Once I was getting ready to leave my apartment and trying to remember what to bring. My friend said “phone-wallet-keys” like a single word and since then I’ve thought of them as the basic what to carry. I go for a walk every day, at least to pick up my daily pieces of litter, which also brings me to the park. I also sing with all my electronics turned off[…] Keep reading →

You might remember my writing about the needles I’d find in Washington Square Park last fall. I presumed they came from heroin users, though I don’t know what drugs people inject. You may have noticed I haven’t written about them for a while. Well, I’ve continued my sidcha of picking up at least three pieces of litter from the northwest corner of the park and the cannabis dealers have been[…] Keep reading →

This episode started talking about sidchas and the episode one of the hosts did on my podcast, involving biking in minus 40 degree weather, but the meat of it was what traps us online and to devices, which also traps us polluting: people design everything to make us want more. First they promote craving, then ways to mollify the craving but that recreate the craving. They try to addict us.[…] Keep reading →

After writing a dozen or so blog posts starting from 2008, on January 23, 2011 I wrote a post, Why I avoid proprietary software. I hadn’t posted the day before, but the next day I wrote Crowding out beats letting go. And I kept posting without missing a day until today, ten years later. As my friend who set up my WordPress blog said, “If you miss one day you[…] Keep reading →

Today begins my tenth year of daily burpees, not one day missed. My spreadsheet says I’ve done over 163,000 of them. I have yet to spend one penny doing them. Since I consider them something I do instead of TV, I’ve saved time doing them too. The activity continues to evolve in its meaning and value to me, always increasing, but mostly I think of them, along with the rest[…] Keep reading →

I’m pleased enough with the side effect of regularly meditating that I can sit in a full lotus position for an extended time that I don’t mind posting possibly the most boring video on the internet. After first meditating at a Vipassana retreat in 2007, starting with a ten-day no reading, writing, phone, etc experiment, I practiced irregularly but deeply, doing more 10-day, 5-day, 3-day, and 1-day retreats slightly less[…] Keep reading →

I happened to check: today is my 1,300th consecutive day picking up at least one piece of litter per day. It’s my dirty sidcha. I do it to develop leadership experience and skills to hasten the day when we view single-use packaging how we now view asbestos and leaded gasoline. Yes, you too will cringe at takeout and to go, now matter how much you relish it today. One day[…] Keep reading →

I can’t believe how much today’s ride tired me out. I’ll only post the high-level details before going to sleep. I recently got a new used bike—a touring bike designed to carry enough to go bike camping. The summer between high school and college, a friend and I rode from Philadelphia to Bar Harbor, Maine and back—about 1,500 miles. For years I used bikes as my main commuting vehicles, until[…] Keep reading →

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[…] Keep reading →