Today is special—I have it off. It’s my first day off in months, and so far I’ve celebrated by enjoying a beautiful mid‐autumn afternoon walk through my neighbourhood to look at all the many colours of the leaves up in the trees and to listen to the swooshing and crunching underfoot of the ones down on the ground—so that’s why leaves are leaves, because trees stay.
I have the day off today because tomorrow I’ll be getting up even before the crack of dawn to go out on delivery with one of the drivers from work—it’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while now, and that’s see what it’s like on the other side of the pack, what the drivers encounter when they are making deliveries, and how what the pack team does the night before plays out for the drivers the next morning. It’s a fact‐finding mission, and I love those. They’re so… logistical.
It’s strange for me to be up and about during the day. The city is so busy by comparison to how I’ve been seeing it since spring time—and that’s mostly at night. The long autumn shadows are here. Light is changing colour. Winter is coming—one of my favourite seasons. A lot of people complain about it, and I find it strange as this is a country known around the world as a winter place. I used to be upset to hear all the negativity about winter—and I get it: cold, snow, slush, grey, darkness, it’s all there, and it’s all unpleasant, but to me it’s all the more reason to find the beauty of the season, to find those moments of perfection—the sound of a cold night, the shape and sparkle of a snowdrift, the warmth of the right coat.
After my walk I find myself back at my place with the rest of the afternoon and evening before me, the only constraint on my time being the early night I’ll need to have to be up at 5AM tomorrow morning—I don’t have to do anything, and suddenly I get why some people cannot stand the idea of not working or doing something. It’s intimidating. It’s easy to not do something when you don’t have the time. It’s actually the easiest thing in the world, to be busy that is. It’s a comfy little cocoon of rational—can’t do it! Too busy! But time to try, to attempt, to fail or succeed—terrifying.
Yet this is exactly where I wanted to be, in a place where I had some time to spend with my own personal projects. My bills are paid. There’s food in the fridge. And I’m even making some small progress in paying off debt. Fantastic, right? Yes—literally fantastic, i.e. ducking terrifying.
You’re accustomed to not having the time to succeed—you’ve been too busy surviving… But it’s okay now. You’re okay. You’ve worked hard, so now you get to be okay. And you can be more than okay—just get through the terror of it all, of looking down at the scribbles of notes in piles and having them start to make sense. You don’t have to think anymore. Just do. Take the picture. Write the words.
Our progress is limited by our ability to dispose of our waste. I'm not sure on the numbers for it all just yet, but what it boils down to is we might be able to get on with things if we stopped making so much shit.
There’s more on that page.
Why are some keyboard shortcuts the same across some applications but not others?
Why indeed—Keep going. What’s on the back of the page?
It’s a recipe for a peameal bacon split pea soup.
Yum… Write it.
But I…
Write it!
Soak overnight two cups of dried yellow split peas in six cups of water. Discard soaking water, place peas in a large pot, cover with an inch or so of fresh water, place on medium heat, and cover. Rough chop a large sweet onion, a few celery stalks, and a couple of carrots. Sweat each in a skillet with avocado oil on medium heat and add to pot of now lightly simmering split peas. Add half a bulb of chopped garlic. Then add two to three diced potatoes. Cube one to one and a half pounds of peameal bacon and fry until just about done, then add to soup, including all drippings. Bring to a rapid simmer (do not ever boil soup) and reduce heat, uncover, and stir occasionally. Soup is finished when the split peas begin to break apart as you stir. Remove one third of soup from the pot and purée remaining soup with an immersion blender. Return removed soup to pot. And add salt and pepper to taste.
Sounds delicious. Now—scrap the page. Recycle or shred or burn it. Object impermanence! On to the next page…
It's always the same shit.
Defeatist rhetoric—and unoriginal. Trash it. Next!
This is a list of the Skype accounts I can remember using.
Fascinating. Do you use Skype now?
No—I know. Trash…
What else?
People try to change the properties of light all the time—what would it feel like, for example, to be a reflection?
Curious.
It all goes on like this—little notes about bigness.
Navigate concepts in language like objects in spacetime.
See—endless…
But you’ve started. It’s less endless now.