I Can Take It
June 5, 2024
3-Item Status
Current location: Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
Reading: Future Intelligence by Tamás Landesz, Sangeeth Varghese, and Karine Sargsyan
Listening: Profusion by Posie Pocket
Quick Notes
Trip: I’m hopping a flight to LA tomorrow, and while in town I’ll be hanging with The Minimalists at their San Diego event (there are still a few free tickets left, I believe), and I’d love to see you there if you can make it out
Seattle: I’ll be in Seattle for a week after LA, visiting family and helping out with my baby nephew’s physical therapy—thus, while I’ve pre-scheduled work for most of my projects this upcoming week (so you shouldn’t notice any difference for almost everything), there won’t be podcast episodes for One Sentence News, and I’ll be doing a visuals-focused layout for OSN emails all week, so I can focus on family-things
Poll: Last week’s poll aligned with my expectations, and while I’m happy to see that so many people are full-up on quality friendships, those results support my suspicion that many of us are dealing with the same, “how do I make more and stronger friendships, now that I’m x-years old?” problem, which is something I’ve been thinking about a lot, of late (this week’s poll is book-related)
(If you have a moment, reply with your own 3-item status and/or quick notes about what’s happening in your life.)
I Can Take It
It’s not a bad idea to know how to take a punch.
I don’t mean that in the literal, someone punching you in the face sense (though that’s arguably valuable, too), but rather in the sense of getting hit with something negative and then being able to shake it off, learn from it, and move forward.
For a long time, much of my planning for the future relied upon my capacity to take all sorts of punches. I assumed if something bad happened—a career downswing, a health emergency, an emotional upheaval—I’d just sit with the pain and discomfort, grit my teeth and work my way through it, and then come out the other side, no worse for the wear.
This approach had worked pretty well for me up till my mid-20s, and I assumed it would scale as I grew older and encountered all sorts of new (and challenging and terrifying) styles of punch.
Over the past decade or so, though, I’ve come to realize that while it’s absolutely valuable to not only have the capacity to get back up after being walloped, but to know I can and will, it’s also important to have external support systems available so that when I’m hit with something unfamiliar (or damaging in a novel way), I’m still able to get back up and persevere, aided in my recovery by personal affordances that reinforce my strength, capacity, and tenacity, both in the moment and in my convalescence.
These support systems can take all sorts of shapes, from friend groups to insurance plans to physical or digital tools that allow us to work and communicate and make things, even when we’re hobbled or ashamed or just feeling incapable of producing anything of value.
Shopping around for insurance in case of a car crash or illness, and relying on friends or rehab programs or therapy to get oneself back to a stable, functional state after a significant, negative life event are not as superficially sexy as stoically absorbing a jab to the gut or hook to the jaw, but understanding the value of external reinforcements is a virtue, not a sign of weakness.
And when combined with the motivation to work on one’s internal self, such environmental scaffoldings can enable more, more rapid, and far more sustainable and resilient growth.
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(My new book is about growing older with purpose and intent, and grabbing a copy is a great way to support my work!)
Interesting Links
What the Internet Was Like in 2004
In 2004, the phrase bandied about by web geeks like me was “social software.” This encompassed MySpace, Friendster, blogging platforms like Blogger and LiveJournal, wikis like Wikipedia, and even 1990s staples like online forums and message boards.
(Cue the “I was there” lyrics from “Losing My Edge.”)
Authorities accused the couple of “intent to cause injury to the nation,” a crime punishable by life imprisonment or death. Dodging the authorities, they fled before they could be taken into custody. The couple maintained that their home—which they called a “seastead”—had been outside Thailand’s territorial waters, but the government insisted it “reveals the intention of disobeying the laws of Thailand…and could lead to a creation of a new state within Thailand’s territorial waters.” Thai authorities worried that the pair in the box were part of a cult and that they intended to build a full-fledged floating community at sea.
China’s ‘Small-Town Literature’ Trend Turns Rural Into Retro
Narrow streets, weathered buildings, and young Chinese clad in vintage attire against a backdrop of soulful music: These are among the hallmarks of a new viral travel trend on social media dubbed “small-town literature.”
Driven by a surge in interest in traveling to smaller cities and counties across China in recent months, the trend increasingly involves tourists hiring local photographers to capture such quaint locales. On Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, posts on “small-town literature” have amassed over 470 million views.
(If you want more links to interesting things, consider subscribing to Aspiring Generalist.)
Poll
I’m curious about your reading habits. More specifically, what sorts of book mediums you prefer:
Outro
The reshuffling of my curatorial projects so they’re all under the same banner (Aspiring Generalist) seems to have gone pretty well, and with a minimum of confusion on the other end of things (alongside a fair bit of organizational benefit, on my end).
My scramble to get twice the usual work done this week (so I don’t have as much to do, next week, while in Seattle) has also paid off, as now I can (mostly) lean into the journey itself, and focus on visiting with friends in LA, doing a little promo work for the book, and then spending time with/helping the family when I head north.
Worth the investment! Though in the moment, a bit of an exhausting hustle.
How have you been this week? Any upcoming trips? Visiting with family or friends any time soon? Drop me a message about whatever’s on your mind, and/or take a moment to introduce yourself—I respond to every message I receive and would love to hear from you :)