There’s a wonderful little story that goes with that photo: I snapped it (on a Canon digital camera) just as I was dashing out of the building. At one point in time, my wife was a mathematics professor, at a small college which arranged a class trip to Japan and extended an invitation to faculty in general. My not-yet-then wife, and I as her +1, went. Early one morning, in Tokyo, I asked another faculty member what he had planned for the day. Turns out he was an architecture buff, and he was excited to go see the Tokyo International Forum. As I often do, I went along on a whim. I had my newbie architectural mind blown, and took that photo.

I’ve no idea if you wonder, but I am compelled to explain the photography at the top of each issue. I’ve a collection of many tens of thousands of digital images. Beyond all the originally-digital photography, my collection includes +6,000 scans of 35mm mounted slides and many scans of old prints. One thing I do with my collection is curate featured photography on my blog. Each week, when I have a good draft of the 7 for Sunday issue going, I flip through the feature photography to find a photo that fits for the issue’s cover. The image above, and its story, were chosen to be entertaining and distracting… because this week, I’m going to just start in ancient Greece.

If many of these parallels seem self-evident, one recurring point of reference does not: Thucydides, the ancient Athenian general and author of History of the Peloponnesian War. Though hardly a household name, he has been a favorite of those intent on doom-scrolling the historical record for relevant exempla.

~ Mark Fisher, from What would Thucydides say?

Before working on this blog post I couldn’t even type his name (I do have one quote though) let alone pull from memory any of his writing. I’m not sure if that means I’ve escaped the trap described in this article.

It’s often said—including by me—that those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. But what does study really mean? My first reaction to learning a little bit about Thucydides was to consider reading something he wrote. But, now it seems clear that simply reading some history isn’t enough to keep me from repeating it.

Everything feels unprecedented when you haven’t engaged with history.

~ Kelly Hayes

The corollary to Hayes’ point is that once do you engage, then things feel much less surprising. I’m really liking that.

This is the moment that ruins our focus. It’s the moment that causes our procrastination and avoidance. It’s the moment that ruins our best habits and our best intentions.

~ Leo Babauta, from The Moment That Ruins Our Focus

Picture me looking slowly, suspiciously around. I’ve recently been deep in the procrastination around my writing. This week, stumbling over my own quote-and-bookmark (above), while wrestling with my own procrastination was disorienting.

In that specific case, Babauta is talking about email. That’s never a problem for me.

But when it comes to writing, when I find I’m procrastinating, I try to figure out: What am I actually running away from in the moment? How do I let go of the feeling that I should be writing? It feels like I’ve built this trap where I now need to put together one of these issues, every week, forever. I’m not sure that’s good. But I’m also not sure that’s bad because it does lead to more actual writing actually getting done.

I believe that everyone should write in public. Get a blog. Or use Squidoo or Tumblr or a microblogging site. Use an alias if you like. Turn off comments, certainly–you don’t need more criticism, you need more writing.

~ Seth Godin, from Talker’s Block

I’m often reminding myself that the successful people are the lucky ones. The harder they worked, the luckier they got. It turned out that, year after year, the longer they worked, the sooner came success. It’s something like: Strive to be the twenty-year overnight-success story. Because when success comes too early or too easily, bad things happen.

I bullshitted everybody and told them all my dreams and things I was going to do. And what happened afterwards? I became a total failure. I was full of shit and that’s the end of it.

~ Dennis Hopper, from Dennis Hopper

In that brief conversation there are at least 5 things (none related to Easy Rider) which impressed me. Regardless what you think about Hopper, or even if you’ve never heard of him, it certainly takes guts and perspective to be able to be that clear about yourself.

As the Island of Knowledge grows, so do the shores of our ignorance—the boundary between the known and unknown. Learning more about the world doesn’t lead to a point closer to a final destination—whose existence is nothing but a hopeful assumption anyways—but to more questions and mysteries. The more we know, the more exposed we are to our ignorance, and the more we know to ask.

~ Marcelo Gleiser

Taking notes on the books I read was a great start, but it wasn’t enough. It did me no good to leave those notes sitting in a software program like a musty filing cabinet in the basement, never to see the light of day again.

I realized if I wanted to benefit from my reading, I needed to engage with the books I read on a much deeper level. I needed to make something out of them. Otherwise, I would continue to passively consume information with no lasting memory of what I learned.
~ Tiago Forte, from The Ultimate Guide to Summarizing Books

Has anyone noticed that’s what I’m attempting to do with all my blogging and writing? Shirley, that’s obvious. (It’s not obvious, and don’t call me Shirley.)

I’ve always deeply loved movies. I was raised in the era when going to a movie was special. (Wall-mounted phone, rotary dial, that long recording detailing show times.) I could tell endless stories about going to the movies; not what the movie is about, but the experience I had around the movie. I’m certain it’s my recalling and retelling of all those stories from around the movies, which makes the entire movie experience more fun for me.

No, I’ve not lost my own plot here.

Forte’s point about how to benefit from what one reads is the same effect. If you want to hold on to whatever it was that you’ve gotten from a book… you have to integrate it with the rest of your ongoing, lived experience. You have to go around telling the story of who gave you the book, what the book means to you in the context of your entire life, and what you think your interlocutor might get from it (like this, this, this, this, this, this or— You get my point.)

And as soon as you realize that’s fun for movies, and great for books, you should wonder if it could be a super-power for self-improvement if you could share the contents of your mind, with yourself, in that same fashion? Yes you can. Start journaling immediately and then, in a year, begin to regularly review your journals.

Until next time, thanks for reading.

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