Journal

Some things are irritatingly effective. Controlled breathing is one of those things. What do you mean I just have to “breathe”.

Feeling stressed? Breathe.

Can’t get to sleep? Breathe.

Mind racing? Yeah, breathe.

Super annoying.

When there are too many thoughts, ideas or worries rattling around in my head, I’ll stand outside in the sun and breathe for a minute. In through the nose, hold it, and then out through the mouth.

It almost always totally changes my state of mind.

When I can’t get to sleep, I’ll do it for a couple of minutes longer. I’ll hold it for a couple more seconds. I’ll inhale and exhale more slowly. In through the nose, hold it, and then out through the mouth.

After a couple of minutes, I often fall right asleep.

It’s the worst (obviously it’s the best).

You’d hear about their arrival before you even saw them. A neighborhood kid would excitedly announce to the street that they were coming. Heads would pop up over fences; peek out of front doors; appear between net curtains. It was true, they were on our street: the Pop Man.

They’d have everything: cola, lemonade, limeade, and my favorite: dandelion and burdock. The sweetness of much refined sugar with the slightly medicinal, savory quality of the ingredients that flavor it. I’d run out into the street with a quid and come back with a 2-liter bottle.

The pop man brought joy to a summer’s day (or any other).

I loved pop. Pop felt like one of the biggest treats I could imagine. A bottle of pop to myself seemed audacious. Who was I—the Queen of England? I wasn’t even sure my body could hold 2 liters of pop. I’d never try to find out though. I’d sip it; savor it—like Charlie Bucket.

The Pop Man seems like such an odd idea today: a stranger (sort of) driving around in a modified transit van, stacked high with soda and candy. A van literally designed to encourage children to sprint towards it, loose change grasped in their clammy little hands.

In 1990’s England, though, it was one of the best parts of summer for me, followed closely by the ice cream truck. The Pop Man was different though. No jingle, rarely a nice little menu affixed—just word of mouth and the promise of your favorite bottle of pop.

When I’m busy or stressed, I can fall into a routine where I’m not taking very good care of myself. It might start with skipping a workout (and then two, and then…), but progress to include things like:

1. Not drinking enough water
2. Skipping or eating a bad lunch
3. Avoiding plans and structure
4. Neglecting friends and family
5. Poor sleep and nighttime routine

I rarely deprioritize work—as if I must pick one or the other—but it’s not actually a tradeoff. Take better care of yourself, and you tend to do better work (or at least that’s true for me)—but it can be hard to remember.

Today, I took the time to eat a proper lunch, make a coffee, and sit in the garden at lunch time. Whilst I was out there, I wrote my morning pages, reflecting on self-care (how meta) and creative environments.

It was such a small act, but it completely reset my day. I started to feel more relaxed; more creative. My headache eased and then disappeared. I felt as though I was starting the day all over again from a better place.

Before I headed inside, I did a three minute guided meditation. Three minutes! You can spend longer getting distracted by your phone when you just wanted to grab a two-factor authentication code.

Those three minutes were so powerful. They allowed me to—just for a moment—pull my mind away from all the stuff and start afresh when I opened my eyes. Another tiny act of self-care that didn’t cost much.

I’m writing this as a reminder to future-me (and any of you) that small acts of self-care are important; that you do better work and become a better friend, partner etc. by first taking care of yourself.

I’ve always wanted to make and share more over the years. More art, more writing, more software, more… everything. I’ve often struggled to do so, at least in part because I’m a perfectionist (or… something), and there’s nothing forcing me to ship.

I’ve been writing morning pages for a while now, and I realized that I have no problem doing that every day. Of course, no one else gets to see those, but that’s not typically what I’m worried about. When I say I’m a perfectionist, it’s my own bar I need to hit.

The thing that makes it easy for me, I think, is simply that I do it every single day—no excuses. I don’t write because I have something to say, I write because it’s tomorrow. It doesn’t matter if I write total garbage or if I write something near-perfect. I’ll be back tomorrow.

That thought reminded me of something that Seth Godin once said:

I made a decision, one time, to write every day, and so I don’t have to revisit that decision. I don’t post a blog post because I feel like it, and I don’t post a blog post because it’s perfect—I post a blog post because it’s tomorrow… and that idea helps the work move forward.

So a few weeks back, I decided I’d do the same, and I stuck a Post-it note on my computer display to remind me. Most of the things I post are half-thoughts. They’re not written particularly well. Most of the time, they’re not even related in any meaningful way.

The quality that they do share, though? They exist.

It’s so easy to find an excuse not to make something, and especially easy to find an excuse not to share it. You’re tired. It’s not good enough. It’s not relevant. Someone has made something just like it.

It’s difficult to share things when that’s the bar.

For me, though, the act of committing to making and sharing something every day regardless makes it all feel lighter. All of a sudden, my goal isn’t to share something great, or novel, or unique. It’s just to make something—anything—and put it out there.

Walking my dog (Cacio) this evening, I listened to the very first episode of This American Life. It’s actually the first time I’ve ever listened to it. I’ve heard snippets before, but hadn’t heard the first act at all.

Kevin Kelly (of Wired and more) tells the story of a deeply personal experience that he lived through as a young adult—the central idea being that he started to live his life as if he’d die in six months.

And I wouldn’t say it was a voice, but there was an idea that came into my mind that just would not go away, and that was that I should live as if I would die in six months, that I should really, truly live. And that I could not tell for certain whether I would really die, but that either way, I should live as if I was going to die. And so that was the assignment.

I’ll leave you to listen to the story yourself, but (regardless of the rest of it) this idea really stuck with me. I started to wonder whether I’d still do what I’m doing right now if I was going to die in six months.

I’m pretty terrified of mortality (to the extent that I use the term mortality instead of death because the latter just feels more visceral to me), so I already think about this idea a lot, but not so concretely.

That is, I try to “live as if I’ll die” (because I believe that it’s easy to fall into the trap off living as if you won’t), but I convince myself that it’s still a ways off. In reality, of course, there are no such guarantees.

Six months is long enough to not immediately fall into a pit of despair, but not long enough that you wouldn’t dramatically evaluate how you spend your waking hours. Not long enough to change nothing.

If you were going to die in six months, would you follow through with all of your current plans? Would you do the work you’re about to do? Would you hold that grudge, make that apology, read that book?

You don’t have to upturn your life or run into the hills, but I think asking some version of this question is a useful reset. A way to say no to those things that you really don’t want to do (and yes to the ones you do).

I love large language models. I love building tools with them. I love using them for research. I love meandering chats about nothing much at all.

Occasionally, I’ll ask one (or more) to give me some ideas for blog posts based on previous writing of mine (including all of my morning pages). Every time, it makes me just a little bit sad.

I’m not saying that large language models can’t come up with interesting ideas to write about (or interesting writing of their own for that matter), but it always feels like they lack a bit of… soul?

You could say it’s a skill issue on my part. It probably is.

I’ve been trying to make sense of why it makes me feel this way, and the thing I’ve landed on so far is roughly: when you spend the time to look through your past writing; to sit there and slowly, painfully think of ideas, you’re not just thinking—you’re feeling.

You don’t only feel something when you finally land on what you believe is a good idea, either. You feel something as you get close to an idea. You feel it as an idea slips through your fingers whilst you try to grasp it, before you realize there wasn’t much there at all.

It’s a feeling (or a combination of feelings) that’s just completely missing when you craft the perfect prompt. When you sit there waiting for a tool to think on your behalf. When it trots out a long list of decidedly mid ideas that apparently reflect all of your own thoughts.

It took me a while to pin this down, but when I did, I found a new sense of appreciation for those feelings. For the struggle. For the almost-idea. For the break-throughs and for the many ideas that never would be.

After a busy few weeks at work, a tiring few hours of driving, and a long day in the sun, I was feeling a little cranky and couldn’t shake it.

We were driving through the redwoods in Humboldt County, headed back to camp, and I hadnt spoken for a while—just driven onward quietly.

Suddenly, I heard my wife’s voice (softly) next to me: “I love California so much”. With a few simple words, my perspective immediately shifted.

My field of view broadened, I took a long, deep breath, and the feeling I’d been trying to shake for a while immediately and completely dissipated.

I was in one of the most beautiful places on earth, with my favorite person in the whole world, on one of the most glorious, unexpectedly sunny days.

A few simple words spoken by someone you love, about some place you love, can change everything. Sometimes, your bad mood lasts as long as you let it.

I rarely look back at my morning pages, but today I looked back at the very first entry and found a passage relevant here, as I start to publish something every day:

One interesting thing about writing morning pages is that you want to write everything you’ll ever write, today. I want to write all of the things that will propel me into the future, all of the posts that I’d like to publish, all of the memories that I’d like to sit with. I can’t do that, but I find solace in the idea that if I stick with it, I’ll be back tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. If I really stick with it, I’ll have written at least 365 things within a year, and even at a conservative estimate of 10% turning into other writing, I could have 36 posts, essays, pitches, or whatever else might come of writing every day.

It’s popular in some circles to claim that a single person can’t possibly be expected to both (for example) design software and build software. It must only be possible to do one or the other.

Almost nobody (that I know of) upon hearing that someone is relatively good at cooking, however, exclaims “how is that even remotely possible when you’re also a competent driver?”

Humans are good at so many things; you can be good at so many things. Maybe not everything all at once, but most things eventually. If you assume that you can, you probably can (and vice versa).

For some reason, when I was very young, boiled potatoes (unseasoned, if I remember correctly) featured heavily in my diet.

I wasn’t very fond of boiled potatoes—or at least the sheer volume and regularity of them—so I would (increasingly) hide the ones that I didn’t want to eat around the house.

Occasionally, one of my parents would find such rogue potatoes—behind the bath caddy, a bedroom curtain, or occasionally on the flat roof below the bedroom window.

Mystery potatoes.

When I got older, I learned that boiled potatoes are much better with an ungodly amount of butter (which happens to be the same ingredient that makes everything delicious).