Hi Friends-
To ring in the new year, I interviewed Adrienne Maree Brown, an incredible writer, activist, facilitator, and all-around human. It's one of my favorite conversations of recent memory, and one that I found incredibly nourishing. We explore how to define pleasure, the untapped wisdom that lives in the body, and what it looks like to recognize when you have "enough."
Listen to: "Adrienne Maree Brown: Are You Satisfiable?"
I also sifted through all the articles I've shared in this newsletter over the past year and cherry-picked the ones that are still resonating months later. See the shortlist below, along with a roundup of my favorite Hurry Slowly episodes from 2019.
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p.s. If you're keen to break bad habits in the new year, a quick reminder about RESET, my course about how to work in a way that's intentional, energizing, and inspiring. It begins on January 12th, and registration is only open for 8 more days! : )
| | LINKS TO LOVE
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My favorite reads, watches, and listens from 2019:
Human doing to human being. The work of meditation teacher Tara Brach was a great comfort to me throughout 2019. This talk about our addiction to doing, and how to unravel it, is an absolute marvel. The rare combination of something that's wise, funny, and useful. Here's the podcast version, and here's the video. 50 minutes well spent.
Two-mountain people. A surprisingly moving piece from David Brooks on awakening to the inadequacies of achievement: "The basement of your soul is much deeper than you knew. Some people look into the hidden depths of themselves and they realize that success won't fill those spaces. Only a spiritual life and unconditional love from family and friends will do. They realize how lucky they are. They are down in the valley, but their health is O.K.; they're not financially destroyed; they're about to be dragged on an adventure that will leave them transformed."
How to do what you love. There are lots of good tidbits in this vintage piece from Y Combinator founder Paul Graham: "It used to perplex me when I read about people who liked what they did so much that there was nothing they'd rather do. There didn't seem to be any sort of work I liked that much. But the fact is, almost anyone would rather, at any given moment, float about in the Caribbean, or have sex, or eat some delicious food, than work on hard problems. The rule about doing what you love assumes a certain length of time."
Against advice. A sublime argument in favor of making more art and talking about it less: "The moral of every great person's story seems to be that they were not trying to retell another's. Indeed, one of the paradoxes of advice seems to be that those most likely to be asked for it are least likely to have taken anyone else's: their projects of 'becoming' are the most particularized of all."
How to do nothing. This essay by Jenny Odell is easily one of the most illuminating pieces I've read in a very long time. There are so many wonderful thoughts on deep listening, the creativity of maintenance work, the value of sabbaticals, and even bird watching! Plus, the photos are marvelous. (I later interviewed her on the podcast here.)
Who killed the weekend? I love the idea of a return to "serious leisure" in this piece from The Guardian: "A hobby is an activity undertaken purely for its own sake, but technology attempts to monetize it. A friend used to make beautiful earrings occasionally. Almost ritualistically, she would buy the beads, and carefully craft the small, colored jewels in a quiet workspace. Then came Etsy. Now she makes beautiful earrings and sells them, ships them and manages this business along with a full-time job and a family. What was leisure became labor."
Are you "action addicted"? A nice meditation on choosing to be busy: "In Chinese, the word 'busy' consists of two syllables, one meaning heart, the other death. More explanation is not needed. The busier we get, the more energy flows to the head and away from the heart. The busier we get, the more we tend to distance ourselves from others and their emotions. Action addiction keeps us busy and away from asking why."
When efficiency becomes God. This is a dense but worthwhile read on the millennial work ethic and why we're facing a burnout epidemic. "More than ever, we feel compelled to supply what is demanded. The presentation of a linear path to success as the model to which each individual must strive if they are to be recognized as valuable, has led to a reorganization of the life choices of the individual. To be inefficient at any point in this process, to divert from the prescribed linearity, is understood by the subject as an act of self-sabotage."
The communal mind. An incredible essay/fugue poem by Patricia Lockwood that mimics what it's like to be inside the Internet. Not for the faint of heart and NSFW: "I did not care about the Singularity, or the rise of the machines, or the afterlife of being uploaded into the cloud. I cared about the feeling that my thoughts were being dictated. I cared about the collective head, which seemed to be running a fever. But if we managed to escape, to break out of the great skull and into the fresh air, if Twitter was shut down for crimes against humanity, what would we be losing?"
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My favorite podcast episodes of the past year...
Short Meditations:
+ Transformation is hard
+ Productivity shame
+ Creativity vs efficiency
+ Letting go isn't easy
+ Who are you without the doing?
Longform Interviews:
+ Sebene Selassie: Unravelling Your Inner Critic
+ Debbie Millman: The Speed of Achievement
+ Rob Walker: It Hurts to Be Present
+ Paul Jarvis: Small Is Beautiful
+ Priya Parker: How to Have Transformative Gatherings
| | SHOUT-OUTS:
The artwork is from: Luke & Morgan Choice, who are based in Astoria, Oregon.
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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. | | | | |
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