Self-Consciousness

Current location: Milwaukee, WI, USA

Reading: Leviathan Falls by James S. A. Corey

Listening: Her First Dance by Misha Alperin

(if you have a moment, reply with your own 3-item status)

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Self-Consciousness

A heightened awareness of what we're doing, how we're doing it, and how our actions and words and public personae might be interpreted by others, can be a source of satisfaction or shame. And the line between one and the other can be razor-thin.

The term "self-conscious" can refer to a feeling of awkwardness or an empowered sense of awareness and self-worth.

I have regular periods of self-reflection baked into my schedule, and one of the benefits of this routine is that when I'm feeling stressed or anxious or out of sorts, I can often trace any low moods or negative feelings I might be experiencing back to a moment of unproductive self-consciousness.

I did or didn't do something, said or failed to say something, responded or neglected to respond appropriately because I was feeling self-conscious.

There are conversations I should have had that I put off because I worried about how I might be perceived. There are gestures I could have made and wounds I could have healed—or preempted—had I faced down certain fears and frets and flusters.

Thus, when I find myself fruitlessly ruminating, I sit, relax, and trace my tension backward, seeking a source, and I almost always arrive at some speck of distress that—splinter-like—has hooked itself into my subconscious flesh and caused the well-meaning denizens of my subliminal immune system outsized alarm.

A variation of this process is part of my daily, informal meditation routine.

I take stock, mentally pat myself down to see if I'm harboring stress or guilt or worries, and I tug on any threads I find until they unravel and reveal their source.

When referring to an ever-growing sense of oneself, one's capacity and goals, one's value and how much one has left to learn, however, self-consciousness is important for personal development and psychological situational awareness.

Lacking this cognizance, we tend to depend upon external reflections and loose caricatures of ourselves—both of which depict superficial sketches of who we are rather than the more accurate blueprint we can render when we've taken the time to understand our holistic push-pull tensions, our load-bearing elements, and what we're really made of.

If you found some value in this essay, consider supporting my work by buying me a coffee :)

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I so very much miss tacky roadside attractions and weird highway businesses. This photo was taken while I was on my motorhome-based speaking tour a few years back (that's my rig in the background). I'm planning to do a lot of roadtripping as soon as infection numbers drop, and I'm hoping that'll be within the next month or so.

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Projects

Select, recent works from across my project portfolio.

Aspiring Generalist: Learning Sweet Spot

Brain Lenses: Violence

I Will Read To You: When I Would Muse in Boyhood

Let’s Know Things: Private Space Stations

Curiosity Weekly: Jan 11, 2022

One Sentence News: Jan 12, 2022 (podcast version)

Consider supporting my work by becoming an Understandary member

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Interesting & Useful

Some things to click:

Time Traveler by Merriam-Webster

See which words were first recorded in a given year, or search for other words by the year when they were first used.

The Fry Universe 3D modeling of various fry shapes reveals why you like some more than others.

Making Lego Car Climb Obstacles

Testing a Lego car against different obstacles and improving it until it becomes a capable climber.

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They have what amount to timeshares for some RV parks ("resorts"), and I was able to stay a few nights at this one in Louisiana in exchange for listening to a little talk about what the timeshare offered. It definitely wasn't for me, but I enjoyed the nights I spent there.

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Outro

I'm planning to make some black eyed pea soup and bake some biscuits today, and my primary goal is to only eat two buttermilk biscuits with the soup rather than half the batch, which has become my norm over this last, chilly month.

Two biscuits, Colin. Two.

I'm doing one more Twitch-based Q&A this week—tomorrow, Thursday, Jan 13 at 7:00pm US Central Time—and then I'm going to switch things up and try out a livestream riff on my One Sentence News project, each evening talking about the news of the day, answering questions, getting a little deeper into some of the context of that news (but also the news-world, in general), that sort of thing.

You can join me on Twitch here: @VirtualColin (23 followers! Watch out Kardashians!)

And you can submit a question ahead of time on Instagram (I'm planning to stream this upcoming Q&A on Instagram at the same time as Twitch—but I haven't tried that before, so we'll see how it goes): @colinismyname

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Livestreaming aside, I'd love to hear from you via email if you're keen to share something about yourself, what life looks like for you right now, what you're up to, and where you hope to go, next.

You can reach me by replying directly to this newsletter or at colin@exilelifestyle.com. I respond to every email I receive and would love to hear from you :)

You can also communicate via the typical methods: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or just a silly amount of content each minute.

If you’re finding some value in what I’m doing here, consider supporting my work via one of these methods: Become an Understandary member / Buy me a coffee / Buy me a monthly coffee

Timeline of the human condition.