“Time passes not, but in it passes the existence of the changeable.”

Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason

October is here and I am not sure where September went. It seems as we get older the months and years go faster and faster, and yet the days feel longer. I am consistently exhausted and stretched, and I am not sure whether that is because I am living well and being productive, or because I am hurrying and hurrying and trying to fit everything in. I think the reason it is so hard for any of us to slow down and enjoy life is because we constantly have a vision of what we are missing scrolling in front of us. We never give ourselves the time to meditate on and enjoy our passions and joys without wondering whether we are doing it the right way or getting the most out of it or spending the right amount of money on it. I think this is obvious to us. We all know we are hurrying, which exposes the fallacy that enlightenment is all it takes to help a person change their ways. The alcoholic is usually the one most aware of how they are ruining their own life. How to change? I can only speak for myself, but finding excuses to leave my phone in the car or in the couch and forget about it has been a good step. Just not having it in my pocket or right next to me or even in the same room helps a lot. But really, just discipline, because I still need to use the computer every day and the web browser is right there. Browsing guitar pedals/amps on the internet can be just as harmful because it wastes time and keeps me from my real guitar, to say nothing of emails news and messages and Substack and Medium etc. My mind needs time and space disconnected from it all in order to be able to breathe. It is amazing how hard it can be to do nothing.

Writing

I have a second draft of my novel completed. I just need to read through it from the beginning and see how it flows cover to cover. Once I do that, if I am happy with it, I guess it will be time to move onto querying. I also have a few close friends and family members who I want to send it to. I don’t know if I’ll do any kind of beta reading or not. I am also working on an essay about C.S. Lewis’s Abolition of Man and how it relates to the AI future garbage fire we’re all anxious about. It is proving to be kind of a wild ride. It has been helpful for me and my thinking, but I am not sure how helpful it will be for others.

Music

I really have not been disciplined about recording. I have been playing almost daily, but not exactly good practice, just noodling and jamming and having fun. Nothing wrong with that, but I do want to get going on my long overdue Lit Song demos. My problem is unreasonable expectations for the sound quality, because I am not recording in a treated studio and I really am an amateur. I guess I could pay to go to a real studio, but I would need to really practice my songs so I could keep it affordable. I also enjoy the learning process of recording, and it is really rewarding when I can get something to sound good. I’ve also got a lot of podcast editing to do.

We also just got back from visiting my wife’s family, and we came back with a pair of speakers and a receiver that I was able to hook up to a CD player. It sounds really good. I played some familiar music and was able to hear a lot more details than I’ve heard on headphones (even good ones) or on any Bluetooth speaker. The crazy thing is that people treat vintage audio equipment like junk nowadays (unless it’s been scooped up or YouTubed about by the audiophiles), but it sounds so much better than the new crap being sold today. If you wanted to listen to music in the 70s-90s, you had to get a receiver and bookshelf speakers for your home audio setup. They last longer, each piece does one thing but does it well, and the speakers are bigger and louder and more detailed. No matter how good the little four inch doodads sound, they just can’t compare. It is really strange to me how most of us are listening to music on really cruddy speakers (laptop, airpods, mini Bluetooth) compared to forty years ago. Perhaps I am romanticizing a bit, because nowadays sound is much more accessible than it was, but once you’ve heard good vintage style speakers that you could get for less than the cost of a couple crappy smart speakers which are unrepairable and designed for obsolescence (even though you can absolutely spend a fortune on old speakers, if you want to), it is hard to go back. Yes, it is less convenient, and it takes up more space, and there is a little bit of a learning curve to setting it up; but it is worth it in my opinion, and it will outlast you.

This brings me to something else I want to do in October, which is listen to music mindfully. Back in the day, people used to have listening parties when new albums came out. They wouldn’t be playing games or watching TV (or driving in the car), they would just be listening to the music. And I want to take this opportunity I have with this speaker setup to just sit and listen. Even if you don’t have nice speakers or even nice headphones, I think we can all benefit from just being able to close our eyes and listen to a track. I recommend this pair of $25 IEMs if you don’t have an audio setup, since they reproduce sound really accurately and they’re cheap and they work with anything (you can choose the USB-C version if you don’t have a headphone jack). But there is also grace with audio, because some of the most important listening experiences I’ve ever had have come almost free. And even if you don’t get the chance to do it as often because you have to make space to just sit and listen and not worry about who might call or text you, that makes it more important and more special. We can absolutely go the other way, where we are always listening to something, which can be just as harmful.

Reading

Well that was a long rant, but these updates are more for me than anybody else anyway. Thanks for reading if you still are! Last month I finished In Dubious Battle and I liked it a lot. I might have to read Grapes of Wrath again. I am also starting The Fellowship of the Ring because Eric and I are doing our LOTR reread for the podcast. I also have the books I have always been reading for a while (City of God, 死神永生, Critique of Pure Reason). I am actually almost done with 死神永生 and should finish it this month if I keep up with my page a day. I don’t know what Chinese book I will read after that, but I should line something up so I don’t lapse. Languages are another area where I feel like I’ve been falling behind. I keep in touch with Chinese, but I don’t do enough real study and practice to progress at a meaningful pace. I could be underrating myself, but there are other languages too, like Spanish and Latin that I really want to learn and I haven’t been successful at making the time. All the carrot and stick methods aren’t going to help. Heck, I haven’t even had much time to play video games, much less the time for other projects. Hurry, hurry, hurry. When was the last time you did something, not for its cognitive or social benefits, but just for the pure joy? I’m trying to write a sonnet about all this hurry. I wish I had an answer.

Let’s randomly connect this back to the Kant quote at the beginning. “Time passes not.” Though we perceive it as a rushing river, time is in fact a constant. This idea is not so unfamiliar because of pop physics, but I think it is no less mind warping. “In it passes the existence of the changeable.” If there is one thing tech has done for us it has made us more changeable. We don’t have to wait to learn new skills or hobbies or information because we can look things up instantly, and so our sense of self seems to be constantly in flux. Perhaps this is why the language we use for disconnecting often has to do with time. “I need to get off my phone and slow down.” It feels fast to us because the rate of development in the digital world moves so much faster than the physical realm. Changeability equals speed. Yet we can also use the changeability of technology to halt our own changeability. We access talking heads and data and interpretations of reality itself that confirm our biases. But the “unchangeability” won by that kind of screen use is an illusion, isn't it? All the while there are dark patterns that are changing us as we use them. We are being sold and led towards extremism and outrage and indolence and anger and lust and a loss of self control and discipline. Even if we feel like all our opinions are being corroborated and our way of life confirmed, it is the way of life that the deceptive patterns of bad faith tech has conditioned us for. All this contained by time as our existence passes within it.

#update #October #2026

Thank you for reading! I greatly regret that I will most likely never be able to meet you in person and shake your hand, but perhaps we can virtually shake hands via my newsletter, social media, or a cup of coffee sent over the wire. They are poor substitutes, but they can be a real grace in this intractable world.

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