Places to Put Things
June 14, 2023
Current location: Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
Reading: Undue Hate by Daniel Stone
Listening: Top Dog by Magdalena Bay(if you have a moment, reply with your own 3-item status via email or in the comments)
Places to Put Things
When I think about work, I sometimes visualize a collection of little boxes in which I can put things.
This is true of paid work—the projects that help me make rent and buy groceries—but also the sort of work I do alongside that, which is maybe just for fun, maybe meant to help me grow in some fashion, maybe something experimental and boundary-expanding, and maybe something that will someday evolve into a money-making venture.
I suspect I reflexively reach for this metaphor because I often find myself with things I'd like to do, but without a proper place to put those things.
And while it's of course possible (and often desirable) to do things without scaffolding or pre-set purpose, I personally find that having some sort of order, some kind of framework underpinning the things I intend to formally try my hand at helps me achieve consistency, track growth, adjust my priors (my initial expectations and beliefs, over time tempered and reshaped by my growing knowledge and know-how), and iterate more reliably than when I just grab at something and fiddle around with it for a few minutes here and there.
I might come across a concept I'd like to write about, for instance, only to discover that I don't have the right box for it, the right project, which then leaves me either having to shoehorn it into a container in which it doesn't quite fit—the angles blunted, the surfaces dented and bruised—or I leave it loose and fluttering in the wind, untethered and consequently disconnected from the larger collection of things I'm working on.
The boxes I set up for myself, then, tend to be important because they in some ways shape how I'm thinking about the ideas and activities I'm focusing on at any given moment.
Sometimes those disconnected ideas and micro-projects serve as seeds that eventually bloom into their own thing. Several of my current projects were grown from a single idea that then sprouted and became more formalized, eventually attracting more of my attention and time when I realized that embryonic notion could become something bigger and more expansive.
Sometimes these bits and pieces remain just that, though, and there's nothing at all wrong with having an idea scrap-drawer (mine is a folder in my main writing app), but I do find that giving even the tiniest supportive surface to something can lend legs it wouldn't otherwise benefit from.
At times, I've pulled concepts from that folder filled with not-quite-right-for-what-I'm-working-on-currently ideas and expounded them into mini-projects, just for me, opting to take a sort of journaling approach to writing about them each day in a note-to-self format, rather than attempting to convert them into a public-facing product of some kind or leaving them to gather moss, filed alongside a jumble of other misfit tidbits and not-quite-there meanderings.
When something does grab and hold me tightly enough that I decide to unfold it into a larger project, committing some of my day or week or month to it at a regular cadence, I'm careful to set a check-in date at which point I'll reassess whether the thing would benefit from more time and attention, or if it's maybe time to pack it in, archiving it and freeing up those chronological and mental resources for some other undertaking.
This makes it a bit easier to commit to box-building, as I know from the get-go that there will be a moment at which I can gracefully bow-out without disappointing myself, feeling like I haven't given something sufficient extrapolatory attention before packing it up and recalibrating my schedule in a different direction.
Box-building is still far from a casual decision, though, as even a month's worth of dedicated labor is a substantial investment of one's finite life, and there are countless other things one might focus on, instead.
Ultimately, this is one more way of framing the process of coping with the trade-offs inherent in learning and making and doing anything at all, and it's one that works decently well for me as a person who's interested in essentially everything, and who might otherwise lack focus, trying to pursue all those everythings at once.
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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
“Videogame game over screens. Beauty in grief. Some "Continue?" screens also.”
Close-Up Photographer of the Year 2022
“Over 9,000 pictures from 54 countries were entered this year across the eleven categories.”
Happiness and Meaning in What We Do
“We looked at what makes people happy. We looked at activities that people rate as meaningful. Now let’s put them together and see what people rate as both meaningful and joy-inducing.”
Outro
My girlfriend and I took a little roadtrip up to Door County this past weekend to attend a get-together, at which we met the director of an interesting sanctuary of sorts called Björklunden (which is an extension of a university a few hours away in Appleton).
He offered to give us a tour the next day, before we headed back to Milwaukee, and that visit set a nice tone for the rest of the day; it’s a remarkable spot, established by a truly interesting renaissance woman named Winifred Boynton (today, among other things, they host seminars for lifelong learners, which was also of interest to me).
Now that I’m back in Milwaukee, I’ve been working to figure out a format for some kind of regular video-focused project, which is something I’ve been fiddling with for months, but haven’t had the chance to sit down and whittle away at (making a box for it, basically, so I can start doing some kind of video work regularly beginning in July).
We’ll see how that goes; this is something I’ve been meaning to do for some time, but I still haven’t found the right combination of format, content, and overall vibe.
What’ve you been up to, lately? Consider dropping me a quick hello to introduce yourself, tell me what’s going on in your life, or for no reason at all—reply directly to this newsletter or send an email to colin@exilelifestyle.com. I respond to every email I get and would love to hear from you!
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Owning a brain that works in conceptual ways, I like the visual of these boxes to represent different areas of your work and personal growth projects. Though, personally, I would want everything neatly organized into these boxes - I might not be able to leave things loose and nomadic.
Fun read, thanks for sharing.