“As an artist and freelancer, there’s a lot of ways you can feel guilty on a daily basis. Guilty for not having enough free time, guilty for having too much, guilty for loving your job, guilty for not loving it. I’m trying to eliminate as much of that guilt as possible, because it’s totally useless. Since quarantine, I regularly sleep until 10. I have dessert every single day. I exercise when I feel like it. I relish my free time when I have it, relish my work when I love it. I ask for an extension if I’m just too sad to meet my deadline. I don’t care anymore. I’m done with guilt. Life is too short.”
Been thinking a lot about this press conference statement by Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles:
“If you’re fixing free throws, if you’re getting better as a player, none of this is happening. So everybody can bitch and complain about how tough this city is to play in. Just play better, man. This city will love you.” ESPN
Just play better, man.
A friend and I have a mantra we share, very simply, “just be cool.”
My mind is heading towards “just be better each day.”
I’m not talking about some quantifiable metric, some hustle, some “get 1% smarter everyday” grind. Better goes great with sports, or sales, but in life it’s different.
Just appreciate, be grateful, be present, be mindful. I know, magical hippy dippy new age bullshit, but whatever, I have to live inside this brain for the rest of my life, so I’m going to use what I use.
In an expert-run industrialized economy, there’s a lot of pressure to be the one who’s sure, the person with all the answers.
Far more valuable is someone who has all the questions. The ability to figure out what hasn’t been figured out and see what hasn’t been seen is a significant advantage.
I know this only because I’ve been on the planet for 45 years, been in a couple of conference rooms, with smart people who kept me on my toes.
Yes, having an answer is fun. Makes you look good. Sure.
But when you ask a question that no one thought to ask, that brings the meeting to a halt, that sets fire to the agenda – that’s way more fun.
Getting there, though, is the long road. The journey. The million mistakes, the trials and errors, the blood, sweat, and tears.
The gold isn’t found in offering up the answers. It’s asking your friend the right question when they’re going through a hard time. The one thing that pulls them up, because the answer was inside them the whole time.
We’re approaching 30,000 COVID deaths here in Pennsylvania, over the course of 17 months. That’s like 1,750 per month. So, approaching a 9/11 death-toll every single month for over a year.
No memorials. No healing. No moments of silence. Nothing.
Sure, the IRS keeps knocking. Local hospital network keeps emailing me for donations. Remember when car insurance companies gave us automated discounts those first two months? HAH.
Through all of this I am reminded of one thing, very soundly; we’re on our own.
From an interview with Harper’s Bazaar Digital Director Nikki Ogunnaike:
“My friend Joe Holder is very much of the school where he believes there are all sorts of products that people are buying and reaching and searching for to do their wellness practices, but there are things like stillness, meditation, religion, fresh air, and vitamin D. And I don’t knock anyone — do whatever you need to do to center yourself. But in my own life, making sure that I do something for myself in the morning before I have to give myself over to my job.”
‘Nikki Ogunnaike Wants You to Unfollow Anyone Who Doesn’t Bring You Joy, at The Cut
Even with my years of talking about productivity and using all the cool tools, my morning routine doesn’t exist. Some mornings I just stumble through, other mornings I rush to complete a task that I put off from the previous workday.
The idea though, of “making sure I do something for myself in the morning before I have to give myself over to my job.” The idea that we really do give ourselves over to our jobs, even when working remotely. That’s a real thing. A different headspace.
Well, things were going in the right direction for a little while. But then…
I’ve seen this movie before. That slope is gonna keep going up. I’ve been to a local Starbucks a bit, to work. People flowing in throughout the afternoons with no masks. Packing the place every now and again. Same at the grocery stores.
And this is what we get. A new 7-day average of 472 cases. Next week it’ll be 1000. The week after it’ll be 2000.
I got talking about Carlisle, PA with a friend recently. We read about the city on Wikipedia (here) and learned of this boarding school called the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, “an experiment in educating Native Americans and teaching them to reject tribal culture and to adapt to white society.” Horrific.
The most beautiful burial I’ve ever witnessed. After over a 100 yrs the children who died at Carlisle Indian Boarding School are laid to rest by the youth of this generation. Wrapped in buffalo robes and back to the comfort of Grandmother Earth in their ancestral Lakota lands. pic.twitter.com/K3Fykn4OqM
I’ve lived in PA most of my life and never heard of this place. This atrocity.
“Carlisle became the model for 26 off-reservation Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools in 15 states and territories. Some private boarding schools were sponsored by religious denominations.”
All our students attend Sabbath-school, the girls in our own chapel, the boys at the different churches in Carlisle. Sabbath afternoon services havo been conducted by Rev. Dr. Lijpincott, of Dickinson College, to whom I am greatly indebted for faithful and zealous services as chaplain. These influences have produced gratifying results.
I mean, how does the church justify this? How do they remedy this? They played a part in the genocide of a people.
I love any story that involves a “what’s really behind the curtain” element. That’s probably why I love The Matrix (1998) so much, and can watch that first movie over and over again. There’s ‘The Adjustment Bureau’ from 2011, too.
Not sure why I decided to give Loki a chance, being as all those “comic book movies” don’t really do much for me. I didn’t grow up on those stories, or the comics. Sure, the ‘Batman’ from 1989 will always be a movie I love, but mostly because I was in middle school at the time, and everyone had that Batman logo shirt.
Getting into this Loki TV series was pretty easy, though. It jumps right into the mystery and intrigue real quick, and it does it mostly without the huge pomp and flash of those comic book movies.
And honestly, Tom Hiddleston is a delight. I love every bit of him this – the dialogue, the wit, the charm, his dashing good looks, his… journey.
For me two parts reminded me of The Matrix.
When Mobius tells Loki, “you could be whoever, whatever you wanna be, even someone good. I mean, just in case anyone ever told you different.”
Remember Neo riding in the car in the matrix for the first time, going to see The Oracle?
NEO: I have all these memories. None of them happened. What does that mean? TRINITY: The Matrix cannot tell you who you are.
In The Matrix, the machines made up fake memories and lives. The TVA snatched people from the timeline and erased their memories.
Then I felt Neo’s lone meeting with The Architect was similar, too. He Who Remains said he paved the way for Loki and Sylvie, and The Architect said that the remainder was not unexpected, so there was a measure of control. Both were planned, expected. It was fate that led to these meetings.
Neo had to make a choice; return to the source and the salvation of Zion, or go back to the Matrix and the extinction of the human race.
In Loki, there was a final choice, too: go back and lead the TVA, or kill He Who Remains and await the “total destruction of… well, everything.”
I have no idea where The Loki story goes, and of course we know that Neo could have saved everyone a lot of turmoil if he just took the door to the right.
The problem is choice.
Loki could have stopped Sylvie, given his powers and strength, but he didn’t.
Neo coulda have returned to the source, but he didn’t.
Sylvie could have “listened to reason,” but like Neo, she was on a mission. She was in love with revenge, the story. She needed this ending, this finality, this completion to the quest that she’s been on for 1000s (?) of years.
Neo had to save Trinity because he loved her.
I’m fascinated by the Simulation hypothesis, which of course would mean that everything is made up, just like The Matrix, or everything is controlled by something like The TVA. In that, that means I can wake up as Tyler Durden tomorrow if I want, or someone with the confidence of Loki.
If we’re all making this up as we go along, why not?
Everything just feels rushed right now. It’s not the opening of “everything” that scares me, but the whole “get back to normal.”
A client mentioned that it’d be great to get a week or so ahead of schedule, and I agree! But… there’s this haze of 27,000 people that died from COVID in PA alone. The haze of loved ones choosing not to get vaccinated. The fog of the insurrection that’s just been swept under the rug. The strain of mass shootings, police brutality, and the multiple laws being passed in the name of “election security.”
Like, it took us a minute to recover from 9/11. But all of the above? Take an hour to grieve, ponder, reflect – we got a Zoom call presentation to deliver tomorrow!
The mass death, the ambient doom, the ever present MEHHHH… but hey, let’s talk about getting back to the office, right? Raise the minimum wage? Nah, but hey, why should my latte take more than five minutes to make!
