Tag: Shit Posting

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Chronicle Internet Culture

Day 15 and The Wolf You Feed

A perennially popular “just so” story newly reborn as meme is The Two Wolves Inside. Not to be confused with the also excellent three wolves howling at the moon tee-shirt, this parable has a bit more payoff.

You can find endless “graphic design is my passion” variants of the parable from charming Etsy shop hipster versions to deeply weird mashups of Corinthians and Lanape culture. Thanks Art of The Christian Ninja Pastor dude. I’ll pick the firefighters training blog variant as beefy bros that save us from fires seem as good as any to own up to existential food demon metaphors. It’s not the best of the bunch and missed key elements like the wise grandfather telling the boy a story. But it absolutely captures the spirit of heinous layouts and type treatments meant to inspire you to greater things. Which is probably more core to the meme. As from there it reduces itself to further derp.

Why all this lead up? Why am I showing a badly executed meme that isn’t even the full story. Be patient good reader. Bad to the wolves. Well obviously we want to feed the good wolf. But also starving a part of you that isn’t socially acceptable also seems like a real asshole move. Why would you treat yourself so poorly? Or anyone for that matter. It’s like saying to a date “if you can’t handle the worst of me you don’t deserve the best of me” and then wondering why you get treated like a child. Bitch everyone needs to parent their screaming inner child. Blackmailing a potential partner into doing it for you is called codependency.

But I digress. I recognize the need for my own darker impulses. The tendency to swear (makes me relatable), the yawning almost never ending need for love and attention (makes me good at making things people want) and a litany of other bad wolf behaviors all serve a purpose. So maybe feed both wolves but recognize one of them can also kill you. Nurture it but keep it on a leash. Be the alpha of that pack. Oh god it’s been three wolves all along!

The tricky bit here seems to me where we extend out the metaphor to others. We want to be with friends and colleagues that are not fucking over their own wolves. Eating disorder wolves being starved out of fear. Ignored wolves. Misunderstood wolves. God it’s a parade of the kind of bullshit you have to empathize with daily as we grapple with the intrinsic sin and frailty of mankind. To say it makes the workplace a mess is an understatement.

It’s currently on my mind because I want to spend my time with people who are feeding and training their wolves for the best possible outcome for them. Genuine engagement with your faults and talents is a joy. It makes you better. It makes others around you better. And it’s just more fucking fun. People who refuse or are unable to engage with the sum total of their humanity just aren’t as interesting as those who are committed to becoming the best version of themselves. They also don’t tend to win as often, as limiting yourself out of fear is a finite game with only so many options to be seen as a winner. You either win a definite sum or you don’t. Evolution and bigger games and more interesting problems never arrive. I’ll just wholesale quote Alex Danco here.

First, finite games are played for the purpose of winning. Whenever you’re engaging in an activity that’s definite, bounded, and where the game can be completed by mutual agreement of all the players, then that’s a finite game In contrast, infinite games are played for the purpose of continuing to play. You do not “win” infinite games; these are activities like learning, culture, community, or any exploration with no defined set of rules nor any pre-agreed-upon conditions for completion. The point of playing is to bring new players into the game, so they can play too. You never “win”, the play just gets more and more rewarding. “

So ask yourself are going spending your time with people who are balancing out their wolves in a never ending game of joyful interaction? Or are you spending time with folks trying to kill off parts of themselves in order to win a prize that is simple and understandable. It’s not exactly a value judgement. Winning is good. Harmful behaviors towards others is bad. But I hope that we can all agree that a truly great life is a lot more nuanced than a scoreboard and a morality checklist. And yes this is me encouraging us all to spend time with better people who will support that.

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Chronicle Politics

I Need To Start Preparing

I’ve managed to make it a full week of writing something long form everyday. And this off the cuff stuff is becoming routine but also I need to start preparing topics and having a thesis or two. Because I’m just winging it. With a violent insurrection in the capital smack dab in the middle no less. As I doomscroll Twitter this Friday night I’m barely able to pull myself away from “The Purge” to think about a topic for a few sustained minutes. How could I ever consider “thought leadering” up some content in the middle of all this!

I feel like I should be doing better. Being more productive about this creative exercise. With as much effort as I’m putting in to parenting my inner child and taking responsibility for my emotions you’d think I’d be coping with the insanity of the week better. And writing better essays. Because when you take responsibility for your own actions you can survive anything right? Well maybe for a couple minutes at a time. And then you add them up and it becomes hours and days and I think I’m just reciting AA program jargon at this point. One day at a time don’t “should” on yourself and such.

Truth is I am struggling mightily. While doing the laundry I tripped and smashed my foot into a cabinet so hard I split my big toe’s nail. I spent a good 15 minutes on the floor crying over the pain and unfairness. Like the 5 year old that lives inside me. Because I just feel that fragile and distracted. To do lists are piling up. Obligations aren’t being met. And here I am crying over an ouchie. But then if you told me that you were doing just great and has never more been more officer I honestly might not believe you.

Today’s consumption was all over the place.

Food: Picked up the raw milk from the diary cooperative Light Root Farm. Then stopped to get empanadas for lunch on the way back. I also got ahead of things by securing and preparing for my spot in a biodynamic CSA farm share for spring. Fun fact about this farm? It’s my first YIMBY effort! In 5th grade I testified before Boulder City Council asking to get permits to farm the land my school had purchased. They said no. I was crushed. Twenty five years later the farm exists (no clue how the permits worked out) and now this spring I’ll finally get to eat the fruits of my labor. You do reap what you sow. It just might take a few decades.

Media: Nothing has made a serious impression on me today. I put on NPR with breakfast. I read the various New York Times round ups. I got annoyed at the latest Olivia Nuzzi talks to anonymous political toady piece. Mostly I read up on various cultures for cheese and prepared to make ricotta and yogurt tomorrow.

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Chronicle

The First Hurdle

Tossing one offs is much easier for me. Editing is a misery. I constantly second guess my wording and narrative when I am building on a thesis. But letting lose a good pun of stream of consciousness rebuilds my willpower. I find it easy and restorative. I suspect pith and story telling are the equivalent of introversion vs extroversion. You can develop the skills for either but you’ve got an innate preference for one or the other. In my case I crush a cocktail party and can write terrific essays but I’d prefer to be in the company of a few close friends and keep my writing away from the red pen.

I’m unclear if this is a function of insecurity. I never worry about holding my own in a conversation even with the most qualified and demonstrably brilliant. Sometimes to my detriment as I’ll make a ridiculous joke that undermines someone’s authority or credentials but once it’s out the door I don’t dwell on it. I move on and find I’m generally forgiven. But if I’m given the chance to refine and revise I’ll dwell on it endlessly. I’m constantly finding poor phrasing and agonizing that I could have found a clearer way to make my point.

This is all a long winded way of saying that on my second day of writing long form content in 2021 I’m already struggling. I’ve got dozens of topics I’d like to delve into but I spent the entire day being so worked up about making a coherent point that I ended up not writing anything. But I did write a half dozen good tweets. Let’s hope by exercising the muscle of putting this into long form that tomorrow I’ll actually make a decent point.

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Chronicle

Day 1 or The Chronicles of Julie

In 2021 I will create as much as I consume. Or at least attempt to balance the ratio as much as is possible given divisions of labor in capitalism. I’ve fallen out of the habit of making things in the past two years as I’ve worked through health challenges and the transitions they imposed on my life. I’m happier when I’m making things. From my early childhood in Waldorf schools to my career as an entrepreneur creating has always been the anchor of my life.

In my college years I picked up blogging. As was typical of the early blogosphere, I mostly focused on my hobbies which at the time was Greek antiquity and Italian fashion. I called it “Where Plato and Prada Meet” and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that it changed the trajectory of my life. I met my first cofounder in the comments section, I got invited to fashion week and I eventually turned the community in a business selling advertising and the early incarnations of sponsored content. That lead to an entire career in retail and e-commerce where I was lucky to ride the wave of the next generation of merchants and shopping. But back to my original point.

The simple act of committing a thought to more concrete form is a creative discipline. Like any discipline it becomes easier the more you practice. Ease comes from regular action.

To begin my practice of regular creation I am committing to publishing some form of content every single day. There will be no theme. No specific form of content. No overarching lesson. I will write essays. I will collect links to topics that interest me. Some days will publish longer form content that o have prepared and edited. Some days I will put down a stream of consciousness. But I still commit to do something every single day in public. If you would like to tag along with me I typically wander a large terrain, often with my pack of intellectual peers across the independent web.

But if you would like a preview to decide if you want to ride along with me I plan to deeper my interests across liberal politics and civics (by that I mean enlightenment liberalism not say leftist political parties), macroeconomics, aesthetics both personal and cultural, science fiction, finance (generally venture capital but some private equity and public market topics), currency and monetary policy (obviously I like crypto) homesteading and resilience, health and fitness (including a large dose of woo-woo self experimentation biohacking), public relations and media theory, and whatever else may come across my transom.

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Background

What To Expect

Content that accrues social capital across class chasms (shit posting)

How to create value through semiotic desire campaigns (marketing and public relations)

The production and sale of memetic artifacts. ( recently lipstick)