Seasons
If you want to know how you’ve changed as a person, I suggest you consider moving.
Over the past two weeks, I’ve had to establish a new set of habits predicated on novel circumstances and environments, and had to introduce (and explain) myself and my life to a cast of new characters: some truly novel to me, and some of whom were familiar to past versions of myself, but not the me of today.
Which is a flowery way of saying I’m in a new place, I’m meeting new people, I’m reconnecting with some old friends who have changed just as I have changed, I’m figuring out how to structure my life in this new place. And as I do all these things, I’m learning about myself—partially through the lens of my own restructuring and partially by how I interface with and choose to share myself with others.
This process isn’t particularly new to me: I go through it every time I change my physical location. And there’s a version of the same procedure that I wade through every time I produce some new artifact, like a book, or reach a milestone marker for a longer-term project, like a podcast.
Now that I’m in this new place or making this new thing, who am I?
Are my previous conceptions of self relevant to this new location or professional and intellectual dynamic?
And if those aspects of myself are now less meaningful, for whatever reason, which other aspects should rise to the forefront? Who am I now, in this space and within this context? And how does that compare to my previous iteration?
This can be a useful internal dialogue to have because as you set up a new space—and I mean that in the literal, physical sense, but also in the psychological, habitual, and ritualistic sense—you’re ideally not setting it up for the earlier you, you’re building a space for the next you; the you that you hope to evolve into.
Interactions between you and the world, between you and other people, can be illustrative of how this process is going because it reflects how the otherwise difficult to perceive internal shift is progressing.
This evolution can be catalyzed or empowered or augmented or limited by the changes you make to your geographic, intellectual, and habitual variables. You can stick to the old script, or you can make tweaks that innervate a new season of life.
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Projects
Brain Lenses:Enclothed Cognition & Heat
Let’s Know Things:Malaria
Curiosity Weekly:June 8, 2021
One Sentence News: Info / Subscribe
Interesting & Useful
Some things to click:
Project Mogul(worth knowing about, especially right now)
Left Alone, Together(“What values do we as a society want to enshrine in our communication systems?”)
Building the Golden Gate Bridge(some really stunning/interesting photos)
Obscura No More(how photography became common)
MapCrunch(random Google Street View)
25 Edits That Define the Modern Internet (illuminating and interesting list, with examples)
Neon-Filled, Blade Runner-Style Photographs of Dubai At Night(exactly what it sounds like: gorgeous, sci-fi-esque photos)
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
I wanted to wait on sharing too many photos from my hard-lockdown, pandemic-period in a fairly rural part of Missouri until I felt like I was far enough out of it that I could smile at how strange and uncomfortable and bizarrely interesting it all was, rather than gritting my teeth and wondering when it would all end so I could return to something approximating “normal” again.
I’m at that stage, now: I’m vaccinated, in a new place, exploring possibilities, and feeling pretty good in terms of physical health and mental well-being. Hence, my sharing some aggressively unglamorous snapshots of me doing my best to keep it together in the midst of a lot of uncertainty, random health issues, and decidedly imperfect circumstances.
That said, there are a lot of avenues by which the pandemic in the US could flare up again. And worldwide the situation I’m just now starting to enjoy is not common, yet.
So even as we do our best to focus on and appreciate the good portions of whatever realities we’re experiencing right now, it’s important to keep the bigger picture in mind, and to consider how we might spread that good fortune—whatever shape it might take—more equitably.
How’re pandemic-related issues progressing in your country or city? How’re you and your family doing? Experienced any major life-changes, recently? Planning any big moves in the near-future?
Send me an email and tell me what’s been up, how things are going in your neck of the woods, and/or what you’re excited about.
Also: if you’re not doing great, you’re not alone. You’re achieving a lot just by making it through these bizarre and at times quite painful circumstances. Feel free to send me a message and vent or complain or anything else that might help—there are no judgements on this end, and I’m happy to provide a listening ear to anyone who might need one.
You can reach me at colin@exilelifestyle.com or by replying to this newsletter.
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If you’re finding some value in what I’m doing here, consider supporting my work via one of these methods: Become a patron / Buy a book / Buy me a coffee