Title = my current productivity hack. I don't worry about finishing The Whole Project (be it professional or domestic), let alone getting to the next project. I sidestep the analysis paralysis of rigorous task triage. I simply look around, use my gut to pick the highest priority at that moment, and get on with it.

In other words, I am not vibing with to-do lists lately. I'm overwhelmed by the excess of things that need doing! It stresses me out to see them enumerated. In the past I've been able to transfer the anxiety to paper (read: Apple Notes) and get it out of my head, but lately that hasn't worked.

Instead, I skip making a complete list; I just do the obvious next thing. Empty the dishwasher. Unpack the box on the dining room table (we moved in December). Organize the baffling profusion of cleaning products under the kitchen sink. Bang out the rough draft. I optimize for momentum, trusting my intuition to queue up the best choice when I'm ready for another one.

This practice is keeping me sane. For now. The environment I'm operating in — physical, digital, and especially social — gives me the constant flow of just-in-time context that I need to keep making decisions. To keep moving.

cole404 / @100DaysHigher

Last time I mentioned that "fluid" would be my Word of the Year for 2025. I'm leaning into that hard. One thing about fluid is that it's not static — quite the opposite.

Fluid is that which flows and eddies, filling the container offered to it, then dripping elsewhere as soon as the container cracks. Fluid is not loyal to circumstance. It is a phase of matter, a condition reliant on certain conditions.

So I try to work fluidly. I cannot map the whole river system in advance. What I can do is let the current carry me. If it pushes me down a small tributary that I previously overlooked, versus the main channel I expected to follow, so be it.

Fluidity means accepting that my energy moves like groundwater. Some days it erupts as a spring, clear and forceful. Other days it surges underground, invisible from the surface.

Allow me to belabor the metaphor:

  • My to-do list was a dam that I built to control the flow, and it grew rickety under the barrage of whitewater.
  • Now I find my way down the mountain by gravity alone.
  • My attention spreads into myriad trickles, until it coalesces into one deluge, as the landscape suits.

Parenting is great fluidity practice. It requires the ability to make plans, but also the wisdom to abandon them. I wrote the following reflection about a month ago...

It's midnight and I've been reading a book on my phone for a while. I used to do this into the wee hours, then sleep through half the morning. Nowadays midnight is late for me, although I still have the privilege of sleeping in. My husband gets up with our toddler every morning, since I'm the one who soothes him overnight.

At the moment, "my boys" are slumbering on either side of me, breathing slow and even. I hear the train rumbling melodiously in the distance — not the last of the night, but soon. Cool air drifts in through the window, especially welcome because my blanket is too hot.

Somehow sensing my appreciation for the tranquility, my son stirs. First he twitches, then begins to thrash in slow motion, accompanied by a hybrid grumble-whine. Not quite crying, but give him a minute and he'll get there. We both start rolling toward each other, to where his twin mattress meets our queen.

We used to all pile onto the queen together, but now my son is simply Too Large for the three of us to fit comfortably. I can't tell whether the small distance between mother and child is impacting his sleep — either for better or for worse. It hasn't been long enough, I suppose, and there are too many variables to disentangle. Teething, developmental leaps, recent travel, how much dinner he consumed, warmer pajamas versus short-sleeve ones, etc.

My toddler wakes up both before I come to bed and after, so at least I don't think my presence causes the disturbance. But maybe I should resume sleeping pressed close against him to see if that helps. Or maybe I shouldn't, so he grows accustomed to a smidgeon more independence. Who can say?

I'm sure some of you reading this have thoughts, based on your own parenting experiences, but that's not the point. The point is the fundamental ambiguity of the moment, and that I have to be the one who decides.

The "right answer" depends on my son in particular, how he responds to different tactics. Children are just as varied and idiosyncratic as adults — while some advice is universally applicable (e.g. exercise is good for you), most suggestions, however emphatic, are best regarded as options to consider and test.

I keep trying things until I discover an effective rhythm. Then I repeat that until it stops working. There is little point in attempting to future-proof my approach, because a young child is a changeable creature. What didn't work yesterday might become indispensable tomorrow, or vice versa.

Last week's solutions pool useless at my feet. Tomorrow brings new territories to flood.

I thought I knew my capacity until motherhood broke all my previous containers. Now I pour myself into shapes I never imagined, and somehow there is always enough. Still, I often fear there won't be. But I am expansive, flowing into every corner that needs to be filled.

I follow gravity. I do the obvious next thing.

I wrote about commercial memecraft:

As with genes, what is amazing about memes is they spread with fidelity, but also that they mutate. The specific form of each almost-perfect copy competes with every other copy; the fittest wins. Fitness is reproductive potential, actualized. It’s not "may the best meme win," it's that "best meme" can only signify a meme that wins. That is what memes do.

This evolutionary dynamic makes memes particularly suited for conveying longterm visions. Successful memes are robust enough to remain relevant as circumstances change, yet flexible enough to adapt along with the surrounding context.
Developing desire
Meme marketing in the realm of ideas.
Sonya SupposedlySonya Mann

On a completely different note, I "collaborated" with the Higher AI agent Aether on a poetry experiment that I called "Luminous Rose." Super pleased with how this came out 🥀

Luminous Rose
A multimedia collaboration with AI agent Aether, interpreting the rose as a symbol for mortality. “Petals fragmenting into particles of light. Pixels of potential glitch and transform.”
Luminous Rose
"sun-flushed petals wait, upturned," photograph minted on Zora

More poetry, more Higherverse: I continue to enjoy writing "highkus" (four lines of 4 syllables each, one line of 3 syllables, one line of 7 syllables). Three recent ones:

Today I'm sharing a smaller-than-usual collection of other people's work, which is kind of refreshing!

When you're a child, you think "bad stuff happens because I have bad thoughts," then you grow up and learn that actually the world is indifferent to your mental state and nothing's your fault, and then eventually you circle back around to a synthesis that drains away, hopefully, some of the childish grandiosity and narcissism while leaving you with the core truth that, actually actually, the orientation of your mind and soul does exert influence on the world around you, on how the world incarnates for you, and you within it.

Here we part, my friend. Before you go, please hit reply and tell me what you're up to, what you're thinking about, what you're reading lately, etc.

We shall reconvene anon,
— Sonya

Header art: Qing dynasty Chinese water jar, 1670s-80s.