I’m loving my daily stoic clarity book (it’s amazing) to be able to pick up a chapter each day and get a few takeaways from it is awesome. Gives me a few words to hook my mind onto instead of being on free fall for hours until things seems to ‘set’ —- I’ve found this super productive to align with my work, it’s like a textual coffee for the mind.
- desires and aversions
- impulses - to act and not to act
- judgement & perception (freedom)
. … for strong emotions arise only when we fail in our desires and aversions! — Epictetus, discourses, 3.2.1-3a
I think this Epictetus character had too much time on his hands.
I mean fair play Epictetus for getting it all worked out and realising the good stuff revolves around the passion side of things — in the modern day I’d call this the distraction economy, it’s so damn easy to fall into that and then you get get carried along like a fast running river.
It can be so overwhelming to be informed ‘up to the minute’ take the news about Kobe yesterday, a tragic situation, news reporting it before the next of kin could be informed. That’s news i guess, the first place to break that news — As a father it was double upsetting that his daughter also tragically past away.
I read the lines of the text that hit me the most that a wife had lost a husband and a daughter, her siblings lost a father and a sister, everyone impacted in different ways in a blink of an eye. He was 41, his daughter 13 i believe — in some kind of weird way i feel at least they are together wherever the afterlife might be for you.
The clarity that the book and January is brining has certainly elevated what’s important to be front and centre. It’s easy to get caught up with those desires and aversions but the good stuff is your family and loved ones, the ones that understand you, love you no matter what — don’t forget to tell them every single day that you love them, hug them extra tight each time.
The second one, impulses, to act or not to act i feel I’m getting much better at, as part of the better eating and fasting it’s made me more respectful of time and food in general — it was a massive realisation how food impacted my energy levels, battling with desire is an important facet of finding balance.
Finally, judgement and perception are taking the most work, probably will always be a work in progress — but it’s absolutely connected with passion in the first instance. If i don’t have passion to be with some one, passion to learn and adapt to my environment then my own judgement and perceptions can get jaded fast.
I’ve found the best way to not wallow or dwell is to keep pushing forward, not headless or stateless but instead build on mistakes and re-tool quickly, don’t let desires seep in and make you believe that you can take a shortcut — it’s always gonna be a TIME SERVED thing that makes you feel the achievement more fully.
I’m very happy with a bunch of platforms this last month or so, growth across all the places I’ve been putting work into — having a better release plan, improving the content to be specific to the platform, daily regular release plan and just generally end to end output.
Automation has been a big part of that, not just to gather/gain audience but to also remind myself what’s gone out, when you post to a number of places you kinda keep this mental log of what’s going on — I find once i jettison that and trust in the tools to push that output it’s easily to circle back around and add context to something that’s existing.
I’m looking forward to seeing pepo build in a few more tools, so that videos can be viewable by the web is gonna be a big one and i can’t wait for the camera change to be able to pause/flip and stuff — that’s gonna make creativity much better in the app, add a little bit of pep to video making!
Alrighty, time to jump back in, every moment, every day precious. Hope you are getting the most out of your time. Remember, wash them hands, avoid high traffic areas, face mask even, eat clean, head for the hills every once in a while, surround yourself with nature!
Peace!
__humble x
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