Hurry Slowly - Archiving the Self

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Archiving the self + a new season of Hurry Slowly. Tender Discipline isn't the only thing I launched this week! I also rolled out the first episode of Season 5 of Hurry Slowly, with a refreshed perspective and a brand-new look. In this 30-minute reflection, I talk about the theme that we’ll be exploring throughout this new season — coming home. I share my own personal challenges with putting down roots, talk about transformation and what we leave behind (and what we can't leave behind), and reflect on the relationship between belonging vs reinvention. 

The pathologies of the attention economy. I've been enjoying writer and thinker L.M. Sacasas' musings of late. This meditation on the evolution of the attention economy is excellent: "If there is a 'problem with attention,' what are its sources? Do I conceptualize the problem of attention as a failure of the individual, or as a failure of the techno-social environment? Who or what demands my attention and to what end? If I undertake a therapy of attention, in the interest of whom do I undertake it? Do my efforts to discipline my attention simply serve the interests of the system that has generated the problem in the first place, or do they aim at a modest liberation from that system?"

How to come back to who we really are. I am always down to listen to Dr. Gabor Maté speak: his voice is soothing and his ideas potent. Here, he talks with Tim Ferriss about his new book The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture: "I can’t emphasize enough the importance of communality of connection. We are wired to connect. And in a society that teaches us that our nature is to be aggressive and competitive and individualistic, and even suspicious of others, that goes against our nature. So we have to work our way through those false beliefs and come back to who we really are, which are connected beings really here to be both individuals, to both to be authentic, and to be attached at the same time, so that there shouldn’t be this tragic tension between attachment and authenticity. We can be both authentic and be connected."

Hard work is only sometimes necessary and never sufficient. In the last newsletter I shared a piece by Clare Coffey about blaming our problems on capitalism. In response, my friend Sean sent me this thoughtful essay from Freddie deBoer: "Of course the game is rigged. Even many enthusiastic capitalists, these days, will concede that a lot of people are born on third base, that preexisting familial advantage can play a huge role in monetary success and success in any given field. Of course chance influences everything we do within our various systems of achievement. (I know someone who busted her ass for four years to be able to save and prep to open her own cafe, which she did… in February 2020.) People are smart and talented and work hard every day and never make it, while the idiot sons of privilege thrive and thrive and thrive. The question is, what’s the right thing to do in light of this information?"

In lieu of even more articles this week, I'll share a few notes about what's on my bookshelf:

As a huge admirer of the artist Hilma Af Klint, I can't wait to read this graphic novel about her life.

I was impressed by how well-written and heartbreaking Jennette McCurdy's memoir I'm Glad My Mom Died was. (It's hard, but don't judge it based on the title.)

I flew through Sarah Thankham Mathews' new novel All of This Could Be Different. It was pure pleasure.

 

 

 

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Website: jkglei.com
Twitter: @jkglei