Notes to Self -- 2025

    Dear Notes to Self Readers, To write these posts, I consider the question of: What is interesting me lately? Breathing exercises (4:6 inhale exhale diaphagmatic breathing for 15 minutes); Christopher Hitchens audio essays on figures in Anglo-European intellectual history from Isaac Newton to George Orwell, along with some more contemporary figures--instead of Sports Radio or NPR on my car commutes; trying to do things I used to procrastinate about in order to feel prepared, using pressure, stress, resistance and difficulty constructively; being a teacher in order to get right what it is I didn't learn as a child, not taking the bait and getting hung up on a story that has me hooked and reactive; the sense that we're all on the verge of some chaotic global transformation. Was listening to a talk by ethnobotanical historian and storyteller/thinker Terrence McKenna from a 1995 talk in which he says that we (humanity) will either have a future of suffering and extinction...