Week 32, 2024
In light of that, is this outrage that you feel worth it?
Time to walk over to your 4K Weeks poster and fill in another square. Done?
You are the mountain.
The valley and the summit are you.
Everything you experience is within you. The successes and the failures don't exist outside of your mind. Act appropriately.
My friend John (the early reader of this email each week) mentioned that the tone of the emails lately had led him to believe I was suffering from the effects of The Misery Index.
Apparently 47.2 years old is the most miserable age across quite a few different cultures.
I am exactly 47.2 years old. I suppose the best way to cure what ails you is to focus on fixing what is ailing someone else... so thanks for being here and reading. It helps me feel like I am making a difference.
Enjoy the email this week. I appreciate you being here... I really do.
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Remarkable Weeks
Week 32 of 1898, Rudolf Diesel had the internal combustion engine, later known as the diesel engine, patented. He was 2,107.71 (40.42 yrs).
Week 32 of 1973, Lyndon B. Johnson enacted the Voting Rights Act, which bans voting discrimination against minority groups. He was 2,971.14 weeks old (56.98 yrs).
Week 32 of 2022, Katie Ledecky clinched the gold medal in the women's 400m freestyle with a record-breaking time of 3:56.46, setting a new world record at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. She was 1,011.86 weeks old (19.40 yrs).
This Week's Quote
Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does." -William James
And if it doesn't... you won't ever know anyway.
Seriously... You can't know if you have free will or if this is just all a marionette show... and likely, feeling like you have agency will make you feel better... and that's great!
People often sneer at the placebo effect... but it works! Take the sugar pill and feel better!
There is nothing wrong with feeling good, despite what you learned in parochial school.
If something is working for you, and not thwarting others, DO IT.
I choose to think that what I do and what I don't do matters. I choose to believe I have agency. It helps me sleep well at night and work hard in the morning. And that is fulfilling, so I am going to keep doing it.
It can be easy to get melancholy about the state of the world and your ability to make a difference. Especially when we are smack dab in the middle of a crisis era. The scope of the problems we face is overwhelming... So, focus on the work in front of you, and do your best at that.
And say to yourself... "I made a difference to that one!"
What I am Consuming This Week
Music... My wife recently suggested that I take a break on inputs.. suggesting that maybe more inputs weren't going to break the logjam in my mind... she was right. So this week, here is some music that I have been filling my ears with.
Willy Tea Taylor, "Chickamauga" A friend suggested Willy Tea to me sometime around 2018. I haven't listened to him in a few years, but I was thinking about civil unrest and civil war this week and this song popped into my head as a memory, so I dug it up and listened. I remembered that he wrote it after his nephew was all hyped up to join a branch of the service. From 30,000 feet it always looks like brother fighting brother.
Natalie Hemby, "Worn". Maybe it is being from the Midwestern US, where rusty farm implements abound, and barns are often still barely standing, but my soul vibrates on the same wavelength as this song. My favorite drill press, bandsaw and disc sander were all made in the 1940s. When I was a teen, I wondered at how my dad had sweaters from before I was born in his closet. I don't wonder that anymore.
Still the truest song ever written. Chills, every time.
What I am Thinking About This Week
I don't know how to share the fullness of this truth with you.
If I wanted to share a copy of this email with you, in a file, you would have exactly the same email as the one that I made the copy from.
The software that saved the file on my computer wouldn't change the meaning, and the software on yours wouldn't change the meaning either.
But that would just be the ones and zeros that represent the spacing of the pixels, that make up the letters, that make up the words, that make up the sentences, that are trying desperately to convey the thoughts.
The second you start using those words made out of ones and zeros and pixels, the meaning can change drastically depending on the version of software you are running on your squishy, wet brain computer.
Heck, I don't even know if you and I perceive orange as the same color, or if we just have the same name for objectively different visual experiences.
So how could I expect to be able to translate the full experiential meaning of something that I know to be true in the deepest parts of my belly?
When you think about it, as amazing a technology as they are, letters and words are often a piss poor way of sharing truths.
I am going to try to boil this down to as few a words as possible to reduce the possibility of a mis-translation. Are you ready? Here we go:
You can do it.
YOU can do it!
You CAN do it!
You can DO it!
You can do IT!
YOU CAN DO IT!
Seriously. You can do it.
I believe in you.
Have a great week!
Dad Joke O' The Week
It's a riddle this week:
A dog had three puppies. They were named Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.
What was the mom's name.
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