Beijing and other Ancient Cities

I am fascinated by the great cities of the world. I’ve been fortunate enough to visit some amazing metropolises. Unfortunately, I haven’t yet been to Beijing, today one of the world’s largest and most modern cities. I mention Beijing in particular because of the quote below, that I saved while reading Jack Weatherford’s popular book Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. Before coming across this I didn’t know that Beijing was also the Mongol capital ‘Khanbalik.’ A little further research indicates that people have been living at the site of Beijing for more than 1500 years. This history reminds me of Mexico City as well, as the modern megacity was built on the ruins of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, thought the Aztec didn’t settle in central Mexico until the 1200s.

For what it’s worth, here are the world’s longest inhabited cities:

Other cities sometimes included on such lists, all with evidence of very long habitation histories, are Plovdiv (Bulgaria), Athens (Greece), Sidon (Lebanon), and Varanasi (India).

Current Stack

I finished four books this month and am currently reading 7, plus the one high school Human Geography text. As I mentioned in a post last week, I bailed on my one novel and took up book two of The Wheel of Time series in its place. So far I’m glad I did. The two books I find myself reaching for the least right now are The Rediscovery of America and The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. Nevertheless, books that I lag on usually grip me at some point and I am able to make significant progress quickly. That is happening right now with Gore Vidal’s memoir Palimpsest. My quickest read right now is the excellent Garcia biography.

It is How You Live Your Life

The Jerry Garcia biography I am halfway through is enjoyable. Rather than a straight biography of Garcia, it’s really the story of Jerry and the times he lived through. The author spends half the book on his youth and the 60s. But hey, as a history nerd, I’m loving all the historical context.

During the description of the chaos of 1968 there is a section that mentions Jerry Rubin and the Yippies. The quote below–attributed to Rubin–which I had never heard before, is great and resonates deeply right now in the back half of 2025. I’d amend the idea a bit in the sense that who we vote for does matter quite a bit. However, as Rubin argues, it is so much more than that. It is what you buy, what you invest your money and time in, what types of people you hang out with, where and how you live, and what values you try to live up day in and day out, including what you do to pay the bills. As a social studies teacher, this is an important idea that I think we all want our young people to understand. Rubin’s quote makes the points succinctly and coming across it, I found it to be a powerful reminder.

Fall Book Reload

A new season is upon us and I pulled the trigger on 8 new books to add to my TBR collection. This haul touches on many of my interests; football, memoir, writing, foreign policy and economics, and general self improvement. I’ve got to finish one of my current reads before diving into one of these, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to tackle the Zinsser memoir first. Happy days.

Traffic and the To Don't List

Everyone has heard of a ‘to do list.’ An idea that has been floating around amongst productivity nerds for a while is the related notion of a ‘to don’t' list. Today I was stuck in traffic on my way home and I was reminded of this idea. Having the same commute for 25 years has led me, unfortunately, to be a bit impatient driving home. I tend to get easily frustrated in traffic and today was typical in that regard. However, I eventually remembered (admittedly, it took awhile) the uselessness of getting angry at traffic, as my feelings one way or another were going to have zero effect on my ability to get home any faster. The advice of Shantideva and the Stoics came to mind. Indeed, “don’t get upset about things you can’t control” became my mantra today and that led me to try and think of other behaviors I should keep atop my personal ‘to don’t’ list. Here a few more that came to mind:

  • Gossip

  • Compare myself to others

  • Doom scroll the news

  • Ruminate about the past

  • Think rigidly or ideologically

Easier said than done for sure, but definitely worth the effort.

Quitting Time

I finish the vast majority of books that I start. However, every once in a while I find myself reading 100 pages (or thereabouts) into a book that isn’t interesting. For me, it almost always happens to be a novel. I used to feel the weight of the sunk cost fallacy and felt like I should finish every book I started. However, as I get older I realize that logic doesn’t work for me. Life is too damn short to read just for the sake of reading. I’ve got to be getting something out of the book.

Yesterday, I gave up on Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future. For those who are interested in science and climate change, I recommend the book. It is well written and is creatively organized, but I wasn’t digging it. Indeed, I only made it through page 88 on this one. I’ll keep it around because perhaps in a different season of life, the book might resonate more. However, since I always try to have one novel going, I immediately started the second book in The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan.

Simple Red Lines

A week ago I wrote about my love of college football. However, today I cancelled my YouTubeTV subscription, which means that starting next weekend, I’m shut out from watching anymore games unless I am at someone else’s house or I decide to go hang out at a pub. Everyone’s red line is somewhere and for me I can’t cotton to supporting Disney/ABC/ESPN, or CBS, or Fox at this point. So, no football for me this year. Luckily, I can access college radio stations online and still follow along with games I really want to experience. Looking on the bright side, it is going to save me some dough and open up some free time on Saturdays.

The Experience of Time

I didn’t finish this book by Jenny Odell, but I read enough to come across this arresting, beautifully conveyed idea about how we experience time. The first example that comes to my mind is how long the next three and half years are going to feel to many of us who are disgusted with the current political environment in this country. Other examples include:

  • Scrolling online, when 10 minutes can quickly turn into a 45 minutes or more, in a blink;
  • Parenting young children, when the days (and nights!) can sometimes stretch on for what feels like forever, but the years pass by at lightning speed;
  • Waiting for test results or a scheduler to call for a needed appointment, leading to the sense that days have become weeks;
  • Commuting, when the 30 minute drive feels ten times longer than the same 30 minutes at home engaged in your favorite activity;
  • Vacations, when the the weeks and days leading up to it crawl by, but the vacation itself seems like it is passing by at double time;

More evidence that Buddhist teachings on Emptiness ring true.

Tyranny of the Majority—and the Minority: Federalist No. 10 and the Fate of Liberty

In my AP Government class we recently read Madison’s Federalist No. 10. Rereading it this year, I am reminded that it is something I wish more Americans were familiar with and the conversation in class connected to an idea in one of the books I just finished reading. In Federalist No. 10 Madison argues for a republican government; that is, a representative democracy. His fear of majority rule (‘direct democracy’) was based on the idea the majority might use that status to trample on the natural rights of the minority. He was mostly worried about the landless masses taking the property of men like himself through the power of the legislature. However, his point has been made throughout American history. The example I use in class is the stain of Jim Crow racism in our history. For close to 100 years a majority of whites in many states (and in all the southern states) voted to trample the rights of non-white citizens. They disenfranchised racial minorities as well, but even if everyone in those places could actually vote most southern states were still majority white so Madison’s point would have likely still been made, that in a pure democracy there is a danger of the minority having their rights abused. This is known as the ‘tyranny of the majority’ and it is an obvious danger of a direct democracy.

Of course, a minority faction (that is, an interest group or political party that does not represent the majority of society) can also trample on the natural rights of the people if they have power. Today, we certainly can see that those with enormous wealth, a minority for sure, have captured much of our government and take advantage of that capture to protect their wealth (I’m looking at you 119th Congress). While discussing the essay, students in class brought up campaign finance as an example of a faction’s threat to our democracy. Coincidentally, their comments touched on something I recently read.

The Narrow Corridor is an excellent, if wonky, book, subtitled ‘States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty.’ At the end of the paradigm-shifting book, the authors (Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson) include a few suggestions for keeping America ‘in the corridor’ (between a ‘despotic leviathan’ and an ‘absent leviathan’), as it is clear to everyone paying attention that we are living in a time when liberty is being threatened by an increasingly unshackled state.

So what was the connection? Well, the first solution Acemoglu and Robinson mention was campaign finance reform. Specifically, they argue we should “curtail campaign contributions and limit the impact of lobbying. Specific measures to bring greater transparency to the relationship between firms, lobbyists, and politicians may be particularly important since accounts of how politicians became become faithful servants of certain industries or interests often involve meetings hidden from the public eye and poorly monitored revolving door arrangements in which regulators and politicians are later hired by the private sector at very attractive salaries.”

In other words, it would be beneficial to change our campaign finance laws in order to make it harder for minority factions (that is, special interest groups) or the uber-wealthy in general, to threaten the liberty of the majority of citizens.

I always love it when something happens in class that connects with something that has been brought to my attention by something I have recently read. I wonder what Madison would say about the fact that today such a small minority, due to their incredible wealth, can manipulate our government, at all levels, for their own benefit.

Links to Two of my Favorite Poems

I am not a huge poetry fan, but I do love Gary Snyder’s work. Snyder went to Reed College here in Portland and for many years taught at my alma mater in Northern California. His poetry blends nature mysticism, Zen Buddhism, and the vast landscapes of North America. As of this post, he is 95 years old and still kicking. Snyder’s poetry came to mind because the biography on Jerry Garcia that I am reading explains the influence of the Beats on San Francisco and Jerry. Snyder was one of the OG Beats. Indeed, he is the inspiration for the character Japhy Ryder in Jack Kerouac’s book Dharma Bums.

Below are links to two of my favorite Snyder poems. Enjoy!

Magpie’s Song

Smokey the Bear Sutra

New Read: Here Beside the Rising Tide

I recently started reading the new biography of Jerry Garcia by journalist and biographer Jim Newton. What first intrigued me about the book is that Newton, while a fan, is not an insider. Most of the many books about the Dead that have been published since Garcia’s death were written by insiders of one sort or another. Those sorts of books, especially memoirs by the band members themselves, are obviously great to read for big fans. However, I am now interested in reading a more distanced view.

I just started the book, but there are a few things I have already learned about Jerry.

  1. Jerry’s dad was a musician, but gave it up to run a bar in San Francisco.
  2. His father died when Jerry was only 5 years old. They left to go on a fishing trip and his dad drowned, so young Jerry had come home from that trip along with his mother, stunned by the sudden death of the family patriarch. I imagine that would have been an immensely difficult situation for such a young kid.
  3. Shortly after the passing of Jerry’s dad, he and his older brother moved in with their grandparents and Jerry’s grandfather sounds like a shitty grandparent. Jerry’s memory of his grandfather was apparently pretty negative. Considering the grandparents were taking the boys in after their father had died, it strikes me as particularly pathetic behavior.
  4. Jerry’s grandmother had other boyfriends while she stayed married to Jerry’s grandfather. Bill, Jerry’s grandfather, beat his wife once and after that she initiated what sounds like a Catholic divorce; essentially separated, but living in the same house.

I am less than ten pages in so I expect there is much more to learn about Garcia. If you are a Deadhead, check it out.

Hearing at the End

I am reading a book now called The Gift of Aging. In a chapter about the dying process the authors make the statement you can see below, that hearing is the last of the senses to fade during the death process. Digging in a bit, it seems hospice workers frequently notice that people who are dying and who seem unconscious often respond to the voices of their loved ones. This study supports these anecdotes.

My wife, being a devout Buddhist, has very specific instructions I am to follow were she to pass before me. Central to her wishes are keeping people away who are overly emotional, as well as playing Buddhist prayers on repeat.

The quote below got me thinking about what I want to hear if I am lucky enough to die at home with people around me who can carry out my wishes. The conclusion I have come to is that I don’t know and that I need to think about it, then make sure my wishes are known.

In the past I have assumed I would want my favorite music to be playing. But that isn’t an easy ask as I like a wide variety of music, and I would likely want to make sure aggressive tunes were not in the playlist. That means if music is my answer, I’ll need to make a playlist and make sure my spouse knows about.

Another possibility is to simply have my loved ones with me, talking to me so I can pass with their voices in my consciousness. However, like my wife, I wouldn’t want anyone to be too hysterical, as I am Buddhist enough to know that I want a calm mind as much as possible at the very end.

A third possibility is to have mantras that I love playing. There are many beautiful, long mantras available on YouTube that I have discovered over the years that might fit the bill. The ones I like definitely calm my mind and would be familiar to me, which I think would be helpful.

As of now, I still don’t know. However, I now realize this is something I should try and figure out. If I will be able to hear through to the end, ideally I am hearing something that is calming and brings happy memories. If and when I figure this out, I’ll post about it.

Saturday Football

I love college football. Growing up, I was mostly an NFL fan. Nowadays though, I watch football on Saturdays, not Sundays. I’m not sure I know why I love one so much more than the other. I root for a school I didn’t even attend (although I root for my alma mater too, they just aren’t as easy to follow since they are FCS and aren’t on TV very often). I root for Stanford, where my dad went to school, because that was the first team I learned to love as a kid. I think the first in person game I ever saw was the Big Game in either 1978 or 1979 (in Berkeley).

One thing I know is that my love for college football generally evolved over time. Indeed, my growing interest coincided with the rise of cable programming and the ubiquity of college football on TV. It also helps that about 15 years ago, Stanford started winning and for a few years were one of the country’s elite teams. Rooting for a team that wins is really fun and in my case stoked my interest. Now, though they are not very good, my memories of winning are there egging on my interest. “There’s always next week…or next year.”

This time period also coincided with the rise of Oregon football. Oregon State has also had some great teams over the past 25 years. When those schools do well, I found myself rooting for them too. The web of relationships between schools and conferences also played a role because I increasingly found myself rooting for Pac 10/12 teams against teams from other conferences. So, in addition to watching Stanford, I often found I had a rooting interest in a ton of other games every weekend, as well. I suppose this sort of logic could also be applied to the NFL in the sense that a fan would have a rooting interest against their favorite teams' conference rivals. However, for me, it was the college match ups that got me juiced.

That leads to another element of college football I like: the randomness of the match ups. There are so many colleges with Division I football teams that there are some really unique matchups between schools. With the new conference alignment, Stanford’s schedule is filled with schools they don’t have a history of playing. Increases my interest. Better than watching the Chicago Bears and New York Giants play for the 200th time.

Like all sports, college football is also filled with drama. For me, movies and TV shows often lack drama because they are either predictable or for some other reason I am unable to forget that I am watching something that is scripted. Saturday football can still surprise and many games come down to the wire, decided by randomness, amazing athletic ability that is a joy to behold, or something else totally unexpected. The Play comes to mind, as a Stanford fan.

Finally, I also used to make the argument that the players were playing for the love of the game; that they weren’t mercenaries. Sadly, that argument no longer holds. The money sloshing around college football has finally made its way into the pockets of the players and all of college athletics have been changed by the new NIL rules that are in place. I’m not sure I like the changes and I worry about what it will mean for schools like Stanford and Oregon State moving forward. Nevertheless, for better or worse, I’m still happily tuning out the bad craziness in the news and following along.

Moving Targets

Sam Wineburg is one of the brains behind the amazing website Digital Inquiry Group (which used to be called the Stanford History Education Group). The team behind DIG produces high-quality lesson plans for social studies teachers that focus on inquiry and expose students to a variety of primary and secondary sources. Their lessons also emphasize that there can be multiple views about what has happened in the past. I have happily used their lessons for years.

A few years ago I read Wineburg’s excellent book Why Learn History. The quote below resonated because it gets to an issue that the public, and many educators, aren’t familiar with. Namely, that the folks who make the tests are constantly redefining what counts, which makes the tests a bit less helpful than they could be. In Oregon, students’ knowledge of social studies content isn’t really tested. Certainly, if students are taking AP exams, they are taking standardized exams written by the College Board. However, as a veteran educator, I don’t put a lot of trust in their test results. The main reason for this is that test scores can yo-yo from year to year, even though what and how I teach isn’t all that different from year to year.

Moving the goal posts leads to another issue. When students demonstrate mastery of a particular skill or fact, that item might vanish from the test, not because it’s unimportant, but because assessors want to maintain a spread of scores. That practice means success can feel like it gets punished—today’s knowledge may not even register tomorrow. At the same time, it’s worth noting that there are moments when standards are lowered, which is an entirely different problem. Lowering expectations masks gaps rather than addressing them, creating a false sense of progress. Between shifting targets on one end and diluted benchmarks on the other, it’s little wonder that educators, parents, and the public often struggle to trust what standardized scores actually tell us.

On top of that, when I think about my own teaching, it is an absolute fact that I have gotten better as my career has continued. I’d say the quality of teaching generally is better than what one would have found broadly twenty-five years ago. We just know more about good instruction. Yet, the news and ‘scores’ don’t always reflect it.

At the end of the day, as both a teacher and a parent, I don’t put too much weight into test scores. I’m not opposed to standardized tests, but I try to keep in mind Wineburg’s point, that there are reasons, often hidden, that weaken their ability to inform.

Start Today: What Ryan Holiday Reminds Us About Time

As a teacher, I hear students lament the frustrations of procrastination all the time. Just last week I asked some of my classes during a whip around what they want to improve on this semester. The most common answer was beating procrastination. Of course, teenagers aren’t the only ones who battle this problem. Steven Pressfield wrote a beautiful book about it called The War of Art. He called the problem The Resistance.

Fellow writer (and Pressfield friend) Ryan Holiday provides a helpful perspective on procrastination in the three sentences shared below. Whereas Pressfield frames procrastination as fear dressed in all of our endless distractions, Holiday goes a bit further and says it is arrogance. Together, they show both the inner and outer faces of the same issue.

I couldn’t save this quote into my second brain fast enough. It gets to the heart of the matter for me because it relates to the core Buddhist idea of impermanence. When I remember that nothing is guaranteed, not even tomorrow, it makes the decision to start today feel less like a burden and more like a responsibility. It is a fact that we could die at any time. Karma can shift on a dime. Most of us don’t think about that fact very often (that’s a whole other topic). Thus, Holiday is spot on; to put something important off because you think you will have time later is arrogant. It’s also true that if you lack the will and the discipline in the present, what’s to say you’ll have it in the future? For me, this shows up most clearly when I put off my short little home weight lifting protocol. I tell myself I’ll do it in an hour, but half the time it never happens that day.

Readwise, the app I use to capture these quotes while I read, allows you to pick favorites that they email to you every Sunday. This is one of those favorited Sunday quotes for me.

Michael Easter's Idea of Misogi

A misogi is a Japanese idea that has roots in Shinto purification practices. The idea is to ritually purify oneself by bathing in rivers, waterfalls, or the ocean. Samurai also adapted the practice to develop discipline, focus, and clarity. Writer Michael Easter wrote a great book called The Comfort Crisis. In it he adapts the idea of misogi to a modern western context. For Easter, a misogi is an epic personal challenge. He talks of scheduling one every so often, say every quarter or twice a year. I had never heard of the idea and can see why it is appealing.

The quote below resonates because of the idea that in the modern era social media has led many people to cultivate an image online. Misogis are personal, and private.

In preparing this blog post I decided to ask my AI of choice, which knows a bit about me, to provide some misogi ideas. I thought they were interesting so I’ll share them. What kind of misogi could you take on?

  • Go on a 7-day silent meditation retreat.

  • Fast for 3 full days (water and electrolytes only).

  • Complete a “no excuses” month: no alcohol, no sugar, no processed foods, daily workouts, daily journaling.

  • Learn a completely new skill (martial art, musical instrument, or language) and perform/demonstrate it publicly.

  • Teach a public seminar or workshop outside your usual classroom—stretching into a new audience.

  • Take P– on a multi-day backcountry trek, just the two of you.

  • Memorize and recite a long text (like the Bhagavad Gita, Gettysburg Address, or Declaration of Independence).

  • Build a “digital sabbath” habit by spending a full week unplugged from screens.

  • Swim across a large open-water stretch (lake, bay, or river).

  • Live abroad for a month with your family, immersing yourselves in a new culture.

  • Go on a 12 hour hike around Portland

Effective, not Efficient

Brian Johnson is an amazing resource for those who want to learn about self improvement. I discovered him years ago because he produced what he called Philosopher’s Notes on the many books he read. Today he runs a company called Heroic that is focused on helping people and the world flourish. I highly recommend his book and other digital resources.

This quote hits hard for me. As a high school teacher, I am all about being efficient with my time due to the challenges of teaching (interfacing with 150 teenagers every day, email, planning, grading, hiking across campus just to make copies, dealing with all the other teacher admin we need to deal with–you get the idea). However, I find that I always feel rushed when talking to people individually outside of class and often give both students and colleagues less than my full attention. I know that is not ideal. After such an interaction, I can usually feel that I was not fully present and it leaves me disappointed. I saved this quote while reading Arete’ because it is a solid reminder that I need to reframe how I interact with people one-on-one at work. I’m still learning, and some days are harder than others, but I am getting better. I have come to realize that what’s true of productivity is also true of people: sometimes you’ve got to slow down in order to speed up.

Alternatives to GDP

The novel I am currently reading is Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry of the Future. (It is worth noting that Robinson lives in the awesome college town I grew up in.) In it he describes the problems with GDP as a measurement tool and mentions some alternative ways to measure how well a society (not just an economy) are doing overall. I found this relevant because GDP is something that always comes in my classes and it obviously has it’s flaws.

Here are some alternatives to GDP.

Genuine Progress Indicator Unlike GDP, which counts all spending as positive regardless of its purpose, the GPI subtracts costs associated with pollution, crime, and resource depletion while adding the value of volunteer work, housework, and education. The index was developed in the 1990s and aims to provide a more holistic view of progress by measuring whether economic growth actually improves quality of life rather than simply increasing total economic activity.

United Nations Human Development Index This index, created by the United Nations in 1990, combines life expectancy, education levels, and income to provide a broader view of human progress. Countries are ranked from 0 to 1, with scores above 0.8 considered “very high human development,” and the index has become one of the most widely used alternatives to GDP for comparing national development levels.

Happy Planet Index
The Happy Planet Index (HPI) is a measure of sustainable well-being that evaluates countries based on how efficiently they deliver long and happy lives for their residents within the planet’s environmental limits. Developed by the New Economics Foundation, the HPI combines life satisfaction, life expectancy, and ecological footprint data to calculate how much happiness and longevity a country achieves per unit of environmental impact. Wealthy nations often score poorly on this index.

Social Progress Index This index measures a country’s social and environmental progress independently of economic factors by evaluating three main categories: basic human needs (nutrition, medical care, shelter, safety), foundations of wellbeing (access to knowledge, information, health, and environmental quality), and opportunity (personal rights, freedom of choice, tolerance, and access to higher education). Initially published in 2013, the SPI deliberately excludes economic indicators to provide a clearer picture of how well societies meet their citizens' fundamental needs and create conditions for human flourishing.

Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness I’d heard of this one already. Introduced by Bhutan’s Fourth King in the 1970s and formalized into a measurable index in 2008, GNH evaluates progress across nine domains including psychological wellbeing, health, education, ecological diversity, time use, and community vitality. This approach has guided Bhutan’s policy decisions for decades, leading to constitutional requirements for environmental conservation and making Bhutan one of the few carbon-negative countries in the world.

End of August 2025 Reading Pile

There are a lot ways people can spend their leisure time. I have friends who spend a lot of time in the gym, and others that like go bird watching. My favorite way to while away the time is to read. Over the past 15 years I have slowly been the type of reading that has several books going at once. At first it was two to four books, and now it is as much as 10 or 11. I’m fairly sure I am in the minority when it comes to this reading habit. Nevertheless, it is my way of reading and I love it.

The picture below shows my current stack. There is only one novel and there is also a high school textbook. I don’t ever have more than one novel going and it is unusual for me to be reading a textbook. This particular book makes it easy though because it is broken down into two page subsections, so I can just read a spread or two and put the bookmark back in.

Usually there are one or two books that I spend more time on that I finish faster. That is not the case with this pile. These are mostly dense books that force me to consume in relatively small chunks at a time.

Once a month, towards the end of the month I am going to post my current stack. Books on the bottom are ones I have been reading the longest.

On Seth Godin's Reminder About Systems

Seth Godin is one of the world’s great bloggers because he publishes a thoughtful take every single day, and has done so for nearly 17 years. His posts are usually short, which I appreciate since I already have more than a handful of daily blogs and newsletters to get through. Godin is also a prolific author, educator, and well-known marketing thinker. Not everything he writes applies to my life, but often his ideas are both interesting and relevant. As a new blogger, I find him inspiring.

Earlier this year I finished his latest book, This is Strategy. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it unless you work in marketing, but as usual, I found a few quotes worth saving and reflecting on. The one below resonates with me as a new blogger with no social media presence.

On one level, I think about the systems that exist for bloggers—Medium, Substack, LinkedIn. The main reason I have decided to blog is simply to practice writing and thinking in public on a regular basis (something Godin highly recommends). I’m not trying to become famous or turn it into a major source of income. Still, I want my ideas to reach others and to invite feedback and conversation. To grow an audience, though, I have to consider engaging with the systems that make that more likely.

Godin’s point helps me reframe the decision. Instead of focusing only on what these platforms can do for me, I need to ask what they will demand of me. For instance, posting through them means exposing myself to their algorithms, and I know from experience that’s a mixed bargain. Leaving Instagram, Facebook, and later Substack has been a real boost to my mental health, so I’m cautious about opening those doors again.

Even if I eventually choose to cross-post, Godin’s reminder will help me pause, reflect, and step in with eyes wide open. It also makes me wonder: what other systems in our lives deserve a closer look at how they shape our habits and our thinking?