Recommended Reading
Who’s Up for Building A Cathedral, article by Bill Plotkin.
True adults are agents of cultural evolution not because they are consciously trying to support the evolution of their culture but because their conscious and successful embodiment of their unique innate niche in the Earth community is what contributes to cultural evolution, which it does precisely because that is the niche that Life (or Mystery or Soul or Nature) gave birth to them to embody.
Life Update
Assuming everything works as intended, you’ll be reading these words as I’m pedaling through the desert on day one of this year’s bikepacking trip. I’m headed for the deserts of Utah and plan on spending way less time on asphalt than last year. Also this time I’m riding with a new friend instead of solo.
I’ve been thinking a lot about freedom, lately. Well, more than usual. I started a side hustle a couple months ago and it’s going well, so well in fact that I’m likely to hit FI by the end of the year. It’s one thing to have low expenses and be able to earn enough money to pay the bills with a little part time work here and there. It’s another thing to contemplate being done with earning money forever. I’m already feeling my brain change.
Freedom from having to work a lot to pay the bills is just one form of freedom, though. So many of us are constrained by subtler forces. Expectations, socialized notions of appropriate behavior, survival mechanisms, the lies we tell ourselves, and narrow Overton windows all serve to box us in to a certain path. One of the benefits of achieving a large measure of freedom from having to work all the time is having the time to devote to freeing yourself from all the other ways in which we’re not free as well.
Skillshop: How to Fix a Splitting Zipper
I spent all winter not wearing my puffy or my favorite vest because the zippers were ‘broken’. I had look up how to fix zippers on my GTD task list for something like six months.
I looked it up and now I’m mad at myself. All you do is squeeze the rear end of the pull with pliers - they just loosen up over time and need to be tightened. It takes literally ten seconds, plus however long it takes to walk to the kitchen drawer to grab the pliers. Here’s a video. Careful not to overtighten. You’re welcome.
Also, I sewed a rolltop framebag for my bike.
