Matt's Mix Tape, Vol. 139

Hi, I’m Matt Tillotson, and this is Matt’s Mix Tape: ideas on writing and exercise to remix and recharge middle life.

This week’s Mix:

• Frustrated by note-taking? Try notice-taking.

• A new experiment: Fit Notes

• It was a hell of a party, pal

• This week’s Florida photo

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Frustrated by note-taking? Try notice-taking.

I suck at note-taking.

Write of Passage has extensive materials on “info capture”: how to take notes to spur on, and add to, your essays.

As a mentor, I avoided teaching info capture because, well, I sucked at it.

In Cohort 8 I forced myself to devote a session to note-taking. And I learned something: I’m pretty good at notice-taking.

If you’re frustrated with taking notes—the process, the organization, filing things into oblivion you never reference again—maybe notice-taking is more your speed.

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A new experiment: Fit Notes

The old school Internet: decentralized, uncontrolled, and unsuppressed by tech oligarchs. We wrote stuff on blogs and linked to other stuff on other blogs.

Michael Dean’s logloglog page is a throwback to “micro-blogging.” It’s full of small phrases with big ideas.

I’m trying that with fitness, capturing fleeting ideas and observations about workouts and wellness in this middle-aged body.

Thanks for the inspiration, Michael. You can follow along on my Fit Notes page here.

(My last note: am I getting fatter or is it the Creatine experiment I’m doing?)

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It was a hell of a party, pal

Sad to see one of my all-time favorite actors, Bruce Willis, suffering from aphasia, a condition often linked to Alzheimer’s:

… the public learned what he and many other filmmakers have privately been concerned about for years: The 67-year-old’s family said he will retire from acting because he has aphasia. The cognitive disorder affects a person’s ability to communicate and often develops in individuals who have suffered strokes.

Willis burst onto the scene as smart-ass detective David Addison on “Moonlighting” in the 1980s. Grade-school me thought he was the coolest guy I’d ever seen.

(Note to Disney+: get the rights figured out and get this show uploaded.)

Willis became a superstar, gracing us with a top Christmas movie. (I accept no counter-arguments to this position.)

I’ve seen the effects of cognitive decline firsthand. It’s devastating. On the Megyn Kelly show, Dr. Peter Attia shared said best way to prevent Alzheimer’s—by a long shot—is to exercise consistently.

In this episode, Dr. Attia seems shocked at how much more effective exercise is than any other preventative measure. (Tons of other great info in this episode, also.)

So thank you Bruce for making me an even more obnoxious sixth-grader as I tried, in vain, to fire off Addison-quality one-liners. And thanks for so many great roles post-Moonlighting.

Alzheimer’s sucks.

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This week’s Florida photo

Downtown Tampa, Saturday night.

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Hello to 22 new subscribers!

Thank you for reading.

And whatever you’re working on or working through: keep showing up.