Another Year
December 18, 2024
3-Item Status
Current Location: Milwaukee, WI
Reading: New Cold Wars by David E. Sanger
Listening: Eating Heartache by Cosmo’s Midnight
Quick Notes
New Work: This week’s Let’s Know Things is about South Korea’s Tumult, and yesterday’s Brain Lenses essay was on Social Microbiomes.
Holiday Break: This is the final newsletter of 2024! I’m visiting family in Seattle over the holidays, leaving Milwaukee in just a couple of days, and the usual pods and writings will keep landing in apps and inboxes through this Sunday. I’ll be back to making new stuff the week of Jan 6.
Question: No question this week—keeping things simple as we segue into the end-of-year holidays :)
(If you have a moment, reply with your own 3-Item Status and/or Quick Notes about what’s happening in your life.)
Another Year
Another year around the sun, another 365 days tallied, another torrent of experiences weathered and another boatload of lessons learned.
Last December, my life was different from how it is today.
I’ve had loved ones experience all sorts of traumas. I’ve suffered from, learned about, and attempted to ameliorate (unsuccessfully at first, but more successfully over time) several disruptive medical issues.
I’ve altered (and had altered by external forces) my day-to-day routines, rituals, and work.
I’ve made new friends, I’ve taken up new hobbies, I’ve set myself fresh goals and obligations.
My relationships have grown and evolved, including my relationship with myself: my mind, my body, my sense of who I am and who I want to be.
I published a book and dreamed-up (and mapped-out) another that I’ll start writing next month.
This year has been strange in that I have a vague sense that I’m in the process of coiling a spring; that a whole lot of what’s happening now (this year in particular) is preparation for something else, rather than (merely) an end unto itself.
I think it’s possible, maybe even likely, that the next-step thing I’m preparing for is my 40s, and from there the rest of my life.
Whether that’s true or not, each year represents 365 days of self-honing: shaping ourselves into the people we’ll become next, and in the process readying ourselves for a world that is likewise ever-changing.
If you enjoyed this essay, consider supporting my work by buying me a coffee or buying a book.
Interesting Links
A Case Against the Placebo Effect
The picture that emerges is that a placebo pill has almost no effect when administered by researchers who do not care about the placebo effect, but the exact same pill has an enormous effect larger than all existing treatments when administered by a researcher who really wants the placebo effect to be real. The most parsimonious explanation is that it is the research practices, rather than the placebo.
The Coincidence Project is an on-going photographic body of work which I started to develop in late 2012. In this selection of photographs you will be able to observe how urban and natural landscapes that we are so used to seeing merge to create a certain balance.
As the project´s name reveals I look to capture different scenes where the subjects appear to be coincidently together creating an amusing combination. A combination that makes you look twice and tells you a whole new story about an everyday situation.
The Super-Rich and Their Secret Worlds
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian grew up in Geneva where, from a young age, she became aware of secret spaces within the city inhabitable only by the wealthy. Enclaves that defied national borders and laws—places where the super-rich could hide their assets and play by their own rules, unencumbered by restrictions elsewhere.
(If you want more links to interesting things, consider subscribing to Aspiring Generalist.)
Outro
The rest of my work for the week (and consequently, the year) is completed, scheduled, and out of the way. That means I’ll be spending the next several days not knowing what to do, feeling rudderless, and puttering around the apartment worrying that I’ve forgotten something (though I almost certainly haven’t).
I’ll be heading out to Seattle at the end of the week, though, at which point my days will be full-up with familial stuff, including helping-out-with-baby-nephew duties—so not too much time spent aimlessly puttering, thankfully.
It’ll be nice having about two weeks without the normal routine, though I’m already looking forward to coming back to “real life” with fresh a perspective attained by thinking about and doing other things, for a spell.
In the meantime, drop me a message or leave a comment, telling me what you’re up to for the rest of the year, something about your plans for January, and anything else that comes to mind—I respond to every message I receive and would love to hear from you :)
Happy new year (and other end-of-year holidays)!