Where are we right now? Trying to find something true and something that will be valuable and useful to people. To who? Stutterers? Creators? People like me, who can learn from me.

At work it is non-stop Portuguese. I might take an English break and listen to a song or something in English, but for the most part, I've got about 7 straight hours of Portuguese input. Tonight I created a few MCD's; it is an intriguing technique for learning language, so I'll have to give it a shot.

Momentum is a powerful thing. I like Khatzumoto's metaphor of boiling water (metaphors are just amazing...if you look at the etymology, the word literally means "carry over," and that's exactly what they do for me all the time; they carry me over, over the wall or the valley or the dry patch, into a new place of understanding or clarity or motivation): you can take a goal--fluency in Japanese, for Khatzumoto, or kensho, or a satisfying quality of creative work--and think of it in terms of terms of time (heat) dedicated to the task. But what is fascinating is that boiling water requires not just heat, but constant heat, as constant as possible. And as Khatzumoto describes here and here, one can look at the situation in terms of the ideal, Platonic method of one straight, continuous stream of heat, which is much more difficult to accomplish in the life of the average person. The more sophisticated method is leaving as little time as possible between "touching" the task--whether it is writing, or language learning, or meditation--so that the pot has as little chance to cool off.