours total… it’s going to be closer to 30 hours… we have been going from point to point with no time to explore along the way… the only thing we have experienced off the beaten track was the result of detours through the countryside… one such detour took us through what looked like poor, sharecropper farmland in South Carolina… … we are told by friends who travel the route frequently that today will not be much better…

… i am going for a 6:30 AM start in hopes that we will miss some of the predicted awful traffic… we have a choice of three routes… two travel highways and are projected to take about 7 hours… one does not use highways and is projected to take closer to 9 hours… we are tempted to do the 9 hour one in the hope that it will be more interesting and with fewer delays…

… one of the thoughts i keep having is how inefficient it all is… when so much of the nation’s goods and workforce flow over the apparently inadequate roads of the nation, so much time is lost…

The Manchin Mess… good article in the Bulwark about the mess…

Omicron, the possible good, bad and ugly… this article in The Bulwark summarizes the possible directions Omicron could go…

Heather Cox Richardson, December 21, 2021…

… the January 6 Select Committee noose tightens around the neck of 45’s administration… violent rhetoric is increasing… the HCR meter pointing down… we are on course for rough times…

First notes…

… we started our journey to Florida yesterday and the first leg of the trip was a bear… we got a late start which put us at DC near rush hour… DC rush Hour traffic is legendary… the traffic was weird too… car with flashing lights moving too slow on I95… in the fast lane!… a brush fire by the side of the road… accidents we never saw because we were rerouted through suburbs and farm land to avoid… the vehicular arteries around DC as metaphor for the arteries of government… what should have been 7 hours of driving turned into 9 with only 2 brief stops!… we will get an earlier start today… hoping the worst is behind us…

… we seem to have landed in the land of national chain retailers… big box stores everywhere…