Daily Log Digest – Week 51, 2024

2024-12-22

Meditations with Mortals Day Twenty Four

This chapter is titled Scruffy hospitality: On finding connection in the flaws

To put on an impressive show for visitors is to erect a facade, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that: some of us love the challenge of creating the most enchanting one we can. But the idea that such a facade is mandatory, if visitors are to be admitted to your life, must arise from the assumption that there’s something incomplete or inadequate about your life the rest of the time. Since your visitors’ home is presumably likewise usually a mess, it might even imply there’s something wrong with their lives, too. No wonder calling off the whole performance forges a deeper bond. The moment I first see a friend’s chaotic kitchen is like the moment in a blooper reel when two actors can’t help breaking character and collapsing in laughter. Nominally, it shouldn’t be happening, but it always feels delightfully real when it does.

2024-12-23

Christmas break day 1. Was out the whole day. Went to Thom's Bakery, church hopped to check out the decorations. Also ended up checking out this coffee shop called 6oz coffee in Ulsoor.

2024-12-24

Christmas Break Day 2.

Meditations for Mortals Day Twenty Five

This chapter is titled You can’t hoard life: On letting the moments pass.

Among spiritual traditions, Buddhism is uniquely insightful when it comes to this specific form of suffering – how we make ourselves more miserable than necessary, not just by railing against negative experiences we’re having, or craving experiences we aren’t having, but by trying too hard to hold on to good things that are happening exactly as we wanted them to. That’s what’s going on whenever you fail to savor a moment in nature, or with a newborn, or while eating an exceptional meal, because you’re too focused on trying to savor it, or somehow extend it into the future. It’s also what happens when you’re too busy attempting to ‘make memories’ from an experience so as to be able to reflect upon it later – or, worse, to post pictures on social media. Another version of the same phenomenon occurs when you reach the end of a day on which you’ve been unusually successful in getting your work done, or sticking to your fitness routine, but then instead of thinking ‘What a great day!’ and luxuriating in your achievement, you find yourself thinking: ‘Yes! Now that’s the kind of day I’m aiming for, and now it’s my job to make sure that this is merely the first of many such days to come!’ Congratulations: you turned a potential source of easy delight into a cause of further stress.

…

Perhaps all anxiety,’ writes Sarah Manguso, ‘might derive from a fixation on moments – an inability to accept life as ongoing.’ Our attempt to grip on to fleeting experiences expresses the desire to store them up, use them for future purposes, freeze time in its tracks, or in some other way to resist the truth that this is it. And yet it follows from our finitude that the value of anything good that’s happening now has to lie, at least in part, in our experience of it as it occurs, rather than in how we might co-opt it into our long-term project of trying to feel less finite. When I say I’d like to look out over the valley every morning ‘forever,’ I’m denying my finitude in a rather obvious way, because even if I were never to move house again and to live to the age of 130, there’d be no ‘forever’ about it. That would just be a few more decades of morning coffees, a less-than-invisible speck of time against the backdrop of the eons. All my clenching and grasping would have done precisely nothing to render the experience permanent.

2024-12-25

Christmas Break Day 3. Caught up on the last two episodes of Dune Prophecy S2, and generally just chilled all day.

2024-12-26

I am supposed to start grinding on stuff today, but I have visitors coming so might not be able to fully lock in.

The Bookshop Woman

The Bookshop Woman: Nanako Hanada, Cat Anderson: 9781914240812: Amazon.com: Books #books #japan

I have been reading The Bookshop Woman since I got it as a secret santa gift. It's a pity I am reading a physical copy, because I don't usually highlight or copy quotes from it. It has a lot of quotable bits that I believe folks will resonate with a lot.

Japanese Stationary

This tweet I made about Japanese Stationary seems to have reached a wider audience than normal.

2024-12-27

The Lonely Hunter

I heard these lines in a books podcast this morning and have been thinking about it ever since.

Deep in the heart of Summer, sweet is life to me still,

But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill.

The Lonely Hunter by William Sharp - Famous poems, famous poets. - All Poetry #poems #loneliness #grief

This poem explores themes of longing, grief, and the search for connection. The speaker, a solitary figure, yearns for a lost love, represented by a white flower. They wander through a verdant landscape, haunted by memories and the hope of reunion.

ghostty

Ghostty released today: Ghostty 1.0 | Hacker News #terminals

I already have it as my terminal with the following minimal config:

theme = GruvboxDarkHard
macos-titlebar-style = hidden
window-decoration = false

Ghostty is revolutionary in many ways, but I found this article about its native platfrom integration particularly compelling: Ghostty Is Native—So What? | g.p. anders

2024-12-28

Went to a cafe to work, but ended up meeting a friend and then more ppl joined and I basically yapped from 9am to 9pm straight.

I went to Mūru Mūru in Indiranagar and had their hot chocolate and it was pretty amazing.