Some things making me happy:
- Kayaking to Doe Island in the San Juan Islands
- Looking up flights to the kayaking trip… on kayak.com, without noticing the concordance.
- Seeing a motorcyclist on the highway whose white wind stopper was all puffed up in the wind like the Michelin Man
- Looking up at El Capitan and Sentinel Rock from Yosemite floor with Joonas, feeling like ants
- Looking down on the Boeing Factory floor, one of the most intricate scenes I’ve ever seen
- Every time I see Sutro Tower busting out through the SF fog bank
- Discovering the random old trees that are around the office where I work, the ones that date back to before Google and the internet to a time when Silicon Valley was all orchards.
- Noticing that in the picture above Little Sucia Island looks like a speech bubble
Some thoughts occupying my mind recently:
- That about the nicest thing you can wish someone is happiness.
- That the Google President who was beside me at the breakfast pancake line had shaving cream in his ear. Should I have told him?
- That if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing properly, and that confronting decisions is better than dodging them and that living deliberately is almost always better than just floating.
- How it’s interesting to look back at big and great things and remember the innocuous ways in which they began. And how, while sometimes I think it would be cool to be able to go back and whisper in my own ear “this bit coming up is important; pay attention, you’ll like it!” (as though I’m beside myself in a movie), how really I’m very happy not to be able to do that as it would spoil the adventure.
- And that “There is no past that we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternally new now that builds and creates itself out of the Best as the past withdraws.” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
- Or, as Regina puts it: “This is how it works / You’re young until you’re not / You love until you don’t / You try until you can’t // You laugh until you cry / You cry until you laugh / And everyone must breathe / Until their dying breath // No, this is how it works / You peer inside yourself / You take the things you like / And try to love the things you took // And then you take that love you made / And stick it into some / Someone else’s heart / Pumping someone else’s blood // And walking arm in arm / You hope it don’t get harmed / But even if it does / You’ll just do it all again.” (Regina Spektor)
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