Every language contains its own set of focal vocabularies, that is to say, a set a specialized words to describe — with great precision — the sorts of things that the culture considers important enough to elaborate upon.  The old myth about “eskimos having words for snow” would be good example of this concept, were it not factually incorrect… at least compared to English, which has a flurry of its own flakey variants (hmmm… anyone know how many words for snow there are in Classical Arabic, or maybe the Saharan languages?)   Typically, the economic activities of a given group of people will cause that group to generate large quantities of specialized words pertaining to their field of practice. For example, software programmers have their own vocabulary, as do lawyers, architects, herdsmen, dairy farmers, etc.  However, outside of the area of expertise, such an expanded focal vocabulary does not typically serve much purpose (despite my belief that there are no true synonyms).

Then, once in a while, along comes a culture with certain peculiarities which — eureka! — cause it to generate a single, unique term that delightfully captures some phenomenon or aspect of the human condition.

For example, Schadenfreude (delight in another person’s misfortune) and L’esprit d’escalier (coming up with a witty comeback too late, after the conversation), are words that perhaps only the Germans and the French could have come up with, and yet, these words have a certain  je-ne-sais-quoi universal appeal (..and yes, I’m still on the lookout for a language that has deemed it important enough to describe The DANdelion™ Effect.).

There is great pleasure in discovering that particular, seul mot juste, for that thing which you never knew had a name.

What is Shinrin-yoku ?

Thanks to Mysending’s blog, I recently learned about a Japanese term — Shinrin-yoku – which describes a favorite pastime, which is immersing myself in a heady botanical space, the more Dagobah-like, the better.

I started doing this as a kid, and I still do it today, especially when I feel trapped in a harsh urban or edge-city environment.

It’s a simple, three-step process:

Step One: Recognize the Stress Signs

I’m stuck in rush-hour traffic, somewhere in the outskirts of Tampa, Florida, right after a thunderstorm in the late afternoon, on a six-lane road surrounding by fast-food chains, strip malls and automobile dealerships. My cellphone connection is spotty, I’ve just completed a tense and counter-productive conference call with a client and I have a wee bit too much caffeine in my system. Hot mess.  The air outside is a torrid mixture of humidity and vehicle exhaust, and the air circulating in my cheap rental car is frigid and stale, with notes of artificially-scented deoderizer.

The sun is setting, casting an angry yellow glow through the smog.

A double rainbow is forming overhead, between the visual pollution of telephone wires and traffic signals.

I want out.

Step Two: Find a Green Patch

I open up my GPS-enabled map and note that it indicates a large patch of green on it, not far from where I am.  That’s what I usually do: Find a wide expanse of green on the map, preferably surrounding some irregularly shaped patches of blue, with the words “conservation land” or “state park” or “national forest” near it.

In this case the words are unfamiliar – “Lettuce Lake” — but the shape of the green and blue blobs on the map look promising. Also, I have a heavenly sign: One end of the rainbow happens to be pointing right in the direction of where I want to go.

Step Three: Soak In It, Soak It In

By the time I arrive, the park ranger tells me there’s only 15 minutes before the park closes (at dusk… apparently that’s when the alligators and coyotes start their wild rumpus) and that it might not be worth the entry fee.

It’s worth it.

Sometimes, all you need is 15 minutes.

Too much polution? Seek the Phytoncide Solution

Here’s a description of Shinrin-yoku and its health benefits: 

Forest bathing

(source.  http://www.mnn.com/health/fitness-well-being/photos/7-odd-natural-ways-to-boost-your-health/forest-bathing  )

(cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_bathing )

For the even more scientifically-minded, read the pubmed article, “Trends in research related to “Shinrin-yoku” (taking in the forest atmosphere or forest bathing) in Japan,” by Y. Tsunetsugu, B.J. Park, and Y. Miyazaki  (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19585091), which is a meta-study of research on the physiological effects of forest environments (or isolated elements of those environments, e.g. cedar wood, running water, foliage) on the different senses, e.g. visual, auditory, olfactory, and  tactile.

In any case, if you’re fortunate enough to live in a climate and location that has large, immersive forests and wetlands, you now have one more “scientifically proven” reason to feel lucky.

But what if you’re an urban dweller?

What if you’re surrounded high-rise towers, mid-rise walk-ups and/or low-rise wastelands of never-ending concrete, metal and plastic?

What if your city is Montreal, Canada?

What if you live in a place where one-third of the year resembles a cold, dry, flash-frozen asphalt tundra? ..where the air around you does not provide anything in the way of phytoncides… but rather, acts like a Dementor, sucking all the heat and moisture right out of your nose?

Best Places for Shinrin-yoku, in Cold Cities

Most major cities have a botanical garden… and within that botanical garden, a glass-enclosed microclimate such as a greenhouse, palm house, or if you can get one, a fern house.  These are the places to go to, in order to get your shinrin-yoku fix.  I’ve made a habit of checking in to these spots when visiting a city, when times allows for it.

Here are some instances of urban shinrin-yoku that I’ve enjoyed over the years — some of these are well-known attractions, some of these are lesser-known local spots:

The Montreal Biodome – check out the simulated rainforest environment, trees, flowers, monkeys, the whole nine yards…. used to be a bicycle racetrack

The IBM Building – in Montreal at 1250 René-Lévesque: atrium of soaring bamboo against backdrop of miserable grey slushy roadways… ’nuff said

Allan Gardens — in Toronto, palm house FTW

Cloud Forest Conservatory — a postage-stamp-sized refuge in the heart of downtown Toronto

Kew Gardens — a giant of London, max humidity to be found in the Water Lily House

Class of 1959 Chapel — at Harvard Business School, another small refuge  in a cold, cold place… waterfalls, papyrus plants and koi fish provide healing for the non-denominational soul…   the interior courtyard at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is nice too, if you like a more Mediterranean environment

San Antonio Botanical Garden — well, not exactly a cold city, but it includes one of the best conservatories, complete with a steamy fern house

The Eden Project is still on my bucket list.

Where else?

What are the key differences and similarities between the two quotes, shown below?

What common philosophy or worldview do the authors probably share?  What might they disagree about?

Bonus Question:  How does the translator’s word choices and placement of phrase breaks potentially change the meaning of these quotes?

Daodejing 33:1-4	Avot 4:1
One who knows others is clever, but one who knows themself is enlightened. One who conquers others is powerful, but one who conquers themself is mighty. One who knows contentment with what they have is rich. One who pushes with vigor has will. One who loses not their place endures. One who may die but will not perish, has life everlasting.	Ben Zoma says: Who is wise?  One who learns from every person. Who is strong? One who overcomes their own nature. Who is rich? One who is satisfied with what they have. Who is respected? One who respects all of creation.

Background:

The above quotations come from two very ancient — and still very popular — texts that have some striking parallelisms: the text of  Pirkei Avot , aka “Avot”, written/assembled in Israel about 1900 years ago, and that of the Tao Te Ching, aka, “Daodejing”, written/assembled in China about 2500 years ago.  The person quoted in that part of Avot, Ben Zoma, lived sometime around the first third of the 2nd century.

For this particular pair of juxtaposed sections, it would be interesting to figure out if these were coincidentally convergent ideas in otherwise independent traditions, or whether there was some cross-fertilization of aphorisms along a spice route. However, for those of us lacking in the requisite linguistic and archeological expertise, we might do better to simply compare and contrast the actual messages, as a way to deepen our own understanding of this age-old wisdom.

Note: With a bit more massaging of the translations we could probably put these two texts into even closer alignment… though as it is I’ve abridged the Avot section considerably and have mashed-up a four-line interpretation of that chapter of the Daodejing, which isn’t the way it’s always read (more on that, below).

In an exercise such as this one, some people like to get lots of detail and source material, in order to help them undercover meaning.  So in the spirit of that, the remainder of this post will be dedicated to providing source material.

For those of you who like a quick read, consider this post over. You only have the questions at the top, to consider.

Source Material:

Here is a rendering of Avot 4:1 in Hebrew (taken from http://www.mechon-mamre.org/b/h/h49.htm), with a Chinese translation of Avot next to it (taken from http://along.blshe.com/post/287/10718) , and a more complete, literal translation in English (taken from http://www.shechem.org/torah/avot.html):

בן זומא אומר,איזה הוא חכם–הלמד מכל אדם, שנאמר “מכל מלמדיי, השכלתי” (תהילים קיט,צט איזה הוא גיבור–הכובש את יצרו, שנאמר “טוב ארך אפיים, מגיבור” (משלי טז,לבאיזה הוא עשיר–השמח בחלקו, שנאמר “יגיע כפיך, כי תאכל; אשריך, וטוב לך” (תהילים קכח,ב):  “אשריך”, בעולם הזה; “וטוב לך”, לעולם הבא.איזה הוא מכובד–המכבד את הברייות, שנאמר “כי מכבדיי אכבד ובוזיי ייקלו” (שמואל א ב,ל

本·祚瑪說：-“誰是智者？向所有人學習的人，經上說：‘我比我所有的教師更聰明，因為我常在默想你的法令。’”-“誰是強者？能自製的人，經上說：‘有涵養的人，勝於勇士；克服自己的人，勝於克城的人。’”-“誰是富足者？樂其本份的人，經上說：‘你能吃你雙手賺來的食物，你便實在幸運，也萬事有福。’‘幸運’於今生，‘有福’於來世。”-“誰是尊者？尊重他人的人，經上說：‘只有那光榮我的，我才光榮他；那輕視我的，必受輕視。’”

Ben Zoma said: Who is wise? He who learns from all men, as it is written (Psalm 119:99) “I have gained understanding from all my teachers.” Who is mighty? He who subdues his passions, as it is written (Proverbs 16:32) “One who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and one whose temper is controlled than one who captures a city.” Who is rich? He who rejoices in his portion, as it is written (Psalm 128:2) “You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be happy, and it shall go well with you.” “You shall be” refers to this world; and “it shall be well with you” refers to the world to come. Who is honored? He that honors his fellow men as it is written (I Samuel 2:30) “For those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me shall be treated with contempt.”

Here is a rendering of the section of the Daodejing in Chinese…

知人者智，自知者明。勝人者有力，自勝者強。知足者富。強行者有志。不失其所者久。死而不亡者壽。

..and several translations of it, courtesy of http://www.yellowbridge.com/onlinelit/daodejing33.php:

Note how on Goddard’s translation, the line about achieving wealth through contentment/satisfaction is left by itself and is not grouped together with the idea of demonstrating a strong will by making a bold or vigorous effort. Instead, that bit about having a strong will is combined with the phrases in the last section, about endurance and legacy. As for that last line, there is a wide range of translations and interpretations of its intended (or potentially unintended) meaning.   In addition to the three translations shown above, it might also be…

He who stays where he is endures. To die but not to perish is to be eternally present.

..or it might be…

If you stay in the center and embrace death with your whole heart, you will endure forever.

..or it might be…

Who defends his home may long endure; Who surrenders his home may long survive it.

This, apparently, is part of the fun of translating the Daodejing: Even if you are a grammatical expert who fully grasps the idioms and allusions of ancient Chinese, and even if you have a deep understanding of Taoist thought and history, you still have to content with the fact that this text was often transmitted between generations via ink on strips of bamboo sown together by silk, with little or no punctuation to demarcate the separation of phrases. Therefore, part of the translator’s job is to decide where to read an implied “however” or “therefore,”  and where to start a new paragraph. Hence, the difference seen in Goodard’s version.

Need more than just 3 translations? This site has line-by-line comparisons, using a couple of dozen translations: http://wayist.org/ttc%20compared/chap33.htm#top

As for the Avot section, while there are many different interpretations of the text, the accepted range of translations seems to fairly consistent, with only minor differences in shade of meaning. Maybe it’s a difference of language, or maybe it’s a difference of medium. Ink on paper, bound in books, assiduously copied by scribes in what might be described as an obsessive-compulsive tradition of ”getting-things-right?”  That said, the Avot section provides its own opportunities for ambiguity and variety in interpretation, by giving us a layer of biblical verses to consider as a prooftext/context/subtext. Text, text, text.

Post-script

If you haven’t done the work of reading, comparing the two quotes, and coming up with your own answers to the questions, well then maybe this will help you along:

I’m curious to hear what other people have to say about this.

In fact, I did a quick (read: lazy) Google search to see if anyone else out there has done a comparison of the Tao Te Ching and Pirkei Avot. One of the results that Google served up for me was my own post, http://danspira.com/2009/12/18/the-tao-of-instructing-teaching-coaching-leading/. Gee, thanks Google, now I really feel like I’m in a algorithmically-driven echo-chamber.

I guess this means I’ll have to try harder than Google, if I want to seek the wisdom of others.

Continuous improvement is one of the ways to put time on your side, as is selecting the right field of practice to play in.

Time marches forward relentlessly. Turn the ticking clock into an ally by making slight tweaks to the things you do, so you can do them even better.

Also, choose a function and a skillset to practice that rewards experience.

The key to aging gracefully is to make your age an asset, not a liability.

The glass is undervalued by at least half of its potential value. Buy it at its current discount. Top it off with some tap water. Brand it. Package it. Resell it.  Win.

Here is an image summarizing this as a General Theorem of Glasses-of-Water-with-Unrealized-Potential:

This theory also explains the “it only really matters if you’re thirsty / it’s needed” observation, made elsewhere, while also allowing for the effects of advertising and packaging on demand. Sometimes people enjoy glasses of water because it’s the cool thing to do.

Finally:  The glass is 100% full of metaphor: Be the glass and fulfill your potential.

Add your comments, votes or opinions on this most importunate matter, here:

http://www.quora.com/Is-this-glass-half-empty-or-half-full/answer/Dan-Spira?__snids__=39871696

If you maximize your schedule and fill every bit of programmable space with destinations (aka “Goals”), you will have no time left to venture off, explore, to learn, to stop and smell the proverbial roses.

You will have achieved full efficiency in your schedule of waking hours, however you will be eroding your long term competitive edge, which is your ability to think creatively and to innovate… because those things require serendipitous discovery as their creative fuel.

Most significantly, a fully maximized schedule will reduce your ability to take on brilliant opportunities as they arise. Some of best opportunities are the ones you don’t plan for, so you need some room to be able to say “yes” to the unexpected.

Finally, too much fixation on a singular goal reduces your ability to get lucky… tunnel vision comes at the  expense of peripheral vision.

Some solutions for highly programmed individuals:

• Plan gaps in your busy schedule, gaps to explore the territory between Point A and B.
• Plan regular moments of rest… or even a weekly Day of Rest.
• Do something “inefficiently,” so that you can be open to discovering a better way to do it… or better things to do.

What other strategies do you use, so that you can make time for discovery?

Waste some time well, so that the time you spend working is not wasted.

D.O.P.A.M.I.N.E. is a powerful substance. Play around with it at your own risk.

The first part is the D.O.P.A. – Desiring Other People’s Approval.   When you were young, you thought you needed it.  When you performed well in front of others, you got a hit of the D.O.P.A., and that made you want to perform more, perform better.

The second part is the M.I.N.E. — May Increase Naysayers’ Enmity.    As you got older, someone inevitably came along and started treating you badly because they thought you were a junkie. They looked at you with disdain and called you weak.  They taught you the cruel lesson about how unattractive it is was when you appeared to be trying too hard.  (Some of them are really good at what they do… they can catch even the faintest whiff of effort.)  They could have done it nicely, but didn’t. These naysayers — nah, let’s call ‘em what they were: haters — made you recoil. The experience made you want to quit the D.O.P.A. and stop performing. Or perhaps it caused you to twist yourself into a pretzel, acting as if you didn’t care about what anyone had to say.

The third part is… well, we’ll get to the third part in a moment.  Before we do that:

What’s Your Online Approval Rating?

Remember the first time you posted something on Facebook or Google (etc.) and received a whole bunch of likes / +1′s from friends?  How did that feel?  How did it feel the second time?  How about two years into it?  What about seeing other people’s stuff getting liked?  Was it like cheering in a small private stadium of like-minded fans?  Was it like hearing a laugh track on a sitcom?

We don’t always prefer it — in fact, sometimes we think it’s downright harmful — but we know that deep down inside there’s a part of us that responds to approval.  It starts with our first act of smiling, continues through our first laugh, our first words, our first crawl… walking… dancing… singing that whole song nearly flawlessly to the supreme delight of the parents and onlooking relatives… it’s there, deeply embedded in our subconscious.

Then comes along social media and WHAMMO– suddenly we’re bathed in nonstop stroking.

People Who Put (Themselves) Out

It used to be that only certain people had the opportunity to perform publicly.  There were professional producers — writers of books, television and other media — and the rest of us were supposed to be good docile consumers.  Warhol presciently predicted that we’d each get our of 15 minutes of fame, but even he was constrained to the vision of the mass media, the world as a single rapt audience.  It turns out that the future is more like 15 seconds of fame, many times over and over again for each of us, but each time it’s for a very thin slice of the world.

“It is now common, and will soon be expected, that every intelligent person (and quite a few unintelligent ones) will have a media platform where they share what they care about with the world.”

- Seth Godin

There are still people who refuse to go online at all…  and an even larger number of people who do go online but stay on the sidelines, acting as quiet voyeurs of the nonstop exhibitionism… and that’s just fine for everyone but the most diehard online personal branding guru 2.0 types.

But then there are the haters who are a subclass of those voyeurs — they don’t really contribute anything, but they do enjoy consuming the social content while smugly snickering to themselves,  Ha! Look at all those attention junkies who desperately need approval! 

Of course, haterism is a maladjusted way of seeking security, a sad adaptation for dealing with the fear of being judged. If a person sits on the couch and criticizes everybody else, nobody has to know how competent or incompetent they themselves are.  Within every Statler and Waldorf there lurks a Beavis and Butthead.

If you spend enough time with a hater, you can easily get infected by their attitude… I know this from personal experience.  These are the people who eschew all forms of peer pressure, including positive peer pressure. These are likely to be the same people who don’t work well in groups and prefer to tackle projects alone. I’m happy to be out of that, now.

Apply a thin coating of social glue, press firmly, then release…

D.O.P.A. is the glue that keeps collaboration together.  Approval — and the desire for it — is an important social cue, if you’re going to exist in any kind of community relationship. Denying the importance of approval is akin to denying the importance of communicating.

Also, even if you successfully adopt the haterist view, then in a sense all you’re doing is seeking the hater’s approval… which, by the way, you can never, ever, get.  That’s right.  If they had it their way, you and every other “approval junkie” will sit down and shut up… and yes, the world would be a poorer, less interesting place.

Which brings us back to the third point:  Be aware of both sides of the D.O.P.A.M.I.N.E. equation — you’ll get what you get, and you don’t get upset.  Enjoy the love and ignore the hate. In fact, you may get some pleasure ignoring a hater, denying them the attention that they secretly want by doing what they’re asking you to do, vis-a-vis their disdain.

It’s true, you don’t need anyone’s approval… and it’s also okay to enjoy it, to use it as encouragement to keep improving, especially if it’s coming from people who you respect and admire… or who you love.

So keep contributing.  #DontGiveUp

The question is unanswerable not just because it’s a moving statistic.  The question is unanswerable because it is phrased incorrectly as a quantitative question, whereas the real question — the question behind the question — is qualitative.

The question-behind-the-question is something like this:  What are the typical scenarios that lead to the creation of a blog, and, for each scenario, what is a reader of such a blog likely to see over time, in terms of the amount and type of content posted?

For any given blogging scenario, how does the blog usually start out?  What does the frequency of posting look like, over time?  How does the blogger’s content evolve, both in terms of topic and style?  

Technorati puts together an annual report called State of the Blogosphere which offers answers to some of the above questions… too many answers, actually. I’m looking for something less statistical, more narrative.

Somewhere Out There, A Narrative

Somewhere on a laptop of a developer for WordPress or Blogger there’s a nice presentation about it.

The presentation is a couple of years old (some would say that it’s decades old, in blogyears) , and as with many discussions circa 2010, it discusses the continuing explosive growth of “microblogging” and how sites like Twitter and Facebook have taken some of the steam from what it archaically refers to as “traditional blogs.”

The presentation may have some stats on how the average length of a blog post initially declined in relation to the growth of Facetwitrublr, but then, ultimately started to increase as those sites allowed for more media-rich postings.  It says that traditional blogs have become a refuge for long-form writing.  The presentation almost certainly has a graph showing the steady decrease in the number of comments per blog post…. once again, the microblogging Twitumbookverse is the culprit. Thanks to the ambient intimacy of social media (social meds?), our attention and willingness to engage with text has become diffused… a warm fleeting breath of distracted amusement.

The one time that WordPress/Blogger developer gave their presentation, he or she was asked if their data had been controlled for blogcruft, the 50% or more of blogs that are spontaneously created as SEO marketing machines.  Of course s/he did.   Which is ironic, since right now s/he is working on a system that will improve the monetization of blogs through content-specific, analytically driven advertising.

Taking the Numb out of the Numbers

Meanwhile, in a search for a good blend of statistics-and-narrative, I came across this snarky summary by Caslon Analytics, a consultancy based in Australia, which managed to get its page high enough in Google results to gain my fleeting attention:

• Quantity of Blogs:  Statistics, demographics and trends of blogs (c.2007):  http://www.caslon.com.au/weblogprofile1.htm
• Quality of Blogs:  Types of blogs, purpose of them, pathology of the blogger mindset, etc.:  http://www.caslon.com.au/weblogprofile2.htm

Some of the more interesting statistics in that analysis came on the ephemerality of blogs, but then, those stats came from a Stone Age source in 2003.  At that time, apparently the longest period of time that a blog lasted before becoming entirely inactive was approximately two-and-a-half years…. but… how many people were even blogging before 2001?   Anyone still left today, from those 1999 blogboom years?

Technorati says 95% of blogs eventually die within a few years.  Well, maybe Technorati said that… there was too much data, I forget exactly what they said.

Yes, the real question-behind-the-question is:  Why continue blogging?

It’s a follow-on to my opening question:  Why start blogging at all?  (an expanded version of: Why blog backwards?)

Blog Posts About Quitting Blog Posts

Ah, but then I found a nice post by Doug Noon, covering the topic, with some interesting commentary:

To me, the blog is about discovery and reflection. Not so much about passion. It’s a lot like beachcombing. I read stuff that people write.

I follow links, and follow links from links, heading off in all directions at once. I find stuff and I think, Huh? Where did this come from? Cool. I save it in del.cio.us. It’s a weird obsession. Then I try to make sense of this muddle by writing about it. It’s a system.

… (I) wonder if there isn’t a natural lifespan for a blog that exhausts itself like any other project a person takes on.

(..) I don’t know where this blog is going. I’m following an evolving set of interests.

I was particularly pleased to note that as an edublogger (a portmanteau of “educator” and ”blog,” which is a portmanteau of “web” and “log,” which is a shortened version of  “World Wide Web” and a sailor’s “log book,” 1990 and 1842, respectively… okay, I’ll stop…)  Doug hasn’t given up and is still going strong:  http://borderland.northernattitude.org/2012/04/08/search-for-meaning/

Doug also brings in a post from Timothy Burke, where Burke contemplates discontinuing his blog :

(…) I think it’s fair to say now that most blogs have a fairly definite life cycle. Most never really outlast a brief initial burst of enthusiasm, but those that do last rarely hold on for more than about three or four years without either transmogrifying into some other kind of format (a group blog, a paid gig of some kind).

Mostly blogs ebb and flow with the life rhythms of their creator.  (…)

However, I think there’s also something about the form itself that poses a problem, and that the problem has gotten more acute as blogging has evolved as a practice.  A self-aware blog writer eventually starts to recognize static or repetitive patterns in their posting that threaten to devolve into schtick. Readers may not object: in fact, the larger and more stable a community of readers a blogger has, the more they may in fact come to rely on the blogger to merely convene or spark a rolling conversation among commenters, to be the rhetorical equivalent of comfort food.

For anyone hoping to sharpen and complicate their own writing, or to use a blog for exploration and discovery, however, this repetition and cumulative expectation can become a problem. I’ve talked here before about how much I find my sense of humor drains out of me when I’m writing here, because I’ve gotten trapped by compulsive reasonableness. When I write in this format, I find that my humor is sharpest when it’s snarky and a bit cruel (I don’t think this is true in person), so I often put it aside. There are times where that and other self-imposed limits and expectations frustrate me as a writer and even a thinker, however.

I’ve also hit a point where I’m frustrated by the rigidity of discussions across the blogosphere. (…). We’ve gone past the point where many conversations had the plasticity to go in unexpected directions. We’ve gotten instead to the point where many participants in the meta-discussion are defending fixed terrain, sometimes terrain that they’re paid to defend (…)

So I have to say I was recently tempted to (…) close up shop. I don’t think I will just yet. There are still a lot of things I enjoy about blogging: conversations I find rewarding, discoveries to be made, skills to be honed.  (…)

Many of those observations rang all-too-true for me. I liked them so much that I highlighted them above in bold.  See, there’s me being a snarky blogger… self-directed snarkiness, at that.

Notwithstanding the Seinfeld Principle of bowing out gracefully, it’s nice to know that some folks keep on blogging away, and will likely do so until their last dying keystroke. That tells me it’s something they do for themselves, not for some misguided quest for fame or fortune.

Hmmm, we could start a whole genre of Blog Posts Where the Author Considers (Threatens) Quitting their Habit.   You know, it’s that moment where, the blogger gets all contemplative and super-meta…  to the untrained eye, it looks like navel contemplation… but we bloggers recognize the signs… we know not to hang up the phone and keep talking to them… get someone to give them a hug and a warm cup of coffee…  don’t…  let… another one…  get away…

Here’s one that didn’t survive  (b.2009-01-25,  d. 2010-11-01) :

Thought as my second and proper full review I might just review blogging as a whole. Yep, rather introspective, there’s the obvious possibility of the whole infinite-depth-mirror going on, but I thought it worth at least getting down my thoughts on the blogosphere.

Most of the time, I think blogs are a massive waste of internet.

(…)

don’t know – I still think that in general that people who write on the internet are doing so without trying to be a world-class author so perhaps I should give them a break. You take the percentages of start-up, shut-down blogs – the whole blog abandonment rate is somewhere between 60% and 80%… that’s way too high to suggest there’s a great deal of good blogging going on.

Personally I’d like to see us get to a point where you can’t “start” your blog until you’ve posted 5 entries. That’d learn ‘em.

Anyway, we’ll see how I get on. Hopefully I’ll be around in a week or so but you never know.

It’s true. There is nothing new to say. There is nothing new under the sun.

Yet, just like a dandelion’s spirit of hyperseverence, there is a meaning in trying anyway.

1. The vegetation that sprouts up in between cracks in the sidewalk, or along the edge of the road where a small film of dirt has accumulated.
2. Earth’s biosphere, which is teaming with life, exists in a razor-thin edge between a massive planetary ball of molten rock and the vast cold emptiness of space.
3. Parties in the type of armed conflict where they simply seek to take hold of the next building or deliver the next blow to their enemy (eg. nomadic warfare).
4. People who show up for work every day, despite not being sure what their long-term plan is.

Pick a Word, Any Word

Coming Around Full Circle: The Backstory

As I passed the building of a particularly noteworthy client who had been on the receiving end of disproportionately extra-large portion of populist anger, I watched a steady stream of employees arriving at work early — their suits pressed and their faces a mixture of stolid and resolute expressions – a phalanx of workers getting set to keep the markets moving, one little bit at a time, despite everything else that was going on.  Way above across the street, I could see a crane slowing pulling up materials to rebuild the World Trade Center, one little bit at a time.

But many have such a scent that amid a thousand excellences they fix upon a single defect, and single it out for blame as if they were scavengers of men’s minds and hearts. So they draw up a balance sheet of defects which does more credit to their bad taste than to their intelligence. They lead a sad life, nourishing themselves on bitters and battening on garbage.

They have the luckier taste who midst a thousand defects seize upon a single beauty they may have hit upon by chance.

cxl, The Art of Worldly Wisdom, by Balthasar Gracian, tr. by Joseph Jacobs

Today I had to remind myself to resist the temptation of saying, “There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who are toxic and those who are a tonic.”

Rather, people can choose to behave in a toxic manner, turning good things into bad things.

Now admittedly, some folks have a knack for toxicity and seldom deviate from that tendency… but hey… I’d like to surround myself with more people who have the talent of finding the good in things, who know how to turn bad things into good things, and who make the good things into great things.

More alchemists, please.