Particular Ways
January 18, 2023
Current location: Milwaukee, WI, USA
Reading: The Story of Russia by Orlando Figes
Listening: Carving Canyons by Lissie(if you have a moment, reply with your own 3-item status—via email or in the comments)
Particular Ways
When I find myself endlessly (and purposelessly) ruminating, worrying, or otherwise spiraling in a negative direction, maybe half the time I can pull myself from that psychological eddy by reframing how I’m thinking about the project, relationship, approach, outcome, or whatever else I’m fixated on.
I remind myself that whatever it is I’m worrying about doesn’t need to look, feel, or turn out any particular way.
I’ll actually sometimes say, aloud, “It doesn’t have to be any particular way.”
This strangely rhythmic phrase serves as a touchstone for all the things I do—the malleable structures that guide my life.
It’s a prompt that helps me recall, in the moment, that all of these things can be, and often should be, me-shaped; they don’t need to adhere to anyone else’s standards to be valuable and successful.
It helps me remember that I’m aiming for outcomes optimized for my priorities and preferences, not those reinforced by the societal milieu of which I’m a part (by choice and by happenstance).
This doesn’t apply in every situation or for every set of concerns, but a surprising amount of the time a simple reminder that the focus of my (negative) attention doesn’t have to look the way I’m worried it doesn't look and doesn’t need to serve a purpose I’m concerned it won’t serve, is liberating.
I’m not (usually) consciously worried about adhering to those standards, but some part of me keeps tabs on them, compares and contrasts, and shows me endless snapshots of who I am and how I’m doing, all taken from unflattering angles.
The things I do, though, needn’t be done in the default, expected fashion. Photos taken from those (standard) angles are bound to look weird and compositionally unsound by definition.
Even being generally thoughtful about this—orienting my life around my sense of what’s valuable and interesting and morally correct—isn’t enough to stave off this subconscious nudge toward adhering to (perceived) norms 100% of the time.
So I remind myself:
My life, my work, my connections, my goals and approaches and conclusions and perspectives and tastes and trajectory don’t have to make sense to anyone but me.
And though I still choose to adopt others’ standards in many facets of what I do and pursue, I can feel my brain and those clusters of concerns decompressing and unclenching every time I remind myself that a failure to do so is no failure.
If you found value in this essay, consider buying me a coffee :)
My Work, Elsewhere
Aspiring Generalist / Brain Lenses (podcast) / Climate Happenings / Let’s Know Things (podcast) / Never Not Curious / Notes On the News / One Sentence News (podcast) / You Probably Don’t Need
Might I suggest reading:
Interesting & Useful
“For six months, I cycled through the arid lands of the Maghreb and the Middle East with the idea of recreating a world from the landscapes and characters I met there…The desert gives the impression of being like a god. Its silence and emptiness give way to a projection space—you can create any world you want, especially by bicycle because you move at the right speed, like a travelling camera.”
America’s Chain and Independent Restaurants
Interactive map showing locations and frequency of different brands across the country.
The entire “scan of the month” website is worth perusing, but this one is especially interesting to me, since we engage with this technology daily but seldom have the (safe) opportunity to look at what’s inside.
Outro
As I mentioned last week, if you’d like to send me a postcard, a letter, or other tangible item, here’s where I can be reached:
Colin Wright
PO Box 11442
Milwaukee, WI 53211
Also: on a whim I started a little Discord server—I have no idea if I’ll actually use it, but if you’d like to join and maybe help me figure out potential good uses for it (this is mostly an excuse to experiment with an unfamiliar-to-me platform), you can find that here: Colin’s Cozy Internet Space.
I’ve been using a new service that (I think) will allow me to more intuitively and elegantly share notes and highlights from books (and other longform works) I’m reading, and I’ll be experimenting with sharing those notes and highlights via Aspiring Generalist this week, if you’re keen to see what that looks like and what I’ve been reading / found interesting.
And thanks to everyone who’s already submitted a question for my resurrected Ask Colin series—I’ll send that out (to this list) sometime this week, as well. It may take a few tries to get the format on that right, too, but I get so many questions each week it feels like it’ll be worth the effort to do so (you can view previous AC questions and answers here). On that same note, if you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer, respond to this email (I may use it for this project, but I can also just answer you one-on-one if you’d prefer).
Of course, you can also reach out just to say hello, tell me what’s going on in your life, what you’re thinking about—things like that. I’d love to hear from you and I reply to every email I receive. You can reach me by replying to this newsletter or by writing to colin@exilelifestyle.com (you can also leave a comment if you’d like to share something publicly).
You can also communicate via the usual methods: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or endless, chilled-out driving simulator.