I walked into the radiology center with my mom. A medical assistant named Kia walks up to us. Greets my mom. While looking at my mom, Kia says: “And who do we have with you?”

I decided I would make myself known by saying, “you can just ask me directly, I’m right here.”

Kia took us to room 3280. My mom prepared for her tests. A nurse, red-head lady — I forgot her name, walked in and looked at my mom. Nurse introduced herself. Didn’t look at me. Didn’t acknowledge me.

I parked on the 5th floor of the parking structure. I walked to the elevator lobby attached to the parking structure and a sign read:

“Entrace to Main Hospital Floor 1. Ground Floor Exit Only.”

I pressed the button for Floor 1.

I walked out of the elevator on Floor 1 and did not notice a main hospital entrance anywhere. I saw stairs that took me up to other elevator lobbies, and I found a door that went outside. I also saw a sign outside the elevator I just walked out of that read:

I have the tendancy to become over obsessed and positive towards music or food I love at first experience. I recently discovered Bandcamp and quickly became all about it. I went so far as to claim it’s the best platform for getting in touch and supporting independent artists.

I am a musician, but I am not an artist. I don’t make original music that I then sell. I don’t work with a ton of artists who do. I know quite a bit about marketing and advertising; but I don’t know it well in the Indie music sense. What right have I to claim that Bandcamp is the best platform?

I heard an idea that the opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference. And that makes sense to me.

To love is to have an intense feeling of deep affection, and hate is an intense dislike — both love and hate are intense feelings for a thing. They are not opposite, they are like gemini twins.

Both love and hate require something to be significant to me to be felt. For me to have an intense dislike for a person or an idea, that person or idea must be significant enough to me for me to have intense dislike. Love would be no different. In the same way that someone becomes blinded with love, another can become sick with hate.

How much truth gets traded away for socially-lubricative norm’y politeness?

And, maybe that question isn’t even the right question. Perhaps the right question is:

How much fidelity do I lose as I increase normy politeness?

Suppose a person applying for a job reaches out to a recruiter friend. The friend receives the resume and says “thanks for sending the resume over. I can forward your resume to a friend at a different team.”

As much as we want to block the things that don’t serve us from our lives; I speculate life doesn’t work that way. In fact, perhaps irrationally, I almost believe that unconditionally loving the things that don’t serve us frees us from their grip on our lives.

Unconditional love, as I understand it, is simply a heartfelt desire to hope that [insert object of unconditional love] achieves its maximum fulfillment, whatever it might be. And unconditional love does not require unconditional acceptance.

When the mind wakes up at 4:30am it has ideas, aims, and dreams. The body follows.

Now, two hours later, I still can’t think of what to say.

Smidge

Another form of “smidgen” which means a small amount of something.

Smidgen, in the United States, dates back to the mid-19th century. And that word is likely related to the Scottish word “smitch” or “smutch” meaning a small amount or a slight stain/smear. Essentially, small or barely noticeable quantity.

Erica, a dear friend, asked me if I could move a coffee date a smidge later. I’ve now learned that a barely noticeable quantity of time is approximately 1 hour.

Brian, a friend, told me his desire is to have a butterfly effect on people’s lives through his work. If he’s doing his job well, perhaps his clients could achieve better work-life balances, treat people better who then treat others better, and the ripples extend and extend.

I never heard of the butterfly effect. I didn’t look up the word, I liked how I heard it from Brian.

We need more humans that think like Brian thinks.

Yesterday, my mom and I spoke about resilience — and what it means to have it. She was commenting that a mutual acquaintence didn’t exert much resilience during a difficult life experience as evidenced by their poor behavior. I said perhaps we don’t have as much resilience as we think we have. I thought about it more, and I think we were both wrong.

Resilience

The capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.

The history of resilience: