Cannons and Pirate Bones (DD4, Chapter 2, pages 7-10)

PRACTICAL DEFENCE AGAINST PIRACY continues apace, this week featuring naval strategy from the mouth of babes.

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In "how are things going" news: I suspect our toddler is reading my philosophy books and has chosen to test my resolve. (Of course he is not; he is a toddler.) All I wanted to do on Wednesday was use his two-hour mid-day nap to finish colour on some of next week's pages. Based on the preceding week-or-so's behaviour, this was not an unreasonable expectation. I'm sure you can imagine, then, how hard and with what intensity he very much did not nap on the day where I wanted to use that time productively.

So that afternoon I told myself, "he will be tired this evening and will go to bed early, and then I will be allowed the time I want to do my work." To which he responded—less in words and more in actions—with energetic defiance. In turn, I responded by screaming. I understood then and I understand now that this is beyond irrational, but no matter how hard I sincerely believe my toddler is incapable of gaslighting me, wow, he's very good at offering a convincing facsimile.

You may be familiar with the notion that desire is the root of all suffering, etc. etc. I finished listening to Oliver Burkeman's FOUR THOUSAND WEEKS (mentioned last week), which offers many tools for thinking about the short amount of time we are all granted in life. It is funny and good and insightful and you could do a lot worse if you were looking for general guidance. I have been recommending it to all my mid-life friends. It expands upon this post I linked to last week, about embracing the possibility (or inevitability) that life's challenges will overwhelm you as a way of making peace with them and learning to navigate them. And, in a variety of ways, the book touches on the theme of "if you want something you can't reasonably expect to have, you're just going to make yourself miserable;" desire is the root of all suffering.

Dear Reader, I received (or gave to myself) a good lesson in the yawning gulf between "understanding something intellectually" and "putting it into practice." I wanted to colour pages, I was prevented from colouring pages, and I let it drive me crazy, despite having just read a book reminding me to approach such things differently. Plus, plus! Our toddler is almost two; I should be used to this by now.

For embarrassing bonus points, if we stand back and ask "how high are the stakes here?" the answer is "chillingly, freezingly, icicle-formingly low"—the pages did not in any way need to be coloured on Wednesday. Or Thursday. I've got plenty of time to do it today. And if I didn't, there is more than enough time between now and next week. And even then, it's just comic book pages. It's just comic book pages! It's not worth raising my blood pressure over!

But that's the point. Or not the point. It's either the point or not the point, I'm not sure. My takeaway is, "it's difficult." Even principles that you whole-heartedly believe in are challenging to put into practice and do, I suppose, take exactly that: practice.

I share this little anecdote since it lands tidily at the intersection of a book I recommended last week, the comic book pages you will be reading soon, work habits (a common theme here), and babies (the reason I'm making this book the way I'm making it). FOUR THOUSAND WEEKS is kind of a self-help book—I hope this post offers consolation to anyone who's ever read a self-help book and subsequently wondered, "hey, why hasn't my self been helped yet?" And I suspect some toddler-havers might find it familiar.

Anyway, the pages are coloured now and the baby is happy and cute and still gives me a testing sort of look before putting his feet on the dining-room table but I'm not letting it bother me. He'll move past that at some point.

👶
TC

P.S. Were you aware that there is a secret alternate Chapter Four for DELILAH DIRK AND THE TURKISH LIEUTENANT? I roughed out two mostly-different versions of the chapter because I couldn't decide which one to use, so I asked Trusted Readers, and ended up not using this one. I was reminded of it recently; it has a lot of stuff I'm really happy with. You can read it right here if you like.