Reading (and listening): Sports Illustrated

For the past two years, Sports Illustrated has been my favorite magazine. I started my subscription for the photography. I keep it for the writing.

The way I use my iPhone has evolved over time. There was a time, if I were to listen to anything, I would listen to music. I still listen to music, but at the gym or doing chores, I’m much more likely to listen to podcasts or audiobooks. I’ll also do this in the car, though gas-powered transportation tends toward music.

Many of the audiobooks I’ve completed have been about basketball or baseball, with one on football, and a couple of Sports Illustrated collections, including, right now, Fifty Years of Great Sports Writing.

Back-to-back, I’ve listened to a couple of great pieces:

Snakes Alive!

Rattlesnakes are cold-blooded but not murderous, and they prefer the stealthy escape to the lethal confrontation–unless they’re peckish and you’re a hamster. Stand real still when you meet one and it’ll slither off, thinking you’re just a rock or at least a thing too large to eat. Of course, if you surprise one by stepping on it, sitting on it (heard this several times; still not over it) or putting your hands where they don’t belong (i.e., under rocks, into holes…), you’re likely to end up snakebit and off to the hospital, there to experience the complex multisymptomatic wonders of a venom that works at once as a neurotoxin, cytotoxin, hemorrhagic agent and digestive acid. Meaning you’ll most likely suffer some pain, swelling, pain, pain, discoloration, pain, bleeding, pain, blistering, nausea, pain, light-headedness, pain and further, persistent acute pain. Statistically speaking, you probably won’t die–you’ll just want to.

Mirror of My Mood (Google Books link and I can’t copy and paste from it).

On meaningful work

I’m reading Phil Jackson’s “Eleven Rings” on iBook and am very much enjoying it. Last night, I came across this passage and it rang true. I think I’ve always sought work that was meaningful. I think more than at any time in my life I’ve arrived at a spot where what I do springs from who I am and from my “unfolding journey.”

“To make your work meaningful, you need to align it with your true nature. “Work is holy, sacred, and uplifting when it springs from who we are, when it bears a relationship to our unfolding journey,” writes activist, teacher, and lay monk Wayne Teasdale in A Monk in the World. “For work to be sacred, it must be connected to our spiritual realization. Our work has to represent our passion, our desire to contribute to our culture, especially to the development of others. By passion I mean the talents we have to share with others, the talents that shape our destiny and allow us to be of real service to others in our community.”