The unoptimized life with Alan Lightman, backseat folk music and a second newsletter
📖 The Unoptimized Life
The funny thing about optimizing is that it quickly becomes a lifestyle. Take for example the productivity optimizer, who spends their time learning tricks & hacks rather than doing the actual work. Or the person who spends every Saturday on anti-aging techniques they don't enjoy, instead of living out a Saturday in their youth.
I picked up this book on my coffee table Eienstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman - I purchased it in 2006 and had a flag bookmark on page 28 - (thank you young Alfred!) There is a punchy story in there, about five pages long, that illustrates the craziness of optimizing. In the story, scientists find out that when you live at a higher elevation, you age slower. Society abandons all the lush valleys and starts building their houses only on inhospitable mountains on top of massive stilts so they can age slightly slower.
I highly recommend the book and will leave this question to you: Is there somewhere in your life where you can optimize less?
♫ Backseat Folk Music
I stumbled on this folk duo I'd never heard of before named Ocie Elliott. For the last 5 years, they drive out to a trailhead, park their car, and quietly play a song together. You see people passing by, birds flying past the windshield, and the seasons changing. It’s an intimate backseat audience view into their delicate moments. It feels like you shouldn’t be there.
Here is a 📹 playlist I made organized by seasons from their series. Or separately spring, summer, fall, and winter. They cover Big Thief, Fleet Foxes, and Simon & Garfunkel. Enjoy!
✍🏽 A second newsletter?! Yes!
Writing this newsletter is a pleasure! I set out to create a personal space to express myself outside of social media, and so far this is doing the trick. I'm building another newsletter that I plan to have an editor eventually take over. It's a different practice that involves finding a particular audience, setting a tone, and building a system. The newsletter is for my brand Already There.
We have our first 80 subscribers that I gathered through FB ads while testing interest.
Since I'm writing the first few months of content, there will be some overlap with what I put here. It gets sent out on Tuesday afternoons and is designed to be filled with fun wellness reminders. Try it out here