Personal essays
My second word for 2025 is about noticing the things you are able to accomplish
Weights
Years and years ago I was working for a startup with a buddy of mine and this young kid.
The money guy had brought me in to do sales. I told him I hated sales and I wasn’t good at it. I ended up doing a bunch of our marketing and wrote the documentation and user manuals.
This was so long ago that the company didn’t have a web site. We printed brochures and mailed them to prospective clients.
Around ten each morning my buddy and I would walk next door and get a cup of coffee.
This was so long ago there weren’t Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts around. But some office buildings had some place where they made bad coffee and brought in pastries from somewhere.
One morning we were talking about lifting weights comparing workouts and the kid said, “I don’t lift weights.”
He paused and saw the question on my face and continued, “they’re too heavy.”
I was thinking about that last week as I made adjustments to my current workout.
I’m doing too many repetitions of some exercises to I increased the weight.
I reduced a couple because I caught myself cheating. I was doing the right number of repetitions but only by cheating and not using the proper form.
Little adjustments.
Sourdough
I feel bad about this next story because the friend who I’ll be quoting reads this newsletter.
I was out to dinner with a friend just before Thanksgiving and we were talking about cooking and baking and I asked if he makes sourdough bread.
Now, I’m not religious about sourdough. I do maintain a starter (I used to maintain two - one wheat one rye) but I think you can get much of the flavor benefits from using a poolish.
But sourdough had somehow come up in conversation so I asked him if he makes sourdough bread.
“No,” he said and saw the question on my face and continued, “it’s too sour.”
I honestly couldn’t tell if he was messing with me or not. He and I had gone to Vermont and taken a class from a biologist and a baker about the science of sourdough.
We learned that you can completely control the sourness of the dough by how you feed the starter.
You’re balancing the acids and bacteria produced and you have a lot of levers. You can adjust the temperature, the water content, how often you feed the starter, and how much you feed the starter.
I prefer my sourdough on the sweet side. It has a fruity aroma with just a bit of sourness.
When I travel or don’t bake all the time the characteristics of my starter will change.
I can bring it back or push it farther in another direction.
I can’t do it right away. It takes time.
I can’t bake today based on how my starter was a week ago or how I wish it would be.
I have to think ahead and do the little things I have at my disposal to make gradual changes.
Goal 2
Anyway, that’s why my second word is “levers”.
It’s so easy to catastrophize right now.
Believe me, I’m not putting my head in the sand and pretending that things are better than they are or that things will magically be ok.
I’m looking for levers that I can push.
Some are too heavy. I can’t operate them now. Perhaps over time and repetition I’ll get there - perhaps I never will.
Some seem self-indulgent.
I’ve started sitting on a massage chair after a workout. Not all the time. But those ten minutes make me feel good and relaxed. I need to rememher to press more of those levers this year. Those are the levers that release a little food pellet - a treat that makes me happy and keeps my mind quiet for a bit.
There are other levers that don’t seem to have any impact at all - how does a solar panel on my roof really save the planet.
It’s what I can do.
This year I hope to look for levers that, in the face of all that is going wrong around us, might move me, my little world, or our bigger world in the right direction.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 251. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe