An Unexpected Benefit of a Hip Replacement
One unexpected benefit of my left hip replacement (done last week) is it forced me to focus completely on my body. I had to think about every step I took, where I was going to sit, how I was going to stand, the food I was eating, drinking enough water, the clothes I...
Surgery, Wittgenstein, and the Joy of Deep Reading
As I write this post, I am post-op day 8 from my hip surgery, and I finally have the mental energy and sharpness to tackle some serious reading—Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, by Marie McGinn. This is in preparation to a one-day course at Oxford (via...
My Best Blog Post For March
My top March blog—or at least the most relevant March blog to me—is Stress, Creativity, And Neural Networks. In it, I discussed and referenced an article about how certain types of stress greatly diminish certain types of creativity. Well, this past week I had a hip...
On The True Value of Comedy
If you have a chance, rut around your attic and look through some of your old high school books. If you're fortunate, you will find an old dog-eared copy of Aristophanes’ play The Clouds. Reread this book and spend some time on considering the why behind Aristophanes’...
My Personal Covid Story
My direct, personal Covid story is rather dull. I am vaccinated and boosted, and due to my age and weight, I am in a moderately high-risk group. Unfortunately, the night before an important (but non-urgent) hip replacement, I received the results of a pre-op Covid...
How Not To Break a Long Blogging Streak
I nearly broke my +500 daily blogging streak today, believing I was unable to write due to my post-operative surgical fatigue. But then I realized—that is the post!
Risk and Simplicity
In the pre-op room, surgeons will sign the extremity they will be operating on to avoid the big mistake of operating on the contralateral (other, i.e. wrong!) extremity. In the photo above you can see is my surgeon’s signature just prior to a my left hip joint...
Curiosity, Rudeness, and My Emotional A-Game
If I’m on my “Emotional A-Game” and someone is rude to me (cuts me off in traffic, is condescending, has a mean twitter comment, etc), then I’m able to approach them with a curiosity mindset: Why are they rude to me?What did I do to contribute to this?How are they...
On Woo-Woo
Woo-woo is a term I’ve run across which I’ve heard people use about going over the top with a certain form of spirituality. I often see use it to describe writers and bloggers who refer to spiritual aspects of yoga, meditation, affirmations, prayer, muses, and the...
Reading is not Writing.
Reading is not writing. Both require sustained attention, both require skill with language, and both require an expenditure of intellectual energy. Yet even deep reading—with pencil and highlighter in hand, physically engaging with an article, poem, or book-—is mostly...