Focus on situations with change potential:
This approach requires serious commitment. Development requires time. The secret is to invest a few moments every day to maximize learning.”
Development First by David Peterson & Mary Dee Hicks
Not only a matter of having time to get things done, it’s also a matter of having the energy.
More closely your schedule of rest & activity corresponds to your natural peaks & valleys throughout the day, the more productive your many efforts will be.
Karl Benjamin (1957)
I will have no man in my boat,” said Starbuck, “who is not afraid of a whale.” By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
Chapter 26, Knights and Squires – Moby Dick by Herman Melville
There’s a sacred place at Almaden Quicksilver Park that few people know about. A hike there is refreshing to the soul, yet could be exhausting to the body.
It’s a fair trade.
The Adventure Begins – another year of living with the questions about life & work. What can done within the confines of 365 days which enlarges the lives of more than one person? Taking a day-long nap isn’t the answer, although at 5 AM that’s the first thought that occurs to me.
In 2022, it was 36 degrees outside in Northern California. This morning it’s 45 degrees. Dressed for comfort, I can see the stars at 6:30 AM while drinking my first cup of coffee – ah, the pleasure of that first sip.
All energy moves in waves & particles, but the ocean wave is the only wave the naked human eye can see. If time is the lesson willing to be learned, the wave is time’s expression. It comes again & again. It keeps saying, “Will you know me now?”
Life’s Work: A Memoir (2022) by David Milch
Today, in 2025, the moon is a waxing crescent, spiritually representing a time for new beginnings, setting intentions, and stepping towards a new goal. It symbolizes growth and potential, and is considered a phase for initiating action and building something bigger.
It has always been the individual who calls the group to a larger vision, who insists on compassion and fair play. When the goal of the group ceases to be the individual, that group goes into decline.”
The Sun Magazine
Time is the essence, time is the season, time ain’t no reason, got no time to slow. Burn out the day, burn out the night, I can’t see no reason to put up a fight. I’m livin’ for givin’ the devil his due.”
Blue Öyster Cult
Cells in embryos make their way across a steep “developmental landscape” to their eventual fate.
Embryonic cells continuously monitor their changing surroundings and make small corrective adjustments, optimizing as development proceeds, locking in on their planned identity relatively late.
Processing positional information makes genes variously switch on and off throughout the embryo, giving cells distinct identities based on their location. (Some cells unfortunately take the wrong paths and are unable to get back on track.)
All the information is there in the landscape and processing that information effectively may be the phenomenon that makes a bunch of loosely stuck-together atoms behave like the thing we call life.
Had I been like a man living in a wood from which he knows there is no exit, I could have lived; but I was like one lost in a wood who, horrified at having lost his way, rushes about wishing to find the road.”
-Leo Tolstoy
Chess skills are most helpful when you are playing chess. However, when you climb & jump on rocks, your entire brain & body are put to work.
The board & pieces are all the material, but the METAGAME dynamic is certainly a factor in competition. The Royal Game by Stefan Zweig is about losing the battle to a weaker player who uses a novel psychology.
That’s me at the board, on the right, maybe 20 years ago.