Lustrous Tools
August 28, 2024
3-Item Status
Current location: Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
Reading: Poison and Power by M. Patrick Duggan
Listening: Cold Reactor by Everything Everything
Quick Notes
LKT: If you’ve never checked out my weekly news analysis podcast Let’s Know Things, the show is basically my excuse to learn a whole lot about what’s happening around the world so that I can then share that info with listeners and put it all into more intelligible context. Also! If you already listen to and enjoy the pod, consider becoming a paid supporter (for the price of a cup of coffee, you get an entire additional episode of the show each month) and/or leaving a quick review wherever you get your pods—thanks in advance :)
Question: Asking a question went REALLY well last week (check out the wonderful answers people left in the comments if you have a moment), so I’ve got another one for you this week. I’d love to hear your thoughts if you don’t mind sharing.
(If you have a moment, reply with your own 3-Item Status and/or Quick Notes about what’s happening in your life.)
Lustrous Tools
I recently decided to replace a (digital) tool that I’ve used every day, many times a day, for years.
The outgoing tool is called Simplenote, and as the name implies it’s an ultra-simple piece of note-taking software that’s mostly defined by what it doesn’t do: it’s great for notes and other types of unstyled writing (no bold or italics, limited link-handling capabilities, etc), but it doesn’t offer anything more complex.
I ultimately decided to swap it out in favor of an app called Obsidian because the latter is more liberated in terms of styling and organization, while also remaining fairly straightforward; it offers expansion capabilities via community-made plugins, but it’s otherwise a relatively bare-basics experience, augmented with a few quality-of-life upgrades beyond what Simplenote delivers.
I still think Simplenote is great (and maybe even ideal) for a lot of purposes, but I’ve thus far been happy with my transition to a slightly more expansive note-taking tool.
That said, I waited several years to make this switch in part because software extensibility can lead to bloat and inefficiency, while also tempting users into spending more time working on the tool than its ostensible purpose.
This is similar in some ways to how a focus (or fixation) on organization and tidiness can get in the way of actually simplifying one’s life (and liberating oneself to focus on what’s most vital), because the tools (which may be labels and boxes, or may be approaches, habits, and systems) that were meant to help us eschew the superfluous become ends unto themselves, rather than means to an end.
We can become obsessed with our tools, optimizing, hardening, and polishing them so that we have little time, energy, or attention left to spend on the things they were meant to help us achieve.
This isn’t an inherently negative thing! There are so many useful bits of advice, clever systems, and valuable implements on the market because interested people invest themselves in refining these utilities.
When we tell ourselves we’re sharpening our knives so we can become better chefs, but then never get around to cooking, however—that’s an issue.
There’s something latently compelling and appealing about tools. They imply potential and capacity, and because of how they’re marketed (as products or systems) it can feel like we’re imbued with those benefits simply by owning them, or just by arranging our lives in accordance with their tenets.
I hesitated to replace my ultra-streamlined note-taking platform with a more capable and expandable version of the same because of this human propensity to get lost in the luster of our tools.
I worried that I would get so caught up in the tool itself, fiddling with all the fun new functions and customizing it to the point of preoccupation, that I would neglect to use it for its intended purpose: jotting and organizing notes.
I’m enjoying my upgraded note-taking experience so far, but I think it’s prudent to be aware of this potential source of focal derailment, perhaps especially for those of us who really like making things and for whom tools therefore represent fresh opportunities and refined capabilities.
There’s a thin line beyond prudently sharpening our knives and forgetting to cook because of endless hours invested in knife-maintenance, paging through knife catalogs, and watching eye-straining durations of knife-centric YouTube videos.
Working on our tools can feel like doing the work, but past a certain point that’s seldom the case.
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Interesting Links
The End of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration
What was “the Heroic Age” of Antarctica Exploration? The term is used to refer to the series of Antarctic expeditions launched by Europeans at the tail end of the 19th century and the first few decades of the 20th, beginning with the Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897-1899, the first one to spend a winter in Antarctica. It was a concerted effort to open up to human discovery and knowledge the last great frontier of Earth, and it was carried forth by men who were often terribly unprepared for what they would encounter.
How the Olympics Break Athletes’ Bodies
Mariana Pajón is one of the world’s most accomplished BMX riders, and she can quickly recount some of her career totals: 18 world championships, two Olympic gold medals in racing (in 2012 and 2016) and one silver, in Tokyo in 2021.
But Pajón, a Colombian, can also rattle off the much more painful totals of the cost of so much riding: 25 fractures, 12 screws, eight surgeries and countless tears of ligaments and tendons. The medical hardware in her left arm and knee included so much metal that she used to travel with her X-rays. Opening a door or serving a glass of water hurts.
The Day You Ate Our Deliveroo Delivery
The day you ate our Deliveroo delivery we’d ordered Indian food from Chachi’s Kitchen for four people. You knocked on our door and said, “I ate your food.” We looked you straight in the eye and saw that you did not look sorry. Instead, you looked defiant.
We wondered what kind of person you were to do such a thing. We did not know who you were, where you were from, where you’d been, or what you’d done, but now you were here, standing on our front step, while it was pouring with rain, with your belly bursting with our special order of Indian food. The inconvenience of you and your story was too much to bear.
“What?” we said, because we wanted to hear you say it again, that you had done something wrong to us.
You said, “I was hungry.”
“But that was food for four people,” we said.
You looked down at your wet shoes.
(If you want more links to interesting things, consider subscribing to Aspiring Generalist.)
Question
Today’s question is about relationships.
Consider answering in the comments (via the button below) or hitting “reply” to answer via email. Here’s the question:
What sort of (currently absent) relationship would, if added to your life, be beneficial to you in some way?
This is something that’s been on my mind for the past half-decade or so, as I’ve realized that most of my best friends are scattered across the planet, and while I have some really solid in-person relationships here in Milwaukee, I don’t have the sort of tight-knit, scenius-like group of local co-conspirators that I’ve enjoyed in some of my previous creative eras. And I feel like I would benefit from that sort of community right now, at a moment in which I’m internally recalibrating and rearranging in all sorts of interesting ways.
There are countless types of relationships (with self/body, with other people, with pets/nature, with society and spaces, with faith/god/energy, etc), so please interpret this question however you like, and then share your answer in the comments if you’re comfortable doing so. You can also email me your answer if you’d like to share, but not publicly.
Outro
My annual physical went well! Looks like I’m a happy, healthy, growing boy. Always glad (and relieved) to hear that, especially after several years of life-altering (but currently managed, thankfully) surprises in that department.
I’m heading out to Seattle to help take care of my baby nephew in two weeks, so I’ve been front-loading the work I would otherwise need to do while there. I’ve spread it out in such a way that it’s not too hefty a burden, and because I’m the sort of person who would rather arrive at the airport way early than risk being late, I’ll probably have this clutch of pre-scheduled work done unnecessarily soon (so that I no longer have to worry about maybe not getting it done in time, which I will otherwise continue to do).
Also: like seemingly everyone in the US right now, my girlfriend has Covid, so I’m sleeping in the living room on the (surprisingly comfortable!) air mattress I seldom have reason to use. I’m hoping I either dodge the bullet on catching it before (or during) the Seattle trip, or that I get (a light and fleeting version of) it soon so I can recover well before it has the chance to mess with my travel plans.
Know anyone with Covid at the moment? Any impending trips on your calendar? Drop me a message and tell me what’s been going on, and/or take a moment to introduce yourself—I respond to every message I receive and would love to hear from you :)
What a funny coincidence, I have been obsessed with learning about hand sharpening knives the last few weeks. I’ve genuinely spent more time sharpening knives than using them to cook! It’s been satisfying in and of itself to learn but I realized I wasn’t using the tools. I have since purchased fun to chop veggies so that I can test my newly sharpened knives.
Watch the Bestie Boys Story, I want a friendship like Mike D and Adam (and what they had with Adam Yauch). I've good friends but nothing like that! It's amazing to see!