Hi Friends-
This week I released the final episode of season 2 of Hurry Slowly into the wild. It's a conversation with journalist Rob Walker about the power of directed attention — and what we lose when we let tech take control of what we notice. (Hint: The answer is an original point of view, the source of all creativity.)
"Listen to Rob Walker: It Hurts to Be Present"
The current plan is for the podcast to go on break for the summer and to return in the Fall with season 3. But I'll be honest with you: I'm really wrestling with the future of Hurry Slowly at the moment.
If you're an avid listener, you'll note that all three of the most recent podcast episodes have touched on the notion of personal branding. Specifically, how social media and personal branding are constraining and/or limiting the expression of our full selves.
And that's exactly the tension I'm experiencing now with Hurry Slowly. The topics that interested me when I started the podcast two years ago, no longer interest me. My actual self is headed off in a new direction, and I'm trying to work out how to reconcile that with the "brand" of Hurry Slowly in a way that allows for expansion rather than limitation.
I already have some glimmers of how to figure it out, so I expect there will be a season three. But it's all rather TBD at the moment.
Why am I telling you all this? Because I think it's useful to talk transparently about the real life cycle of creative projects: Where we get hung up, the hard questions we have to ask, and the ways in which the "success" of a brand or a product can limit us.
(I am also aware that it's a luxury to even be able to ask these questions.)
Thanks for listening while I think out loud, and I'll keep you posted!
Much love,
Jocelyn
| | LINK ABOUT IT
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Make your own door. I loved this piece on film director Ava DuVernay, featuring some fascinating tidbits about how her new Netflix miniseries, When They See Us, came together and how she's building her own powerhouse Hollywood studio run by women of color: "I'm not going to knock on any closed doors. I'm going to make my own door."
Conversational narcissism. I didn't know this habit had a name, but it's definitely something I'm working on: "I started to notice how often I responded to stories of loss and struggle with stories of my own experiences. My son would tell me about clashing with a kid in Boy Scouts, and I would talk about a girl I fell out with in college. When a co-worker got laid off, I told her about how much I struggled to find a job after I had been laid off years earlier. But when I began to pay a little more attention to how people responded to my attempts to empathize, I realized the effect of sharing my experiences was never as I intended. What all of these people needed was for me to hear them and acknowledge what they were going through. Instead, I forced them to listen to me and acknowledge me."
Write a letter to yourself. This simple technique for convincing yourself to make big, scary life changes makes a lot of sense: "After particularly hard days, I would read the letter. What I found was remarkable: the letter instantaneously swept away all of the self-critical thoughts I had about leaving graduate school. It broke the pattern of my thinking negatively about myself and made me see, in my own words, why what I had done was right. Each time I finished the letter, I would be confident about my decision again and proud of my choice."
+ What's your email legacy?
+ The Sweet Green-ification of society.
+ Rules for being human.
+ How to draw a horse.
| | | TOOLS FOR TIME WELL SPENT:
| | SHOUT-OUTS:
Much appreciation for link ideas to: Race Ahead, SwissMiss, Creative Mornings, and Ann Friedman.
The artwork is courtesy of: Anastasia Panina, who works out of Moscow.
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Hi, I'm Jocelyn, the human behind this newsletter. I created the online course RESET, a cosmic tune-up for your workday, and I host Hurry Slowly, a podcast about how you can be more productive, creative, and resilient by slowing down. Occasionally, I write books and give talks too. | | | | |
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