From78

Every day, there is so much stuff (books, podcasts, long-form articles and blog posts, films, audiobooks, comics, music, games, tv shows, etc.) I want to spend time absorbing. Every. Day.

But time and my attention are not unlimited. Both are finite.

So I’ve got to make choices about what gets the time and attention I don’t need to invest in work or parenting… I’m going to assume you (whoever you are) are experiencing your own version of this, and that you, too, are frustrated by it. This post is my attempt to express solidarity with you.

Hello Daystar,

I’ve been thinking about how I’d like to use the From78 site/blog. One possibility is to use it as a space to record different thoughts, feelings, moods, associations, vibes, hunches, and all the other stuff that makes up my headnoise at the start of a day.

Here are some loose suggestions (to myself) for how to make it happen.

• Don’t overthink it
• Keep it short
• Aim to do it daily, but if I miss a day, don’t worry about it

Today: It is the first day in more than a week that I have not woken up feeling sick. It is marvelous. Be that as it may, I don’t feel like I’ve returned to what I’d call “baseline.” While I don’t feel sick, I feel like I’ve been sick and am still recovering from having been sick.

I wanted to exercise, but I decided to hold off because I’m worried I’ll overdo it. What I want is to return to baseline, so I can start training and get more benefit from it than I will if I start before I’m ready… which would actually set me back.

I’m also looking at how many podcasts, RSS feeds, and newsletters I subscribe to, and honestly asking myself how many of them I actually read, rather than skim. Some things need to be cut.

BeforeI had kids, I would get annoyed at how people with kids reacted to cold and flu season.

Simply put: I thought they were treating a time of year when many people had to deal with an inconvenient transitory illness like a bigger deal than it was.

Today, I’ve got four kids, the oldest is close to seven and the youngest not much over one year old. And everyone in the house has a cold.

Not COVID, RSV, strep, or the flu. Just a cold.

Having a cold makes everything even the most mundane task of daily life (sleeping, moving, talking, etc.) go from things that I don’t need to think about to things that require noticeable mental and physical effort.

When it was just me who had to endure this rottenness, it was uncomfortable, but it was definitely bearable. This is probably why I thought that people with kids were overreacting to cold flu season before I had kids. I was was assuming that my subjective experience of discomfort and difficulties that are part of being sick were representative of what they would be going through.

Now, as I experience having to deal with

1. my own sickness induced discomfort and
2. how my kid’s sickness induced discomfort (which makes them act in ways that are not fun)

I realize how sawfly cold and flu season is for people with kids! Having to manage the discomfort of others makes my discomfort become far more uncomfortable.

It also makes me more aware of something I talk about in my podcast —how getting older (and more experienced) has made me far less judgmental than when I was young (and less experienced).

From the film Winter in Sokcho (2024) on Mubi.

Time is so cruel. It slips through your fingers like an eel.

Yeah!

When I read these words on the screen while watching the film (with English subtitles), I paused the movie to contemplate what they conveyed.

My reverie brought up thoughts about how, nowadays, I sometimes consider starting something and decide not to because I know I won’t have time to see it through to the end.

(Recent example: Starting a long book, trying to learn a new language, & cleaning out the storage room in my basement.)

I don’t think this happened to me when I was younger, or if it did, it didn’t happen as often as it does now. The reason for this: when I was young, I could honestly tell myself I had a lot more free time and a lot more tomorrows… Saying “I’ll do X later” or “I’ll get to X tomorrow” wasn’t necessarily a lie.

Now, experience has taught me that whenever I think I’ll get to something later or tomorrow, I quickly realize that’s probably not true. I recognize that sentiment as an appealing fiction, but a fiction nonetheless. I’ve come to really experience, acknowledge, and know that time slips through my fingers like an eel.

This morning, one of my four kids (he’s 5) said, “Today is a good day!” Immediately after he said this, the song Today by The Smashing Pumpkins started to play in my head, and I started to hum it as I made breakfast.

“What song are you humming, Dad?” Asked the oldest boy, he is close to 7.

I told him what it was.

“Can we listen to it?” He asked. I played it for him via Apple Music, and the next song that the algorithm put in the rotation was Pictures of You by The Cure.

The five year old listened to Robert Smith sing and said, “This is a beautiful song.”

In that moment, I felt lots of things.

Looking out the window at the cold slowly day outside brought up many memories of days like this when I was young.

The clearest memories were from when I was a student at a community college who would go to Borders Books, Misic, & Cafe to study… and (rather often) avoid studying by reading things that had nothing to do with my studies.

I found it interesting to notice/pay attention to what it felt like to remember these days from the past in my present.

What stood out was the feeling of wanting to be someplace warm, with a book, in close proximity to (but not talking to) other oeople.

This feeling that was invoked as I stood inside a warm place and looked out into a cold snowy outside, and it was the same feeling today as it was some 20 years (!) back.

The feeling is a bridge, a connection between me then and me now, between an affective experience then and now.