Clearing the Way
December 4, 2024
3-Item Status
Current Location: Milwaukee, WI
Reading: Golden Son by Pierce Brown
Listening: Stoney Creek by Xavier Rudd
Quick Notes
New Work: This week’s Let’s Know Things is about COP 29, and yesterday’s Brain Lenses essay was on Creative Networks.
Question: This week’s question is about digital communication.
(If you have a moment, reply with your own 3-Item Status and/or Quick Notes about what’s happening in your life.)
Clearing the Way
It’s amazing how often a sense of stuckness or listlessness or internal confusion can be remedied (at least in part) by cleaning, reorganizing, and getting rid of stuff.
Sometimes this stuff will be intangible: heaps of digitized media, open tabs and saved links, or maybe a bazillion newsletter subscriptions and other e-missives that threaten to overflow your inbox on the daily.
Sometimes it will be more concrete: too many clothes, too many kitchen appliances, too many unused art supplies or unread books or underutilized exercise gadgets.
By taking the time to do a little tidying—to shuffle things around and get them in orderly, useful formation—we put ourselves in the proper spot and frame of mind to cull the excess (and maybe even hand off some the superfluous to those who might actually find some value in our neglected possessions).
This general concept applies to things like activities, relationships, and responsibilities, too. We accumulate all sorts of stuff over the course of our lives, often because it makes sense to do so in the moment.
If we don’t periodically invest time and effort in trimming our stockpiles, though, our caches will become hoards, and our otherwise sensical, navigable world can suffer as a consequence of all that befuddling bloat.
We might think about this process not as simply getting rid of stuff, but instead as clearing the way for other things.
When we free up physical space in our closets, we’re making room for other clothing (which will perhaps suit us better than our existing options), but we’re also making it easier to see and use the things that remain: no additional purchases necessary, just more value imbued in the garments that survive the donation pile because they’re no longer hidden amongst all those less-than-ideal options.
Rearranging and cutting back the growth in our intangible lives can also make what remains more pleasant and maneuverable. By liberating our calendars, we make space for new projects, passions, and experiments. Our inboxes (and other digital stomping grounds) are easier to navigate, reference, and maintain after we put some effort into pulling the e-weeds.
A lot (though not all) of what we own, what we keep, what we stack into piles and store for long periods of time made sense for us at some point in our lives.
If we want to reorient, evolve, and clarify things, though, it’s helpful to have the space (physical and mental) to maneuver, and to know there’s room in our lives, in our homes, and in our hard drives for whatever we choose to fill our days (and ourselves) with, next.
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Interesting Links
In a First, Scientists Found Structural, Brain-Wide Changes During Menstruation
People who menstruate will experience some 450 or so periods during the course of their lifetimes, so it would be nice to know the different effects they can have on the body, really.
However, although it is something that happens to half the world's population for half their lives, research has been somewhat lacking. Who knows why. Total mystery. Seriously.
The strawberries the Tudor court ate and those for sale nowadays on supermarket shelves are entirely different varieties. However, the variety of the fruit we know today as the strawberry results from a long history of crossbreeding varieties of strawberries extracted from across the length of the Americas. The history of the strawberry is thus a history of empire involving war, slavery, espionage, and the extractive colonial history of botany. In particular, the taste of the “modern” strawberry would not exist without the French, British, and Spanish Empires.
How Double-Loaded Sidewalks Bring Safety, Comfort, and Joy to Our Streets
Sidewalk widths make all the difference. Street widths can and should be narrowed to allow space for the kind of wide and vibrant sidewalks where social life is able to thrive. In an era where the word of traffic engineers is law, data is used to optimize street design for traffic throughput at the expense of sidewalk life. Sidewalks become minuscule in comparison to the enlarged number and size of car lanes. This is counter to the purpose of streets in cities which is to support social and commercial activity.
(If you want more links to interesting things, consider subscribing to Aspiring Generalist.)
Question
This week’s question is about digital communication.
Specifically, how do you manage your e-communications (like emails, texts, social media messages)? And do you have a particular messaging medium you prefer over others?
Consider sharing your thoughts in the comments (or you can share them with me directly by responding to this newsletter) :)
I’ve been doing something like Inbox Zero for more than a decade, so my email inbox is regularly cleared out entirely, all the messages that aren’t deleted or archived after reading them serving as to-do list items that remind me to write a response or otherwise act on something contained in that message.
I tend to prefer email over most other modern messaging methods, as it’s time-insensitive in both technology and culture (most people don’t expect email replies immediately, whereas some people get really irate if you don’t answer a text message within minutes).
I do use social and text messaging apps with some people, though; mostly my family on Facebook, friends from overseas on WhatsApp and Signal, and people I know in real-life primarily via text.
Outro
I got a membership at my local Planet Fitness a few days ago, as it’s gotten really cold in Milwaukee and that coldness (mixed with the dry air) upsets my exercise-induced bronchoconstriction more than summerier (or spring-like) weather.
It’s actually pretty nice! It’s a short walk from my apartment, the place is clean, the folks who work there are friendly, and they have a bunch of equipment that’ll allow me to do exercises that are tricky or impossible at home (with my current setup).
They also have hydro-massagers (I had never tried one before, but I loved it) and a machine that looks like an upright tanning booth, but which blankets its occupant in red light (for ostensible dermatological benefits) and vibrates the floor (for reasons currently beyond my comprehension). I have no idea if that latter thing will do me any good, but I tried it out, didn’t hate it, and either way I’ll continue to enjoy post-workout massages now that I have the option.
It’s December!? What are you up to the remainder of the year? Send me a message and tell me about it, and/or take a moment to introduce yourself—I respond to every message I receive and would love to hear from you :)