The Weekly Review | Vol VI Issue 8
Hello, friends!
My thoughts have turned back to independent publishing on the web of late. It’s something I think about a lot (obviously), but sometimes other people bring it front and centre when sharing their own related thoughts. Alan Jacobs lamented getting plain text into Wordpress. Cal Newport wrote about indie social media. Craig Mod walked hundreds of kilometres across Japan and published a daily entry over SMS — and shared a strangely enjoyable podcast of sounds to boot.
All not merely about blogging, some maybe even a little weird, but all tangentially related to publishing on the web. And owning your stuff.
Most important, my pal Rian Van Der Merwe finally (finally!) started up his newsletter once again and launched his own site membership after 10 years of writing. We’ve talked about this frequently over the past months and I’m super excited to see him finalize a direction and run with it. Please consider joining — he writes mostly about product management, but also a lot about how technology affects us. If you enjoy this newsletter, chances are you’ll enjoy his as well.
So this is all top of mind for me. But the reality is, I don’t really have time for much publishing these days. We’ve been having some hard times in our home and the mental health of my family comes before hobbies such as this (more on that some other time).
But when I’m short on time for writing, I’m thankful for the work of others providing good reading!
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Investing ourselves where we are
Digital Nomads Are Not the Future
This was a featured story on Medium last summer, but I stumbled across a few posts recently that brought this to my mind. Paris Marx makes gives astute commentary on our current obsession with a nomadic lifestyle, opening with the allure:
In an era of increasingly precarious jobs, ever-longer working hours, and declining social mobility, it’s no surprise that digital nomads are gaining a sizable following. Office dwellers lack happiness or hope in the daily grind. They know there must be something better. After enough time spent in an office chair, it’s easy to aspire to become one of those people with a MacBook on a beach in a foreign locale.
See the google image search above. And who among us hasn’t spent a 15 minute session scrolling through some “van life” Instagram feed? But he quickly hints at the darker reality:
Many digital nomads had significant privilege before pursuing such a lifestyle, privilege that allows them to avoid the potentially negative aspects of location independence.
Later in the article, he states his case — and the problem with this movement — more clearly:
The fierce individualism embedded in the culture of digital nomadism ignores (and can damage) communities, both at home and abroad. People who feel “liberated” from space have no stake in improving the space around them. To them, local communities are as valuable as co-working space. Digital nomads are far less likely to work toward positive local change, fight for the rights of disadvantaged peoples, or halt the gentrification that displaces long-term residents — to which they usually contribute — because those issues don’t affect them.
I’ve been making my way through A Field Guide For Everyday Mission with other members of our local church. It’s been a good read and I recognize changes I need to make in my thinking. This post resonates in a similar way.
Marx finishes the article with a scathing judgement (understandably so), but sadly doesn’t offer any solutions.
Privilege allows digital nomads to ignore all these things. It allows them to live in a fantasy world where they need only worry about themselves. They take full advantage of their positions, increasing their satisfaction while avoiding their responsibility to contribute to the society that granted them their privilege in the first place. Their lifestyle actively augments the forces displacing locals. Digital nomads evidently do not care about the places where they happen to live and, for that reason, they have no place in the future.
That’s where the book I mentioned above comes in. It encourages followers of Christ to open our eyes, see the mission field right where we are, and to start to make changes by serving others and sharing the Good News of Christ.
This is one I’ll read through, then go back and go through it again. The second time making notes and picking practical changes to make in my daily life.
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Items of note
How to Tap Less on Your Phone (but Get More Done)
David Pogue has a handful of good tips for using our phones more effectively. The first is one I really should take the time to do: set up self-expanding abbreviations.
You probably do a lot of repetitive typing on your tiny onscreen keyboard. You enter your contact information into one website after another. You reply to dozens of emails. You text stock phrases like “Got it — thanks” or “On my way!”
And I really should give Siri more to do. Habits are hard.
This was an interesting read from David Mathis at Desiring God. When I saw the title, I was curious how they would approach the topic. TL;DR version: they (mostly) approve of it.
He goes into detail about the effects of caffeine, plus how it helps people to wake up and be more alert. The case is then made that it can help with devotions and meditation, as well as love and good works.
He also spends some time discussing how we should be wary and consider the potential negative effects:
As Christians, we will be eager to observe the negative effects of caffeine. Does it help me not just feel awake but also feel an artificial hope? Does too much caffeine alter mood in an irresponsible way? Is caffeine a cover up for sinful lack of sleep? Is it masking other disobedience? Why would it help to be more awake today? Is it for idolatrous reasons (Proverbs 23:4), or for soul-strengthening, others-helping outputs of energy?
Overall, the part that interested me is the concept of coffee helping with our devotional time. I find I have to meditate, pray, or read my Bible before I make some coffee. Have it too soon and my mind easily wanders and I’m too stimulated to focus my attention well.
But, as the spirit of the article implies, to each their own. It affects us all differently.
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Quote of the week
Most become aware of margin when they run out.
Isaac Smith, “Margin” as Part of Your Decision-Making Process
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Currently
Drinking
Saison’s have become one of my favourite styles of beer lately. As such, I quite enjoyed the West Coast Hoppy Saison from Yellow Dog Brewing. It still has the yeasty spiciness of a Saison, but with a little more of an IPA feel thanks to the extra hops. Fresh, crisp, and delicious.
Reading
Still on the same track for fiction (looking forward to moving on to a new series though — more to come), but I started Digital Minimalism recently. I was slow on this one and wasn’t even considering reading it.
Social media is pretty low on my priority list these days: I follow a group for our men’s group at church on Facebook Messenger and check Twitter a couple of times per day during the work week. So I didn’t see this as a need.
Comments from my dear internet friends Rian Van Der Merwe and Isaac Smith convinced me otherwise.
Listening
I continue to listen to mostly mellow music during my workday (which is when 80–90% of my music listening happens). And by mellow I mean ambient, background electronic styles or low key jazzy stuff like Menahan Street Band or Devon Lamarr Organ Trio.
I mentioned Moby’s Long Ambients Two last issue and that album has taken a permanent spot in my weekly rotation. Another one that has gotten a lot of play time is Lux Prima, a collaboration between Karen O and Danger Mouse. I find it very similar to the 2011 album Rome, but that is a very good thing.
Easy listening at its best.
Running
If 2017 was the year I learned to love running, 2018 was when I learned to love running on the road. Prior to that, most of my runs were off the beaten path on ungroomed trails. I came to enjoy the way concrete lets you focus on rhythm and improve your times.
But 2019 has been a return to the trails for me. Overall, it’s better for your soul. Being closer to nature and away from the traffic noise has been a vital part of my mental health this year.
And my time has been spent more on some of the amazingly well kept trail systems in my hometown. Compared to the much quieter trails near our home, where your footing is dependent on the last time someone drove their quad through, the well packed trails (Pidherny and Otway) have been calling me. There’s more people there, but embracing the running community here is something I need to improve on anyway!
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Back to Craig Mod and his walking+publishing experiment. Not everyone is into walking; I can get that. But good writing? I think we can appreciate it even when the topic is not normally of interest.
For 25 days I woke up to this kind of thing waiting in Messages:
Day 18. Thirty-seven asphalt slammin’ kilometers. What are pinkie toes anyway? Not necessary, right? Mine have become meta-pinkies, shadows of pinkies, mere charcoal sketches of pinkies. Somewhere, below the blisters, there are pinky toes and they are fully ready to bow to evolutionary desires and leave this material world. I write to you from Denny’s. The most popular place in the known universe. I have left the forest and reentered Pachinko Road.
There’s a lot of negativity about what the internet turned out to be after 25 years. But it’s not all bad … some people are still having fun.