#methodical

[dk-thrive]

A methodical approach to an irrational task offers a certain hope of success in a project that is in fact hopeless. And to some extent a methodical approach can provide a sense of meaning, even joy in some cases. This apparent structure might be what makes searching for something so much like writing: the stroll of the thought down to the paper that appears purposeful when it is not.

— Ia Genberg, The Details: A Novel (translated by Kira Josefsson) (HarperVia, August 8, 2023)

[whats-in-a-sentence]

An anomaly which often struck me in the character of my friend Sherlock Holmes was that, although in his methods of thought he was the neatest and most methodical of mankind, and although he affected a certain quiet primness of dress, he was none the less in his personal habits one of the most untidy men that ever drove a fellow-lodger to distraction.

"The Illustrated Sherlock Holmes Treasury" - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

[tenth-sentence]

Our experiences overwhelmingly attest to there being at most one route: we must wait it out – second must follow second as tick by tock now methodically gives way to then.

"The Fabric of the Cosmos" - Brian Greene

[1introvertedsage]

The beast has been asleep for too long. But now it is awake.

[thejournallo]

ME MANIFESTING THAT EVERYONE WHO SEE THIS POST GETS WHAT THEY WANT.

(Masterlists)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The math just adds up!

[lo-fag]

idk man. i just think itd be really cool if sign language classes were mandatory throughout primary school. yeah because it would make communication with deaf kids and autistic/nonverbal kids much easier. and those kids would be accessible to the others so they could make friends and have healthy relationships. yeah. and kids would eat that shit up man. like their own little secret language? they love that.

[dkscore]

The Comprehensive Guide to the Virgo Zodiac Sign: Traits, Compatibility, and Spiritual Growth

The Virgo zodiac sign, known as Kanya in Sanskrit, is the sixth sign of the zodiac. Renowned for their perceptiveness, orderliness, and methodical nature, Virgos are often seen as conservative and modest. They are thoughtful, Read more >>

[a-method-in-it]

You know that Chris Fleming line that goes "Call yourself a community organizer even though you're not on speaking terms with your roommates"?

I honestly think every leftist who talks about the "revolution" like Christians talk about the rapture needs to spend a year trying to organize their workplace. Anyone who sincerely talks about building a movement so vast and all-encompassing that it overwhelms all existing power structures needs the dose of humility that comes with realizing they can't even build a movement to get people paid better at a badly run AMC Theaters where everyone already hates the manager.

[buried-in-stardust]

Making Huizhou inksticks (徽墨), famous for its high quality.

Notes:

The characters OP pressed into the inksticks are 山白, OP's username

The "internal heat" referred to in the video is a term in Traditional Chinese medicine referring to a cause of inflammation, swelling, twitching, etc.

[eng by me]

[daveinediting]

Yesterday I laid out a part of my story as it intersects with education and how that education informs my belief in the interplay of subconscious and conscious processes.

Interplay?

Sure. A lot of the time it's not obvious right away. Sometimes, sure. But sometimes months, maybe years later.

As brand new information and as new mental associations that point the way forward.

I said it before, I'll say it again: I was not a model student. I legitimately pissed off some of my teachers. I drove others to distraction. Even the ones who taught me things I actually use in my professional life... I gave them a hard time, too.

The Education of Me was a pretty gnarly process.

During that gnarly process, however, something in my brain held onto certain experiences and knowledge, most of which I did not consider relevant to my life at the time. In general, the categories are: performing arts, literature, and writing. And my future career was light years from my awareness.

In school, from elementary halfway through my senior year in college, I thought I'd be something about writing. By high school I'd zoomed in on journalism. By my senior year in college I thought for sure advertising.

So I was not consciously learning what I would later need to know in order to sustain a future career I was in no way preparing myself for.

Lemme give you one example of how that played out.

I was working on the music for a pretty lengthy section of a show for broadcast television. The section of show was about a humanitarian organization and some of its component parts. So I got to thinking about how the music could be and immediately my brain came back with the word Rondo.

Rondo?

Yes. It's a music form in which you establish a theme and follow it with another theme. Then you come back to the original theme. Then you jump to a new theme. Repeat as necessary. 

The themes wander about a bunch but are always anchored to the original. The form is represented as A-B-A-C-A-D-A and so on. And it's a pretty good template when you're crafting music for a thing with parts.

A thing...

With parts.

And my brain comes back at me with BAM.

Rondo.

I wasn't a very good piano student, by the way. I never practiced, really. Not seriously. Not intentionally. Not relentlessly and methodically. But I do remember sonatas and variations and, yes, rondos. Although here's the thing:

I only practiced one rondo that I'm aware of. From Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 8 (Pathétique), the third movement, Rondo: Allegro. 

I could play some of it... but not all of it. I could perform what I could already perform without practice. So yeah.

This one song, this Rondo, didn't mean that much to me.

And yet...

And yet, when presented with a thing with parts, my brain recognized the form from this one area of my life I didn't much pay attention to and applied it to this other area of my life for which I was being, you know, paid.

So.

When the sequence for which I was crafting music focused on the main organization, that was the A theme. Anytime we pivoted to one of the organization's departments, that was the B, C, or D theme.

It worked, by the way.

It worked well. 

That's, I think, my most memorable story of onboarding a lot of random knowledge as opposed to getting it on demand.

And it is how my brain works.

[themandalalady]

24-153 Being Methodical

[tenth-sentence]

Then he would run them to the other side of the room one by one, very slowly, and line them up on that side bumper-to-bumper.

"Cujo" - Stephen King

[blueskittlesart]

sharing mana