James

Tis the season

'Tis the season. I'm sitting next to a Christmas tree covered in lights and ornaments. Hand-made and photo ornaments accumulate slowly over the years, small differences framing the familiarity of this tradition, this talisman of love and gratitude. In a related way, 'tis also the season

Quality of awareness

(Writing is thinking; reader beware, this isn't for reaching out.) Unfolding ways of being have qualities, qualia I guess, a "what it is like" that's similar to texture, color, viscosity. There's a state of receptivity to experience which lets in sensation so

journal

Monday warm up

Hello Monday, silence, opportunity of time. Hello awareness, choice, sensing, passion without fixation. What wants to be heard, expressed, fulfilled? What is mine to do today? What role at all scales will I play? What voice to wear here, even? Selecting words forces a style, a vector of expression that

journal

remembering the greenhouse

This is a meta post to bring me back into contact with this workflow, this writing editor, and activate the sense of muscle memory that comes from stepping back into this space, this site, the intersection of public and personal. It's like a greenhouse — walking through a door

journal

my phenomenology of free attention

Hey self, what's on your mind? ... Nah, I don't want to keep up that rhetorical style.  (Awkward start, but no deleting! Plow forward) Nor reify IFS parts either — it's not patterns floating around, just untangling/wayfinding/degfragging. Integrating, maybe I'll go with

journal

just plain typing

<warning: the following is entirely self-referential navel-gazing fluff... at first, then looks at the dark side of the big picture> Sometimes I think about typing here, exploring something out in the open, and I shy away because of some concept of... wanting it to be high-quality, in case

journal

feelings about fixing the computer

This post hearkens back to my feelings about the dishwasher [https://www.bakejam.com/feelings-about-the-dishwasher/] over a year ago. Today I spent 6 to 7 hours of effort across 12 hours of wall-clock time trying to get my desktop PC to update its Win10 after being stuck for two years

newsletter

Mid-year 2021 update

journal

drafts in the icebox

This is just to say I have deleted the drafts that were in the icebox and which probably had some good stuff that could have been written at one point Forgive me they lost their aliveness so stale and so old

journal

a soaring grounding

Hello to myself, writing from the middle of an Intentional Society session. I've just sent the boats out to sea, and we happen to have no day-trippers around other than myself so, this is what wants to flow for me. Doing a Complice review last night, I had

journal

consider blogging

That's what my daily tasklist says currently - "consider blogging." Not to demand that I write, but to think about it in the context of setting my intentions for the day. I've found myself thinking, almost imagining myself writing in a variety of moments

journal

emotions as another brain

I heard a child's reactions upstairs: noises that conveyed emotional states. Shock, distress, anger, grief, a few seconds each, one flowing into another. This seemed to resolve without any parental support (this time), and now I hear them playing together again. Something about it worked - some sort

essay

a one minute message

To those who live and grow. There is a further shore A further shore of how to be Beyond the ocean of knowing You know already This current ground will not hold you long It is cracking and sinking already Sail with awareness Navigate with intention You can only get

journal

commitments and agreements

When someone asks you "to commit" to something, there are two interestingly different senses of the word to consider and disambiguate. The first is a synonym of "dedicate" - to be committed to something is to be dedicated to that thing. To care, to value, to

journal

just waving hello

Hello, I'm still around! When I'm not here, you see, I'm over there [https://www.intentionalsociety.org]. It's been a fun couple weeks. We've just about hit critical mass, I think, at 60 newsletter subscribers, 34 session registrants, 14 session

journal

talk and action

I did some one-on-one calls on Sunday for Intentional Society [https://www.intentionalsociety.org], getting more familiar with folks and quizzing them about their hopes for personal/ultimate outcomes and inclinations for next steps. One thing that came up multiple times was a desire towards action. Action as the counterpoint

journal

goal recrafting

I started using Complice [https://complice.co] six months ago now. Coincidentally, that was right after I glimpsed down below "values" to formulate my deep goals [https://www.bakejam.com/deep-goals/] of relational being-ness (and wholeness, coherence, integrity - words are approximate). That made for a great set

journal

growth and commitments

I'm rolling around a few thought nuggets shared by participants in yesterday's inaugural IS [https://www.intentionalsociety.org] info session. One is that personal development/growth is at the center. Or very near the center. This sounds very pithy and quite true to me. By development

newsletter

Post-retirement Christmas Letter

journal

ready to not know

First, I notice it's been two weeks since I wrote here! I've been intentionally focusing on other things, but I didn't mean to stop entirely for this long. I notice a part of me was thinking that I should leave the last post [https:

journal

intentionalsociety.org is live

https://www.intentionalsociety.org It's like starting to roll a boulder uphill. Potential energy starts to turn into distance traveled. Once you push off, you want to sustain the effort so it doesn't roll right back to the start. Once you have others pushing beside you,

essay

pointing at intentional society

<meta: drafting/distilling bits of copy for a homepage> It starts with intention and awareness. Intention is the will to cause something to change. Awareness is the means to see what really is, see why it is so, and see what is changeable. Awareness brings capacity and capability

essay

building doghouses

This is a delightful new-to-me conceptual label for a particular kind of experimental-proof-of-concept-team-execution-construction-project: build a doghouse. Thanks go to @SarahAMcManus [https://twitter.com/sarahamcmanus] for the metaphor. The primary goal is not to possess a doghouse - your goal is to learn how your team works together in building something.

essay

unlocking intentional society

This is an explanation of the building blocks that I think can enable (codename) "intentional society" to enter amazing new territory. They are my justification for "why there's a THERE there", even though I can't describe quite what it looks like to

essay

rings of intentional society

One of the first questions that people have about (codename) "intentional society" is, "what kind of thing is it, really?" By that, people tend to mean "what do people actually do to be in it?" This is a very practical question! And it'