See you next year, working out the kinks in systems, Richard Feynman my nerd crush
Endings and Beginnings
I told my caregiver this week that I would see her next year. It's just a week away, but the stark transition from one time to the next is never more evident than what happens this weekend. The new year begins in just a few days. We make resolutions and wish everyone we meet a happy new year! "See you next week" does not cut it for a transition like this.
What is ending this year is our covid isolation at my house with a trip out of town. It's been so long that we can't grasp the scope of it. There is so much fun to be had out there with enough caution. We still wear a mask inside and in crowds. We might risk going to the movies again. Also, I am ending one phase of Crohn's treatment and beginning this next year with higher expectations. I have more good days and fewer off days, which is promising. I have enough juice to read more than a year ago and do more around the house.
What I am working on now.
I have been working on a digital note-taking app called Notion. It's a follow-up to reading Building a Second Brain. I use a paper notebook system, but the app is more useable long-term, especially for taking notes on what I am reading and projects with extended time scales. So I dove into the app version of a notebook this last month and started plugging in ideas and projects. So far, it is slow going, but I see the value in keeping up the digital app practice and learning from my early efforts as I build more projects. My big takeaway is that I can pick up on something right where I left off previously with the digital version—no lost effort in trying to start from scratch where I have already done the legwork.
What I am reading this week?
"Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman?" Adventures of a curious character| Richard P. Feynman
This week, I read a second Feynman book for the year. I read a book about him earlier this year. This week I got the goods straight from the source. This is a biography. He is a curious character. He tells a story from his childhood. He loved to play with radios, as did I. I remember the crystal set and old black and white TVs I loved to play with as he describes his radio exploits. He had a side hustle fixing radios for people who could not believe he fixed things just by thinking about them. So I related to him firmly just on that. He had a radio that could pick up a distant station that played the same show as his local station only an hour earlier. It gave him clairvoyance that his family could not figure out.
The book is full of similar stories, from playing drums for a San Francisco ballet troupe to driving a mobster around to meet show girls in Los Vegas. When Richard tried to fess up and tell the truth about wholly was, he got crickets. No one believed he was a scientist who worked on the bomb and taught at a university. Another story I related to and loved was when he decided to give up living and teaching at a cold eastern school and take a position teaching in Pasadena. He made a point never to consider moving and did not entertain offers to avoid taking a better deal and giving up CalTech. When I decided I had had enough of the cold and rain of Seattle for Los Angeles, I can not imagine wanting to move anywhere else, having enjoyed every bit of living in Los Angeles. So I related very strongly with Feynman yet again. It's a total nerd crush.
I am sharing a note from my James Clear News Letter posted last week.
Poet Donald Hall on the importance of ambition in poetry (and in life):
"I see no reason to spend your life writing poems unless your goal is to write great poems. An ambitious project—but sensible, I think. ... If our goal is to write poetry, the only way we are likely to be any good is to try to be as great as the best."
Source: Poetry and Ambition