Updated: March 30th, 2025
We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through which no one else can take for us … The lives that you admire, the attitudes that seem noble to you are not the result of training at home by a father, or by masters at school, they have sprung from beginnings of a very different order, by reaction from the influence of everything evil or commonplace that prevailed round about them. They represent a struggle and a victory.
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
What I’m Reading
I have no idea why I have so many books going at one time but I’ve always been that way…
- In Search of Lost Time, vol. II–, Marcel Proust. Apparently this is the longest novel ever written and seldom do people actually finish the whole thing–challenge accepted.
- Collected Essays: Reflections on Self-Knowledge, Emotional Maturity & Calm, The School of Life
- We Who Wrestle with God, Jordan Peterson–I’m reading this one with my mom in sort of a book-study. We both wrestle with God. She believes, I don’t.
- I just finished Moby Dick for the third time and I’m thinking of reading (again) Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West, by Cormac McCarthy, so to compare the two. There’s lots of literary criticism comparing the two and I’d like to see that for myself.
- I’m also listening to several podcasts: Cultish by Amanda Montell, and Philosophy Talk.
- Lights On (audio book), Annaka Harris–this is a documentary of writing the book Consciousness and the follow up interviews and investigation into the “unknown corners of consciousness and the cosmos.”
Moved Into a 100-Year Old House
Projects, Projects, and more projects.
The house is livable and ready for entertaining at this point and we have already hosted a dinner party and a few overnight guests. Now we are working on … hmmm, what to call it?
Whatever you call it I’m learning I like to fix stuff and build shit.
- Kayak Racks
- Saw horses
- Workbench and shelving units
- Bookcases
- New deck?
- French drain?
- Landscaping
- Potting bench?
- Squat rack and bench press stand with attached shelving unit for kettle-bells, dumbbells and other equipment?
My Office
I finished painting. Next step is to ‘hack’ some IKEA “Billy” bookcases to look as if they are built-in shelf units. The rest of the ‘decoration’ I already own, I just need places to put it. Hence the bookshelves.
The “Sun Room”
Kathleen calls this room “Grande Soliel” (I call it the “nautical nap room” because I like puns. Big comfy furniture, artwork hung, a book shelf rearranged, knitting projects next to the chair… Eventually this room may get painted but the scheme will likely remain nautical. I think “haint blue” will end up on the ceiling in here.
Basement Workshop
Finished building a workbench and tool shelving unit. Got some new power tools. I’m designing a tool rack and battery center for them.
I built two saw horses and with those then built two kayak racks on the garage back wall using the wood from preexisting shelves I demoed.
I’ll build a base for my large miter saw next. something mobile that I can put on the work bench or saw horses. The saw has to sit lower than the two pieces of table that should be at the same level of the miter saw top. I found a design on line. should be easy enough to build. This of course will make the deck building that much easier.
Dinning Room
Painting, likely.
Living Room
Hung a new television. I’ll be painting at some point.
Landscaping and Exterior
I demolished the back deck and discovered two dead raccoons and the bones of others. I suspect the dead raccoons took the poison bait that put down over the winter. I also found a hole in the brick above the concrete basement/foundation. This is how the raccoons got under the floor all winter.
I could rebuild the deck (with synthetic lumber) but fixing the brick and foundation is outside my wheelhouse. I’m looking for a subcontractor.
We got some front porch furniture a miniature Japanese Maple, morning glory vines, and electric candles. It’s quite pleasant sitting out there in the evening with a glass of wine, or in the morning with a cup of coffee.
Major landscaping is going to have to wait, but some smaller projects I should be able to take care of in the fall. I need to lower the soil behind the garage so that it is lower than the garage foundation. This should prevent the leaking that occurred all last winter.
I want to move some plants around and expand the flower beds they are in.
There are numerous regional variations for the term ‘tree lawn’: a parkway, nature strip (Australia), a shoulder (United Kingdom), city grass, curb lawn, sidewalk buffer, and verge. It is also called a devil’s strip, parking strip, and planting strip. The ‘devil’s strip’, has an interesting origin–the phrase is found exclusively in northeastern Ohio, specifically in and around Akron–arising from the strip’s ambiguous status as a nebulous piece of land that falls between public and private property. The area is effectively rendered a no-man’s land, leading to it becoming known as the devil’s strip. Devil’s Strip also referred to the space between trains in the train yard that was so tight a man could not safely stand there when two trains were passing.
I’d like to plant some ground cover on the Devil’s strip, preferably flowering, that doesn’t require mowing. On the slope from the sidewalk up towards the house, maybe some creeping phlox (again something I don’t have to mow). The flatter area would be grass with a sandstone walkway for the mail-person (who walks across the front yard as a shortcut to using the sidewalk; rather than get mad about the trampled grass and dirt, give them a place to walk).
Then ground cover underneath the preexisting flower beds. I’d like to stick to natives and support pollinators.
Zettlekasten & ‘Second Brain’
I’ve processed through all of the papers, scraps, and notebooks brought over from my last job and years of self study, and through my more business-like files. Most of that went into the recycling bin or was shredded. A few scraps of information went into my zettlekasten and the rest end up in a digital archive (I’m switching from Evernote to the Apple Notes app; yes a future blog post will explain why and how).
Next step is to process all of my old common-place notebooks and review the books I was reading when I scribbled in those notebooks.
All of this processing will land in my zettelkasten on 4×6 cards, filed into my antique library card catalog (see “Writing a Book” below). As I process these books I’d like to write summaries like Derek Sivers.
That said, projects around the house have come to dominate my time. I need to get better at splitting my day–like a maker/manager schedule–with the realization of course that I can’t do ‘everything’ (see Four Thousand Weeks, by Oliver Burkeman).
An Atelic Activity
I’m taking “Basic Cooking Skills” at the Loretta Paganini School of Cooking, International Culinary Arts & Sciences Institute. I’ve taken Basic Skills 1, 2, and 3. I had to take a pause this summer but will restart this fall. There are 5 in the series. Each one is four three-hour classes per month. They also have several specialty classes–pastry, cocktails, bread baking… I’m having fun and that’s what counts.
The Centenarian Olympics
I am “de-trained.” I’m also retired from law enforcement–a group that suffers from higher rates of all-cause mortality, I think in part because they just stop. They are tired and worn out and what purpose is there NOW for training?
Enter Peter Attia and his centenarian decathlon. As outlined in Doctor Attia’s book Outlive, The Science and Art of Longevity, the centenarian decathlon is a frame work he uses to organize his patients’ physical aspirations for the later decades of their lives.
“Think of the Centenarian Decathlon as the ten most important physical tasks you will want to be able to do for the rest of your life. … I find it useful because it helps us visualize, with great precision, exactly what kind of fitness we need to build and maintain as we get older. It creates a template for our training.”
Peter Attia, MD
Time to stop talking about it and get started training for my version of the ‘Centenarian Decathlon.’ I need to line out my ten (or more) events and get to work on a training plan.
Regardless of the events the over-arcing mission is intentional, purposeful, deliberate, goal-driven training to optimize three physical fitness dimensions, highly correlated with longer ‘health-span’:
- Aerobic endurance and efficiency–for metabolic flexibility and maximum aerobic output,
- Optimal strength and power to weight ratio,
- Stability, balance, and coordination.
Update: We switched from our ‘fancy’ gym to the local YMCA, but what I really want to do is eliminate time and distance barriers by programming around my home-owned equipment. Running and the rowing machine for my aerobic endurance and efficiency, kettlebells and a sandbag for strength and power to weight ratio, and yoga and other movement practices for stability, balance, and coordination.
However. so that “I’m programming it” and “I’m preparing to” doesn’t become the never-ending excuse, I will return to the gym-five-days-a-week routine ASAP.
Writing a Book
To move in that direction I’ll be reviewing old “common placing” books, book marginations and my indices, and developing my (analog) zettelkasten of 4×6 cards into my antique library card catalog (thank you Kathleen).
A small confession: I’m an organizing junky. I have common placing books from 1995(?) which was a combination of travel journal, spiritual practices, and the notation of interesting stuff I read or learned or found. Problem is the accessibility of this information is near nil. So too are all the marginations and self-developed book indexes that I wrote but never processed. That’s a big backlog of lost learning and knowledge.
For these reasons I’m likely to be blogging about this process and my re-reading and research.
Coaching
I’m accepting new athletes. Go here for more information.
Like what you’re reading? Has this information been helpful or entertaining? It’s all free, of course, but if you feel moved to the point of spending money, I won’t stop you from clicking this PayPal donation button…
