Hmm, honestly not the best month for photos...

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

Most people don't realise that their beliefs about winter are subjective. They feel like they're just someone who hates the winter and there's nothing they can do about it... But once you put it in people's heads that mindsets exist, and that you have control over your mindset – I think that that's tremendously powerful.

As the days have been getting shorter I've been reminding myself to reset my framing - night time is also a time! A time where things can happen, conversations had, art made, loved ones canoodled etc.

I always think back to that one angry-at-having-to-move adolescent summer when I programmed myself to despise summer camp with "I hate everything about this place" becoming such a personal catchphrase that I startled myself when a random thought starting "Oh I hate..." auto-completed with the rest of the mantra.

Like I once said about a tendency to rage against being stuck in traffic: "Whether I'm furious about it and making myself angry or accepting of it, the traffic is still there. So why be furious? The only counter-example is if my rage now helps me avoid future bad traffic. But I could probably do that via rationality, not just gut level rage..."

Of course the ability to dispassionately connect varies from person to person, though I think practice helps. I don't know if the abilities I have to not let emotions roil is more like adult self-control or just low-grade depression or what not. (I know it has its roots from a time when keeping on the religious straight-and-narrow felt like the most overwhelmingly critical thing I could possibly be doing, at peril of my immortal soul.)
So glad to see the Poetry Unbound podcast is starting up another season. (One of the the few things I'm not tempted to put on 1.5x speed.) In each the poem is read, thoughtfully discussed, and then read again. The first episode of the new season, Ada Limón's "Wonder Woman" was moving.

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Myth is not something that's false; myth is something that's so true that we find fantastical ways to tell it.

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This ain't our fight, baby. We want no part of the war between the Boomers and the Millennials. We took our lumps as young people in the 80s and 90s, and now we're middle aged, most of us just living our lives, doing the best we can.

Besides, no one ever wanted our fuckin opinions anyway. Why ask now?

Plus, and this is the biggie, there aren't really that many of us, at least as compared to the two ginormous (and noisy -- oh, so very noisy) generations we're sandwiched between.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I believe I'll go watch Clerks and reminisce about the good old days.

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Thinking I should do an old game clear out (Wii/Wii U especially, also PS2, some other things) but it's really tough to let go!

It really runs into the muchness of the world. So many of these games, packing them up for selling is the last time I'll think about them. And I have a pipedream of like getting random young folkI know enthused about this stuff... but does that even matter? Is not being able to let them fire up "Rayman Raving Rabids" on Wii that big of a loss, wouldn't we find other things to do?

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Fail Faster. Follow the Fun.

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That quote from this video:

I'm proud of the little games I've made but sometimes I wish I had fleshed out more of them... most are just barely enough wrappers for playing with a lovely little mechanic.

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toys.alienbill.com/daylight/ - woke up too early this morning. Noticing how it was still dark inspired me to update one of my first infographics, plotting out sunrise/sunset over the course of a year. I added a new overlay showing how much the daylight shifted on a day to day basis, and could see how that around the solstices there isn't much change, but around now, near the equinox, the shift is pretty rapid. I think for me the worst part of procrastination is that idea of "well what if you get lean into it, get some things done, but stuff sucks anyway?"

Or: there's still that list of longer term projects you have that will still be there when you die! (Though, conversely, you could say that that since life is a process, that would be a good sign of ambition even into old age, not a bad fossil of failure...)

Definitely a bit of the best being the enemy of the good. (Along with that general fixed mindset concept that if you feel laziness had you leaving some in the tank, some potential untapped, you have a less certain view of your own limitations.)

Though sometimes I think I lean too much into this image, which I literally have framed near my workspace:

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For grins I keep around my Gen 1 iPhone. Found this photo on its camera roll from probably not too long ago...

I kind of like it somehow, Dean's "what the hell are you doing" look.