You see, there is a long held, and too often justified, stereotype about African-Americans in this country. That being, that we are always late. In the Black community it’s referred to as “CP Time” — Colored People’s Time. My Grandmother was not the type to ever allow herself to fall into the trap of proving such a stereotype. Thus, the clocks.

But, one may be compelled not to leave the story there but to ask why it was then that all the clocks were set early instead of exactly on time. Good question. I asked the same thing as a kid barely old enough to tell time. Here is what I learned…

She told me that, as a Black person, despite education, despite abilities, despite accomplishments… Despite the sit-ins, strikes, acts of civil and non-civil disobedience… Despite the hard work of all of those who fought and died, those jailed and bailed to be jailed again… Despite all that was done to grant us our “equality” in the eyes of the law… This equality did not exist in the eyes of man.

In fact, simply because of the color of my skin it meant that being as-good-as was not good enough. Because, that very fact made me less so in a real life comparison with someone who was not so colored. Therefore, just to be considered equal, we had to be better. It was not enough to disprove a stereotype by meeting the standard, we had to exceed it. Therefore, it was not enough to be on-time, we had to be early.

Thanks to this, today all of my clocks are just a little bit ahead.

By how much?

I have no idea.

My Daily Pens from Patrick Rhone on Vimeo.

One of the best things one can say about a pen is that it is pocketable. For a pen that one can easily pocket is a pen that is likely to travel beside you. And a pen that travels is a pen that get used.

These are the pens I carry on me daily:

• Kaweco Classic Sport Fountain Pen – Extra Fine Nib – Green Body – JetPens.com — I received word from Brad Dowdy that Kaweco is, in fact, a German brand. Mea culpa.

• Amazon.com: Fisher Space Pen, Matte Black

• Amazon.com: Uni-Ball 207 Retractable Micro Point Gel Pens — In the video I mentioned these were .37mm but, in fact, they are .5mm

• patrickrhone / journal » Blog Archive » Pelle Journal — An Invocation — This is the journal you see in the video.

My friend Brad Dowdy of Pen Addict fame recently sent me this beautiful new Pelle notebook from Jet Pens in an absolutely stunning, refillable, leather cover. He also sent along with it a Kaweco Sport Fountain Pen (which is so great it deserves a longer mention of its own).

I have been using it constantly for a few weeks now but have been struggling to find a way to impart what it is about this journal that has caused me to be drawn to it so.

There is the obvious of course. The rustic good looks, supple feel, and earthy smell of the thick leather cover that will only improve in character with age and use. The fact that the construction of the cover allows the containment of multiple notebooks if one desired. My notebook included insert was filled with thick, creamy, welcoming, blank linen pages that take fountain pen ink (or any other you choose to throw its way) like a champ. That said, I have used one of the other elastic straps to fasten the Field Notes notebook I’ve been using for my book notes. Yes, all of these make it wonderful and an asset.

But, there is something more and I think I might have it figured out…

It is an invocation. A good notebook (and this is true of anything made with a high level of craft and care) should be be more than just a joy to use, it should be an invocation to do so. It should beseech one to fill it. When within reach, it should call to you to grab it, hold it, open it, and pour yourself into it. It should beckon your plans, drawings, ideas, dreams, experiences, doodles, schemes, diagrams, plots — each empty page left wanting without these. And, when you reach the end of a thought, it should entice you to take it further. It should also be though as nails. One should have no fear of taking it anywhere and throwing it in anything. For any journey worth taking is worth taking this journal along with.

This notebook fulfills these qualifications and more. I have been treating it as prescribed above and it continues to reward each time I do so.

I walk to our local grocery co-op (2.5 blocks) no matter the weather. I walk to our local bread shop (4.5 blocks) and wine shop (4.75 blocks). On a nice day, I walk to a small independent bookstore I love (6 blocks). The great little park , recently refurbished after years of city neglect, where my daughter likes to play (3.5 blocks). When the time allows, I enjoy meeting a friend for beer at a great restaurant and bar with a fantastic selection of beers (5 blocks) which I enjoy more than the one with less selection across the street (100 feet). These places are designed for walking to. They have limited parking if they have any dedicated at all. In the time it would take to get in the car and navigate traffic, one could be there already on foot.

What I love most, beside the walking itself, is the occasional friend or neighbor I run into. And, even when I don’t, most of these shop owners and barkeeps are friends and neighbors as well. For this is where I find out the news that matters most — that which is happening right around me…

“Did you hear about the break-in just around the corner?”

“What’s the deal with the two seemingly competing chocolate shops opening on the same street two blocks from each other?”

“Mr. Councilman, sorry to disturb your coffee. Can I ask you about your vote against the stop reminder I asked about for the pedestrian walkway?”

Thus, though a walk may be only a few blocks it can sometimes take an hour if I’m in no hurry which is just fine with me.

Increasingly it seems, so many of us live in places without sidewalks. So many suburbs and exurbs we are moving to are without them. So many of these communities we build are purposefully absent this integral part (in my mind at least) of community. Though I can’t imagine a worse fate then to be somewhere without them, I increasingly feel in the minority.

The planners know that less people want them. They are moving out of the urban area for a sense of country living. Part of which means, in their mind, to have lawn that extends to the road. Even though that road may be a asphalt beach. Sidewalks are simply a reminder of all those things they are trying to venture from.

These concrete paths are not technically ours. They belong to the city — the community. Even the ones that are just in front of where you live you must share and allow others to pass through. As such, you must maintain them despite this domain. You must shovel them when it snows. You must keep them free of ice. You must pay the cost to repair if damaged. More people, it seems, would rather have a few feet of green space instead. One that they own outright and can tell people to get off of when crossed.

Because there are less sidewalks in these places, people tend to make their connections elsewhere. At work or at the kids hockey practice or at the dog park. They tend to know their actual neighbors less. There are few opportunities to do so since they never cross each other’s paths except within the protected bubble of vehicles and traffic laws. They drive to all the places they need to go. Which are the similar to the places I go but all decidedly further away and designed for cars. Upon return, they go straight into the garage and then shut the door.

They turn on the TV before dinner to get news that is happening half a world away and consider themselves informed. Why should’t they? For the news they may get from conversations with people who do not live near them might as well be the same distance and equally as relevant. And because these connections are with people who live not near us they must discuss what things we have in common which does not start with community for there is none.

I wonder too if our communities in the virtual world are following this same path.

My first sense of being “online” was on a dial up connection to a local BBS. I knew the people there offline as well. It was small enough that one could. The topics discussed were often a continuation of the ones we did when we were together. If there was a problem that needed sorting (or a quarrel that needed moderating) one messaged the sysop who, once again, was a friend as well as neighbor. There were sidewalks there.

Then AOL came along. The first suburb. A place where you could form relationships, of a sort, with people from all over the country. They were not neighbors or people you would likely see in real life. Yet, you felt like you knew them just as well. You felt like you were being informed about things that mattered. And, as long as you stayed there, there were sidewalks.

Now we have Facebook and Twitter. The exurbs. Communities and relationships that span the globe. People on the other side of the planet that we know better than those real humans right next door. We can now know the first hand, on the ground, news of a community in Iran in real time. Or assist in the search for someone we barely know who has gone missing and is feared dead. Are we building sidewalks here?

If you pressed me to come up with one reason I feel so drawn to a service such as Path versus the rest is that it feels like a sidewalk to me.

• Having a regular weekly check-in with someone who challenges you and helps you think beyond your limits is vital to creativity.

• I don’t listen to music nearly as much as I wish I did and am reminded of this fact whenever I look up from my keyboard after a long writing session to run off to an appointment and think to myself that I should have turned on some music before I started.

• Writing a book can drive one between the polar extremes of self-loathing and grandiosity so violently that it really can send one prone to madness and depression to the edge of the abyss.

• Why writers drink.

• In the very short time I have done so, one can find frequent utility from a good knife if one carries it daily.

• Forming a habit is really difficult and takes an nearly life or death desire to do so. The trick then may be to fool your brain into believing that your life actually does depend on that thing you want to do.

• Doing the things you really want to do is easy. If something feels hard its because you don’t really want to do it.

• When it comes to my online work, I want to own as much of every word and pixel as possible.

• I want the same when it comes to my offline work too.

• One can safely ignore most information and communication for a few days or a weekend with few ill affects. Especially if expectations are appropriately set and there is a system in place for folks to get in touch should a urgent need arise.

• I could not recommend AwayFind enough.

• For thinking and tasking, nothing beats good old pen and paper and I should stop flirting with anything else.

• That a life well lived is a life well loved, and vice versa.

• That, for me, solitude is essential to living and loving.

• The only thing more valuable than telling the truth is having a truth to tell.

• One can also safely ignore most news and information sources. 99.9% of it is information theater designed to titillate and distract one from digging deep into an issue through research, analysis, scrutiny, and bias. Such digging takes time and effort so choose those things you wish to know about carefully. Then, form an opinion based upon such research.

• Don’t think you have the wit to debate any subject unless you have done the above.

• That our fear of death is, in fact, a fear of missing out.

• That when you have purpose, intentions and actions follow naturally. If intentions and actions are not flowing, examine your purpose.

• My Pinboard public RSS feed could (and perhaps should) replace most of what I share other places.

• I should make a point of writing one thing I learned down in my journal every day from this point forward to a) make learning a habit and b) make this list easier.

• Life is a big place shared by many. Ignore most of it and concentrate on yours.

• That the line between technology and magic is increasingly blurred for me.

• That all things are impermanent and transitory.

• That one should embrace the delete key, the trash can, and the word no.

• Saying no is actually saying yes to other things.

• That when you have said all you can about something, it is OK to be done. Shut up and walk away.

Sometimes these are obvious. For instance, a great indie band that has a hit single, gets signed to a major label, assigned some famous producers, and suddenly things are no longer the same. They are markedly different. Perhaps it is the production – less or more raw. Perhaps it is that the band, now flush with major label money, has fewer or more creative constraints. Perhaps it simply because now they can afford steak dinner over ramen.

And, of course, there are countless stories of film actors who spend the later half of their lives trying to regain the career making performance they once had. Or the visual artist who after years of struggle in their medium finds that one element that sets them apart.

Sometimes, the forces of change come from within. The author who decides to stretch himself and take on a subject much more different and requiring much more research than he previously has. Or, perhaps she has been featured on Oprah and now has experienced success so great she can’t possibly live up to it again.

In rarer cases, such transformative work causes the author, actor, or artist to go nowhere from there at all. JD Salinger and The Catcher in the Rye being the most obvious example that comes to mind. Following the success of this work he became a recluse, published infrequently, and what he did produce were clearly things he could have just as easily thrown away. Perhaps he knew the work had transformed him in such a way as to never want to produce such work again.

Of course, as this year draws to a close and I reflect upon it, thoughts of transformation are natural. Along with impermanence, I’m going to make transformation part of the scaffolding that supports the structure of my work in the year to come. These are two of the three chairs I plan to sit upon and dialog around in the coming year.

I have never used Ho Daddy (mis-type intended and a bit more honest judging from their commercials). They always came off as unsavory to my discerning tastes. There is an ocean of good hosting and domain registration out there that does not smell nearly as fishy.

As for me, I have been using Dreamhost for what seems like forever. Good hosting, great support, and they have a sense of humor. They are great for the .coms, .nets, and .orgs. Then there is IWantMyName for the fancy stuff. You know, the .me, .in, .wtf. They have a nice clean easy to use interface and can register just about anything that is registrable. I have also heard great things about Hover though I’ve not used them myself.

The point being, if you have a domain parked or hosted with So Daddy please know that they likely don’t care about the Internet you care about and therefore you should consider taking your Internet business elsewhere.

Update: Here is a step by step guide to do just that. Only 19 simple steps.

It is about being able to have a seat on a bus.

It is about being able eat a sandwich at a counter.

It is about being able to enter a raffle so you can be the first one to kiss your girl…

Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta, left, kisses her girlfriend of two years, Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek in Virginia Beach, Va., Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2011 after Gaeta’s ship returned from 80 days at sea. It ís a time-honored tradition at Navy homecomings – one lucky sailor is chosen to be first off the ship for the long-awaited kiss with a loved one. On Wednesday, for the first time, the happily reunited couple was gay.

Better – Merlin Mann

This piece is really resonating with me today. There are things I know in my gut I need to do and want to do but am struggling with the courage to actually do them. That said, I think I am beginning to realize that I’m on a course to make bold moves in the near future regardless of the fears that may hold me back. Because, ultimately, they are the only ones that makes sense.

And, yes, I know I’m being a bit cryptic. I’m being so purposefully. I’m not even sure I’m being fully transparent with myself. All will be revealed when the time comes.

Micro Pod | Office | Gear.

I would love a place of my own like this one.

(via Christoph Schobel)