edition 3.
As I’m writing this, I’m sitting on the floor of my living room. Which means this is quite literally coming to you from my coffee table :). It’s not my usual writing space but I read You were lied to about exercise and now I’m terrified of being a fall risk at 65, so here we are.
This week I’ve been thinking about ideation and the spaces that breed creativity. But really I’ve been thinking about a question my friend asked me when I told them I started a newsletter. Let’s call this friend Ramu. Ramu asked me why I started writing publicly.
Up until this point, I hadn’t given it too much thought, which meant I hadn’t written about it at all. Thinking back, I believe this was somewhat intentional.
When I initially felt compelled to start a newsletter, I remember not wanting to discuss the thought of writing publicly with myself or anyone else. I’ve always felt that giving an idea for a project too much time to breathe in your head was a bad thing. I knew how that would go. I would think of a million ways it would fail, the million people that would laugh at it, and the million reasons it was a futile project and how I never should have thought of it in the first place. As you can see my fears come in millions.
Time and other people’s anticipation kill the excitement required to begin. That is at least my current understanding. And I didn’t want this to be an experiment that failed before it started. If I wanted to hit publish for the first time I needed to do it before I told anyone about it. That is how I was able to begin.
Finally, here is what I hope to get out of writing publicly - a slightly more fleshed out list building on the answer I gave Ramu. I know I shouldn’t count my chickens before they hatch - but if there are to be chickens, this is what I want them to look like:
a gentle incentive to be consistent
an increase in my surface area of luck
a way to find those who enjoy reading and learning about the same things I do
a way to find ideas that resonate
the joy of referencing my own thoughts and tracing my influences
a body of work and a thread of thoughts that exist on the internet for people to read, reference, and steal
reading: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
I suggested this book as the first read for my family’s book club, having deeply underestimated how devastating it would be. If you’re not familiar with Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking is arguably her most famous work and is an exploration of grief following the death of her husband.
I think I expected an abstract reflection on grief, but got quite the opposite - an intimate look into the details of her husband’s death, observed and analyzed with the kind of attention that only grief can demand.
This book’s been reminding me of why I enjoy her writing in the first place, it’s honest, sharp and reads like stream of consciousness - one of my favorite styles of prose. While it has me wanting to revisit her essays, I’m going to have to rush through it so that I don’t spend days in emotional turmoil.
Additionally, this week’s substack bookmarks:
learning:
Still learning as much as I can about stablecoins, here’s what I’ve read recently to augment my understanding:
Stablecoins Could Become One Of The US Government’s Most Resilient Financial Allies
The third edition of Token Economy by Shermin Voshmgir has a chapter on stable tokens - Stable Tokens: Money with a Stable Value
making:
I’ve been loving fish over rice lately and made two different versions this past week (should I start sharing recipes?):
Nizami fish and bagara rice
Chimichurri fish and cilantro lemon rice
I’ve also started making weekly menus every Sunday as a way to reduce decision fatigue during the work week. While I love cooking, I absolutely dread having to decide what to make for dinner. Having a list of dishes to choose from has dramatically lightened the mental load that comes with grocery shopping and meal prep.
On the writing side, I've been curating a list of my favorite authors and quotes to build out a couple of different essays :)
Thank you for reading!