Recently…
Here’s what I’ve been up to recently…
New seeds in the Garden
Seeds are notes and quotes from my everyday practice…
What it means to protest
In beginning such work, we take endings into our own hands, perhaps for the first time. And this is exactly what I see students doing; acknowledging the despair and rage of countless unchosen endings, and asking again and again “what life must become going forward.” It is an empowering and world-making shift.
Unwanted endings
Unwanted endings often reveal a web of other potential endings that may become undeniably necessary and even impossibly enticing; ways of living that no longer work, outdated relational styles, choices around consumption, and productivity.
Dore on forgiveness
To the degree that forgiveness means finding closure or redemption or a way to feel better about this reality it is not just a pointless, but a violent idea. If, on the other hand, forgiveness involves looking unflinchingly at the harms done and imagining “what a wronged life lived well might be,” it comes with clear work to do and an invitation to make life otherwise. It comes with practices and habits and ways to take up, alongside pain that will not go away.
Dore, quotes from Savransky
Counter-apocalyptic thinking is a reminder that endings are both inherent to reality and “the only thing in this world that is worth beginning.” And for Savransky, “to suggest that the end of the world must be begun is to affirm that the otherwise must be made, and to proffer an invitation…for an ongoing and unfinished experimentation with divergent modes of inhabiting the Earth.”
Potts’ notion of forgiveness
Potts’ notion of forgiveness as mourning, which is struggling “with and through and in a loss we cannot redeem” and showing us how to live in the wake of that loss. ()
Jessica Dore on forgiveness
Refusing the need to reconcile what is too late to change or take back, forgiveness makes way for “the only possible future” that can come of it. And though it’s often taken up with some amount of hesitation, forgiveness always entails “a stance of openness toward the future,” from which a “refusal to forget its wrong imagines what a wronged life lived well might be.”
on forward facing
For Potts, forgiveness is “paradoxically forward facing” in that it both “addresses the past so unflinchingly” and “sets itself honestly toward whatever future can actually come to be in the wake of that past.” Rather than ease or peace or closure, the promise of forgiveness may be that it makes livable what can’t be undone.
Dore quoting Keller on apocalypse
I read Facing Apocalypse by theologian Catherine Keller. In it, she notes the meaning of the word apocalypsos as “unveiling, thus revelation.” For Keller, apocalypse is “disclosure, not closure. Not a closing down of the world, but an opening up.” ()
tv for comfort
Research demonstrates that we intuitively gravitate towards reruns when we’re feeling down because doing so increases our communal sense of belonging and decreases loneliness; it’s the parasocial connection that’s comforting us. One study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology showed that watching reruns of your favorite show “buffers against drops in self-esteem and mood and against increases in feelings of rejection commonly elicited by threats to close relationships.” (Location 3066)
on survival
You survive what happened to you, then you survive your survival, and then the gift you’re given is that you fall in love with your whole life, inextricable from the bad thing that happened to you.
Thinking in terms of seasons
Thinking in terms of seasons really helps relieve time pressure and think more cyclically. One’s seasonal output might follow the natural world—winter for incubating, spring for hatching an idea, summer for collaborating and promoting, autumn for reflection and release. After a few years of experimenting with and identifying my flow, I’ve realized that winter and summer are my inward seasons for personal projects. Spring and autumn are when I am more willing and ready to share my work and teach others what I’ve learned.
New Seed
This page is a portal
it needed a different word to make it have more weight because then I well, and then I realized that my journals were alters. That's why they feel kind of like living things to me, is that my journals are alters to possibility and potential to the world I dream about for all of us. And I need to hold the threads, the threads of those dreams to not get weighted down by the grief of the work that I do. And so when I say this page is a portal or these pages or portals, it's really an invitation for. (30:29)
Working with your hands makes things happen in your brain
What we want to point out here is that the physical manipulation of things, like direct personal experience of any kind, generates sensory images of all sorts and thus enables thought. Hands-on tinkering leads to minds-on thinkering. Bodily engagement with nature teaches much more than any amount of words or numbers in science books. Doing produces a personal understanding that symbols simply can't.
What is thinkering?
‘Thinkering' is a word that the writer Michael Ondaatje coined in his novel The English Patient to express the genesis of concepts in the mind while tinkering with the hands. Much has been written about the human hand and how its use effects the brain, language and culture (see Frank R. Wilson's The Hand, 1998).
Slip-box: focus on thinking, instead of remembering
The slip-box is designed to present you with ideas you have already forgotten, allowing your brain to focus on thinking instead of remembering. ([Location 657]
What it means to be a maker
When we collaborate with reality, we are makers. We are makers when we act in response to life from our true being, instead of merely doing. On the making path we remember we are in relationship with a living world, not just conquering things on our to-do list or molding the world to our utilitarian purposes. ()
seasons for the creator
“The creative moment of a writer comes with the autumn,” wrote Cyril Connelly in . “The winter is the time for reading, revision, preparation of the soil; the spring for thawing back to life; the summer is for the open air, for satiating the body with health and action, but from October to Christmas for the release of mental energy, the hard crown of the year.” ()
art from danger
“Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further. The further one goes, the more private, the more personal, the more singular an experience becomes, and the thing one is making is, finally, the necessary, irrepressible, and as nearly as possible, the definitive utterance of this singularity.”
Rilke on experiencing pain
In his Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke famously wrote, “So don’t be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have ever known, casting its shadow over all you do. You must think that something is happening within you, and remember that life has not forgotten you; it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness, any pain, any depression, since you don’t know what work they are accomplishing within you?”
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Thinking in terms of seasons really helps relieve time pressure and think more cyclically. One’s seasonal output might follow the natural world—winter for incubating, spring for hatching an idea, summer for collaborating and promoting, autumn for reflection and release. After a few years of experimenting with and identifying my flow, I’ve realized that winter and summer are my inward seasons for personal projects. Spring and autumn are when I am more willing and ready to share my work and teach others what I’ve learned.
Jul 9, 2025
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9
‘Thinkering' is a word that the writer Michael Ondaatje coined in his novel The English Patient to express the genesis of concepts in the mind while tinkering with the hands. Much has been written about the human hand and how its use effects the brain, language and culture (see Frank R. Wilson's The Hand, 1998).
Jun 9, 2025
Published but raw
Published but raw
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7
The slip-box is designed to present you with ideas you have already forgotten, allowing your brain to focus on thinking instead of remembering. ([Location 657]
Jun 8, 2025
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Published but raw
6
When we collaborate with reality, we are makers. We are makers when we act in response to life from our true being, instead of merely doing. On the making path we remember we are in relationship with a living world, not just conquering things on our to-do list or molding the world to our utilitarian purposes. (Location 215)
May 6, 2025
Publish
Published but raw
3
“The creative moment of a writer comes with the autumn,” wrote Cyril Connelly in An Unquiet Grave. “The winter is the time for reading, revision, preparation of the soil; the spring for thawing back to life; the summer is for the open air, for satiating the body with health and action, but from October to Christmas for the release of mental energy, the hard crown of the year.” (View Highlight)
Nov 10, 2024
Publish
Published but raw
4
Research demonstrates that we intuitively gravitate towards reruns when we’re feeling down because doing so increases our communal sense of belonging and decreases loneliness; it’s the parasocial connection that’s comforting us. One study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology showed that watching reruns of your favorite show “buffers against drops in self-esteem and mood and against increases in feelings of rejection commonly elicited by threats to close relationships.” (Location 3066)
Jul 5, 2024
Publish
Published but raw
1
“Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further. The further one goes, the more private, the more personal, the more singular an experience becomes, and the thing one is making is, finally, the necessary, irrepressible, and as nearly as possible, the definitive utterance of this singularity.”
Nov 10, 2024
Publish
Published but raw
2
In his Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke famously wrote, “So don’t be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have ever known, casting its shadow over all you do. You must think that something is happening within you, and remember that life has not forgotten you; it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness, any pain, any depression, since you don’t know what work they are accomplishing within you?”
Nov 10, 2024
Publish
Published but raw
20
You survive what happened to you, then you survive your survival, and then the gift you’re given is that you fall in love with your whole life, inextricable from the bad thing that happened to you.
Apr 10, 2025
Publish
Published but raw
16
In beginning such work, we take endings into our own hands, perhaps for the first time. And this is exactly what I see students doing; acknowledging the despair and rage of countless unchosen endings, and asking again and again “what life must become going forward.” It is an empowering and world-making shift.
May 5, 2024
Publish
Published but raw
15
Unwanted endings often reveal a web of other potential endings that may become undeniably necessary and even impossibly enticing; ways of living that no longer work, outdated relational styles, choices around consumption, and productivity.
May 5, 2024
Publish
Published but raw
19
To the degree that forgiveness means finding closure or redemption or a way to feel better about this reality it is not just a pointless, but a violent idea. If, on the other hand, forgiveness involves looking unflinchingly at the harms done and imagining “what a wronged life lived well might be,” it comes with clear work to do and an invitation to make life otherwise. It comes with practices and habits and ways to take up, alongside pain that will not go away.
May 5, 2024
Publish
Published but raw
17
Counter-apocalyptic thinking is a reminder that endings are both inherent to reality and “the only thing in this world that is worth beginning.” And for Savransky, “to suggest that the end of the world must be begun is to affirm that the otherwise must be made, and to proffer an invitation…for an ongoing and unfinished experimentation with divergent modes of inhabiting the Earth.”
May 5, 2024
Publish
Published but raw
18
Potts’ notion of forgiveness as mourning, which is struggling “with and through and in a loss we cannot redeem” and showing us how to live in the wake of that loss. (View Highlight)
May 5, 2024
Publish
Published but raw
5
Refusing the need to reconcile what is too late to change or take back, forgiveness makes way for “the only possible future” that can come of it. And though it’s often taken up with some amount of hesitation, forgiveness always entails “a stance of openness toward the future,” from which a “refusal to forget its wrong imagines what a wronged life lived well might be.”
May 5, 2024
Publish
Published but raw
13
For Potts, forgiveness is “paradoxically forward facing” in that it both “addresses the past so unflinchingly” and “sets itself honestly toward whatever future can actually come to be in the wake of that past.” Rather than ease or peace or closure, the promise of forgiveness may be that it makes livable what can’t be undone.
May 5, 2024
Publish
Published but raw
14
I read Facing Apocalypse by theologian Catherine Keller. In it, she notes the meaning of the word apocalypsos as “unveiling, thus revelation.” For Keller, apocalypse is “disclosure, not closure. Not a closing down of the world, but an opening up.” (View Highlight)
May 5, 2024
Publish
Published but raw
10
it needed a different word to make it have more weight because then I well, and then I realized that my journals were alters. That's why they feel kind of like living things to me, is that my journals are alters to possibility and potential to the world I dream about for all of us. And I need to hold the threads, the threads of those dreams to not get weighted down by the grief of the work that I do. And so when I say this page is a portal or these pages or portals, it's really an invitation for. (30:29)
Jun 12, 2025
Sprouted
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URL
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Sprouted
8
What we want to point out here is that the physical manipulation of things, like direct personal experience of any kind, generates sensory images of all sorts and thus enables thought. Hands-on tinkering leads to minds-on thinkering. Bodily engagement with nature teaches much more than any amount of words or numbers in science books. Doing produces a personal understanding that symbols simply can't.
Jun 9, 2025
Dore, quotes from Savransky
Dore on forgiveness
on survival
Potts’ notion of forgiveness
Dore quoting Keller on apocalypse
Unwanted endings
What it means to protest
on forward facing
Thinking in terms of seasons
New Seed
Slip-box: focus on thinking, instead of remembering
What is thinkering?
Working with your hands makes things happen in your brain
This page is a portal
tv for comfort
What it means to be a maker
seasons for the creator
Jessica Dore on forgiveness
art from danger
Rilke on experiencing pain
New sprouts in the Garden
Sprouts are notes I’ve made my own…
SproutsI could write a paper that conducts a concept analysis with an evolutionary approach on public scholarship (or something else in my research area).
They don’t get the best of you! YOU get the best of you!
Leave email and meetings for the afternoon!
Julian Gough wrote his book in public through his newsletter
Being an artist is choosing to imagine something different.
A blog is a simple way to write on the internet
Blogs are a place to garden
View a writing project as a processual research project
A simple equation for a writing a Substack
How to think about an online writing project
Hard to learn from mediocre
AI = average = dumb
Definition of social deaths
It’s not from just one loss, but from a series of losses.
Social death can happen without a loss of agency or identity
Social death doesn’t mean dead to everyone
Autumn for creativity, winter for reading & revision
Social isolation→social death
Rodgers' evolutionary concept analysis method
Main themes of social death
Social death means being dead while still being alive.
Concept analysis as a method of exploring a complex concept
Coco gives us a good example of how social death can happen when someone is forgotten.
New shoots in the Garden
Shoots are collections of ideas…
Recent
There is a focus on objective reality (outcome) vs. one on subjective experience (process).
How to get things done when motivation isn’t enough and you don’t want to use force?
What is the process of making stuff?
If you build/write/make it, they will come.
Who can make stuff? (everyone!)
Making stuff improves our lives.
Why do we make stuff? What’s the point?
Making stuff supports our mental health.
Making helps us process our emotions.
Making creates a safe space.
Making stuff (art) is a way to explore.
How can we make stuff?
How to decide what to make & find creative voice
What are the functions of art?
Art can capture what words can’t.
Things to Try?
The Medium or the Message?
Talking about visual art allows for activity in the body and the mind.
How to write?
Why teaching is important.
How to write about my work?
How to write a newsletter/blog/on the internet?
How to write a bio?
Adding structure to a project.
How to find/create my writing voice
Load more
New blooms in the Garden
Blooms are essays I’ve written or things I’ve made…