Nels Lindahl — Functional Journal

A weblog created by Dr. Nels Lindahl featuring writings and thoughts…

Month: February 2019

  • Trying to find some new jeans

    Earlier today we went to a Levi outlet store. They did not have any of the 517 style jeans on the shelves. Oddly enough the only bootcut jeans they carried were some 527 slim bootcut style jeans. It has been some time since I have been able to walk into a store and buy my desired bootcut jeans. Apparently, I either need to adjust to buying slim bootcut style jeans or it is time to find some new jeans. Slowly over the last few years my jeans have been wearing out.

  • A Monday flight to Dallas

    My goal for the week is get back to writing weblog posts with the same spirit they started with a decade ago. It used to be so much easier to just write and post. That is something that I have been thinking about recently. Maybe it was the amount of time I spent sitting in front of a computer either reading or writing papers. Sitting in my office chair and completing my college education outside a classroom was a major staple of my academic efforts. That is really the reason I made it through about 13 years of college. Reading and writing papers was a major part of my life. Back then none of my efforts were streaming video related. That did not really happen. Sometimes, I watched television, but that had nothing to do with the two monitors hooked up to my computer. The television was a very heavy stand alone box with a glass screen. Streaming is now everywhere and I think it has impacted the way I end up writing. Maybe the best form factor for me to write is a smaller screen laptop. Right now that is my ASUS Chromebook flip. This screen form factor pretty much means the only thing I do with it is work on a single application or browser at a time. That helps my writing efforts. It focuses me down to just a single purpose that might be mixed with things going on around me, but it really is the most focused that I am going to get.

    Somewhere in that last nugget of truth is the real reason I like writing hand written notes to people. Maybe it is a different method of writing, but the same general lockdown into the process of writing is the same. Right now I’m sitting in a window seat on a Boeing 737-700 aircraft. Sure the seats might not be the most comfortable, but without any internet to distract me all I can do is sit here and listen to music in the library on my Pixel 3 XL and engage in the process of writing. Sure I might have taken a small nap at the start of the flight, but that happens. Something about climbing up to the cruising altitude just puts me right to sleep or it least it has the last couple of flights. I’m going to have to remember to proofread this post before hitting submit this time around. Not having an internet connection is a great way to just write without the terrible red squiggles reminding me of a typo. Maybe that is something I need to start doing from this point forward. Maybe just maybe worrying about the proofreading at the end is the right way to go about things. That will certainly stop me from writing and and directly posting. A new step full of proofreading fun will be inserted into the mix and that might just clean some things up, but it might very well slow things down.

    A lot of the content I end up producing never really gets posted anywhere. Some of it is just part of my efforts to bring my thoughts together into something that is easier to understand. Surely it is easier to explain to somebody that mastery allows simplicity. At this point taking the time to master my thoughts is probably the right thing to do. It helps bring things together. Unifying the path forward is a great way to begin walking in the right direction.

  • A song of the day and some football watching

    The song of the day is Rose Petals by S. Carey on the album Hundred acres (2018). Not every day has a song. Every day is not the same. That is what makes life brilliant and enduring.

    Today was spent watching football. A lot of people watched some football today. My estimation is that roughly half the people watching television today watched some football. That is an amazing amount of attention on one thing. Our attention is rarely so focused on any one thing. Sometimes I wonder if maybe we could bring this much attention together to accomplish something meaningful. Our ability to really focus the collective power of nation seems to have vanished. Something without our social fabric or maybe civil society itself has broken down in ways that were not expected. We are fragmented and focused on very specific things instead of the national trajectory. Maybe that is where my writing needs to start focusing again. It has been well over a decade since my entire writing journey was focused on figuring out ways to strengthen civil society. It is a noble pursuit or at least something worthy of figuring out.

  • Turning off social media amplification

    Yeah — this blog post is about turning off social media amplification. My writing efforts have never been about cross posting or figuring out the best pattern for social media amplification. That is really the crux of my thoughts on the matter. For better or maybe for worse my writing efforts are really just a way for me to refine my thoughts and push forward. To that end I’m working to turn off all the social media amplification on this weblog.

  • 20190202 Notes

    Today I (pretty much) almost reverted back to writing with pen and paper. It almost happened and it might have been glorious. On the other hand it might have just been an excuse to wander off into less desirable topics.