Notes to Self -- 2025

May 1, 2023 As what many believe is suspense-filled race between extinction and exhilarating transcendence continues, this month I have been taking a break from worrying about this to concentrate on being happy without needing anything to change. Of course, there's a limit to how much happiness is possible if human made disasters get unavoidably terrible enough. That said, even in the Zen story of the man driven over the edge of a cliff by a ferocious man-eating tiger, holding on to a vine for dear life, this man was able to at least enjoy a strawberry while temporarily avoiding both forms of doom. This month's entry is a description of What Does it Actually Take to Be Happy . The song this month is of the first two verses of Biology Song, a song for kids I work with who are learning about the Clock of Eons from the Big Bang to the emergence of life from the ocean to its proliferation into Five Kingdoms. To take all this in this kind of history and complexity a childish song ca...

 April 1, 2023     Now as we reach the milestone of our fourth month of publication, we at Notes to Self are determined to keep this ever more widely-visited website advertising-free and available at no cost to you, the discerning reader/listener/viewer. You will never see us build a paywall or hold a fund drive. Our continued existence is entirely dependent on the whims of your attention and through our determination to declare our independence from the corrupting influence of squares, professionals, and the mercenary impulse that seeks to commodify the very pixels of the electronic clouds that gaily traverse the virtual sky.      This month's essay, The Yoga of Morning Practices is about how learned to get ready for my day by getting up at 3:30 a.m. and doing things I had to write about to explain why I need 3 hours to start to get ready for every day.      The song of the month is "I Feel" a kind of personal anthem--intended t...