Celebrating: Discovery
A roundup of captivating writing, news, and ideas that are worth your while.
Welcome to this edition of Discovery—the Celebration link roundup—where we celebrate great writing, explore new ideas, keep abreast of newsy items, continuously reframe our understanding of the world, and also (ahem) laugh at memes.
A preemptive guilt trip to avoid accountability for sporadic newslettering
The sub-heading really says it all. Preemptive guilt trip incoming: It’s been far too long since I’ve sent out a link roundup, but you can’t chastise me too harshly because it’s cancer season, bbs! What with my solar return being (almost) imminent, you wouldn’t want to harangue me back into hiding in my crabby shell before I can properly celebrate, would you? No. And for those of you who assume a hater’s posture in the face of astrological patter, I offer you the below tweet (it’s gendered but the sentiment applies across the spectrum). Let us, the astrologically inclined, have our fun!
Whatever your attitudes towards astrology, be you a hard-crusted cynic or a card-carrying tarot-mystic at the county fair, you should be following Chani Nicholas either way; her posts—while they employ the stars as a convenient framework—are mellifluous little insta-sonnets encouraging what she calls “radical self-acceptance,” and they leave me empowered with insights I genuinely feel I can use to pursue the things that matter to me most. She assumes the role of instagram fairy godmother to a growing coven of benevolent, progressive, creative witches and she’s ALWAYS in (y)our corner. Most of her prescriptive declarations arrive at just the right time, saying exactly what one needs to hear, and are equally potent even when divorced from their anchoring astro-jumbo. (And her weekly horoscopes are written as generous affirmations, not as portentions.) Get into it—if you’re not already.
On Writing
Many of my friends who have birthed more than one child describe the slow delusion and memory loss that creeps in between pregnancies that allows them to forget the anguish of childbirth—just enough so they can convince themselves to do it all over again. I’ve never given birth and I’m not implying this is a universal experience. But I’ve found myself relating to this phenomenon these past months as I’ve been immersing myself in the writing of a new book (an extracurricular project pursued in my off-hours, a novel). Now that well over a year and a half has elapsed since I was engrossed in the writing of my first book, I’ve allowed a false romance to scab over the memory of how difficult it was to create and complete; I view the process now through a prismatic fog that distorts its reality retroactively. And it’s for the best. If the memory of how laborious book-birthing really is remained vivid in my mind, I’d probably never sit in the chair, leaving the muse untapped.
Are you also bringing forth a big creative project? Maybe this beautiful bit of wisdom from the inimitable Wendell Berry will speak to you too:
"There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say "It is yet more difficult than you thought." This is the muse of form. It may be then that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction, to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings." (emphasis mine)
— Wendell Berry
WOW. He’s so wise. And, piggybacking on this sentiment, enjoy and draw strength from this thoughtful post on regarding your creative projects with the reverence and curiosity you would a living being (click on the link and read the caption if you can; it contains a longform piece of actionable advice that is replenishing to the creative spirit):
On the topic of actualizing your creative pursuits, I hate that so much of our best brain juice is wasted on consuming and creating content for the morass of social media apps and media distribution channels that comprise the Internet; it can feel like an uncontrollable behavior and is often framed in the language of addiction. I’ve had countless conversations with friends about how we mindlessly open the same three apps over and over again through the night. It’s rote and joyless. A ritual without rite. But, what if it isn’t mere compulsion that keeps us coming back—consider the reframe in this piece, “The internet is destroying our brains, but we can’t quit. It’s a factory we’re forced to work in without pay,” which posits that we’re not addicts, we’re indentured servants to enormous corporations that profit off our pain with impunity:
“We need to think of the internet less as a tool we all somehow can't stop using, and more as a factory we're required to be in. . . If the internet is a factory, it is one in which the vast majority of people are not getting paid. Instead, users often fight with each other for non-monetary payment in the form of clout — recognition that we can produce the most and best content for free.”
Like most people, I can’t “quit” the internet; my job, and most people’s jobs, are inextricably linked to it now. But I’m going to try to re-commit to “clocking out” more often, choosing to put my labor towards making my own dreams come true, not making GooFapple any more moolah. Who’s with me?
Shotgirl Summer
Meanwhile, when I’m not reading about our techno-dystopia, I’ve been out in these streets with my fully vaxxed self—socializing, dining, sitting at actual bars ordering real drinks from flesh-and-blood barkeeps. This same delight and peace of mind is available to anyone who gets a vaccine. How can we breakthrough to the vaxx-hesitant? Apparently, at least half would get the vaccine if they could do so from their own doctor, especially those in marginalized groups who have very good reason to withhold their trust in the healthcare system. Partnering with trusted messengers, like local doctors, might be a powerful way to achieve breakthrough. (P.S., “We had the vaccine the whole time,” and this New York Magazine coverage of that fact predicts some smart ways we could learn from this rollout to get life-saving treatments to people even faster when the next plague hits.)
And if we learned anything from being sequestered in our homes for a year under threat of virulent death, it’s that life is too short not to take your lunch break: “Let’s normalize a proper, generous lunch break — both in the remote work environment and especially when we return to any sort of regular, in-person office environment,” writes Ruchika Tulshyan in HBR, eliciting a verbal “Amen!” from me as I read it.
I’m almost done rambling, but before you go, read Adam Serwer on “The Authoritarian Instincts of Police Unions,” get a bit of voyeuristic thrill from exploring the live results of Dan Pink’s, “World Regret Survey” (click on an area in the interactive map to see an anonymously submitted regret; it’s a whole globe filled with small little secrets, and you can submit your own regret too if you’ve got something to get off your chest), and look back with a critical eye on “The Crucifixion of Courtney Stodden,” a child victim we collectively villainized and exploited as they fell publicly prey to a 50-year old predator.
And lastly—
Shot:
Chaser:
The hangover nobody asked for:
That’s all the discovering for this edition! (Next time: Less rambling, more links—promise.) Please feel free and encouraged to share this email.