Recent reflections have led me to wonder whether there is another way – something between believing what your told and ignoring it completely.
What happened to critical thought? Don’t we use it regularly? So why is it sometimes so difficult to exhibit?
What is the way to Taisan? Continue straight ahead.
My focus for the new year. From the Oxford Dictionary:
re·a·lign·ment
/ˌrēəˈlīnm(ə)nt/
noun
It sounds simple. Change or restore. An adjustment.
But the act of change, I think most would agree, can certainly be complicated.
And to maintain that for a year… well, that’s why most resolutions fail.
With new things happening so quickly last year, it was often like I was swimming upstream. I’ve moved, started new jobs, and tried to juggle a number of creative projects.
What I realized was that, for starters: There isn’t enough time. But, in an attempt to make it make sense, I looked for systems that could assist me in keeping on top of everything.
And this required building infrastructure.
As I go through this year, I’ll elaborate on them. Omit some, gather others. I need some time to reflect on each individually, and measure how they work for extended periods of time.
For most, 2025 was another in a line of several unusual years. It seems that since the pandemic, each year brings new challenges, new opportunities, and new …
As I work on my Year-In-Review, it occurs to me that I’ve allowed this blog to sit fallow, which I suppose was partly because I’d been looking for something to say.
How do we talk? What do we say? The climate is incendiary, and maybe we’re failing to rise to the occasion.
That is to say, none of us really know what we’re doing. And that’s my starting point.
Happy new year.
If everyone was efficient all the time, they would be nothing different about about anyone.
No diversity. No uniqueness. Just pure efficiency, over and over and over again.
And where’s the fun in that?
Reminded recently that work takes only as long as is needed to complete.
Sometimes we’ll drag it out, adding task after task.
In the end, though, how much of it is unnecessary?
I gave up overachieving, yet still find myself saying yes to myriad things. Time and again, it’s easy to say yes. Especially when a certain structure is lacking.
Not that it’s bad to say yes. Just make sure it’s something you’re aligned with.
Otherwise, you’re just going along to someone else’s alignment.
Rules, all rules, are arbitrary.
They get set up, taken down, broken when in place, and mean something different from one set of people to the next.
Figure out what the rules mean to you, and whether they even matter.
As we’ve moved into the era of photography, social media, and connectivity, we’ve moved away from poetry.
It was the verbal expression of a snapshot of time. A beautiful, or heart-rending, or even common moment.
Now, we have a way to experience the moment of someone else, and poetry is consumed less. But it is still out there, doing it’s best to capture the ephemeral.
Over the past few weeks, I have heard a couple dozen ideas.
All people have ideas.
What we need are more people that can materialize those ideas.
Michael's Musings 