dear friends of the web,

I took this week off to spend time with my partner, who just returned from six months of Turkish military service. since stepping away from work, I've been watching movies, napping, cooking, and thinking about what to cook: maybe, a layered chocolate cake, slow-cooked lamb in the oven, and pickled Korean-style side vegetables.

despite how much I'm enjoying the week, the act of NOT working is actually very hard, and feels a little unnatural. when work is such a part of my sense of self and way of relating/connecting to the world, not working feels like... being an leisurely-astronaut floating in space. I'm feeling groggy, not in a bad way.

what's inspired me this week

listened to: On Being with Maria Popova: Cartographer of Meaning in a Digital Age
every week, I try to listen to a long podcast to motivate me to vacuum and mop the apartment. this past weekend, I listened to an interview with Maria Popova, whose website The Marginalian, (formerly Brainpickings) - I've admired since I was in college. listening to her conversation inspired me so much on what it means to be a "public intellectual," (my words, not hers) - that is, to live a life of the mind; of ideas, art, and culture -- in public. first and foremost, it is a personal practice; an act of nourishing the self. then, the act of sharing it makes it public.

watched: Avatar, The Way of Water (2022)
I watched this movie upon the request of my partner and woW, the visual landscape and story is so beautifully, exquisitely lush; it's worth 3 hours for just that, alone. watching this movie (and re-watching Avatar) made me feel deeply, viscerally uncomfortable about all the things -- environmental exploitation, imperial/colonialism, capitalism -- and that really impressed me, given that it's a big, "mainstream" blockbuster.

rewatched: The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
I rewatched this film this afternoon with such pleasure -- visual, tactile, sensorial pleasure, like opening a series of nested russian eggs, or an intricately designed storybook. like Avatar, it is such a visual feast, and an evocation of a nostalgic past. in that sense, it carries the same ethos as The Museum of Innocence -- a novel/museum I recommended last week.

4 quadrants of my life

I thought of this diagram a few weeks ago, when i realized that I was spending 99% of my energy on WORK, and I was trying hard to remember what else there was in my life besides work.

let me explain the axis:

INNER/OUTER -- self vs. other. the outer world is external to the self, involving the physical, tangible world, while inner world mostly happens within the mind/psyche/imagination/personal body.

HOME/WORLD -- private/public. home is whatever happens in the interior sphere, world is out there -- but out there could also mean "the internet." in that sense, my work is mostly @world when it's shared, but also @home if it's private. for me, it's especially hard to distinguish between life and work, because they both happen @home, @inner.

looking at this diagram helps me think about which quadrants I want to focus more energy into -- for example, outer/world -- and remember that there is more to being alive than work, even if it feels essential to my soul.

if you experiment with this framework, let me know! I'll be curious how it fits & feels.

dear friends, I'm signing off for this week.

sending you slices of my to-be-baked chocolate cake,
kening

this is guide.notes 23, a weekly letter on the rituals and rhythms of nourishing a living digital ecosystem.