AnnieModify

Friction is a force of resistance. Overcoming friction takes energy. More friction takes more energy. Reducing friction frees up energy.

Friction is a force of resistance.

It resists, or opposes, motion.

Overcoming friction takes energy.

In general, if you can reduce the friction required to start doing or continue doing a thing, you’re more likely to do that thing, and keep doing it longer.

Great! Helpful. Unless the thing is something you don’t want to keep doing.

A lot of our optimizing behavior is about reducing friction. We try to set up the easiest, smoothest ways to manage all the tasks. This can be helpful. But I find that sometimes what I actually need is more friction, not less.

Reducing friction can enhance efficiency, but efficiency is overrated. With the advent of Open AI, Gemini, Midjourney, Apple Intelligence, and other services that seem more intent on thinking and creating for us—we would do well to hold on to meaningful friction in our lives. We must be even more vigilant and intentional about how we interact with technology.

For me, opportunity and balance are found in intentionality: being deliberate about the tools I use, setting boundaries around consumption, and prioritising quality over quantity. It’s a dance. I get lazy and am guilty of following ’shiny new things.’ But I’m also committed to resisting the tyranny of convenience. And high school physics taught me that friction is a form of resistance.

— Aleem Shaun, Of Cassette Tapes and Dial-up Internet

For example, having a frictionless to-do app means I end up with too many fucking tasks. Some things need to be unsaved, neglected, forgotten, ignored, left undone so better things can be done. Or so I can spend more delightful moments at ease, not doing  but being.

Let there be lapses. I am not  a machine. 

Having a phone constantly with me for frictionless communication means I can be easily overwhelmed, inundated by what is sent to me rather than what is developed within me. I get distracted by voices not my own, unable to commune with myself. 

Do you ever find yourself saying or thinking or feeling things that don’t seem to belong to you? 

Hmm. Wonder how that happens. 

We are biologically very interested in saving energy. Whatever is frictionless is appealing.

We are emotionally very invested in predictability. Whatever is familiar is appealing. Known things make us feel safer than unknown things. This is true even if the known things are objectively shitty.

Overcoming friction takes energy.

This is a good thing when we don’t want to start or continue doing something because it’s actually dumb and self-sabotaging and makes us feel yucky but it also provides one of those delicious dopamine hits we crave.

We can use purposeful friction to make dumb things more difficult, to make familiar but shitty defaults less convenient.

Friction can force more awareness. When doing something is so easy it requires no pause, no thought, it’s easy to act without conscious choice. Inserting friction does not guarantee we’ll be more thoughtful, but at least it gives us an opportunity for it.

I love a habit. I adore a routine. Doing things in a certain order, or certain time, or certain way. Over and over. I love the dependability. I love the resonance, the echo, the beat. I love the surprising power. Layering one small movement over another and another until the tiniest action builds itself into a structure. A wall of your identity’s home.

Rituals? I can’t stop myself. They’re so good. Absolutely breathtaking. Humanity’s finest work, perhaps. They make no sense. It’s all about beauty, about made-up meaning, about art. Rituals add unnecessary, arbitrary extra requirements to a simple action. Light a candle first. Kneel. Wear a certain outfit. Carry flowers. Make this shape with your hands. Take off your hat, or put it on. Not that hat, the special one. 

I love talking to kids around 4 to 6 years old. You can ritualize anything and they’ll go along and they’ll be so serious but they know what you’re doing and they’ll join in.

You say, Oh no we can’t climb the stairs until we’ve dinged the stairway bell!

And they nod and go, Oh yes of course. And you ding the bell and they nod along. It can be an imaginary bell. Just make the motion. They get it.  You say, Okay now we can go. But they one-up you. They say, Uhmm you forgot to bow to the big stair first. And you have to say Oh you’re right! And follow along as they lead you in the appropriate bow. Dinging the bell took 15 seconds. This bow will take 4 ½ excruciating minutes. Do not try to rush it. They stuck with you through your bit. It’s not their fault your imagination is lazy. They can construct a 249-step bow with no repeated moves on the fly and all you could come up with was dinging a bell? Try harder. Do better. 

You’ll make it up the stairs eventually. Who cares. It’s not about the stairs. It’s about the art. It’s about each other. It’s about being alive. 

You can ritualize anything. Your whole life. Light a candle before you pay bills. Light the bills on fire. Never mind, don’t listen to me. 

You can combine rituals. Change rituals. Exorcise old crusty rituals that hold pain instead of beauty. Build brand-new rituals to convert shame into love. You can wear a red shirt every Tuesday and it means you are holy.  You can think about how you want to feel and what you want to experience and you can give it to yourself in slow drips, all day, any day, while doing the most regular stuff. You can choose meaning and when you don’t like the available options you can create meaning. 

Rituals do not add anything sacred to life. Life is already sacred. We know this whenever we face death. Rituals remind us, let us acknowledge it. Help us push our heads thru the fog a bit. Help us grapple with this weight, this heart-rending joy. 

There are a lot of support needs in life. That's great. We all need and help each other.

What's not great is when the support needs turn you into support staff. The needs take all your time. They come first in the priority list. And your core activities, the things that are you and that you do for yourself, get shoved to last place which, inevitably, becomes not at all.

Martyrdom may have its place but it’s not a great way to live.

Sometimes we don’t know how to exit a support staff role because we feel disloyal. We feel guilty. We've filled the role for so long, and now it's expected of us. If we walk away, Oh the drama. The suffering we will cause. The dependencies we will break.

We think if we say, "There are more important things for me to do,"
then we are saying to all the people we love and support that they are not important and they do not matter.

However, that’s not true.

You’re not sending a "You're unimportant" message by default when you define what is most important to you.

You’re choosing to respect and support yourself the way you have already been respecting and supporting others. If they have any respect for you, they will offer their encouragement and support as you step toward what's important for you.

If they respond with resentment and resistance, they don't respect you as an equal. They see you as support staff. 

• Being supportive: Caring about people, keeping your commitments, incorporating  kindness into how you live, helping when you can, choosing gentleness and graciousness over anger and impatience.

is not the same as

• Being support staff: Subordinating your needs and priorities to others’, making your life choices based on what others demand, pouring your own energy and time into the well-being of others at the expense of your own.

That's an enormous difference, but that difference isn't taught, is it?

Or, worse, the latter option is taught as the right way.  The kind way. The family way. The good way. The Biblical way.¹ The moral way. 

Many stories in society teach us that people are fundamentally different in the roles they’re meant to have. The narrative goes like this: some people are meant for hero roles² and some people are meant for support staff roles. Everyone is happiest when they stick to the role they’re meant for! Those in the hero roles get to live out their individual destiny, go after their prime objectives³, pursue their passions, make history, you know, stuff like that. Those in support staff roles get to do the boring stuff but that’s okay! Because they actually like it better and they’re happier and more fulfilled doing the supportive stuff.

None of us are immune to the impact of narratives. Stories matter. Stories help us make sense of the world. Stories help us figure out where we fit in, and we all want to know that. Stories help us predict outcomes. Stories help us survive. 

Whether we want to admit or not, we’re influenced by the stories we grow up with, the stories that surround us. 

When you grow up with a story telling you that you’re meant to be a hero, you develop expectations. Assumptions. Behaviors. Ways of seeing and being.

When you grow up with a story telling you that you’re meant to be support staff, you develop expectations. Assumptions. Behaviors. Ways of seeing and being.

The expectation that you will always receive support becomes entitlement.

The expectation that you will always provide support becomes obligation. 

When someone who feels entitled gets together with someone who feels obligated, well: It’s a perfect match. The pieces fit. The sad warped little pieces fit just right and form a sad warped gross unhealthy little connection. 

This connection happens in all sorts of encounters and interactions. Romantic partners, friends, work colleagues, community groups, so on. It can be obvious or it can be subtle; it can be deliberate or unconscious. My belief is that it is always damaging.

There's some truth in every lie that lasts. That's why it's so hard to fight against the really long-lasting lies.

The truth buried in this twisted narrative is simple: We all are meant to support one another. At different times, in various ways, as we have skills and inclination and resources and empathy, we are all capable of and benefited by serving and supporting others.

It’s called community.

In community: We offer support from love, not obligation. We receive support with gratitude. We are all heroes, and we all get to help each other.

The way we support others and the way we are supported by others is not solved by any universal formula or methodology. We have to work it out, all the time. Seasons of life, capabilities, relationships, circumstances: All of these change. With those changes, there is a natural ebb and flow of support needed or given or received. It takes humility and openness and curiosity to let ourselves adjust, to release patterns, to accept changes, to flow. 

But we can do it. 

1. That’s especially odd, since if Jesus had lived as support staff he would never have completed his mission; he'd have been too busy pursuing political power (for his disciples) and healing people (really helpful for sick people) and raising the dead (a great kindness for those who don’t want to be dead yet) and going around being a Nice Guy Doing Good Things to Help and Support All the People Who Really Need Him.

2. Traditionally this role has been limited to well-offish white men, huh. Whaddya know.

3. The biggest most important prime objectives are often presented as a unifying cause for those in hero roles to pursue jointly. The labels change, from manifest destiny to nationalism to, ohhhh, project 2025, but the idea is never new: Give the heroes an enemy to fight, control anyone who resists, accumulate property, hoard wealth, and subdue any lingering other-ness, as violently as needed.

Have you noticed there are a lot of dumb little decisions to make? Have you also noticed that most of these decisions, while dumb, are not necessarily easy? There’s not an obvious answer. Sometimes there’s an obvious “I should” feeling, but I have a heavy distrust of shoulds. 

So I’ve been using this little matrix. 

Example: “OH NO. I have recently learned that XYZ tool/software is controlled by an absolute shitpile of a person! I do not like this! What should I do?”

This is a case of the Obvious Should. As in, obviously you should stop using it!

And, yeah: I’d rather not use anything created by a shitpile-person. I don’t want my money to support more shit being added to the pile. 

However: There are so many things to do. Have you noticed this? Everything keeps happening, all the time. While the Obvious Should might be the ideal move, I can’t forget all the other stuff there is that needs my attention. And I can’t forget that I myself, a human being with needs and wants and feelings and relationships and something called sleep debt, apparently, am a limited creature. This does frustrate me endlessly. The ideal version of me can do everything, gracefully and well. The ideal version of me does not need this dumb little matrix. 

But here we are, stuck with the less-than-ideal version of me in the less-than-ideal world, filled with numerous small and large decisions.

So I like to bring the Obvious Should to the matrix of impact & effort: How much effort would it take? How much impact would it have? 

• If it’s low-effort, high-impact: GREAT. I’LL DO IT. 

• If it’s high-effort, low-impact: PASS. 

• If it’s somewhere in the middle: I’ll put in on my list of Things That Would Be Nice To Do. And when I have time to tackle stuff on that list, I tackle it. 

I won’t sacrifice my sanity, well-being, sleep, time with people I love, time doing things I love, the quality of my work, or the care needed to keep my life functioning for an Obvious Should. Because the Should is often not so Obvious. The Should may have value, but it also has cost. The Should may align with my beliefs, but it may not align with my capacity.

I’m not sharing this in response to any specific bit of news. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about.

I also use the matrix in a slightly different way. Instead of high or low impact, I think about negative or positive impact. 

There are a lot of low-effort tasks and activities I can do, like reading a book, scrolling social feeds, watching a show, checking the news, texting a friend, reading blogs, listening to music, sharing a photo, scribbling a dumb little box in my notebook. 

Which ones have a positive impact, and which have a negative impact? 

I can’t answer that question for anyone else, but I can answer it for myself.

Sometimes it’s a bit difficult to determine negative vs positive impact. When it’s not apparent, having a standard is helpful. A personal standard. Then you can judge the impact by its effect on the standard: Does X activity make it easier or harder for me to meet Z standard? Sometimes things that seem good, that are helpful or positive in many cases, have a negative effect on what you’re aiming for personally. 

I did some of what I wanted to do and completely missed on other things. This was a nice focus for the month. 

I’m really glad small cypress came up with the Small Web July challenge/invitation.

It was a nice way to recalibrate, shift my focus, and put more attention into habits I want to cultivate and less energy into habits that aren’t great for me. 

My personal guidelines were to blog more, read and respond to blogs more, finish a couple of projects, and stay on track with my physical goals.  

Blogging more: Not as much as I envisioned, but I’m always waaaaaay too optimistic when I set personal goals. Anyway, I got 9 posts out there and I’m happy about that. 

Reading & responding to blogs more: I did a lot more blog reading. Not so much responding! Oh well! Maybe this month. 

Projects: I got an iPad set up for blog reading & small web browsing. I find myself reaching for it often when I don’t feel quite up to a book but don’t want to mindlessly scroll. It’s a sweet spot and I’m liking it. I also got my little notes garden going, very much in an as-is state, but that’s okay. (It’s OKAY! GET IT???? BECAUSE THE DOMAIN???)

Physical goals: The 2nd week of July hit with a vengeance of fatigue, so instead of pushing myself I R E S T E D. Amazing. What a concept: Listening to your body and nurturing your wellness instead of punishing yourself for being human. I think I’m maturing as a person. Anyway, the remainder of July went well. I got my steps in most days (aiming for 12k/day) and lifted weights 3-4 times each week. Not to brag but I added 20 lbs to my squat so now I have a big plate AND a little plate on each side of the bar. Also, wow, all these years of learning to ignore imposter syndrome as a writer is really paying off when I go to the gym. It’s not imposter syndrome at the gym, it’s reality: I actually have no idea what I’m doing! But turns out ignoring the sensation of being inept is about the same as ignoring your actual ineptitude, so the skill transfers nicely.

I know Blaugust is happening this month and I’ll enjoy reading along as people post and share. I’m not  up for taking on another challenge myself. I think I’ll just keep my personal Small Web July guidelines going for a while.  :) 

Summer reading: Escapism served hot and fresh. Now I’m off to buy myself a hot and fresh personal pan pizza because baby, I earned it.  

Coup de Grace by Sofia Ajram

TW: Suicide, depression

Short, mind-bendy, horror-ish? But, I dunno, I wasn’t horrified. There were definite Ew gross horror nasty scenes and the whole setup is horror-y but it felt more like a sad psychological trip into desperation represented by the ew-gross things and the whole, um, plot. Maybe I just wasn’t in the right mood. I liked it? But also I’m not sure I liked it in the way it is supposed to be liked? If that makes sense. 

No Exit by Taylor Adams

TW: Child hurt/in danger

Easy read, thriller. A bit of a twist but it’s not really about the twist, it’s more about how in the heckin heck will they survive? Some pretty gruesome scenes. I can’t watch that kind of thing on tv but I can read it fine.  

The Dawning of Muirwood trilogy by Jeff Wheeler

The Druid, The Hunted, The Betrayed

Zoomed through the first, strolled through the second, and kind of plodded through the third. Your enjoyable basic fantasy with magic, threatening evil, a rising-from-poverty heroine and a nice cast of characters.

The Murderbot Diaries (3) by Martha Wells

All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol

Started watching the show and realized I’d never read the books? Could have sworn I did. Maybe I did and just completely forgot. That does happen. Anyway, I like these. Currently reading the 4th novella (Exit Strategy).

Hearts of Oak by Eddie Robson

I read this one in March but forgot to include it, oops, so here it is. Anyway, I loved it. This was a random library pick and what an absolute delight. A quirky, thoughtful, funny but deep (also, short) scifi adventure. Read it. 

Anyway I loved it so much I immediately grabbed Robson’s other two novels: Drunk on All Your Strange New Words and Tomorrow Never Knows.

Enjoyed both, especially Drunk on All Your Strange New Words. I hope Robson will write more novels. 

Space Deputy and Space Rodeo by Jenny Schwartz

Absolute easy-read scifi escapism. Kept me entertained. Homey, hopeful, fun. 

Stars Die by Jenny Schwartz

Magic and family ties. A decent fantasy for escaping the current reality, but not enough to pull me back for the rest of the series.  

Emergency Skin by N.K. Jemisin

I love Jemisin. This “novelette” (wth is a novelette) isn’t as gripping as her novels but still a great read. 

The Inheritors by William Golding

I don’t know. I liked a lot about this book but also it just made me depressed. I probably should have expected as much from the guy who wrote Lord of the Flies.

Nightchaser by Amanda Bouchet

Our community pool has a little book cart with discarded library books. I happened to grab this one and honestly did not expect to like it, because look at the cover: 

Anyway, I liked it! So that was a pleasant surprise. Tropes, yes. But like, they were done well enough I was entertained rather than annoyed. I liked the characters mostly. Plus I love a feisty little resistance standing their ground against galactic evil.

No one stood out any more than I did, and I realized that we’d all perfected the art of blending in and avoiding notice. Maybe Hourglass Mile had nothing to do with it, because the whole galaxy was a freaking jail. Not everyone needed bars to be locked up, and what I saw around me was evidence of entire populations falling into complacency for the sake of personal peace. 

I liked it enough to read another by Bouchet, A Promise of Fire. It’s a fantasy romance which my Kindle history tells me I already read several years ago but thanks to my ability to completely forget things I have read, I was able to read it again for the first time. Anyway, it was fine and I’ll keep Bouchet on tap for pure escapism reading which I find myself turning to a lot lately.

Heart of Mist by Helen Scheuerer

Another fantasy. I liked the world-building, I liked most of the characters, I got annoyed with our main girl, the bitterly self-pitying and alcoholic Bleak, who needs a solid kick in the arse. In fact, she gets several but they don’t seem to have much of an effect. I love a flawed (and female) main character but I do need them to show some personal growth over the course of, I don’t know, multiple life-changing events. Anyway, it ended on a cliffhanger and I’m down to give the next book a chance to see if Bleak gets her shit together or not. 

The Half-Lived Life by John Lee

This book could have been a blog post. I use that phrase so much for nonfiction. I should switch to an acronym maybe. #TBCHBABP

Some good stuff. I took some notes. I found some helpful bits. Also, I scanned large chunks of text with illustrative anecdotes or just bland restatement of the thing that had already been said. This book also falls prey to the Just Do It! mode of instruction/advice, in which the writer tells you what to do and then, instead of telling you how to do it, just tells you what to do again, in slightly different words. 

However, this book’s greatest sin is quoting from Gary Chapman’s vomit-inducing Five Love Languages, non-ironically. 🤮 Gross. Fuck right off with that bullshit. 

Dealing with Uncertainty by Laurie Bowman

DNF. I liked the explanation of tools and models for decision-making. It’s very corporate-y, which is yuck and all the examples are like How Can Company Y Expand in Z Sector When Facing ABC Market Uncertainties? Who cares. Anyway I just skimmed the annoying bits till about page 100, when Bowman declares that companies are shifting toward conscious capitalism and sustainability and considering their “ethical impact” and then cites BlackRock as an example of this exemplary corporate behavior. Hahahahh WOW bye. I’m not even linking to this one. 

(Side note: I thought perhaps Bowman wrote this book in a simpler, more hopeful time which would kind of partially explain these amazingly dumb takes about corporate goodness. Um, no. Published in 2025.)