What I’ve Learned, 2013 Edition

Our brain on automatic is a pattern-making machine.  Our consciousness can help bring awareness to the patterns through which we live our life, and break the ones that don’t suit us.  Be very careful about which patterns you choose to keep around.

Computers are tools to be used for tasks.  They are not a lifestyle.

We have as much freedom as we decide we have.  Once we can get outside of our patterns enough to notice this, even for a moment, we are free.  Which is not to say that we don’t also need reminding sometimes.

Cutting our losses takes courage, continuing for the sake of it does not take as much courage.

There’s no substitute for getting our hands in the dirt.

A great warning sign that we might not be in the right place is when people measure success by things we don’t care about (like money, or attention, or popularity, or whatever).  Especially when the success being measured is ours.

If it can be erased by a magnet, it isn’t real.

Life is too short to follow the zeitgeist that much, unless it happens to coincide with what we’re interested in anyway.

Just because we’re on the right track doesn’t mean what we’re working toward is going to  (or should) look anything like it does now.