Envisioning
June 26, 2024
3-Item Status
Current location: Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
Reading: Only Human by Sylvain Neuvel
Listening: Flavoured & Eaten by Nina Kohout
Quick Notes
OSN: So I made a big decision (which I’ve been thinking about for a while) this past week—I’m putting One Sentence News on an indefinite pause so I can reinvest the time and energy I spend on it each day into some other things (including a new project called Some Thoughts About). More details for OSN subscribers in tomorrow’s edition, and I may write more about my thinking on the matter for this month’s bonus essay, but the short version is that I’ve been running it for years, it requires a lot of work every weekday, and I’d like to free up that time and those resources for other efforts and opportunities, for the moment. Truly sorry to those who will be disappointed about this decision, but thanks for bearing with me, and I hope you enjoy what I end up doing next :)
The Minimalists: I sat down with Josh and TK to record a podcast when I was in LA, and the episode is now live! You can listen wherever you get your pods (search for “The Minimalists podcast”) or on YouTube, and there are show notes for the episode, here (the “Minimal Aging” episode).
Poll: Lots of people trust the algorithms for their music recommendations, according to last week’s poll! Which is understandable, I think, as they’re easy to use, widely available, and there are some really good algos for this purpose, these days. This week’s poll (scroll down to participate) is about aging.
(If you have a moment, reply with your own 3-Item Status and/or Quick Notes about what’s happening in your life.)
Envisioning
It’s impossible to know what a future version of ourselves will want, need, and prioritize. But we make assumptions about our future selves (and the world they occupy) all the time.
Unfortunately, many of these assumptions are knee-jerk and superficial, predicated on our sense of things, today, or based on an illusory, optimistic, not terribly realistic version of who we kinda’, sorta’ believe we could be at some point.
(There’s an underlying presumption baked into a lot of these predictions that maybe if we buy this widget / take this trip / invest in these shoes, that will help make us that person, though that’s seldom actually the case.)
Projecting forward in time like this can be helpful, despite our frequent, supposition-laden mis-predictions, though, especially if we use these imaginings to re-map our sense of what’s possible.
Considering what life would be like if I quit my job or learned to swing dance, for instance, may open my mind to all sorts of possibilities, widening my gaze and empowering (and maybe even encouraging) me to contemplate a broader range of life paths.
This isn’t a “Man, it would be nice not to have to go to work today,” or a “those swing-dancing people look so cool! I wish I could do that,” sort of visualization, though.
This involves forecasting what our day, week, month, and year would actually look like, at it’s most nitty-gritty and bare-bones, if fundamental components of it were removed (all that time and energy freed up, and that paycheck disappearing, too), or if some new element were added (how might I utilize and practice this new skill, what would it cost me, and how might I benefit beyond feeling cool because I can dance?).
At the most basic level, I find this flavor of foretelling helps me avoid buying things I don’t need, as I’ve made a habit of picturing how I would use whatever it is I’m thinking about purchasing, even to the point of determining where it would live in my home.
This specificity often helps me temper my initial surge of enthusiasm and desire for said would-be acquisition, as it gives me a preview of the dissatisfaction I may experience, later, when I realize it didn’t do for me what I’d hoped it would do, and instead just sat on a shelf (or in a closet, garage, or storage facility), gathering dust.
This approach to exploring possible futures also helps me determine what, if anything, I may want to extract from my life, though: not because the extracted elements are bad, but because in doing so I would liberate some volume of time, energy, and/or resources for other ambitions.
And as I mentioned, it also makes it easier to compute the potential benefits of investing myself in a fresh undertaking, helping me categorize such efforts as money-earning, mind-expanding, or just fun; all of which are potentially positive outcomes, and are more likely to be incorporated into my life in a positive way if I approach them for what they are, rather than what I might initially (and incorrectly) imagine (or want) them to be.
Our expectations and assumptions about our futures are often distorted by hopes and biases and bad data (related to the world, other people, and ourselves).
Making an effort to chart these possibilities, though, with as much specificity and neutral realism as possible, can help us make better decisions, today, while also providing us with more, more varied, and more thoughtfully conceived paths to walk, moving forward.
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(My new book is about growing older with purpose and intent, if you’d like to read more about this sort of thing.)
Interesting Links
We have a special grammar for personhood. We would never say of our late neighbor, “It is buried in Oakwood Cemetery.” Such language would be deeply disrespectful and would rob him of his humanity. We use instead a special grammar for humans: we distinguish them with the use of he or she, a grammar of personhood for both living and dead Homo sapiens. Yet we say of the oriole warbling comfort to mourners from the treetops or the oak tree herself beneath whom we stand, “It lives in Oakwood Cemetery.” In the English language, a human alone has distinction while all other living beings are lumped with the nonliving “its.”
5 Novels Told From a Side Character’s Perspective
The Tale of Genji is arguably the first novel, depending on how you define it. Dating back to around 1000 AD, the book has an unusual style and can be a difficult read. Most relevant for our list, the story is not told by Genji but by an unnamed woman speaking to some high-ranking official about the events she witnessed when at the Imperial court. Supposedly, many others refuse to believe the tale.
2D Rigid Body Collision Resolution
From Mario bouncing off a Goomba to two cars bumping into each other in a racing game, dealing with collisions is such an integral part of most video games that we often take it for granted.
In this series of blog posts, I want to show you what actually goes on behind the scenes in a physics simulation like the one above. While we're going to look at this through the lens video games, this post is really about the actual math and physics of collisions. Video games are just a nice way to contextualize these concepts and help make things a little less abstract.
(If you want more links to interesting things, consider subscribing to Aspiring Generalist.)
Poll
As mentioned above, the previous poll (on music recommendation sources) came out heavily in favor of algorithmic options.
This week, I’d love to know how old you perceive yourself to be:
Outro
Thanks for all your pants suggestions last week!
It sounds like I’m going to have to go visit a few places to try things on, as many of these companies have pretty brutal return policies (there’s a chance I’ve been spoiled in this regard by Amazon), and pant sizing can be fiddly sometimes.
Also: I’m looking for interesting targets for day trips, ideally no more than a handful of hours drive (bonus points for train accessibility) from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I have a small list already, but I’d love to hear about your recommendations and experiences, if you wouldn’t mind sharing even more mini-vacation inspiration!
Any mini-vacations of your own coming up? What have you been working on, of late? 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 :)
I use the same principle when considering purchases. Most of the time, I realise that the new thing with gather dust or it won't change my life in the way the ads would have me believe. This was made clear to me when I realised that ads generally sell you a lifestyle, a vision of what your life could be like if you owned this new thing, rather than a picture of the reality. I've never regretted not buying something after envisioning.
I find envisioning harder to do with life decisions such as new jobs or hard conversations because people are far less predictable than products. In those times, I usually come back to the outfit vs haircut vs tattoo idea that someone else came up with. Basically, is this decision an outfit I can quickly change if I don't like it, a haircut that will grow out in a short time, or a permanent tattoo decision. Most of my decisions are outfits or haircuts that are impermanent and can be changed if they don't work out.