Note to self: When you find yourself reflecting unhappily about your job being helping make truck bed covers when you wish automobiles had never been invented, remember that these words of Paul were addressed to slaves: “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord” (Colossians 3:23). Whatever you do. And besides, DiamondBack is easily the best manufacturing company (and one of the best companies period) to work for in central Pennsylvania. Everything about working there pretty much couldn’t better.
An elaborated 1 John 2:15-16 with some eye toward Ecclesiastes 11:9: Have desires of the flesh, but do not love those desires. Have desires of the eyes, but do not love those desires. Possess things, but do not love the pride of possession or estate.
Have desires of the flesh. Have desires of the eyes. Possess things. But do so lightly. Instead of loving them, love YHWH your god, and love your neighbor as yourself. 🧘♂️
Note to self: Discretize everything. It will maximize concentration, keep you from hurrying, and keep you from losing sight of God. 🧘♂️
Circumvent Google’s default search results page—including its new, unwelcome AI results—and return to a simple list of blue links. 💻
I stand with carbohydrates. 🍞
Give and receive. Don’t take.
“You almost have to give your happiness up to accomplish your goals” (Mike Tyson).
Welp, that settles it: A single game of Civilization VI on its fastest speed (other than battle turns) took me 10.5 hours. I will never play it again.
Do what you’re doing. Don’t worry about the rest.
The first chapter of Judges is all about how most of the tribes of Israel failed to drive out the Canaanites and other non-Israelite peoples from their inherited land. It’s just like yesterday and Civilization VI.
Just be grateful.
You said it was a long-term plan. So why start now?
— Éa
Do not talk about your hard feelings after 9 PM. Maybe not even after 8 PM.
For the joy!
By which I mean to answer questions such as: Why do anything? Why work? Why make music?
Step one in any anti-racist agenda: Refuse to speak in terms of race. Skin color? Pigment? Melanin? Yes. But “‘[r]ace’ itself is just a restatement and retrenchment of the problem” (Ta-Nehisi Coates).
Air: the original social medium.
Living unanxiously mindful of your own certain death is probably salutary. Living unanxiously mindful of the certain death of those you love might be even more so.
Become love plankton.
On the subject of the solo satisfaction of biological and psychological drives (e.g., eating, masturbating, sightseeing): As long as they are not harmful and they are undertaken with thanksgiving, they are done in love, and are thus good.
I have decided to drop all items from my to-do list except those things which must be done.
In order for me to maximally productive at work, I have to be cutthroat with all non-work items. I have to forcefully box out distraction, daydreaming, and other (non-work) people and their agendas.
But that’s no way to live your home life!
Love in one’s home life means primarily the enjoyment of relationship with those around you and acting for others’ good by relating and enjoying and resting with them. Work is necessary in home life—and indeed, even for love’s sake it is necessary—but it isn’t primary. It serves the primary purpose of enjoyment. And besides, home life flows like water, it’s stochastic, it’s unpredictable, it’s got a bunch of other people and animals and neighbors and friends that can’t be controlled like one’s own attention can be controlled.
So I need to have two mindsets:
At home, I will not abandon my getting-things-done agendas, which are after all mostly built on love, but I will let the direct relational and enjoyment modes of love take precedence. I will go with the flow comprised of everybody else’s wishes and needs (and my own, for that matter—let’s not forget that rest and occasionally following one’s whim is important).
At work, since love in one’s job life is indeed primarily about productivity for the sake of the “family farm”—although not entirely (think of the joys of turning my attention 100% to others when they interrupt me!)—I will continue to hone that blade.
Telling someone they “have been” something is more empowering a way of truth-telling than telling them they “are” something. It leaves the future open for change.
My new motto is: “Live every day like it’s your last.” And no, that does not mean find a hospital, go there, find a room and lay down, eyes twitching…
— Sullivan
Carla: Are you a thinker or a feeler?
Scott: Well, the facile response would be: duh, I’m a thinker. But I tend to think I’m actually a feeler who is articulate. Just not about feelings.
“Don’t worry about the parts of the Bible you don’t understand. Obey the parts you do.”
— a Red Letter Wake Up email newsletter