Establishment
There’s a method for exploration that I’ve found works pretty well for how I think, how I learn, and my relative energy and comfort levels when it comes to the unknown.
I’ve developed this method over the decade-plus I’ve been traveling full-time, setting up home bases in new, unfamiliar places, and generally doing my best to get set up—in the sense that I could feel at home in a new place relatively quickly and efficiently, without glazing over too many important things in the process—with the minimum amount of stress.
This method orients around mapping out plots of familiarity, methodically extending outward, making the time and setting aside the psychological and physical energy required to pay attention to my environment, and to then slowly but steadfastly increase the span and scope and depth of my comfort zone.
Many of us have been going through this type of process, I think, over the course of the past year-and-a-half-ish.
We were all one day plopped down into confusing professional and political and epistemologic geographies, and had to plot out new, safe-feeling, home-scented territory within which we could just exhale; within which we could take off our masks and feel like we maybe understood something that was happening around us, even if only for a few moments at a time.
Unfamiliar spaces turn our biological, data-gathering dials up to 11.
Our bodies and brains appreciate the mundane because within such contexts they can relax a bit: the threats and opportunities are familiar and thus comparably easy to track.
In novel environments, however, the torrent of new information can be interesting and invigorating, but it can also be exhausting.
It’s just a lot to parse. It’s a lot of sensory information to wade through. It’s a lot of bewildering impressions and micro-interactions to worry about.
It’s a lot.
We’re all at different stages, now, after having been, a while back, unceremoniously deposited into a new reality with new rules and new perils and new strangely compelling “maybes,” jumbled together with all the new menaces and headaches and absolute tragedies.
There’s no single, correct way to deal with this flavor of unfamiliarity, but it’s heartening to consider that—even as we plod along, feeling like we’re not quite aligned or a little bit behind or manifesting as mere human-shaped apparitions in a world that’s rapidly crystalizing around us—our current disorientation is a step on the path toward establishing a new, us-shaped anchorage.
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Projects
Brain Lenses:Reference Groups & Alphabetical Order
Let’s Know Things:Charging Stations
Curiosity Weekly:June 15, 2021
One Sentence News: Info / Subscribe
Interesting & Useful
Some things to click:
Diana’s Tree(neat/beautiful science thing)
The Intelligent Forest(thinking in terms of ecosystems is a good habit to get into, especially when thinking about “nature” as a broad concept)
Interactive Phylogenetic Tree(a neat, interactive way of showing common genetic ancestors)
The Messy Business of Sand Mining(solid, visual explanation of something that’s happening a whole lot, but not being reported on very much right now)
US Internet/Broadband Fact Sheet(visual data-snapshot from Pew that provides some good heuristics for how we think about who’s using the internet, and how)
Superhistory, Not Superintelligence(a very interesting way of thinking about artificial intelligence and our relationship with it)
How To Design a Sailing Ship for the 21st Century(I like this whole website, and this article is a good place to start)
PS: if you like this sort of thing, subscribing to Curiosity Weekly (link in the previous section) nets you an email containing just curated links every Tuesday.
Outro
Now that I’m set up in a new home base, I’m planning a few tip-toe steps back out into the world and would love your thoughts/advice/suggestions on a few things.
I’d love any suggestions as to social media-based things you’ve seen work or things you think might work for the sorts of topics I talk/write about, and the mediums I use (writing, speaking, audio, primarily). I’m doing something I haven’t done in ages on Instagram today (you can find me here)—an “ask me anything” that allows me to respond to questions in Instagram Story-form. But I’m very keen to try out some of the new whiz-bang tools that’ve become available across these networks since I more or less set aside active social media usage a fair while ago.
I’m also planning on trying out some online-meetup options—video services, chats, etc—and I’d love your input as to what you’d like to see and would find useful from that type of service or event. In particular, I’m keen to start holding conversations, but also maybe just online get-togethers, with the intended outcome of helping folks make connections with other folks around the world, providing a venue to chat about learning/growing/travel/etc, and potentially even holding regular sessions with a central topic, kind of like an in-person talk with audience participation. I haven’t seen any of this done particular well, previously, however, so your input on what seems to work and what might be valuable would be especially useful to me :)
I’m planning to take regular trips from here in Milwaukee, and I’d love suggestions of things I should go see and do. The caveats, for now, are that these things should be safe and prudent (we’re still in a pandemic, after all, even though we’re relatively fortunate here in the US at the moment), they should be within a day’s overland journey (car or train or bus) from Milwaukee, and they should ideally be relatively inexpensive and accessible (I’ll be doing this for me, but I’m also keen to share adventures in which other people might themselves be able to partake).
I had a couple of medical things (including a chest and shoulder injury) that set me back on my workout regimen for the past too-many-months, and I’m rebuilding my at-home workout setup. I’d love to know your at-home regimen, if you have one: especially things that require minimal or no equipment.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts you might have on the above!
As always, too, I’d love to hear about what’s happening in your world, what plans you’ve got on the horizon, and a bit about yourself—a quick intro—if you’ve never written before.
And if you’re not thinking about next-steps yet, if you’re stuck in a particularly hard-hit area, if things are not going well in your personal or professional or family life and you’re feeling not great: you’re not alone, and if you need someone to talk to, to vent to, or whatever else, I’m here and I respond to every email I receive.
You can reach me at colin@exilelifestyle.com or by replying to this newsletter.
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You can also communicate via the typical channels: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or rumination on metric-sized paper that’s actually about a lot more than that.
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