Expand and Contract
Current location: Door County, WI, USA
Reading: How to Prevent the Next Pandemic by Bill Gates
Listening: Altered Scenes and Slight Variations by N Kramer
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Expand and Contract
As someone who typically travels quite a lot, it's important to me to have comfortable, sustainable inflated and deflated modes of operation.
This means having a sense of what goes where in my bag, what I wear for which travel scenarios (for smooth passage through checkpoints and TSA screenings, for various weather conditions and social settings), and how I get my work done if the WiFi isn't good, if it's noisy and I need to record something, and if my attention is pulled in a million different directions but I need to get something written, edited, and published in the twenty minutes I have between flights.
It also means understanding how I settle into a place, unpack my bags, set up a productive environment, and generally shift out of "travel mode" into a "sprawled" or even "rooted" mindset for a period of time.
This is important, I think, as it allows me to periodically decompress, air-out my things (and myself), and enjoy the benefits of roomier mental and physical space—in contrast to experiencing the world through the lens a bag-sized pocket of predictability: a mote of order and familiarity floating through a chaotic, uncontrollable world.
This dichotomous relationship, the expansion and contraction of one's life, can help sustain balance where lifestyle-extremism might otherwise take hold.
It can be compelling, the feeling of pulling inward, decoupling, relegating oneself to a concise, knowable space and superficially engaging with the world without ever becoming part of it: forever a visitor who explores natural and social environments, never a local who helps maintain and shape them.
Staying put, claiming space, and organizing one's context to suit one's preferences can also be pleasurable to the point that scenarios in which we lack such control—the casual capacity to reshape our environments in our image—can seem uncomfortable or even frightening.
I don't think there's a universal, perfect balance between these two postures: habits, rituals, norms, and stability are more feasible from one footing, while novelty, exploration, surprise, and awe are more likely from the other.
That said, it's been interesting experimenting with constructing lightweight, intentional, me-shaped homes wherever I end up, rather than melting into the social landscape as completely as possible (which is how I've typically done things in the past).
There are benefits to dabbling in both extremes (having a home that's completely yours to do with as you please, and being in a space you don't control at all—adjusting your rhythms and priorities accordingly), but as with most things, a more sustainable and (for many people) healthy medium is likely somewhere on the spectrum between those two endpoints.
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Projects
Select, recent works from across my project portfolio.
Aspiring Generalist: The Game is Rigged
Brain Lenses: Altruism
I Will Read To You: Nocturne
Let’s Know Things: Shein
Curiosity Weekly / Daily: June 7 / June 7
One Sentence News: June 8 (podcast version)
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Interesting & Useful
How Do Big Tech Giants Make Their Billions? — www.visualcapitalist.com The Big Five tech companies made $1.4 trillion in revenue combined—more than Mexico’s entire GDP. Here's how they earned it all.
Technicolor Tokyo — neocha.com
To view Liam Wong‘s photography is to enter a new universe. Although he creates work that’s tethered to the here and now, Wong isn’t afraid to take artistic liberties and tread outside the bounds of reality.
Top 100 Images — esahubble.org
Taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
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Outro
I'm on the last full day of my "vacation" here in Door County, Wisconsin—about 2.5 hours north of Milwaukee and a world away from what's become my usual routine.
I put "vacation" in quotes not because it hasn't felt like a vacation, but because I've continued to work while here (though at a dramatically reduced level), having prepared many podcast episodes and essays ahead of time but also having left a handful of such responsibilities for my mornings in Door.
I did that intentionally, as I wanted to see what it would be like to have some (relatively minor) deadlines while on a weeklong trip with my girlfriend, Ariana, and fortunately it played out well: though I do think next time I'll try to go Full-Vacation and see what it's like to use my morning solo-time for art-related undertakings, instead (I've been having a lot of fun drawing and painting and photographing, of late, and would love to aim more of my energy in that direction on my next trip).
It's all about balance, though, and I feel like we were able to wander and socialize and see beautiful things and eat nice food and putter around this beautiful building/coastline without feeling too constrained or overstretched in any direction (despite those deadlines), which feels like success to me.
All that said, I've had a blast and cannot speak more highly of this part of the state if you ever get the chance to visit.
You might also consider checking out the Dome House residency program (for next year) if you're an artist: Ariana was invited back (and I was able to tag along) after her earlier residency because the folks who run the program are so generous with their space and resources (it seems like a really supportive creative community, up here).
I'm headed back down to Milwaukee tomorrow, and my schedule (including my email-responding habits) will reset to something normal-ish the following day.
If you're feeling it, shoot me an email and tell me something about yourself, your plans—whatever's on your mind. You can reach me by replying to this newsletter or by writing to colin@exilelifestyle.com.
You can also communicate via the usual methods: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or cute little on-the-water town you create just for fun.
If you’re finding some value in what I’m doing here, consider supporting my work: Become an Understandary member / Buy me a coffee
We found this cool study about randomness that we wanted to show you.