“Thomas Jefferson went through the New Testament and removed all the miracles, leaving only the teachings. Take a source, extract what appeals to you, discard the rest. Such an act of editorship is bound to reflect something of the individual doing the editing: a plaster cast of an aesthetic—not the actual thing, but the imprint of it.”

– David Shields, Reality Hunger

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“Reading is an adventure…

Yet as we travel deeper into the strange world of the story, the feeling we get is of being understood – which is odd when you think about it, because at school learning is based on whether or not we understand what we are reading. In fact it is the story (or the poem) that is understanding us. Books read us back to ourselves. And one of the things the story teaches us is this: Read yourself as a fiction as well as a fact…

The escape into another story reminds us that we too are another story. Not caught, not confined, not predestined, not only one gender or passion. Learning to read yourself as a fiction as well as a fact is liberating – it is the difference between energy and mass. Mass is the beloved object – the world we can touch and feel – but mass is also the dead weight in ourselves and others. Shifting the dead weight takes energy but at its atomic core the dead weight is energy. Transforming mass into energy, energy into mass is what creative work is about. An idea becomes embodied. A tragedy is released.”

– Jeanette Winterson, Introduction to Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

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There are no rules to how we should read.

If someone has published their ideas we have no obligation to use everything.

There is freedom in skipping pages and ignoring what we find reductive.

By having an open mind and confident editing, all books can be useful.

I have my own agenda when I read.

To better understand myself.

Everything I read becomes a fuel to energise me.

Now this post has been published it’s not my possession anymore.

Feel free to extract, discard or completely ignore.

This could be the energy you need.

Or not.

“Psychiatrist Alexander Niculescu sees depression as a survival instinct to conserve resources in an environment void of hope—“to keep still and stay out of harm’s way,” he wrote in a 2005 article in Genome Biology. It’s a form of hibernation: When the emotional landscape turns wintry, our neurobiology tells us to stay inside. Except that it can last much longer than a season. It’s as if our entire being has said, there’s nothing out there for me, so I may as well quit.”

– Dr John J. Ratey, Spark!

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“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work—as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for—the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?” —But it’s nicer here.… So you were born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?”

– Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (translated by Gregory Hays)

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Some days the yearning to withdraw and stay under the covers is great.

But getting up prevails over inertia.

Yet the yearning can last all day.

The safety and warmth and solitude of bed.

The splendid isolation from others.

Ignorance of responsibilities.

Fed by, and in turn feeding depression.

Like an ouroboros – the mythical snake that devours it’s own tail.

A perpetual cycle of doom and gloom.

Getting out of bed breaks the cycle.

Getting to work requires movement.

I have to tell myself to get that serpent tail out of my mouth.

It’s difficult to speak with my mouth full.

But I still have the choice to get moving.

“There are few treasures of more lasting worth than the experience of a way of life that is in itself wholly satisfying. Such, after all, are the only possessions of which no fate, no cosmic catastrophe can deprive us; nothing can alter the fact, if for one moment in eternity, however brief, we have really lived.”

– Eric Shipton, Upon That Mountain

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“Every man dies, not every man really lives.”

– William Wallace, Braveheart (screenplay by Randall Wallace).

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The above quote was on a poster for the film Braveheart, blu-tacked to the wall of my teenage bedroom.

I can’t say that I rededicated myself to a life of purpose every time I passed it.

But it has remained in my mind as a mantra that returns from time to time.

How do we define really living for ourselves?

Of course, it will be different for everyone.

That sense of freedom, or flow, or joy.

Creating every day is one way I have found to really live.

Writing and expressing and sharing.

Thinking on the page (or screen).

I’m not prepared to die for my words.

But by sharing my inspirations and influences I am re- energised.

I have the treasure of satisfaction.

“It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do.”

– Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried

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“The weirdest thing about a mind is that you can have the most intense things going on in there but no one else can see them. The world shrugs.”

– Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

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We are walking systems which carry around hardware and software.

We get default programming from our genes and environment.

It’s left mostly to us as individuals to indentify if there’s something wrong.

We can learn and tinker under the hood.

We carry around so much.

It’s important to figure out our own way of carrying it all around.

No one can help us, unless we ask.

Sometimes that’s the hardest thing in the world.

Moving, keep on moving,
Where I feel I’m home again,
And when it’s over,
I’ll see you again

– Supergrass, Moving

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“A sense of purpose doesn’t come from thinking about it. It comes from taking action that moves you toward the future. The moment you do this, you activate a force more powerful than the desire to avoid pain. We call this the “Force of Forward Motion.””

– Phil Stutz and Barry Michels, The Tools

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Some days when you feel flat or depressed, just moving the pen across the page is all you need.

It can be like dragging yourself along by your fingernails.

Keep in contact with the ground and keep yourself moving forward.

The pen moves you forward even if it is just scratch by bloody scratch.

In the movement, purpose re-emerges.

You find yourself again.

And keep on moving.

“He told me that he was working on a book he would call Conversations with Quotations. “If you ever come to my room you’ll see. I have just an enormous number of cards. All my life I used to write down anything that I wanted to remember. So I have got a thousand or maybe two thousand quotations. And every time, after that quotation, I am going to talk to that man.””

– Tom Bethell, Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman Philosopher

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“Every artist gets asked the question,

“Where do you get your ideas?”

The honest artist answers,

“I steal them.”

How does an artist look at the world?

First, you figure out what’s worth stealing, then you move on to the next thing.

That’s about all there is to it.

When you look at the world this way, you stop worrying about what’s “good” and what’s “bad”—there’s only stuff worth stealing, and stuff that’s not worth stealing.

Everything is up for grabs. If you don’t find something worth stealing today, you might find it worth stealing tomorrow or a month or a year from now.”

– Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist

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I stole the name of my blog from Eric Hoffer.

I love his idea.

He can no longer use the title.

An idea that cannot be used is a waste.

I hope I honour him with my own humble effort.

I am carrying on the conversation with Mr Hoffer.

Thankyou sir.

“A lot of people I’ve talked to seemed surprised that I’ve kept all these notes.

I don’t understand why they think that.

I don’t understand why I’ve kept anything else.

What could possibly be of more value?”

– Jerry Seinfeld, Is This Anything?

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“Every student should put down in some form or other his findings. All any man can hope to do is to add his fragment to the whole. No man can be final, but he can record his progress, and whatever he records is so much done in the thrashing out of the whole thing. What he leaves is so much for others to use as stones to step on or stones to avoid.”

– Robert Henri, The Art Spirit

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By writing and recording we remain students.

It is proof of our progress and existence.

Evidence that we have created, reflected and shared.

We have connected with those who came before.

We reach out to those following behind.

Let’s join hands…

“One of the things I always tried to coach myself on was not being afraid to fail. When you have something that doesn’t work out, a lot of times, people’s reaction is to get very protective about never wanting to fall on their face again. I think that’s a big mistake, because you never achieve what you want without falling on your face a few times in the process of getting there.”

– Steve Jobs, Make Something Wonderful

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“Alex Ferguson was once asked why he always ignored the press’s advice. He said: “I’d rather be hanged for my own mistakes than for someone else’s.””

– Dave Trott, The Power of Ignorance

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You can’t trip over when you are standing still.

Failure is simply evidence that you are moving.

Movement equals life.

So failure is proof that you are still alive and trying.

If you trip over then it’s quite simple to stand back up again and keep moving.

It might be embarrassing.

Better to be embarrassed for our own choices than caught on the floor because we were blindly following someone else.

“Traveling over the oceans and spending time overseas demands a bit of thought and discipline. Experience helps—you only want to forget key things once. Never is better, but I promise you the pain of omission makes the teaching permanent. I want to share the basics. I don’t have a cure for jet lag or stock in any of the companies I recommend, but I have ideas that work.”

– Dan John, Attempts

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“Don’t waste your time until you have something to say…. nothing to say other to discuss his or her level of ignorance… but you don’t have wisdom to impart.”

⁃ Howard Marks, How I Write Podcast, 21/02/24

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Howard Marks is saying don’t give advice until you’ve been doing something for decades.

Listen to the advice of people who have actual experience.

Remind yourself that you are in fact not an expert.

I can still share my experiences.

But my experience is not extensive.

Acknowledge that.

Be humble, keep writing, but give it ten years before you offer any definitive writing advice.

I am talking to myself here.

I write my ideas.

Unlike Dan John, I can’t say for sure that they work.

“Chefs submit to critique As a system of ongoing education dedicated to becoming better at one’s craft, inspect and correct requires humility, a commitment to submission. The chef submits to her responsibility to teach the cook. The cook submits to the wisdom and guidance of the chef. The cook submits to her own discipline and to honing her own processes. The chef submits to maintaining a balance between her own instincts and the wisdom and guidance of the customers and critics. And both the chef and cook submit to the fact that this submission never ends.”

– Dan Charnas, Work Clean

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“Muad’Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult, Muad’Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson.”

– Frank Herbert, Dune

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If we reframe every experience as a learning experience then nothing is wasted.

We can never know everything.

There are always people who know more about something than we do.

Learning, as Dan Charnas writes, requires submission.

We need to submit to a system of learning.

The system is circular, there is no beginning nor end.

We always have the option to ask a question.

Why did that fail?

How did you do that?

What do I need to do to improve?

If we chose to submit to learn, we need to trust in ourselves.

Trust that we can find an answer.

And that the true joy is in the journey to get there.