The Right Lessons

I don’t find regret to be particularly useful, though it’s sometimes difficult to avoid.

Regret can play a role in productive reassessment, triggering the reflex to look back and consider. I find that its knee-jerk utility often stops there, however, leaving me in a reflective-limbo; worrying over something that went wrong, but not doing anything useful with that information.

I have several habits meant to help close this deficit, but the most straightforward and boring one tends to be the most effective: I give myself a bit of time each day to do nothing but sit with my thoughts. Having that time is typically sufficient, though giving myself permission to set things aside once I’ve reassessed them through the lens of more experience and knowledge also seems to help.

Without that permission to move forward, it’s possible to reach to the reflection step and to get stuck there, held up and unable to progress because the critical act of determining how to do better in the future, and the also-critical act of forgiving oneself, are lacking.

I bring this up not because there’s anything in particular weighing on me, but because many of us are coming around to a year of our full-on pandemic reality, and it’s likely that we’ll want to reflect, but will also need to move forward in productive ways.

There’s a lot of uncertainty in our day-to-day and on the horizon. There have been a great many unusual variables influencing our behaviors, thinking, physical and psychological health, and the choices we’ve made along the way.

I will not be at all surprised if the many decisions I’ve made—from how I’ve chosen to spend my time, to what I’ve decided about the future—are soon called into question by the little brain-based voices that seem to exist solely to poke and prod at such things.

I’m attempting to preemptively prime my thinking with a reminder that context matters, that day-to-day realities during this bizarre period have been distinct and unusual and will probably seem like an easily dismissed dream at some point in the future—if I’m lucky, at least, because that will mean things got way better.

The idea is to make sure that when those nattering voices arise and ask me why I didn’t do this or that, why I didn’t do more, how I could justify spending so much time on tasks that will probably make little sense to future me—things like “making it through the day” and “taking long walks through unremarkable neighborhoods just to get out of the house and maybe have the opportunity to wave at a stranger”—I’ll have some answers.

I’m doing this so that I’ll, hopefully, be able to contextualize what I’ve been up to for the past year, so that I can learn what I need to learn from the experience even at the cognitive distance from which I’ll be viewing it, and so that I’ll be able to do so without unwarranted judgement or embarrassment that could mean learning the wrong lessons and making the wrong changes.

—

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

This wonderful awkward selfie was sent in by Xiaoyu. You can send in your own (they’re meant to be imperfect, snapped with whatever you have available, and taken without worrying about achieving perfection) by replying to this email :)

Projects

Brain Lenses: Contextualism & Exposure

Let’s Know Things: Meme Squeeze

Yesterday’s Newsletter: Second Doses, Iran Inspections, Texas Blackouts

Curiosity Weekly: February 16, 2021

Other: I’ve decided to shelve the podcast version of my Yesterday’s Newsletter project for the time being. I learned quite a lot making it (in terms of voice-cloning, and in terms of rapid-production methods that I might use for future, short-form audio projects), but I don’t think that it’s the right format for YN-style content. I’ll likely reassess at some point, but I feel good about the time spent, either way—it wasn’t wasted effort, despite not leading to a longer-lasting “asset.”

Question: is anyone who’s used Circle or Discord (or similar community platforms) on a semi-regular basis willing to share something about their experience with me? If so, please respond to this email with your impression of it, what worked, what didn’t, etc.

Also curious about those texting apps (like Subtext) that allow you to sign up to receive texts from folks and engage with the people on the other end by texting back. I’m by nature skeptical of both types of community tool, but also looking for a few models to try out as part of a learning-centric project I’m working on.

Interesting & Useful

Some neat things to click:

• What Goes Into Designing a Wine Label?(as someone who’s designed a few, I found this to be a wonderful look into the process)

• Visual Education(useful concepts/history to understand)

• How Rich Am I?(fantastic economic context)

• Travel Photographer of the Year 2020(incredibly beautiful, but makes me miss travel even more than I already do)

• Bathroom Reading(on “excretion”)

• Ultra-Fast Fashion is Eating the World(some food for thought about our consumption habits)

• Worldbuilding Forever(on the theory, practice, and value of imagining how things could have been and could be)

This splendid awkward selfie was submitted by Sebastian in Austria, who doesn’t typically take selfies but liked the idea of doing a “nonserious” one.

Outro

It’s been a frosty few days here in mid-Missouri, but my understanding is that even with consistent, double-digit below-zero temperatures and quite a lot of ice and snow, we got off relatively easy compared to other parts of the States.

If you’re in one of the more severely afflicted areas, I hope you and your loved ones are okay and make it through the rest of this polar vortex (and associated infrastructure-failure) with as little negative impact as possible.

In other news, pandemic numbers are looking comparably good at the moment, but please do remember that in many places (including here in the US), they’re still vastly higher than they were at other peak-danger moments in 2020.

There’s good reason to be optimistic, and we’re on a far better trajectory, globally, than we were even just a few months ago—but don’t put yourself in harm’s way by celebrating and changing your habits too early. There’s light on the horizon, but the sun hasn’t come up just yet.

Be as safe as you can manage given your circumstances, be patient with others, understanding that their context might be far worse than yours, and know that even if you don’t feel you’re living up to your full potential at the moment, you’re doing great just making it through; and I’m here, on the other end of this email, if you just need to make contact with someone right now, for whatever reason.

What’re you working on at the moment? What’s been on your mind? How’s the weather in your neck of the woods?

You can reach me and/or submit an awkward selfie at colin@exilelifestyle.com or by responding to this email.

—

You can also communicate via the usual channels: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or well-placed semicolon.

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 / Subscribe to Brain Lenses

You can also buy me a coffee if that’s simpler :)

Can-production is strangely meditative.