This is the Long Version, episode 014 : Micro-musings
Hello, readers and listeners,
Thank you! It’s been a couple months since my last podcast, and I see that some have been busy listening to past episodes. Coming up on the one-year mark and this is number 14. My intent originally was to aim for a couple episodes a month, and that hasn’t happened. So this episode is really about two things:
00:00:00 Introduction.
In which I acknowledge the gap between episodes and address the challenge of starting something up again, versus starting something fresh. Also, I weave in some stuff about the importance of micro-conversations, an anonymous favourite person of mine, and the difference between being first and being best.
Also, I talk about the challenge of being an Artist, which means having enough singular confidence to believe that what you have benefits the world in ways that can be difficult to measure, and the challenge of being a Parent or Teacher, which means having enough humility to believe that you must pass along the very best of your knowledge, skills, experience, and character to those who will likely surpass you - if you do your job well.
00:10:50 Micro-musings
These are partially-formed thoughts and ideas about life. Here is a sampling below:
If you’re on a really tight budget, then one idea that sometimes works is to buy a house on top of a mountain, and then spend a couple years carefully cultivating a strong relationship with a neighbor who has a flatbed truck and ramp, and when the moment seems right, you ask her if she’d be willing to load your car up every evening on the way up the mountain so you don’t have to pay for gas, and then the next morning you coast down in neutral, and then voila, evening rolls around and you’re all set and your gas bill is way better. Cycle continues. Tip: have your neighbor sign a contract committing to the plan for at least seven years. Win-win: you save money and she has a good friend for life. Or seven years.
I was thinking of inventing a reversible plate that you only have to wash half as many times. But then people would expect me to do the same thing with bowls, and that would super stress me out cause that’s like the holy grail of reversible dishes.
Many young children are scared of the dark, and sometimes it can be helpful to remind them that there’s nothing to be scared of, as long as there’s no giant hairy monsters with horns outside the window waiting for the right opportunity to attack, which is fairly improbable but not impossible given the work being done in cross-species gene manipulation, and this is a great intro into talking about statistics and probability, which a lot of kids seem to find helpful in talking about before bedtime. Also, I’m writing a collection of fairy tales, if anybody’s interested in purchasing for their children.
Everybody thinks submarines are so dumb, but to me they’re honestly like the spaceships of the ocean.
If you ever get concerned about all the molehills running rampant in your yard, then just stop, take a deep breath, and think about all the chemicals in the air that you probably just inhaled. Those are probably a bigger deal than molehills.
If you’re riding your bicycle, naked, and it’s super foggy out, then be really careful.
If your child asks if they can have ice cream before bedtime and you don’t want them to, a good compromise is to tell them that one of you will be eating ice cream after they go to bed, and that way they can practice being happy when good things happen to other people, which is a valuable lesson to learn, and way better than a big bowl of ice cream like the one you’re going to have. So the reality is that the kid wins that round. But at least you have ice cream.
If you’re on a tight budget and think it would be cheaper to amputate a foot so you could start buying just one sock at a time, then good for you for thinking creatively! You never know if something is a good idea until you try it.
A lot of people think it would be cool to have transparent pipes that ran along the interior walls so you could see the beauty of modern plumbing in action, but to be honest, I partially disagree.
I bet whoever invented the monocle is like a patron saint in the elderly cyclops community.
I have to agree with everyone: ostriches really are the tubas of the bird world.
Everyone thinks that mugs should have two handles, but personally I think one is sufficient most of the time.
It’s really sad to think of all the stories and books that could have been written if we had invented another letter of the alphabet.
00:28:58 The End.
Thanks for listening, and thank you to Jeremy M. Long, as always, for answering my questions about audio stuff!
Until next, love y’all.
Joseph.
