Random Thoughts February 15, 2018 The Chinese call essays suibi, which can be literally translated as "wandering brush" or "following the brush." In classical Chinese literature, suibi are often collections of short, miscellaneous articles--the report of a particularly enjoyable party, a description of a recent antique purchase, an analysis of the literary allusions of a two-hundred-year-old poem. This time around, I'm going to embrace that miscellaneous quality to give a collection of random thoughts this time around: I've been a big fan of commonplace books for a long time. In fact, the first article in my Digital Renaissance Man[1] series was about keeping a commonplace book. Besides their use as a source of quotations and inspiration, commonplace books can reveal a lot about your personal interests and priorities. Examining the topics you've created inside your book, as well as how many entries you have in which category, shows where your interests lie and how deep those interests are. For example, I naturally have quite a few entries about writing and poetry, but it turns out I also have quite a bit of material related to government and motivation/taking action. So I'm apparently quite interested in these topics but wasn't aware of this until I cast an eye over my commonplace book, looking at it on the level of a whole work and not just a collection of thoughts and quotes. If you keep a commonplace book, it might be worth it to do the same and see what unexpected insights it might give into your old mind. To control something, you have to be aware of it in the first place. For example, when I decided I wanted to lose weight, I started counting how many calories I was eating each day. At first, I just noted the numbers down. But after finding out from the doctor how many calories I needed to eat per day to reach and maintain my target weight, I continued counting calories, stopping when I hit my goal for the day. I lost 20 pounds over the course of six months. And at the beginning of the year, the doctor said I should reduce the amount of sodium I was eating. So I added sodium counts to my daily calories count. And sure enough, the amount of sodium I was putting into my body went down once I saw how much I'd been eating. So as I continue to try to get rid of bad habits and replace them with better ones, it seems that keeping track of my successes and failures will be an important part of the process. The days are definitely getting longer. And even though it's still as cold as it was in the dead of winter, that extra bit of light is a fore-taste--a promise perhaps--of the spring to come. [1] https://www.andrewgudgel.com/DigitalRenaissanceMan.pdf (c) 2018 by Andrew Gudgel email: contact [at] andrewgudgel.com