"But I can only be close friends with a limited amount of people, and this disappoints me. I’d love to spend more time with my friends. I’d love to spend more time with my wife. I’d love to spend more time alone. I’d love to spend more time making things. I’d love to spend more time sleeping. (I should be sleeping.) I can’t do more of all these things. In fact, I’ve basically given up trying to make time to play guitar; I just can’t do it all. 

The only answer I’ve come up with is to make sure I get enough time to be in isolation. It’s the only thing I can truly control. Plus, I’m a terrible friend, husband, and employee if I don’t get enough time alone to sort out my thoughts. I’ll continue meeting new people, and I’m sure there will be meaningful friendships that emerge, but only of I take care and nurture myself."

“I had gone through and thought about the number of books you could conceivably read in a year, for example. And then if you extrapolate it out over your lifetime, how many can you reasonably read? And it got me thinking about how vast the world of books is, and how small what you will ever take in actually is. And it becomes a sort of overwhelming thought when you realize that no matter how hard you try, no matter how smart you are, no matter how much you love to read – as I put it in the piece, statistically speaking, you’re going to die having missed almost everything.”<br />
<br />
[via: http://jslr.tumblr.com/post/7205844487/i-had-gone-through-and-thought-about-the-number ]

"Los Angeles has been compared to a laboratory — an urban ground for experiments both prescribed and accidental. Laboratory is a perfect word. Enveloping, chaotic and mutable, LA is a nocturnal workshop where the constant experiments leave no time to tidy up and reset the data in order to start fresh in the morning. In LA, you are both the experiment and the scientist. One is forced to be the object of fascination and fray, while simultaneously judging and monitoring the urban experiment…<br />
<br />
what is the new identity for a city whose entire life has been marked by its ability and desire to endlessly expand? Perhaps the lack of perceptible hierarchies — or, likely, the reality that traditional thresholds and boundaries in this city are hidden and constantly transgressed — makes LA a difficult case study in the urban milieu…<br />
<br />
As an evolving being, its dynamics make description difficult. Perhaps it is not a city — perhaps it can only be described as Los Angeles."

"why collaborate if one doesn’t have to? … one big reason is to restrict one’s own freedom in the writing process. There’s a joy and relief in being limited, restrained. … But one might also ask: Is writing ever NOT collaboration? Doesn’t one collaborate with oneself, in a sense? Don’t we access different aspects of ourselves, different characters and attitudes and then, when they’ve had their say, switch hats and take a more distanced and critical view — editing and structuring our other half’s outpourings? Isn’t the end product sort of the result of two sides collaborating? Surely I’m not the only one who does this?"

"So, if there is something you truly are passionate about, something that you really want to try – I think just because it may seem difficult and out of reach, that shouldn’t stop you from starting. Just because it’s not possible right now, doesn’t mean it’ll never be.

"What’s so charming about this calculation is the way infinity comes to the rescue. At every finite stage, the scalloped shape looks weird and unpromising. But when you take it to the limit — when you finally “get to the wall” — it becomes simple and beautiful, and everything becomes clear. That’s how calculus works at its best."

"The Referendum is a phenomenon typical of (but not limited to) midlife, whereby people, increasingly aware of the finiteness of their time in the world, the limitations placed on them by their choices so far & the narrowing options remaining to them, start judging their peers' differing choices w/ reactions ranging from envy to contempt. The Referendum can subtly poison formerly close & uncomplicated relationships, creating tensions between the married and the single, the childless & parents, careerists & the stay-at-home...The problem is, we only get one chance at this, with no do-overs. Life is, in effect, a non-repeatable experiment with no control. In his novel about marriage, “Light Years,” James Salter writes: “For whatever we do, even whatever we do not do prevents us from doing its opposite. Acts demolish their alternatives, that is the paradox."...One of the hardest things to look at in this life is the lives we didn’t lead, the path not taken, potential left unfulfilled."

"There is a disturbingly increasing number of early adopters who tell me they are fed up with their jobs. Those same people who were creating homepages with 28k modems back in the 90s are now closing their blogs, snubbing Facebook, moving around with no computer or iPhone, wishing aloud they had less commitments and more money to open a restaurant, a store, or engage in a life involving more down to earth activities. It could be anodyne - and probably is in some ways as we all tend to always want the opposite of what we have - but I feel there is something interesting here. Let’s review some of the arguments involved: The web industry got boring ... Humans need to have something to show for their work. ... the partiality of online interactions. ... Tools are limiting. ... It will be interesting to see if what happens these days is a fundamental shift, or just a temporary crisis worsened by hard economical conditions. Can the people who built new technologies really reject it?"

"The older generation is rediscovering clouds and craft fairs and kids are turning to activities that involve actual human interactions"

"I want more information to help me ‘fine tune’ my social network so that I can make better decisions about who I include in my network so that I can continually fine tune it in a way that gives me the best ongoing value over time."