Turning hassles into hilarity
Making lemonade with other people's lemons.
Howdy! Welcome back to Traipsing About, my newsletter about reclaiming creativity and ditching tired personal paradigms.
This week’s flashback: If this was 1915 and I was on Shackleton’s Antarctic Expedition, I’d write this newsletter while marooned in sea ice…but you wouldn’t read it for another two years until the marvelous escapade unfolded.
Instead, I’m listening to jazz piano and typing this while the snow falls—and I didn’t have to eat seal blubber for breakfast for two years. Fewer stories of adventure though…tradeoffs.
This week on Sarging About, Edition #129:
Travel, happiness, and luck.
A gift you can give a friend.
Brainstorming is so over.
Traipsing Tidbits: discount shipping, ninja pomegranate opening, preschool expectations, jazzy Beatles, and a curry recipe.
ICYMI: Many of us are trying to find that balance between productivity and enjoying life. My essay last time was about finding a haven in the adulting, a time each day to call your own and ground yourself.
Thoughts pinging around in my brain
I’m reading a lot lately—winter mode!—and wanted to share some concepts I’m kicking around. Perhaps you’ll find a useful journal prompt or discussion topic for a walk with a friend?
How much travel is necessary…or responsible? What if one mountain range is enough for a lifetime, and what happens to how we see the world if we dig deep into the landscapes around us instead of questing abroad to find them? (Inspired by Local by Alastair Humphreys.)
What if our base state is one of happiness…and attachment to people or things chips away at that happiness? How can we arrive at a state where we own things and cherish people, but our happiness isn’t dependent on them? (Via The Way to Love by Anthony Demello.)
What if being frugal (i.e. depriving ourselves of something we want and could afford) meant we were independent. I.E. That we’ve rejected what the world tells us that we SHOULD want and looked deeper, finding happiness elsewhere. (Via Morgan Housel’s excellent blog. Pair with his book The Psychology of Money.)
How can there be more meaning than helping one another stand up in a wind and stay warm? (Via Stitches by Anne Lamott.)
Speaking of the last one…
Making the annoying fun
A good friend of mine is getting his Austrian citizenship. He also has kids, a job, and no bandwidth for researching this stuff and navigating the bureaucracy.
Ah, but I know apostilles and Vitalchek orders well from my (finally f’g completed) Italian citizenship quest! And a beautiful gift we can give is to help someone out with a task we don’t mind, but they HATE. Plus, it’s often more fun to help others with their crappy task!
In this case, I took a two-fold approach:
Piece by piece, I’m sending my friend emails with an easily accomplished task—e.g. “go to this link and order this certificate”, or “print this form and mail it here.” It only takes me a few minutes to be the concierge.
To make it fun (for both of us!), I’m writing the emails to my friend as a cantankerous Sarge to his new recruit. In a stream of consciousness, I come up with ridiculous ways to frame the tasks and make it sound like a game. (Specifically, the old-school classic Contra.) Stuff like, “Ok Private, not gonna lie, there are aliens on this level. Your farfatootin spoiled Upper East Side ass is gonna be scared, but I need you to get in there with your laser cannon and…”
The result? My friend is on his way to citizenship and both of us are cracking up at my redonk emails. In fact, I’m already feeling a bit sad that this process will end soon! What will Sarge do? Where will he GO?!
Forget brainstorming, do this instead
We all know what brainstorming is: People sit around a table and yells out ideas, good and bad. Well, everybody except the introverts, the new employee, or the lone woman at the table…
Forget that shiz. Studies have shown that brainwriting works far better and prevents the most powerful (or loud) people from taking over. And it’s easy:
The initial steps are solo. Start by asking everyone to generate ideas separately.
Next, you pool them and share them anonymously among the group. To preserve independent judgment, each member evaluates them on their own.
Only then does the team come together to select and refine the most promising options. By developing and assessing ideas individually before choosing and elaborating on them, teams can surface and advance possibilities that might not get attention otherwise.
(Discovered via the excellent book Hidden Potential by Adam Grant. Worth a read!)
Traipsing About Tidbits
Note: none of these are ever affiliate links, just stuff I use, enjoy or admire.
For shipping stuff, I’ve been using Pirate Ship—both for the hefty discounts and their kitschy pirate-themed website, including a pirate joke from any customer service rep.
OMG, I am never opening a pomegranate the old way after Chelsea sent me this Master Jedi Way.
I don’t have kids, but chortled at the insane expectations preschools have for parents.
Loving this jazz piano album of lesser-played Beatles’ songs, especially Golden Slumbers.
I made this vegan Navratan Korma (aka 9-gem curry for the king and queen!) for some friends and it was a huge hit.
Quote of the Week
The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short. But that isn’t a reason for unremitting despair, or for living in an anxiety-fueled panic about making the most of your limited time. It’s a cause for relief. You get to give up on something that was always impossible—the quest to become the optimized, infinitely capable, emotionally invincible, fully independent person you’re officially supposed to be. Then you get to roll up your sleeves and start work on what’s gloriously possible instead.
From the must-read book Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. His blog is excellent too.
You’ve reached the end of Traipsing About newsletter #129.
This week’s unsolicited advice:
Look around and see if someone close to you is procrastinating on something you don’t mind doing. Help them finish it! Better yet, find a way to also make it fun.
Onward,
Dakota
P.S. After we bought a truck to haul our Airstream, a sassy friend sent me this over-the-top short video about what a REAL truck (aka a Ferd Fteenthousand) can do.
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