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I’m currently writing this in my garden, which is the sort of place that causes people to go slack-jawed and slow down as they walk through. I garden a lot. I pull weeds on my way inside and throw them in a little basket next to the door. I harvest plants from my raised bed and make lunches from them.
I pause for lunch every day. I make lunch every other Thursday for anybody who wants to show up. I’m sitting under a 12-foot-tall serviceberry bush right now, and in a couple of weeks its fruit will start to ripen, at which point I’ll be swatting squirrels & birds away as I pick the thing clean. Then I’ll make jam with it, jar it for my close people, and hand the jars out exclusively at my biggest party of the year, which is on the second Saturday of July.
I take multiple days off to cook for that party. Also, I work about 25 hours a week on a busy week.
All of this is to say that the business is going well. It’s not going well because the business is making money, although it is absolutely doing that. It’s not going well because the business is getting impact, although we just got 30% and 70% conversion bumps for our two biggest clients. It’s going well because all of that is happening and I have a lot of discretionary time, with the sun shining, enjoying the rest of my life.
The general energy is loud right now, so it becomes that much more important to protect your field. Distractions happen, of course, but generally speaking you should get deeply intentional & focused on what you are doing, and why you must do it.
What matters to you? What specific outcomes do you wish to create in the world? In what specific ways are you focusing your attention on what matters to you? In what specific ways are you correctly defending your time in this moment? What are you generously saying “no” to as an act of self-love?
More fun stuff I’ve read
And now links.
- I enjoyed this piece on machine learning: a rare one that is both universally correct and measured in its response.
- Kyla Scanlon, our nation’s paper of record, calling it.
- Notes on recovering virtue during the current apocalypse.
- Quality decline in the discourse.
- Pavel Samsonov, the only other remaining designer, on your principles’ relationship to the sacred practice of fun ruining
That’s it for this week. Be well, take care of one another.
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