What Do You Say We Unplug The Giant, Cosmic Scoreboard?

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These days, as I watch and listen to political pundits on right and left-leaning cable news programs, and their “man/woman on the street” interviews, and as I scroll through my Twitter feed, I recognize a familiar pattern.

Everyone is lobbing political grenades at one another as if there’s a giant cosmic scoreboard with “Democrats” on one-side and “Republicans” on the other.

My friends and I do the same thing. We try to couch our grenade-texts in humor, but we’re definitely scorekeeping.

Whenever we score-keep, we focus more on our team—whether Democratic or Republican—than on problem solving and trying to improve everyone’s quality of life. I’m afraid it’s gotten to the point where we want to defeat the other team more than we want our cities, counties, states, and country to flourish.

Among many other examples, Republicans ran up the scoreboard with their rushed Supreme Court appointment bullshit. This week, Democrats are running up the scoreboard by saying everyone that voted for Trump is responsible for the siege of the Capital Building.

Who is going to unplug the giant, cosmic scoreboard first? I will try to by remembering what my mom taught me, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Imagine the silence that would descend on the country if everyone followed that maxim.

The Rest Of The World Is Watching

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And they know. We’re not a “city upon a hill”. We’re not exceptional. We’re not the model for others to follow. We’re a deeply divided country weakening our democratic principles and traditions while a public health crisis rages.

Things will calm down and improve in the months and years ahead, but we will never be a “city upon a hill”, or exceptional, or some idealized model for others to follow.

Challenging Myself In 2021

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Are you thinking what I’m thinking? What physical challenges might be motivating to train for and fun to attempt in 2021?

I’m early in the decision-making process, but so far, I’ve narrowed it down to two. The first is a Claire Law inspired 300 mile bike ride with 16,000′ of elevation gain. In under 40 hours, as per her and the Rapha 500k Brevet guidelines. Probs not in the dead of winter though since I’m afraid of the dark. And rain. And cold.

Thanks to my brother for finding the second one, which he instinctively knew, is much more in my wheelhouse.

This is good to know:

“One popular method of doughnut-eating is flattening three or four doughnuts on top of each other to form one pastry. ‘You can trick your mind into thinking that you’re only having three doughnuts when you’re really having more.'”

Monday Required Reading

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Administrivia. Every time I write critically about the President, a humble blog regular and close friend whose opinion I care about, rips me for spreading “hate” and sowing “division”. Given that predicament, I guess I shouldn’t link to any of the numerous articles about our President’s Saturday phone call to Georgia’s Secretary of State which Carl Bernstein called “way worse than Watergate”.  

1. The Plague Year: The mistakes and the struggles behind America’s coronavirus tragedy. Lawrence Wright’s damning deconstruction of “America’s coronavirus tragedy” details the President’s complicity which my friend might think of as hateful and divisive. Not to worry though, it’s WAY too long for him. Everyone writing books about this simultaneously let out an “Ah shit!” upon finishing Wright’s piece. I could excerpt endlessly from it, but there’s other reading to get to.

2. The challenge of chess – learning how to hold complexity in mind and still make good decisions – is also the challenge of life.

3. Walk, run or wheelbarrow: We moved our bodies forward during the pandemic. Our second born walked 153 miles in December!

“. . . my eldest walks. She carries a backpack loaded with her journal, a beanie, whatever book she’s reading. She dons her mask and canvasses our Atlanta neighborhood at New York speed, striding purposefully as if she has somewhere to be. When the sun starts to set, she sits on a patch of grass or a park bench to catch her breath and stares into the sky, tracking the light until it bleeds into darkness.

She does this every evening because, as she explains, it gives her ‘something to look forward to.’

When she comes home, cheeks flush, hair windswept, my daughter does seem happier, lifted. The simple act of walking underscoring her autonomy, reminding her that she is still a human capable of breathing fresh air, of shuttling from point A to B, that she is still a human at all.”

4. Shearing Sheep, and Hewing to Tradition, on an Island in Maine. Love, love, love the pictures. They have the same effect as an engrossing foreign film, they totally transport me across the country to the island. Long live the Wakemans and their way of life. 

What’s Next?

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The humble blog, at nine years old, is a true outlier. Most bloggers sprint from the gun only to hit the wall quite quickly and bag their plans of blogosphere glory altogether.

So, props to me for the longevity. Correction, props to you for inspiring me to keep on keepin’ on. Whether you “like” a post, leave a comment, tell me about a post that made you think, or just keep silently returning, it’s all motivating.

I get inquiries from tech firms all the time that say they could help me grow the humble blog through their search engine optimization (SEO) expertise. I haven’t hired any of them because I’m an outlier in another way, I’ve never cared about monetizing the blog. Even to the point where I actually pay for it to remain ad free.

Being content with a small, internationally inclined readership doesn’t mean I don’t think about mixing things up on occasion. I suppose, that could mean enlisting the services of an SEO team, although I have no idea how to evaluate their relative merits. It could mean changing formats too. I could vlog (video blog); however, many people say I have the perfect face for radio, which brings us to the coolest kid on the “personal journalism/communication” block—podcasting.

When I think about podcasting, which I really learned to appreciate in 2020, I assume we’re just approaching or just past “Peak Podcasting”. There’s no danger in it fading away, but there’s definitely going to be a shakeout with 15% of the best ones getting 85% of the audience. And I have no illusions about what it would take to be in that 15%, largely a dedicated team outworking the 85%.

I suppose though, I could have a humble podcast, since I wouldn’t be depending upon it to feed my family. 

I’ve been contemplating what’s next when it comes to personal journalism/communication. Many would say the future is Substack. Substack is definitely a part of what’s next, but I anticipate some unknown format evolving to compliment subscription-based blogging, vlogging, and podcasting.

In the last twenty years, a significant swath of phone-less Sub-Saharan Africans skipped landline telephones in favor of inexpensive, cellular ones. Similarly, I could leapfrog podcasting and make a real go of the next format if I had a better, more concrete feel, for the future.

Is your crystal ball any clearer than mine? What do you think is around the corner? Five years from now, how might you “consume” news, hear stories about other people and places, and educate yourself about things you care about?

What is lurking on the personal journalism/communication horizon? Put differently, what should PressingPause become?

‘Getting Along With Others in a Pluralistic Society’ Rule #1

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ESPN pro football analyst Booger McFarland was fired up about a promising, highly drafted, second year NFL quarterback getting cut as a result of poor play and mindless “off-the-field” behavior.

Which woulda been okay if McFarland hadn’t tied the player’s problems to African American football players more generally. Predictably, that’s when the shit hit the fan.

The (dis)United States is a wonderfully diverse conglomerate of 331 million individual identities. Does that mean we can never generalize, no, positive generalizations are fine. For example, if I say, “Elementary school teachers do amazing work and deserve, as much, or more respect, than any other group of educators.” I’m not going to get any blowback. It’s sweeping negative assumptions that everyone rightfully resists. No one ever wants to be “guilty by association”.

So here’s Getting Along With Others in a Pluralistic Society Rule #1, refrain from making negative generalizations about any group, even ones of which you are a member. Ask Cosby or McFarland, your insider status will not provide any sort of “benefit of the doubt”.

Andrew Hawkins, NFL alum, takes McFarland to school, literally. Hawkins Wikipedia “personal life” entry includes this sentence, “Hawkins graduated from Columbia University in 2017 with a master’s degree in sports management from the School of Professional Studies with a 4.0 GPA.” No surprise. This is a 4.0 return of serve.

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Tuesday Required Reading and Viewing

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1. Bet you can’t guess the top global health story of 2020.

2. Bet you can’t guess the ‘secret’ to longevity.

3. Bluetits and Bluebells: Essex’s open water swimmers – a photo essay. Remember, I don’t write the headlines, I just share them.

4. It’s not that hard to buy nothing. After reading the top comments, a suggestion. Dear wealthy people, advertise your minimalism at your own risk. The non-wealthy are (still) not having it.

5. The future of electric cars. This really good ‘free’ advice proves you don’t always get what you pay for.