Continuum of Selves
I’m aware, as I make loose plans for my post-pandemic lifestyle, that I’m making these plans as a pandemic-immersed version of myself.
This is both exceedingly obvious and deceptively easy to forget as I make these plans.
The me of today has been in lockdown for over a year, has been short on socializing and novelty and physical contact, and has been situationally locked into habits based on the same fundamental variables for a very long time.
This version of myself, then, is looking at the world from a very distinct angle; an angle that may or may not be representative of who I am a year from now, or ever six months—it’s hard to say what changes we’ll see in the next week, much less the next half-year.
As such, although I can do my best to predict my future priorities and desires based on where they are, today, I’ll almost certainly be at least a bit off on my approximation.
There’s no single, correct way of coping with this uncertainty.
Building too-solid structures can lock us into paths that may no longer be relevant or desirable to future versions of ourselves, but failing to build any infrastructure, while liberating in a sense, can render us rudderless and leave us lacking in satisfying, secure root systems.
I personally find that a familiarity with failure, a well-honed capacity to break and reshape one’s own expectations, and a trained tolerance—if not taste—for uncertainty, can help one build sturdy structures even while maintaining a malleable definition of “success,” so that changing paths or postures doesn’t smack of unreliability or weakness.
There’s no wrong way to cope with this moment and all the moments that will come after. But it is possible to view oneself as a continuum of selves, and to adjust one’s expectations, perceptual frameworks, and plan-making process accordingly.
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Projects
Brain Lenses: Anticipation & Manic Defense
Let’s Know Things: Our Plague Year
Curiosity Weekly: March 24, 2021
Other: I’ve made some tweaks to a few projects this week: Curiosity Weekly has been moved to a new email service provider (one that’s better suited for curated content, in my opinion), and Yesterday’s Newsletter is now One Sentence News, to better reflect what I’m trying to accomplish with it (comprehensible, one-sentence summaries of what’s happening in the world each day).
OSN has also been moved to a new email service provider: one that I think will serve its purpose a bit better (you can learn more about that project here, if you’re curious…I’ve been having a lot of fun and learning a lot by making it each day).
Interesting & Useful
Some neat things to click:
American Psycho with Cats(look at that coloring, the tasteful thiccness of it)
Create a Holiday(I’m actually very keen to give this a go, now)
A Decades-Long Quest Reveals New Details of Antimatter(so interesting)
An App Called Napster(this was a defining component of my teenage years)
How the Copy Machine Gave Rise to New York’s Downtown Arts Scene(as someone who was heavily involved in the zine-making scene back in the day, this resonates)
The Mantis Shrimp Will Change How You See the World, Literally(biomimicry!)
Outro
I managed to get my first vaccine shot two weeks ago and I’m scheduled to get my second one a week from today.
It was one of those weird situations you hear about, where a small town has more vaccines than folks who want them, and they can either just give them out to whomever shows up or let them expire.
I heard about the oversupply situation that day, and drove an hour to get there, arriving just as they were finishing up their scheduled appointments and beginning to divvy out doses to anyone present.
My arm was a little sore at the injection site for a few days, but I didn’t have any noticeable side effects (I hear moderate flu-like symptoms are a little more common after the second shot, especially in younger people, so I’m adjusting my schedule accordingly just in case).
I feel pretty fortunate to have lucked into that shot, and now that my parents are both almost fully-vaccinated (they got their first doses a week-ish before I got mine), I’m making firmer plans to set up a home base elsewhere in the US; which is what I was doing around a year ago, too, before everything went sideways and things got massively more complicated on many levels.
I’ve mentioned previously that I’m taking a serious look at Milwaukee as a potential home base, and I’d appreciate any insights, opinions, or advice you might be able to send my way, if you know the area.
Any big ambitions for the rest of March? How’re you faring after a year of immense weirdness?
If you’re not doing great for whatever reason, you’re not alone and you’re not failing in any sense of the word. It’s a show of strength that you’re making it through the day at whatever pace you can manage.
Also: if you need an encouraging word for absolutely any reason, about absolutely anything, please feel free to write.
You can reach me at colin@exilelifestyle.com or by responding to this email.
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You can also buy me a coffee :)
Lovely interactive visualization of all the stuff we’ve got in orbit.