Colin Wright's Blog, page 21
April 17, 2018
A Year of Growth
Today is my 33rd birthday, and to celebrate I’d like to take a moment to present some thoughts and heuristics that have served me well this most recent year of my life. One thought that’s been immensely useful to me over the past year, especially considering everything that’s been happening in the world of politics, […]
March 25, 2018
Big, Vague Goals
I like to set sprawling, ill-defined goals for myself, and then figure out how best to accomplish them along the way. This is a counter-intuitive approach to goal-setting, I know, but it tends to assuage some of the downsides of extremely formalized, front-loaded goal-setting. For one, there are many unknowns involved in any pursuit, and […]
March 17, 2018
Sewing Buttons
It was thrilling for me, the first time I sewed a button onto a shirt. I was sitting in a conference room, waiting for a meeting to start, and one of the buttons on my favorite polo—a shirt I’d owned for probably a decade—had popped off earlier that day. I stopped by a grocery store […]
March 2, 2018
Landscape Portraits
It can be difficult to balance the presumed prudence of digging deep into a particular field, a particular topic or profession, with the desire to explore more widely; to dabble in other realms of inquiry and to invest portions of your time and energy in a rudimentary understanding, therein. Part of the reason for the […]
February 28, 2018
Self-Reported
For about a month, I’ve been tracking my sleep habits using two different sensors. One of these sensors is tucked under my mattress, plugged into the wall, and connected to my apartment’s WiFi. It keeps track of movement, and seems to be fairly sensitive: it gets a lot of its most vital data from my […]
February 11, 2018
Tiny Upgrades
I started running again recently. Back in my college years I ran five to ten miles per day as part of my intercollegiate Ultimate Frisbee workout routine. That continued to a lesser degree, just a few miles a day, when I left school and moved out to LA. Though by then my gym regimen had […]
January 31, 2018
Flappability
There’s something to be said for a Stoic response to difficult or uncomfortable situations. To be more specific, it’s nice to be able to step back and assess things from a mental distance. To recognize and acknowledge what’s happening, but to address it from a place of calm, rather than a state emotional fragility. To […]
January 26, 2018
Metacognitive Exercises
Why did I just do that? This is a question I try to ask myself regularly. Being conscious of the reasons behind our actions isn’t something most of us are taught to make time for, but I find it’s an excellent way to ensure the way I live is aligned with what I believe; with […]
January 5, 2018
Planning for the Fire
There’s something wrong with the fire detection system in my apartment building. In the five months since I moved to Memphis, we’ve had probably twenty false-alarms, the siren in the hallway just outside my flat blaring an enduring, ear-shattering sonic pulse each time. After a week in which nearly every day was accompanied by such […]
December 30, 2017
Regular Revolutions
Milestones are valuable tools. They’re endpoints that aren’t real in the sense that a rock is real—there’s no physical law stating that the approximate end of a journey around the sun starting from an arbitrary point we happen to use as our commencement and completion of a calendar cycle must be celebrated in any particular […]
