Things I Like
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So much of what I’ve wanted is to get past the wobbling stage in my writing, to get to that point where the book has momentum. Part of that is realizing that I “can’t write the good sentences without writing the bad sentences first.” Or, as Jessica Brody suggests, realizing that writer’s block is actually perfectionist’s block. (This blew my mind.) It’s not that I don’t have anything to write about. It’s that I have to accept and contend with the fear of being bad.
I absolutely loved the idea of the wobbly state and it could apply to so much more than just writing (for me it's drawing and sewing).
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The internal struggle doesn’t make things any easier. How do I learn to get along with others when it seems I can hardly get along with myself? How do any of us, as we emerge into this post-COVID world, which feels in so many ways like an ushering into a gathering inferno? Things aren’t going to be the same. They can’t be.
I loved some of the quotes in this piece as well as La Tray's vulnerability and honesty. It's a weird time right now, how to do we come out of our shells? I read another piece today that talked about maybe not wanting to totally come back out and I relate to that so very much.
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When we scale up the individual to a body politic, it is the private sphere that’s crucial for our capacity for democracy and self-determination. As individuals, we need privacy to figure out who we are when we’re no longer performing the self. As a collective, we have to be able to distinguish who we are as individuals hidden from the norms and pressures of the group in order to reason clearly about how we want to shape the group.
I'm currently reading a book on lost cities and the transition humans made from being nomadic tribes to living together in large cities and reading this piece on privacy at the same time has some thoughts percolating in my head, thoughts about how we're meant to live and how we actually live, and more that I don't even have words for yet. But I've now subscribed to this blog, feels like some good writing and thinking happening here.
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Monet gave the paintings that hang in the Orangerie to the French state after the tragedy of the first world war. A century on, Hockney has shown again that painting nature is a resonant response to a great crisis.
I really wish I could see this show, but I'd also settle for the catalog book with wonderful pictures of the work.
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Take a few minutes and watch a relaxing video of a many in his 80s paging through his sketchbook. I loved every minute of this and have watched it a few times. It probably helps that Hockney is my favorite living artist, his use of color and line quality are so amazing to me. And he's still producing so much work.
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Placing these lands under collective Native control would be good not just for Natives, but for the parks as well. In addition to our deep and abiding reverence for wild spaces, tribes have a long history of administering to widely dispersed holdings and dealing with layers of bureaucracy.
This idea is a very good one and should be taken seriously, for the Tribes as well as for the health of the parks.
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Workers, moreover, tend to be pretty good at equipping themselves with in-demand skills when they have the resources to invest in themselves and when companies are hiring. The problem lies not with American workers, but with American jobs and American policy infrastructure. Too many jobs pay too little. They’re too dangerous. They offer too few benefits. They offer no union representation. They are inaccessible to millions of Americans who are pushed out of the labor market by illness, disability, poverty, the arrival of young children, or discrimination.
I hate the way we categorize jobs and it starts so early when we push high school students to think about what they want their "career" to be. We need folks to do all sorts of jobs and all of them can and should be good jobs, it's our choice to say that they aren't all good jobs.
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The forest gardens were filled with plants that benefited humans, but they also continue to provide food for birds, bears, and insect pollinators, even after 150 years of neglect. It’s evidence that human impact on the environment can have long-lasting positive effects.
I loved learning about this, a short article, but such an interesting thing to think about.
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As Field perceptively notes in her piece, “conspiracism…has the allure of the radical and of the forbidden”—conspiracism, like its cousin despair, is attractive—it makes one feel special. It is romanticism without the romance. As such, the politics of cultural despair has temptations for people in all social conditions.
Wow, this piece puts into words so well things I've been trying to put my finger lately.
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It seems to me that the reason that so many of us feel like we’re languishing is that we are trying to flourish in terrible conditions. It is spring outside — or the “unlocking” season — but it is still “Winter in America,” and, as any gardener knows, if you try to wake a plant out of dormancy too soon, it will wither, and maybe die.
I really like the way Kleon turns the idea of languishing into dormancy, which I much prefer as well.
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You don’t need a yard or a big house — people all over the world dry clothes on tiny high-rise balconies or in windows.
I've been hang drying most of my laundry most of my adult life. It started with a foldable rack in college and using the shower curtain rod, then I got a house and got more racks, then we got a house with a basement where we could put actual clothes lines, and now we're in a house and back to using three racks. And I've been able to manage it no matter what size my living space was. A small thing, but for some reason people are always surprised to learn this is possible.
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By consistently presenting nature as an untouched wilderness, many nature documentaries mislead viewers into thinking that there are lots of untouched wildernesses left. I certainly thought there were, before I became an environmental journalist. This misapprehension then prompts people to build their environmental ideas around preserving untouched places and to embrace profoundly antihuman “solutions” to environmental problems, such as kicking indigenous people out of their homeland. In truth, wilderness doesn’t really exist.
Really interesting perspective on how these really luscious looking documentaries are shaping the way people view nature. I'm still chewing on how by leaving people out of them we're telling a false narrative because people are intrinsically part of what's going on in the world.
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In an industry that is predicated on innovation, it seems absurd that young people are still encouraged to be frictionless. VC’s pride themselves on being contrarian, and yet the industry is still ruled by the same practices and principles that were established 40 years ago. And the lack of friction -- in our products, processes, and people -- has made it easier to cling to the status quo. If giving up my suite of no-code automation tools created more space to rethink and redesign the processes that define the venture industry, I would do it in a second. Maybe more friction -- more questions, slower processes, higher barriers to broadcasting every thought that comes to our minds -- is exactly what we need to break the status quo.
Interesting thoughts on how the way we make software has shaped the way in which companies operate and the way they're funded as well.
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I told her that I find myself craving role models my age who are not only righteous crusaders, but also humble and merciful, and that I’m not finding them where I live (online). Referring to the influencers who have filled the void religious faith has left for people like me, she said, “They might inspire you to live your best life but not make the best use of your life.”
So much in this piece that I'm thinking about, but I'm mostly struck by how much we look for meaning in life and we look to others to help us find it. But that line, living your best life instead of making the best use of it is rattling around in my head a lot.
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A really gorgeously created essay on one small painting that taught me so much. I'm loving these types of articles lately, even more now that I don't live near any museums, a way to experience art while I'm at home.