Chris Remus' Personal Blog

My free-form, unfiltered and unorganized space to reflect and explore.

I've been doing most of my free form writing in this blog lately. Before this, I'd been using a small physical journal.

The journal was private. This blog isn't.

I've been thinking of the trade-offs. This blog allows me to continue getting comfortable putting myself out there, being open, vulnerable and available for connection.

Yet there are some things that I feel are best kept private. Maybe they feel too painful or sensitive to share. I'm also trying to be conscious of over-sharing. Brene Brown's over-sharing definition resonates with me.

So maybe the answer is to start writing both here and in the physical journal again. In addition to being a private place to reflect on anything, I experience the physical act of putting pen to paper as a grounding activity.

I'm rediscovering the pleasure of physical books and bookstores. For many years I convinced myself our NYC apartment had no room for books. I'm now enjoying making space for them.

There's something comforting and inspiring to me about being around books. Maybe it's the sense of potential, connection and expansion they represent to me.

I'm also enjoying buying a book even if it may take me a while to get aroubd to reading it. I'm feeling grateful to rediscover the joy of browsing used and independent bookstores. It feels important to me to expose our son to bookstores too.

If I do buy online, I try and buy used on Amazon. My next intention is to start using IndieBound as my go-to online bookstore.

First posted as my introduction here.

Hi Everyone 👋

Background

I'm Chris. I came across Bentoism via Yancey Strickler's Reboot podcast episode. I've been following Jerry Colonna's work since before there was a Reboot.

It's one of the very few podcasts I make space for on a regular basis. I'm also a current Reboot Founder's Circle member.

Why Bentoism

I've been thinking about this idea of financial gain being the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong in business for a while now. It had been present in my consciousness for a while. I've started to recognize it for what it is only over the past year.

Spending a year on a floor of a co-working space with real estate agents really brought this to light. Day-in and day-out, I was amazed and sometime appalled by how the pursuit of a $ justified every action they took.

I've been writing about a related topic, pursuing The Dream, on my blog, Just Rolling with It, for a while now. The blog's evolved to explore why we are so convinced that pursuing The Dream justifies so many other unhealthy decisions and trade-offs.

These decisions pull us in the opposite direction of self-coherence. I was going in this direction for most of my working life. Just Rolling with It started about 4-5 years ago. A few years into it, I realized that this career/life reboot was about aligning the work I do with my true self, as Parker Palmer refers to it.

I'm curious to explore Bentoism as I develop Chainflow. It's a company I'm building (and bootstrapping) that runs validators on cryptocurrency Proof of Stake networks.

Although the space is less than a year old, it's already showing signs of being driven primarily by the accumulation of financial assets. And this is in a space that's ostensibly about creating a more equitable distribution of wealth and power.

I'm feeling excited to find this group. I look forward to exploring, developing and furthering these ideas with each of you.

Holiday travel begins tomorrow. These times feel conflicting. I want to rest from work. I know it's healthy to rest.

Yet at the same time, I find myself in the fortunate circumstance of truly enjoying my work. Plus I work for myself. These conditions makes it hard for me to disconnect.

Today I marked some vacation time on my calendar. I think it feels like a beneficial balance.

Past experience has shown that being part in and part out od vacation at all times feels doubly exhausting.

Hopefully setting aside specific times to work this vacation season will help prevent this half in/out tension from manifesting and compounding.

I feel pretty good about my efforts to not get caught in the artificial and unhealthy holiday consumption cycle. Yet I still became aware of experiencing a growing sense of urgency as the year closes.

This perceived urgency is manifesting in my consciousness and somatic experiemce as mild anxiety. The source feels like the drive humanity has to bring the current western calendar to a close with definitive finality.

All these things need to get done before the year ends. We need to start the new year with a clean slate.

These needs drive us toward grasping some finality in something. Yet I reminded myself that time is somewhat an artificial construct in and of itself. For a great perception-bending exploration of time, I recommend reading Einstein's Dreams, by Alan Lightman.

I also reminded myself that January 2 comes and goes. Sometimes it's hard to rember that too, when faced with the massive New Year's Eve build-up and coundown.

Remembering these things is helping ease this year end finality anxiety for me. I don't feel this false sense of urgency so ugently anymore.

To me, that's worth celebrating, even if it's not 00:01 on January 1 2020 yet 🙂🙏🎉

I write a daily priority list every day. It is the single most important work task I do each day. It's limited to 6-8 tasks.

The list helps ground and focus me. I've been doing this for years. In that time, I've learned to scope the tasks to get them done within the day.

This helps remind me that I actually am getting stuff done. It fights the feeling of never getting enough done.

6 tasks feels like the right number. 7 is stretching it. 8 is starting to set unrealistic expectations.

Yet recently I find myself adding 8 every day. This is an indicator something's out of sync. Yesterday I only got half the list done. That's further reinforcement sonething's out of whack.

This demonstrates another daily priority benefit. It can signal that something about my workflow needs adjustment.

I'm not sure what exactly's unsynchronized. I do have some ideas. The awareness and ideas have me feeling hopeful I'll figure it out.

I write a daily priority list every day. It is the single most important work task I do each day. It's limited to 6-8 tasks.

The list helps ground and focus me. I've been doing this for years. In that time, I've learned to scope the tasks to get them done within the day.

This helps remind me that I actually am getting stuff done. It fights the feeling of never getting enough done.

6 tasks feels like the right number. 7 is stretching it. 8 is starting to set unrealistic expectations.

Yet recently I find myself adding 8 every day. This is an indicator something's out of sync. Yesterday I only got half the list done. That's further reinforcement sonething's out of whack.

This demonstrates another daily priority benefit. It can signal that something about my workflow needs adjustment.

I'm not sure what exactly's unsynchronized. I do have some ideas. The awareness and ideas have me feeling hopeful I'll figure it out.

Just Rolling with It's a blog I started a number of years ago. It slowly emerged from an earlier free form blog I started, much like this one.

Here's this week's issue, The Dream Pushers' Holiday 🌲

I wake every day between 5-5:15AM. It's my grounding time, before my wife and son wake.

I usually alternate between exercising and meditating during that time, depending on the day.

In a past life, I used to get home on weekends at 5AM, after being out at a club, listening to house music. This was when I was drinking too, so I'd usually still be pretty buzzed.

I'm reminded of this when I walk our dog in the early morning hours. I'll sometimes encounter people stumbling home, having a few come-down beers on the pier or smoking some weed to wind the previous evening down.

Seeing this makes me feel grateful for the changes and shifts in my life that allow me to start the new day, rather than wind down the night before, at 5am 🙏

I feel I've been pushing hard this week. The exertion is catching up with me on Thursday evening. My stomach tension at times like this feels like it's locked.

Today felt like a physical and mental sprint since I woke at 5AM. I hope to attend a 2 hour classic hatha yoga class this evening, taught by my teacher, to help slow things down 🙏