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Oof! Yes, so so good. I am one of those head-in-the-clouds people, but lately my productivity cap has been on and i keep yearning for more time to sit, be still, have the focus to read a book, watch the birds. I also truly believe we need those people! As you quoted, the need for collective dreaming and imagining feels so high at this moment. There is so much more possible if only if we give ourselves the time and space to imagine it. I applaud your quixotic inclinations!

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Yes and thank you! I can imagine the problems if we were a whole world of Don Quixotes, but surely a few of us do some good?! ;)

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All I can think is this: "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives." --Annie Dillard

And this, something I've repeated to myself for decades (eek!) now, from an 18-yr-old to me, also 18, while taking a whirlwind tour of Europe and TRYING to be cooler than I am: "Embrace your inner dork." I try to live up to that (my kids would probably agree that I'm far more "dork" than "cool" so I'll pretend I'm winning). I also can't help looking for birds and flowers, so there you go.

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Alexander McCall Smith uses the word solipsism a lot, and every single time I see it, I have forgotten what it means and I have to look it up. Thank you for making me look it up again. You know I'll write you letters in the summer. Lindsey, I loved this post. It made me think of this Anne Lamott quote from Dusk Night Dawn: "Such great industry under the earth on which we stand. Someone is paying attention while we flit about and check our texts."

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I remember in grad school for literature, my profs used the word solipsism an absurd amount, and I hard to learn it quick if I was going to keep up. I also had to learn "hegemony" on day one. ;) I like to think about academic pet words like those.

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Another one is palimpsest. AMS uses that one a lot too. I'm going to be impressed if you know what it means without looking it up. I still have to keep looking it up.

About your latest post, thank you for not letting me stay a dum-dum about AI. I am going to watch that video The AI Dilemma. I am going to make TJ and my boys watch it with me. I wrote it down last time you mentioned it, and today I'm putting an exclamation mark after it in my notebook.

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I teach a writing class called “The Narrative Palimpsest.” Ha!

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