On going public. When the world — or your wife — serendipitously hears you talking to yourself and solving the world’s problems. Yes, everything is just fine.
Pull Quotes
- “…and fun fact I haven’t yet told [my wife] that I’m doing this podcast, right, she doesn’t know that I’m doing it, and so my voice is like ringing through the kitchen and I had to kinda turn it up loud because I was washing dishes as I was doing it and she comes in and I was like scrambling to pause it, like, oh no I don’t want her to know that I’m doing the podcast, and then it occurred to me: yeah I do. Yeah I do, you know, and one of the key concepts of the podcast that I was listening to, the episode draft, I guess, that I was listening to, was about serendipity and it was about necessity, obviously, this is the On Necessity series, like, why do you do what you do and and how do you know it’s necessary? Well, I know that this enterprise is necessary because it’s teaching me something.”
- “I am doing this podcast, this whole Right Mindfulness thing, because it’s who I am. And I’m doing it because I need to be myself out loud to the individuals in my life who matter to me, and that starts obviously with my spouse, my son, you know, and also with you who’s listening to this, right? That is a meaningful connection, too, and the idea that you, the individual out there – you, this other Creator out there, this other writer out there, this other mindful person, this other Mind – is out there, even if it’s just one other person, that’s important too.”
Rabbit Holes
- Joan Didion’s “On Keeping a Notebook” — that line about writing “entirely to find out what I’m thinking.” That’s what this [podcast] is. Notes-to-self, shared, extemporaneous, mostly unfiltered.
- Austin Kleon on serendipity — he’s got a whole archive on letting ideas collide.
- Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies — “Work at a different speed.” The whole deck is worth sitting with.
- Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak — on vocation as listening to your life rather than imposing your will on it.
- Thich Nhat Hanh on deep listening.
- And, oh by the way, what exactly is a connection through (and to?) a microphone? Hmm…