update — Hunter Dansin

Time Passes Not

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 20:13:15 +0000

October 2026 Update

“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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September 2026 Update

Sun, 06 Sep 2026 22:32:47 +0000

Dubious Train

“At last it was evening. The lights in the street outside came on, and the Neon restaurant sign on the corner jerked on and off, exploding its hard red light in the air. Into Jim Nolan’s room the sign threw a soft red light.”

— John Steinbeck, In Dubious Battle

This is good prose, and it was a beautiful reminder of why I love John Steinbeck. He was an excellent writer dedicated to his craft, no matter how controversial his stories or opinions. I really needed to come back to good prose, and I have not been disappointed by In Dubious Battle. It is a good book for starting a new job (haha if you’ve read it). Speaking of which I am somewhat drained while I write this. It is a good job, but there is definitely extra stress when you have to meet new people and go to a new place. And yet every year is new, so experience can sometimes provide a false sense of security. Kids grow, people move, time rushes.

Writing

I have been writing almost every day, and I have crossed 40,000 words with my new book. If I can get to 50,000 it will be close enough to full length for me to call it a novel instead of a novella. It has been a fun project, and I will still have to do a significant amount of rewriting and editing. It has shown me that writing, just like any other art, ought to be fun. I think the past two books have felt like monuments that I needed to build for myself before I could really admit to myself that I am doing this for fun, not to be a Great Writer. There must be a balance between spiritual gravity and joyful whimsy. This project is definitely on the side of whimsy, or its weird and crazy, I honestly can’t tell the difference sometimes.

I am also making peace with Substack/Medium/Social Media, I think. I have accepted that it will probably never be a significant source of income, and that is freeing to me because it allows me to avoid a “half artistic profession.” Lots of writers and artists have had to earn their bread a different way, and not depending on it for income it means I won’t have to play to algorithms or trends. I am not precluding the possibility of “building an audience,” but I’m not really making it a goal. My goal is to make the best art I can make and write what I love to write.

I have had some positive interactions on Medium despite my frustrations with their recommendation algorithm, so that is nice. I haven’t had as much traffic from Substack and I don’t really like their social media approach. They are not as greedy and creepy as Facebook, but it is still the same model of trapping attention around things that you love. I appreciate that they focus on encouraging people to pay writers, but I find that there is a pressure (if you are really trying to get paid on Substack) to write something “relevant” and/or controversial. It is nice to connect with people over reading and books, but as with all social media, it is important not to let the means overshadow the ends. Going forward I don’t plan to paywall any of my stuff except for books. It just feels disingenuous. It is also kind of insulting how little the Medium Partner Program pays. I have some stories with hundreds of claps, but they don’t seem to value claps anymore because the profit hasn’t even broken a dollar. The fact that you have to pay to become a Medium Member in order to write for the partner program doesn’t feel great, either.

As always, a huge thank you to those who have bought me a coffee. I really really appreciate it! I’ve been trying to add some behind the scenes photos and music stuff for anyone who chips in, as I am able. I’d say the biggest actual “perk” available on there are the recordings that are done for Lit Songs that I haven’t released anywhere else yet. It is probably going to be long time before the album sees the light of day publicly, but I add them on Buymeacoffee as I finish the mixes. There are currently two.

Music

I haven’t done as much music as I have wanted to, or at least, I don’t have much to show for what I have been practicing. I have mostly been playing the same things over and over. One of them is a riff that I am trying to get just right before I settle on recording the vocals for the song, the other is the song People Get Ready, written by Curtis Mayfield and performed by the Impressions as well as Jeff Beck et al. through the years. It is a beautiful song with a beautiful melody and it is really just a song that gives some relief to me. I’m guessing the people around me who have to listen to it get a little sick of hearing it, but I try not to push it too much. I think the lyrics are really timeless, you should go have a listen to both the original by The Impressions and to Jeff Beck at Ronnie Scott’s.

People get ready, there’s a train a comin’
Don’t need no baggage, you just get on board
All you need is faith to hear the diesel’s hummin’
Don’t need no ticket, you just thank the lord.

There ain’t no room for a hopeless sinner
Who would hurt all mankind just to save his own.
Have pity on those whose chances grow thinner.
There ain’t no hiding place against the kingdom’s throne.

Podcast

Eric and I will be returning for our fourth season of Raise a Glass. We actually have two episodes recorded already, which I am in the process of editing. We’re going to be doing a read through of Lord of the Rings. So if you want to follow along you can join the Patreon for free. There are also actual perks in the form of bonus episodes and blooper content for the different tiers — But I don’t think either Eric or I have a single entrepreneurial bone in our bodies so it’s very much what we enjoy and ways we can try to make it fun for listeners.

Reading

Aside from In Dubious Battle I have been reading way too many books simultaneously again. Death’s End (Three Body Problem book 3) in Chinese, Don Quixote, some Edith Wharton short stories, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Augustine’s City of God. This month, Wharton’s Xingu stands out in my mind. It tells about a hilarious little joke pulled on some stuffy English ladies and their book club. I don’t want to spoil it because it will be better to read it for yourself, but it is one of the funniest things I have ever read and I’ve read Kurt Vonnegut. Edith Wharton was a sharp woman, and I feel like she must have been getting some revenge for something.

I am also almost done with Death’s End in Chinese and I can hardly believe it. It is about 500 pages and it has been several years since I started working through it. I feel like my reading level has definitely gone up, but that really depends on how well I can keep up with my flashcards. Rather than go for 100% comprehension, I look up about five words and add them to a flashcard app. I think it has genuinely helped my vocabulary grow because I am understanding a lot more than I did at the beginning. I also read the English simultaneously just so I can know what really happened and fill in the gaps because there are some pretty crazy things that happen in it. I think Three Body is a special series. It is not very well written in terms of the prose, and neither are the characters particularly deep, but the ideas and the execution of them is astonishing. There are some fresh insights about space and time and our relationship to the cosmos and the earth that I think makes the series worth reading.

#update #September #2026

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August 2026 Update

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:34:50 +0000

Diffusive Mercy

“So deeply inherent is it in this life of ours that men have to suffer for each other’s sins, so inevitably diffusive is human suffering, that even justice makes its victims, and we can conceive no retribution that does not spread beyond its mark in pulsations of unmerited pain.”

— George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, Chapter 7

“Lawful mercy is nothing kin to foul redemption.”

— Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

Well the last month of summer is coming to a close and we have some large life changes on the horizon. I have always been somewhat calm in periods of transition, but I have begun to wonder whether a good deal of that calmness came from naivety. Now I can only think of what it will mean for my kids and our family and how on earth we will afford a house someday. And yet, when I survey my life, I see so much richness to be thankful for. My family is beautiful and our life is not easy but comfortable and meaningful.

I have also been thinking on mercy and justice, and cannot help but observe that we seem to have forgotten the lessons of history. I cannot help but think with some fear, that the violence wrought by the Trump administration will come back to harm us. Foreign aid is not only charity, it is also good policy. If we sow seeds of hate at home and abroad we should not be surprised when those seeds grow and attempt to choke us somehow. This is why justice and mercy must be mentioned in the same sentence. The justice we need is not merely concerned with “fairness,” but with intentional and proactive steps that not only punish wrongdoing, but strive to build a better future.

Writing

I started rewriting my novel, and discovered a new platform which has helped me get my writing habit back. It is called Koala Quill. It gives you one dollar per day that you show up and type for fifteen minutes. It works by measuring your active typing, so you can’t just copy and paste or leave the tab open, and I am almost ashamed to admit that it has been the most reliable way to get me back into a writing habit. The monthly subscription is less than $30, so if you manage to do it every day you end up making money. I’m going to do it for a year, and hopefully it will keep me typing and writing as my life changes.

I have now gotten through most of the rewrite of my new book, and it is now going to get harder because there are some new scenes I need to draft and add in. I am actually procrastinating from it by writing this update.

I did get a monthly supporter on Buy Me a Coffee, for which I am very grateful. It’s good to know that a real person out there appreciated some of my work. Thank you!

I have also gotten some nice comments on Medium with my Sonnets, which is a nice encouragement.

Music

I was able to record and mix another song for the Lit Songs demo album, so that is a win. (Supporters on Buy Me a Coffee of any amount can listen to the mixes as I get them done!) I ended up rerecording the acoustic guitar with a metronome. It helped me realize all the weird things I do with rhythm, and I don’t know whether I should lean into the weirdness or try to tone it down. I should probably meet in the middle. I’ve noticed that my guitar playing has gotten a little more schizophrenic. I think it is because I have been pushing so hard to get faster and ‘better.’ While I do think I have improved a lot, and have a lot more tools, I have been feeling kind of exhausted when I practice, and I think I need to go back to basics and just enjoy the power of a simple note. A good friend gifted me some classical guitar books that I want to work through.

Reading

My wife and I read The Mill on the Floss this summer. It was good to get back into some George Eliot. She is a very good novelist, which is good, but it is also a little demoralizing because it shows me a level of artistic achievement I am not sure I will ever reach. I am not a writer like George Eliot, and I don’t know if I will ever write such a chunky, cozy novel to sink into. I fly off the handle too much. But then, I’d rather find my own voice, and after reading the ending of Mill on the Floss I am unpleasantly surprised to see that finding a good ending is as hard for great writers as for the rest of us. The failings of our heroes are just as important to acknowledge as their strengths, just as it is important for aspiring writers to balance the inspirational work we read with some mediocre writing that shows us that getting our work published might not be so impossible after all.

We also saw Measure for Measure and Midsummer Night’s Dream by a favorite Shakespeare Company of ours and they were really great. There is no silence like theater silence, which we experienced as everyone watched Isabel deciding whether or not to offer Angelo mercy in Measure for Measure. I think Shakespeare externalizes those secret, passionate, battles that we have within ourselves. I wish I could tell you that my internal Isabel always chooses mercy, but she does not. Yet mercy is the only way we will ever see a cessation of violence on this earth, and God gave us the Cross as an example. Yet so strange is the turning of my life, that I find myself having to offer mercy more often to those who profess to follow It than those who do not.

#Update #August

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