journal features

a productive day

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Kokubunji, 2020.11.22

I've discovered that I've been completely exhausted. I've been lapsing into hour-long naps at all times of day. No wonder our photo book was so full of errors this year!

Anyway, it took me until today, my third day off, to do much more than nap. I got my resume ship-shape and out the door to an "executive search" firm that had recently contacted Jon about a US-based firm that's setting up shop in Tokyo. I sorted out a relatively inexpensive replacement for my "beater" watch. I put out and took in the laundry, fed The Girl, did the dishes, watched an actually excellent leadership course, and then took The Girl by bike to a park that's about 4-5km from here.

After dinner we watched "the Matrix". Which was not productive. Modern TV's have such high dynamic range that all those old flicks (e.g. ET, which we watched last weekend) look like made-for-TV stuff, and low-rent versions at that.

rand()m quote

Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.

—John Gardner