Writing every day, for 90 days. How did I get here?
A few months ago I went to one of many regional meetups for Sam Harris’ Waking Up app. The organiser mentioned a talk by Francis Weller that had changed her life. It took me a few months to watch it, but I was transfixed.
I bought his book, The Wild Edge of Sorrow, which talks a lot about loss:
We are designed to encounter this life with amazement and wonder, not resignation and endurance. This is at the very heart of our grief and sorrow. The dream of full-throated living, woven into our very being, has often been forgotten and neglected, replaced by a societal fiction of productivity and material gain.
I’m going to be publishing something every day in Q2.
I made this decision about 48 hours ago and I’m writing this half-way through Day 1. I don’t know whether I’m including weekends or not. There are lots of unanswered questions.
I’ve been writing a lot more this year, particularly on LinkedIn, and across two newsletters. The momentum has been building.
Several things happened recently:
I read a book on grief and thought on “the parts of myself that have not known acceptance.” This made me realise how many of my interests I still keep quiet about.
I watched a few Tyler Cowen interviews and was moved by his uninhibited geekiness (and his own daily publishing on Marginal Revolution).
I spent too much time on LinkedIn, which is many ways the antithesis of everything I hold dear.
Tyler mentioned in one interview that Substack often becomes too personal and full of emotion. It encourages longer-format, original reflections and discourages people from being editors of other peoples ideas. I bristled at first, but it brought me back to the original model of blogging: writing whatever you want on your own quirky website. I did this for years as a teenager and I loved it. Here I am again.
Instead of covering the usual cornucopia of productivity, tech, social commentary & mental health, I will be doubling down on what I care most about: meditation, wisdom and awakening.
I will be doing this on my personal website, but under a new banner: modern mystic. This takeover will last a year. I have other themes that will follow in the coming years. This is a long game.
I needed some time off. As part of an effort to spend less and explore more of what’s around me, I booked a week away near a village called Cwmystwyth in Ceredigion, Wales.
It’s easily drivable from Bristol and I also have friends a little further North, near Machynlleth. I picked it as I wanted to be somewhere remote, near mountains and running water. Check.
Airbnb near Cwmystwyth
Cwmystwyth is a small village nestled alongside the river Ystwyth, which flows all the way west to Aberystwyth. Cwmystwyth literally means “valley of the river Ystwyth.” It sits in the middle of the Cambrian mountains. It is the exact centre point of Wales, according to Wikipedia. This is also West Wales, so it’s pretty wet.
