Awareness

How to stay not depressed when living not how society tells you to

Awareness / Habits / Nature / Tips

How to stay not depressed when living not how society tells you to

Living sustainably is easy. All humans did for most of human history. Animals do it. Living differently than everyone else can be hard, even when you live how they want. People push hard against people who remind them they aren't living by their values. Alison, the host of This Sustainable Life: Untethered, wrote to ask me how I handled the challenge around the time she wrote a post, The Diary Of An Addict, sharing the dawning of her of how much her life revolved around craving out of her control. She wrote: Have you heard of the Kubler Ross change curve? It outlines the emotional journey from starting a new project or change and the different phases that you inevitably go through. I feel like…

March 4, 2022

There is an ‘I’, it’s just not who you think it is.

Awareness / Perception

There is an ‘I’, it’s just not who you think it is.

Life poses two questions people have probably asked for thousands of years that I've seen zero progress in answering from any source: Why does reality exist?What is consciousness? Or, alternatively, why is there a sense of "me" or "I" that seems to exist outside reality? Regarding the first question, I can't imagine any way of finding an answer using the tools within reality. It's weird to ask or even conceive to ask "why is there anything?". But today I want to write about the second question. As far as I can tell, some time in the past, no humans existed and no consciousness existed. Some time farther back, no life existed, so I'm confident believing no consciousness like human consciousness existed. Somehow it came to…

January 31, 2022

Sustainability basics almost everyone gets backward, twisting them up inside.

Awareness / Hands on Practical Experience / My Favorite Posts / Nature / Perception / Pollution and Depletion

Sustainability basics almost everyone gets backward, twisting them up inside.

Things I've learned from experience: Apples taste sweeter than Ben and Jerry's, though not at first. Broccoli tastes better than Doritos, though not at first. Exercise feels better than heroin, though not at first. Not flying connects you with family more than flying, though not at first. Eating only local foods in season gives you more variety and connects you to more cuisines than foods flown in from anywhere, though not at first. Not flying teaches you more about other cultures and connects you with them than flying, though not at first. More electric cars pollute more than fewer cars, though not at first. More solar, wind, nuclear, and fusion doesn't mean less fossil fuels burned. Making a polluting system more efficient makes it pollute…

January 18, 2022

My peaceful eating sidcha for this month

Awareness / Exercises / SIDCHAs

My peaceful eating sidcha for this month

I've been avoiding things I devalue lately. After writing about the day after Thanksgiving, also known as Buy Nothing Day, I decided to strive to buy nothing but food that month and succeeded, if you don't disallow that I bought two things that I later returned. I'll write more about it when I eventually do buy something, as I'm still going. Next, I decided to avoid social media and news sites for January. Strictly speaking, I'm avoiding pages that refresh daily or faster, though allowing short-term checks for deliberate intent sometimes. I'll probably write more about it after the month ends. But I've done things like those sidchas before. A new one emerged from training a new host for a new branch of This Sustainable…

January 9, 2022

Ten years (3,652 consecutive days)

Awareness / Choosing/Decision-Making / Fitness / Freedom / Habits / SIDCHAs

Ten years (3,652 consecutive days)

I just finished my second set today of twice-daily burpee-based calisthenics. Normally, I do my second set in the evening, but since I started the habit on December 22, 2011 and today is December 21, 2021, today completes my first decade. I already finished my first decade of publishing blog posts, nearing 5,000. Here are all of them. 20 percent of the time has been on a single load of garbage. A third of that time I haven't flown. More than that fraction I've gotten up, made my bed, crossed the room, and turned off my alarm in under 60 seconds. Various other sidchas, though the burpee-based calisthenics is the most physically active and vigorous. Past Reflections What can I reflect? On past milestones I've…

December 21, 2021

Euphoria from food

Awareness / Creativity / Nature / Perception

Euphoria from food

I feel a euphoria when eating fresh fruits and vegetables, in particular my famous no-packaging vegan stews. It's subtle enough to miss if I'm talking to someone or listening to a podcast, but wonderful. I'd pick it over the high from things refined from plants like coca, poppy, etc since I can do it every day my whole life with no unwanted side effects. It gives me plenty of wanted ones, like eating to full every meal and having defined abs, despite congenital conditions that if I eat more calories than I burn or excrete, I put on weight and that I almost can't stop eating until I'm full. I suspect the feeling comes from the slow release of sugar and maybe fat. It would…

November 29, 2021

Buzzfeed’s privilege “calculator”: How I Did

Awareness / Perception

Buzzfeed’s privilege “calculator”: How I Did

Maybe you're one of the over four million people who have seen Buzzfeed's video illustrating how society affects us by having people step forward or backward based on their experience: https://youtu.be/hD5f8GuNuGQ I don't know what credence anyone gives the questionnaire, but I copied it from the YouTube page and answered it. Some answers I wasn't sure about, but tried to answer as honestly as I could. My Rating If I calculate right, my answers add to +2 out of a possible range -13 to +22. The average of those numbers is 4.5, so my score is below that average. Does this mean Buzzfeed considers me below average privilege? Or positive privilege? I don't know what the average score of people who have answered the questionnaire,…

November 21, 2021

On depression

On depression

First, I'm not depressed if you saw the title and felt worried. I'm taking a break from my usual topics because I read an article on depression that hypothesized it was a different state of consciousness, not just another emotion. I'm not sure what that definition means, but depressed people often describe depression as something you can't understand unless you're really, truly depressed. Blue But every description I've heard sounds like what I've experienced. I've felt profoundly depressed at times and mildly depressed many other times. I haven't felt meaningfully depressed in a while, but I've never lost the sense of what it feels like. Over the years, I've found ways to avoid it become too deep so it would be hard to get out…

November 17, 2021

Why do so many people lecture me on what it’s like to be a straight white male?

Awareness / Models / Nonjudgment

Why do so many people lecture me on what it’s like to be a straight white male?

Why do so many people lecture me on what it's like to be a straight white male, and why is what they say invariably unlike my life? Do they tell other people what they should be like due to their sexuality, skin color, and sex? Why do they presume to know so much about me and what motivates them to tell me about my life? Why do they tell me so much more than they ask me? Why do they imply a homogeneity among straight white males? Why do they seem to want me to agree with them that my life was how they said, not how I lived it than for them to broaden their views? Why not treat me as a unique person?…

October 21, 2021

Why does nearly everyone reject Gandhi’s advice?

Awareness / Choosing/Decision-Making / Leadership

Why does nearly everyone reject Gandhi’s advice?

Michael Jackson's song, Man in the Mirror, got stuck in my head: I'm starting with the man in the mirrorI'm asking him to change his waysAnd no message could have been any clearerIf you wanna make the world a better placeTake a look at yourself and then make a change It's clear: If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and then make a change. I know of nearly no one taking this advice. Everyone instead chooses to live by something like: if you want to make the world a better place, complain about what governments, corporations, and billionaires do and say what you do doesn't matter, so keep doing what causes the problem. I can understand dismissing…

October 17, 2021

The two biggest chips on my shoulder

Awareness / Nonjudgment

The two biggest chips on my shoulder

Since sharing my September 11 experience on the podcast, I lost $10 million on September 11, 2001. Here is what I learned from those who sacrificed and served, I've shared my story of loss with friends and family. As I have for twenty years, I hedged describing that loss with the context of those who died, those who volunteered to put themselves in harm's way with the intent to defend freedom (even if thwarted by their leaders), and their families. I shared that I was saved from dwelling on my sorrow by my need to pay my mortgage and eat. I had foregone most of my salary. Before Submedia, I lived on a graduate student stipend in Manhattan, meaning nearly no savings. I got a…

September 17, 2021

Clawing back: 4,951 meters in 20 minutes. 49 to go.

Awareness / Fitness / Habits / Stories

Clawing back: 4,951 meters in 20 minutes. 49 to go.

I exercise on a five-day rotation between lifting, resting, and cardio so months with 31 days give me an extra rest day to experiment. This time I decided to try to recapture my nearly five-year-old achievement of 5,000 meters in 20 minutes on the rowing machine, which means averaging 2:00/500m for 20 minutes. A well-trained man in his 20s or 30s could do it easily. A serious competitor might not count it as a warm-up. My turning 50 next month makes it a more serious goal, though many men older than me could do it easily. Still, a meaningful achievement. Before starting, I ate a light breakfast, went to the bathroom (several times, as a function of the fiber in my diet and my nerves),…

June 5, 2021

You Can’t Think More Complex Than Interruptions Allow

Awareness / Creativity

You Can’t Think More Complex Than Interruptions Allow

Talking to a friend about meditating, after I said something, he made me repeat it so he could write it down. He told me to post it. Here it is: If you get interrupted every nine minutes, you can't come up with an idea complex enough to require ten minutes uninterrupted thinking. In other words: If you get interrupted every nine minutes, you'll never come up with an idea that takes ten minutes thought. I may have posted the concept to this blog before, but it bears repeating. This concept applied to writing my book: Six periods of writing ten minutes each doesn't equal an hour of writing. I have to get into the right mindset, which may take twenty minutes. In that case.

March 28, 2021

3 Meditation Updates

Awareness / Fitness / Habits

3 Meditation Updates

About ten months in to meditating 20 minutes two days out of my five-day exercise cycle, a few updates. I last updated in November on my full lotus pose. Practice is making it more comfortable. Here's my post with the video of me in the pose. You may have noticed my sitting on a folded towel on a folded sheet. Here's me, about to sit on the folded towel on the folded sheet, from the video: You probably know I don't like creating demand for material stuff, so I've been checking Craigslist for months for a used meditation cushion at a reasonable price. At last, I found someone selling a cushion and pad for forty dollars, so more than a towel, but cheaper than new…

March 11, 2021

Why do we end sentences with “and stuff” and “or something”?

Awareness / Habits

Why do we end sentences with “and stuff” and “or something”?

Maybe from the podcasting, maybe from writing, maybe from my general interest in self-awareness and preferring to do things deliberately, not thoughtlessly. We all know about filler words and sounds like "umm," "like," "so," and "and." I'm not sure why we use them. Lately I've started trying to reduce them, which takes concentration, so therefore distracts from speaking and listening. I've been asking myself lately why we end sentence with "and stuff" and "or something." Have you noticed doing it or hearing others? I'm not just asking out of whimsy. I believe paying attention closely enough, we can sense ever more subtle motivations, which reveal more about ourselves. The more we can move from thoughtless reflex and reactivity to reflection and thought, the more we…

February 20, 2021

Is the best book on pollution and depletion a picture book you can finish in a sitting?

Art / Awareness / My Favorite Posts / Nature / Pollution and Depletion / Visualization

Is the best book on pollution and depletion a picture book you can finish in a sitting?

I've read a lot of books on nature. Most focus on facts, figures, and information that don't help. To the extent they provoke emotion, they do so heavyhandedly, lacking genuineness or authenticity. If you're explaining, you're losing, as a former U. S. President said, and most books on nature explain. I just finished a book, Over, which you can review online in its entirety for free. It's mostly a book of photographs. By aesthetic standards like composition, color, line, and form, the photographs are beautiful. Like many great works of art, it says something I knew but in a way I didn't know it could be said. It illuminates my understanding of myself, what human means, nature, beauty, and purpose-level parts of life. By measures…

February 3, 2021

The cruel misunderstanding of “poor today live like kings of yesterday”

Awareness / Relationships

The cruel misunderstanding of “poor today live like kings of yesterday”

You've heard the concept that poor people today, with cell phones, large TVs, computers, and so on live beyond the fantasies of kings. Here are a few headlines among many articles. Today's Poor Live Like Kings Compared to the Poor Just 100 Years AgoWe live like kings (opening sentence: "It suddenly occurred to me yesterday morning as I was getting dressed, listening to the radio, that we today live like kings did in olden times.")The poor in America live like kings by other country's standards. They talk about material possessions. Maybe medicine. You've also heard people suggest the exercise of what you'd want your gravestone to say or for people to say about you after you die. For all the joking that whoever dies with…

November 8, 2020

What do you think, feel, and do when you see an addicted person?

Awareness / Nonjudgment / Perception

What do you think, feel, and do when you see an addicted person?

I see more people in my neighborhood, especially my neighborhood park---Washington Square Park---addicted to I don't know what. My whole life, I've never been far from seeing addiction. I don't think I've known anyone uncontrollably addicted. Lately, in my daily picking up litter from the northwest corner of Washington Square Park, regulars there have started conversations with me. Our longest conversation lasted about thirty to forty-five minutes. One guy made a point to point out how many people there are at the end of their lines and that you can't imagine being there without having experienced. I don't know where the relationships will lead, if anywhere. What do you think when you see or talk to someone addicted to, say, heroin or crack? I don't…

October 24, 2020

Would you describe these abs as chiseled?

Awareness / Fitness / Habits / SIDCHAs

Would you describe these abs as chiseled?

Call me vain or unprofessional if you want, but I'm sharing the results of my recent decision to reach a fitness goal I've meant to work on for years, maybe decades. Call me self-obsessed if you want for how many words follow, but the journey has been for more enlightening, satisfying, and delicious than I expected. For context, as a child I felt ashamed enough from being teased for excess fat that I would wear a t-shirt at the beach and pool. In high school I started sports, though not seriously, but friends commented on my becoming more fit. In college and beyond I competed at the nationals and worlds level in ultimate Frisbee, a demanding and highly active sport. I loved competing and discovering…

September 2, 2020

2020 in 9 words: “Everybody wants to be heard and nobody is listening.”

2020 in 9 words: “Everybody wants to be heard and nobody is listening.”

The title says it all. The words came out in conversation the other day. As I said them, they seemed remarkably accurate and poignant. I searched on the words and found no results. Everybody wants to be heard and nobody is listening. People are saying, "we're all in this together," "how are you holding up," "stay safe," and other repetitive phrases, but to my mind, this phrase captures this moment. Maybe you see otherwise, but from reactions to the virus to George Floyd to the elections to Black Lives Matter to you name it, everyone seems to want to say something they consider important---often the final word on the matter, at least in their opinion---but no one seems to want to make others feel heard…

July 23, 2020

“Do men have emotions?”, she asked.

Awareness / Models / Perception / Relationships

“Do men have emotions?”, she asked.

I gave a book on men and how men experience the world to my girlfriend at the time, maybe five or ten years ago. After reading it, she asked me, "Do men have emotions?" Apparently she thought men didn't have emotions. In fact, she clarified, "I thought men just did things." I'm glad she asked if she didn't know. I was surprised she didn't. For context, she had graduated a top university and was preparing for graduate school, which she has since graduated from. She wasn't holed away in a monastery. You would have seen her as a regular person. The mind reels at what could have created this situation and its ramifications. For what created this situation, what about our educational system and culture…

July 18, 2020

Frederick Douglass: “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

Awareness / Freedom / Habits / Nature

Frederick Douglass: “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

I recently reread Frederick Douglass's What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?, which he delivered on July 5, 1852---a celebrated condemnation of slavery by a man born a slave when it was legal in this country. You'll do yourself a favor to read it if you haven't recently. Here's the passage where he turns the corner from praising the nation: I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. — The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to…

July 4, 2020

Signs of hope

Awareness / Leadership / Models / Nature

Signs of hope

Frankly, I don't see many signs of hope for us to handle the environment. Walking around my neighborhood, I'd say maybe 20 percent of people are wearing masks. Bars and restaurants are packing people within six feet of each other. Headlines about Texas, Florida, and Arizona show people's cavalier attitudes leading to opinion over nature. Still, here are a few signs of hope. Ozone: humanity banded together to ban CFCs. We took decades to do it, but who were the doomsayers who got it all wrong? Those who said we couldn't do it. CVS cigarettes: the chain chose to stop selling its most profitable product based on principle. Most criticized them, but they ended up succeeding. Again, the doomsayers who got it wrong were the…

June 25, 2020

My reflection on an exercise assigned me: Drinking a Hot Beverage Without Judgment

steam, rising, from, cup, hot, tea

Awareness / Exercises / Nonjudgment / Perception

My reflection on an exercise assigned me: Drinking a Hot Beverage Without Judgment

A friend recommended to me an exercise I hadn't heard of. It sounds like the Three Raisins exercise I learned from Jon Kabat-Zinn, included in my leadership book, and assign in my leadership class. She didn't explain much about it, but my experience with experiential exercises told me that doing it would reveal more than any explanation. The exercise The instructions: Drink a hot beverage and when I think judgmental thoughts like, "it's too hot" or "it's too strong", switch to thinking descriptive thoughts. The instructions didn't suggest much to expect, but it didn't look too hard either. I just finished the exercise. What I did Since I drink nearly only water, I didn't know what to drink. I went to the kitchen figuring I'd…

May 23, 2020

Science discovering “tastes good” versus “wanting more”

Audio / Awareness / Perception

Science discovering “tastes good” versus “wanting more”

Have you noticed the difference between something tasting good---that you like the sensation---versus wanting more---that it motivates you to eat more, though doesn't always taste good? If the nuance sounds foreign, I've written on it several times. I use it to illustrate the difference between craving and emotional reward. In my experience, the difference seems subtle until you get it. Then it's huge. Emotional reward improves life, craving enables others to control you, among other differences. Here are some of my posts on it: Tastes Good versus Want More, explored in depth "Want to eat more" and "tastes good" aren't the same feeling Examples of "tastes good" versus "want more" Avoid that addictive tug People study this difference. They usually use scientific terms, which I…

May 8, 2020

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