Wantingness
February 4, 2025
3-Item Status
Current Location: Milwaukee, WI
Reading: Kleptopia by Tom Burgis
Listening: This Summer by Sleigh Bells
If you have a moment, reply with your own 3-Item Status.
New Work
This week’s Let’s Know Things is about the Mother of All Deals
This week’s Brain Lenses essay is on our Sense of Self & the pod is about Attention Lapses
I also sent out Writing & Such and Do Things In Person emails this week, each of which now have an irregular publishing cadence and contain a trio of short essays apiece
For those of you in the Milwaukee-area, I announced a beta version of the MKE Meetups website this morning (let me know if you find any bugs)
Wantingness
I love the cold. Winter (and to a lesser degree Autumn) is when I can finally spend more time outside, because the sun isn’t persistently menacing my burn-prone skin and all the floral aggressors that trigger my seasonal allergies are dead.
Thus, I flourish when the temperatures drop, and my ideal climate is somewhere between that of Milwaukee (where I live now) and that of Reykjavík (where I’ve happily lived previously).
That said, it got down to -32 F (with windchill) the other day, every flat surface has been covered in an inch-thick slick of ice for what feels like months, and the sun has graced us with only periodic and fleeting visits since November, which is doing a number on everyone’s mood.
As a result, there have been times these past few weeks that I’ve thought about Spring and Summer with surprising fondness, bordering on longing.
A little warmth would be nice. Being able to run around the neighborhood (without needing ice skates) would be great. It might be cool to see a blue sky again at some point.
I know from experience that the heat, the humidity, the mosquitos and pollen and skin-sizzling radiation from that devil-star in the sky will not be at all pleasant for me when it arrives in force. But I also know that longing for what we don’t currently have is part of the human condition.
When I was traveling full-time, my deepest desire was to hold still, have a close group of local friends to regularly meet up with, have a familiar grocery store and coffee shop I could visit, and to own possessions of convenience (a foam roller, a rice maker, a nice pillow) that I couldn’t justify trying to cram into my carry-on bag.
Now that I have a life here in Milwaukee, and now that I have friends and familiar, local places to visit, now that I have a nice pillow, a foam roller, and a rice maker, I long for the open road. I miss the constant torrent of novelty, the surprises and discomforts, the situational simplicity that’s near-impossible to replicate when holding still for any amount of time.
At times these sorts of longings, these cravings, are meaningful. At times they represent the surfacing of deep-rooted self-knowledge that we may be well-served to flag, honor, and perhaps even act upon.
There are other times, though, when they are merely manifestations of our latent human condition.
We want what we don’t have because we are wanting, craving, coveting machines. It’s our default setting. The only reason we don’t also want what we already have is that we already have it.
Recognizing this latent state of wantingness isn’t easy or reflexive, but I find that attempting to filter the valuable, informational cravings from the reflexive, instinctual ones makes it more likely that I invest myself in worthwhile, fulling changes and acquisitions rather than spending all my time and resources flailing around, desperately grabbing at anything I don’t currently possess in the hope that this next new whatever will be what finally solves all my problems and makes my life perfect.
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What Else
I will miss the cold when it’s gone, but I won’t miss all the ice and snow on the ground, and the temperatures that are so low it’s dangerous to be outside for more than a few minutes.
That said, I also recognize that not having things can make you appreciate them more. I’ll be even happier with and more fulfilled by my running habit when I’m able to reestablish it after this many months without, for instance, which is a small upside to periodically (and temporarily) losing things we love.
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I often joke to my friends on a hot day that I’d like to destroy the sun. They always look at me as if I do not understand joy. I may have finally found a comrade in the quest to destroy Sol…
As a recovering addict, this dynamic has played an outsized role in my life. Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke is a great book about approaching this dynamic with more intention.