leftovers - changing my mind (riff off)

I realized after mentioning Changing My Mind in the reading clearout earlier this month that I had a few more thoughts on Zadie Smith's essay collection. How about a classic TOA riff-off?

As usual, the thoughts in italics are based on how I originally took the notes from the book.

The trick for editing is to become a reader rather than the writer, and this may require stepping away from the final draft until enough time passes for the transition.

I think this trick also works for enjoying your own work - the way you appreciate something as a writer is often far different from the same feeling experienced through a reader's perspective.

A good story doesn’t force the subject into a preconceived mold.

Smith shared this thought in the context of the story itself, in the sense that storytelling has certain patterns which a writer can fall into if he or she transcribes rather than recreates the story in the work. However, I also think the mold in question can be the frame of the medium, and I'm not just talking about the way youngsters are taught essay writing through the esteemed Five Paragraph method. I read a short story recently that made me wonder if it would be more suited to a novella, play, or even a song, and I think contained within the common expression "the book was better than the movie" is the wisdom that the author originally chose the book form because it was the best mold, so to speak, for telling the story.

Scaffolding is the frame that creates confidence when there is none. At some point in the process, the scaffolding can go and the writing can move forward without the extra structure.

The fear of emotional connection epitomizes the idea of knowing the meaning of words without understanding their value. The verbosity can be a shield from feeling.

There is a special form of ignorance you can spot if you pay close attention to the people who always seem to have a lot to say about any topic under the sun - I call it the Fact Parade, where one fact after another piles up until it seems entirely inconceivable that the speaker is knowledgeable about the subject matter. It is, in my mind, a form of scaffolding for the way it protects the ignorant from the fact of their own ignorance, and their verbosity is a shield that can be used to deflect an outsider in the same way it can obscure our inner feelings from ourselves.

Multinational corporations will seek international regulatory voids to find potential opportunities for exploitative deals.

The president of Firestone once implied, after working out the math he shared in a quote, that the average Liberian rubber worker “only” works for twenty-one hours per day.

If you need to see an example of the Fact Parade in action, ask someone to explain capitalism, and keep asking follow up questions anytime you get a list of facts rather than the truth. It might take a few days, but eventually you'll stumble into the reality at the root of the matter - in order to articulately explain why one person is worth less than another, you really do need to be completely clueless, and it just so happens that these clueless people are using their power to keep the system running. 

You're the queen of the superficial, and how long before you tell the truth?

The larger idea built into the previous two points is that at some level we must all confront ourselves regarding the various delusions, deceptions, and disguises that represent the moral scaffolding of our daily existence. For the least fortunate among us, an entire lifetime may pass without ever partaking in this critical reflection...

...what?

Huh?

OK, fine, this isn't a thought I borrowed from Changing My Mind, it's lyrics to Muse's "Supermassive Black Hole". But who better to close out a riff-off?

Thanks for reading, y'all.

Footnotes (admin)

It didn't come up naturally in the course of the two posts about this book, so I'll just state it here - from my reading, I noted to check Remainder by Tom McCarthy, which given my current reading list will probably show up in a TOA reading review sometime after Emperor Trump's fourth term. I also reread the essay "One Week in Liberia".

reading review - beartown

I enjoyed my latest foray into Backman's work, an author I've become familiar with over the past couple of years. I don't expect Beartown to find its way onto my "best of 2021" list, and I am in no hurry to pick up the sequels to this work, but the urgency with which I finished the book implies that I found it well worth my time. Given that the book is a little longer than some may prefer (and possibly expect, if you are familiar with his other writing), I suggest sticking with it until the central event because I thought the story found its mark starting from that point.

Beartown by Fredrik Backman (April 2021)

It's intriguing that this book inspired a highly-rated TV series, which at first glance feels appropriate - Beartown paints the portrait of a struggling small town with a wide range of characters, each moving through his or her own intriguing story arc. However, as I think about it I realize that my favorite aspect of Backman's writing is not only the way he brings his characters to life, but also in the manner he introduces an otherwise unseen or unacknowledged humanity to their experiences. It could be that books such as A Man Named Ove resonated more with me because of its narrower focus on a smaller number of characters, suggesting that my muted reaction to Beartown should be taken with the proverbial grain of salt.

A few items from my book notes stood out when I returned to them a couple of months after my reading. I liked the insight that a major challenge of old age - or as I would say, merely getting older - is finding a way to admit the mistakes which can no longer be made right, a thought that felt a bit like a callback to some of his prior works. I was amused by the note regarding how people tend to irrationally hope that the things they are forced out of will collapse behind them, having both witnessed this feeling in others as well as felt a version of the same in myself; the fact is that organizations rarely collapse due to the fact of a departing individual, though of course the intangible loss to the culture of a place is an entirely separate matter. The observation that people never become used to being bullied, teased, or rejected is a lesson that, were it internalized by all, would surely make the world a better place.

TOA Rating: Three forechecks out of four.

the toa podcast hall of fame - 99% invisible (check cashing stores)

Today's inductee may feel familiar to longtime readers - I wrote about this podcast in 2017. The point of the story is explained on the 99% Invisible page for the episode, which also provides a link to a related article that appeared in The New York Times Magazine back in 2008. The casual first glance may suggest that the episode is a story painting check cashing stores in a previously unacknowledged positive light. The title of the article referenced above, "Check Cashing, Redeemed", certainly supports this initial conclusion. However, the reason this episode has stuck with me for so long is a far simpler universal observation - design is either inclusive or exclusive. This aspect of a building, organization, or system is particularly challenging to understand for anyone within the included group, so I consider this an important podcast episode for the way it forced me to recognize this design feature within situations where I was previously oblivious to it.

The bank is just one example of how this plays out in everyday life. The more amusing example I can think of is a conversation my friend had with his then sixteen-year-old brother, who was several years younger than us. One night, the brother asked my friend - how does a bar work? The fact is that a bar works a lot like dining out at a restaurant, but if you think about it the way a restaurant operates isn't very obvious to an outsider, either (and that's before we think about tipping). The contrast of how a bar or restaurant operates in comparison to fast food outlets is the crux of this idea. Isn't the process within a McDonald's obvious the moment you set foot in the restaurant? I can't speak for everyone, but I know that it made sense to me when I was seven. 

The reason I like this episode is because once this main idea got into my head - design is either inclusive or exclusive - it became hard to look at situations without thinking about how to apply the concept. I was just in a situation this week where a realtor was refusing to show apartments in-person until a prospective tenant had filled out a preliminary application. The situation, viewed through the lens of this design concept, could be either inclusive or exclusive, and it would depend entirely on the realtor's goal. If the idea was to maximize the number of potential applicants, then I think this is a foolish approach because increasing the amount of preliminary work is going to discourage some interested prospects from moving forward (like me). On the other hand, if the realtor wanted to limit showings only to prospects of a certain standard, then this approach will help keep people who have no realistic chance of being accepted from seeing the apartment. These kinds of considerations underlie all manners of mundane situations - the job search, the entryway of a restaurant, the layout of your yard on Halloween night, and so on. The right answer to the question of using inclusive or exclusive design varies by the situation, but if you don't have the consideration in mind at all times then I'm certain you will find yourself making plenty of avoidable errors.

what i wanted to be when i grew up

I remember that in my fifth-grade yearbook, each classmate's photo was accompanied by his or her answers to a few standard questions - your favorite color, your favorite lunch, and so on. The last question is the one that's discussed the most often whenever this topic comes up among the few friends I still have all these years later - "what do you want to be when you grow up?" Up until now, the conversation has centered around the amusing observation that most of the answers came from a small handful of professions - teachers, firefighters, athletes, and so on. If I was told today that the answers were actually selected from a multiple-choice exam, I would not only believe it, I would probably be able to guess the full list of options. The reality is that fifth-graders don't really know about that many jobs, so it makes sense that the answers would come from the few jobs we were aware of at that time.

I don't remember what I wrote down, but I have a hunch that I had no clue about the daily nature of the actual job. This would have been true for me regarding any job except possibly fifth-grade teacher. It leaves me wondering exactly how I might have explained my decision to list a particular job. Let's suppose I'd written down some kind of trade, like being a plumber. What would have been my logic for saying plumber? I guess it would mean I had some interest in plumbing - perhaps I had seen the inside of a toilet tank, or spent some time poking around under the kitchen sink (though of course we were always warned against it because apparently back then that's where everyone stored their poison). It could be that I would have said I liked water, which actually fits with my love of swimming at the time. But whatever I would have said, it would have had nothing to do with being a plumber.

I haven't learned much about the job in the two decades since the publication of that mythical yearbook. Here is what I know, based on those exceedingly rare mornings when I wake up early enough to have a stroll around the neighborhood - the plumber's job must start at four in the morning, rolling out of bed before dawn to find the car keys and make the drive to Beacon Hill, where an indefinite amount of time will be spent driving in circles until a parking space large enough for a contractor's van will appear out of nowhere - wait, is that a fire hydrant? No, but street cleaning starts in twenty minutes. Keeping in mind that the job itself hasn't actually started, I ask - does that sound like a fun job to you? The locals complain endlessly about parking, the impossibility of parking, the hassle of parking, the miracle of finding a space, and so on. One neighbor breathlessly reported that there are four thousand permits issued for two thousand spaces, which is a good example of agreeing more so with the formula than the numbers, but still - the point is that you can't park here unless you are already parked, and from the sound of it nobody has parked here in years.

The contractors in those vans, not just the plumbers but the electricians, the roofers, the cabinet makers and floor finishers, all of the drivers in the vans surely know this, but they still circle the hill each morning with a tireless determination. I wonder if any of them is fulfilling a lifelong dream, or at least one as old as the fifth grade. Did they know as they scribbled in their answer, wedged in alongside "green" and "pizza", that if they liked pipes and water and solving problems and just generally being helpful, that their dreams would be cut short by the sharp ring of the four o'clock alarm? I always remember "what do you want to be when you grow up?" being a particularly hard question to answer, which is a bit odd because back then I generally liked answering questions, those about math or history or even science, unless of course I had more urgent matters requiring my attention such as gym or recess or a field trip. I suspect now that I merely struggled with the question because I couldn't articulate the problem I had with it - I was being asked about the future as if I had a choice in the matter, but if it were up to me I'd have never grown up at all.

twenty-four hours notice

Recent TOA readers will suspect that the past couple of weeks has been defined by my apartment search, which is leading to certain insights that may inspire an upcoming post or two. For today, however, I just want to focus on an observation that is related to the other half of the equation - if I am seeking an apartment, it implies that I'm leaving my current unit.

My conversation with the building manager informing him of my plans reminded me that when it comes to my phone usage, I remain on the minimalist end of the scale. I asked only that I have twenty-four hours notice before anyone came in to see the place. This request was readily acknowledged alongside the reminder that such notice is (presumably) the law. I welcomed this perspective, but it had nothing to do with my request - twenty-four hours notice is based on the reality that sometimes I will go twenty-four hours without checking my phone. This is an admittedly extreme example, but even ten hours off the grid could be relevant in the context. Suppose I check my phone in the morning, then again at 10 PM. Is it hard to envision a scenario where I've missed several "urgent" messages about someone coming to see the listing? Based on my recent interactions with realtors, it seems that such a scenario is more likely than not. 

The reality has not played out as I'd imagined it during that initial discussion. My own search has motivated me to check the phone with more regularity, and to no one's surprise the building manager has contacted me with requests violating the basic principle of the above law. I am not bothered in the slightest by either of those two facts from the past couple of weeks. The universal truth is that habits often fall away during a time of change, and in this way my temporarily millennial mentality toward phone usage is just another example of the age-old wisdom playing out in modern life.

the toa podcast hall of fame - men in blazers (barry hearn pod special)

Hi reader,

It doesn't take the keenest eye to notice that TOA has entered a bit of a lull in these summer months. There could be a long explanation here, but I think it's easier to say that I've been busy.

I believe it was Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert series and author of How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, who pointed out that the key to productivity is matching the mental state to the task. This might be relatable to anyone who has organized their workday to leave the mindless tasks for the final hour, or to the reader who saves a certain type of book for the beach (I know it's called a "beach read", but I don't really know what that means). I think I've learned the wisdom of this insight from these years on TOA - at certain times of the year, conditions dictate that I lower my energy level a little bit and focus on easier posts for the sake of keeping this train running on schedule.

So, as promised in the July newsletter - it's time to walk down memory lane and pick out a few of my favorite podcast episodes of all-time. As noted in that post, this idea started in the spring as an email exchange, which makes it a logical candidate for this moment - in some ways the work is already done, and I have merely designated myself with the lofty assignment of writing the equivalent of a back cover blurb.

I'll start the series with this Men In Blazers episode, a repost of a 2014 show when English sports promoter and former Leyton Orient chairman Barry Hearn joined the podcast for a memorable "pod special". In this episode, he shares his "10 life lessons", but it's more about the stories that he uses to illustrate each one - his first business venture as a schoolboy, meeting Don King, why he stopped lying, the nature of getting free stuff, and more. You can skip right ahead to the nine-minute mark, where Hearn shows up and sets the tone by announcing "Good evening, colonies!" to the New York City crowd. I've listened to this episode several times in my life, so I suppose my actions speak a louder recommendation than could any more of my words. If all of this sounds vaguely familiar, I wrote a little about this episode in this 2019 post.

The reason I chose this episode to open the series is because of one specific story, which starts at just past the twenty-seven minute mark and last for about ninety seconds. Hearn talks about a potential business deal that he calls off at the last hurdle, citing "because I don't like you" as the reason for changing his mind. One of the biggest factors contributing to my busyness at the moment is an apartment search, which upon first glance might seem entirely unnecessary given that I've spent almost seven years in my current unit. So why move out now? I've been asked this question all month - by friends, by acquaintances, by realtors, by everybody - and I've given everyone a truthful response. However, these responses have never included the most truthful reason, the proverbial Real Reason, which is that I concluded during the pandemic that I don't like my landlord. I could sit here and list every little thing, but that isn't the point. The point is that if I am going to send someone over twenty thousand dollars a year in rent, then I better like the person, or at the very least retain a neutral business-minded opinion of the person, and that just isn't possible anymore in my current situation.

We'll be back this week - hopefully - with some real posts, and maybe another podcast episode. Thanks for "reading"!

 

ACTION NEEDED | confirm email subscription (repeat #3 of june 28 post)

Hello! If you've dealt with the whole process of confirming the email subscription, then no need to respond to this post - everything below the line is a repeat of past messaging.

As a reward for clicking on this today, let's look back three years to this post, which may leave you questioning your decision to subscribe to this nonsense in the first place.

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PLEASE NOTE - the following applies to the original email subscription service, which TOA used until June 2021. At some point in the near future, it's going to cease functioning.

If you are receiving emails from the subscription service that we started using in July 2021, then no need to take any action - you are already living in the future! 

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Hi reader,

I have good news and bad news (it's the same news) - starting sometime this month, the original automatic email feature will no longer be supported by TOA's RSS management service. I've been experimenting a little since I learned about this, and I think I have a decent solution for loyal readers.

If you want to continue seeing email notifications for new posts, do one of the following:

• If you are reading this post over email...
• Reply to the email and confirm you'd like to continue receiving emails via subscription

• If you are reading this post on the website...
• Send an email to "admin@trueonaverage.com" and confirm you'd like to sign up for an email subscription (it's FREE, folks)

• If your idea of a funny joke is to sign someone else up for TOA...
• Send their email address to "admin@trueonaverage.com" (makes for a great gift!)

• If TOA is an unwanted pestilence in your otherwise idyllic life...
• Do nothing - you'll stop getting these emails in a few days, and you can go back to enjoying your empty existence

In case you are wondering, there is no need to formally unsubscribe from the current email subscription.

My apologies for the sudden reader admin! Hopefully, it's a smooth transition for all interested readers.

Thanks for reading (and responding)!

toa rewind - july 12

I don't know what's going to happen on TOA tomorrow, but whatever happens shouldn't come as much of a surprise to the loyal reader. I'm either going to post something, which I've done on every July 12 since the start of TOA, or I'm not going to post something, which would be consistent with how I've skipped every Monday for the past few months. What do I think? Right now, as I type this - Saturday afternoon, July 10 - I'd say it's 50/50. The argument in favor is similar to the argument against - I don't have anything ready at the moment, which was the case at this time last year before I spent the next forty-five minutes dashing off this post. The process of writing it was, fittingly, over before it had started. I guess the matter of history repeating itself tomorrow just comes down to whether I'm inspired at some point in the next few hours to put in the necessary effort.

I think there is an argument that the post linked above represents the best of my July 12 work. This could be a reflection of its necessity, for most posts written in so little time turn out to be completely useless. The more common example of how a strong piece comes together is the prior year's edition. Unlike with "Lost" - in fact, unlike with most of TOA up to that point - I remember this one taking up a great deal of energy. I think it represented something of a turning point for me as it relates to how I think about writing. Prior to the 2019 edition of the July 12 post, I suspect I had always regarded any strenuous effort as an anomaly; my expectation was that writing for something casual like TOA should be efficient, that it should come easily to me. If I spent more time than expected on a piece, I had regarded it as evidence of a mistake on my part - perhaps I had started without a clear idea, or followed one too many digressions beyond a logical ending. There was something, it seems, that I didn't quite understand about time. "Where The Walls Don't Talk" illuminated something I'd failed to understand even after several hundred posts - the best writing is the result of the hardest work.

The bizarre thing about such a revelation is that I've always known this, and not just in the context of other domains. I knew it back in 2016, when I took a short break from my regularly scheduled nonsense to produce a fairly astonishing post. I've gotten some great comments on "What I Learned This Year" (with the line "I learned that I was the Business Bro, all along" earning specific accolades) but I was actually surprised for a moment when I reread it a few minutes ago - it's good, you know? The thing about it, though, is that if I think back to 2016, I recall that the post took at least a full month to write, starting with a few hours spent on the banks of the Charles with a pen and a notebook. You don't have to be a writer to write something good - you just have to know how to use time, which is what writers demonstrate whenever they work on something for a month. Possibly, the only thing to learn from "What I Learned This Year" is the danger of expecting good work without hard work.

This lesson isn't strictly a matter of putting in hours. When I compare the 2016 effort to my 2017 post - which nodded to the prior year's effort without bothering to make eye contact - or to what I posted in 2018, I get the sense that I'd drifted from the necessary understanding, conflating hard work with long hours. As I reread this pair of posts, I was able to see the underlying thread - the years after my mom died changed me not because of the events that transpired in that time, but rather because of how I started to see the world differently. To put it another way, if I had done the same things in those years a decade earlier, it would have led to entirely different results; those same commercials would have had no effect on me, and I might have accepted those job offers. I think it was possible to have explained this in either of those years, but since it would have been hard I opted instead to merely put in the time, never understanding that I was walking steadily on a trail that required an occasional sprint, or that the mode of travel sometimes changes your destination. If you keep doing the same things with your time, you eventually realize that you keep ending up in the same place all the time.

But of course, too much time looking back is often the surest way to stop our progress. There is a fine line between reminiscing and regret. So, what's going to happen now? I have a whole day ahead of me, the daylight hours free of commitments, essentially all the time in the world. It feels like the writing will be up to me, but I could be wrong. It's never clear to me how I decide if something is worth the effort. A few years ago, I hurried into a Starbucks and ordered a plain iced coffee. Five minutes passed, then five more. It didn't seem unusually busy. I had to ask myself something that I've started asking myself regularly over the next six years, the past six years - is it worth the effort? I decided to wait for ten more minutes, cutting a deal with myself - if Mom dies today, I'm never going back to a Starbucks. I haven't quite held myself accountable to this commitment - I've learned not to impose trivial personal grudges - but when I have gone back, it's never been my idea, and it's never been alone. There is something valuable about time, even if it's just twenty minutes, that you understand on the one day you can't get it back. There is something about time that changes when you start to see the world differently, and there is something about the way we use time that changes when we accept this shifting perspective.

I wasn't sure about tomorrow at the start of this post, but my suspicion now is that it will come and pass without the usual TOA acknowledgment. The fact is that a big change in my life now feels more like a big fact about a changed life, where the recent pattern of skipping Monday posts feels more natural than extending a five-year streak. I suppose change comes to everything. I am working tomorrow for the first time on a July 12, but what feels relevant is less so this fact and more about the way the date snuck up on me this year - it never crossed my mind to take the day off. I have always scheduled my running in July to allow for a long run on this date, but this year I don't plan to run at all. Perhaps all of this will hit me again in the full normalcy of a post-COVID world, or when I regret tomorrow's inbox missing the usual TOA notification, but I have my doubts. I think I've said all there is to say for now - what I learned, how I changed, what I lost. It may be that I need to talk about something else, possibly regret, but for now I don't have much more to say about it. I think what I'll regret is putting in more time as a substitute for hard work, and what I have left to say about tomorrow isn't ready for the hard work it requires today. I think what I'll regret is what I've always regretted - the way I used my time, those twenty minutes from a changed life, when I thought I had all the time in the world.

reading clearout - july 2021

Hi,

Time for the monthly recap of a few books I won't cover in a full reading review.

Echoes of Memory by John O'Donohue (April 2021)

This well-regarded 1994 collection was O'Donohue's first published work, a short collection of poetry (though not as short as my notes). Echoes of Memory didn't move me in the same way as some of his later works, but I encourage anyone who has enjoyed his other writing to give it a try. The poem I liked best was the first, "Nowhere".

Changing My Mind by Zadie Smith (February 2021)

This was a rare reading experience for me - despite being lukewarm about the essays throughout much of the book, I find myself looking forward to reading her other collections. The fundamental challenge for me in certain portions of Changing My Mind was determining why she wrote about a given topic, and as far as I recall nothing came along in these pieces to change my initial impression. I am, of course, likely the source of my own discontent, perhaps tripping over one of Smith's insights - writers expect a reader to either add to the work like a producer, or to step aside and let the work speak the final word; it may be that, at times, Changing My Mind simply went over my head. I'm hoping that her more recent work narrows down to the two types of essays I enjoyed most in this collection - the first being an important topic benefiting from her careful observations, and the second a personal essay that gives us a closer look at her unmatched mind, one which I'm sure her loyal readers hope will never change.

Ring of Fire by Simon Hughes (January 2021)

Hughes collects ten perspectives of various figures associated with Liverpool Football Club - including players, managers, and executives - to tell the story of its dramatic rise and fall in the 2000s. Each chapter is centered around a comprehensive interview with one of these subjects, resulting in a book that shows more sides of the story than I expected from this work. I don't recommend Ring of Fire to a reader with no interest in soccer, though I think it holds plenty of fascinating insights about leadership and organizational dynamics that may appeal to the general audience. The most intriguing concept that I pulled from my book notes links stability within a team to its eventual success. According to one of Hughes's subjects, the right amount of such stability for a soccer team is around three years, with allowances for one or two major additions each season. I believe this understanding can be extended to teams in all fields, with personal experience suggesting that in my line of work the right length of time is somewhere between six and nine months. I also liked Xabi Alonso's point that a midfielder who tackles too often implies that he is being caught out of position. It reminds me of how someone can only be lauded up to a point for dealing with constant crises and emergencies - eventually, the focus must turn to why so many urgent interruptions are happening in the first place.

leftovers #4 - it doesn't have to be crazy at work (policies)

There have been a few posts over the past month about It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work, but I promise that today is the last one. Though I'm sure this is welcome news to all readers, those who are disappointed with this revelation are encouraged to review the previous posts or check out the unstructured thoughts collected in my book notes.

As noted previously, one theme of the book is how the design of the organization dictates its capabilities. There is perhaps no more obvious place to think about than HR, which is essentially responsible for organizing, evaluating, and executing the policies that govern company operations. Based on the approach they took throughout the work, it didn't surprise me that the authors tended to favor easily executed policies, such as using a transparent wage structure that paid people equally by position, which leaves no room for time-consuming salary negotiations. They also applied this straightforward manner to the way they defined things like benefits (anything that directly helps the employee during off-hours) or vacation (multiple consecutive days off). To the latter, they suggested that employees who need discretionary time during the week should just work it out within their teams rather than rely on a company policy.

What these kinds of insights demonstrate is that there is plenty of room for common sense to serve as a guiding principle within organizations for creating policy and defining its exceptions. I think the challenge is that the way we do things are always on the verge of becoming habits, and it's often easier to stick with a habit rather than make a meaningful change. There is also the temptation to lean on a policy when the alternative is to expend energy while demonstrating flexibility for the people involved, particularly as applying a policy is much faster than granting an exception. But there are times when a little extra work in the moment can prevent larger issues from emerging further down the line. The authors point out one example - how to handle major organizational changes. As far as I know, departing employees are never encouraged (and if I had to guess, discouraged) from communicating with the organization. I am sure this standard practice is grounded in strong thinking. However, if there is any mystery or confusion surrounding a major change, the remaining team members are certain to invent a story based on their limited information unless someone explains the reasons. If it were up to me, I'd prefer an organization publicly encourage clear communication, even if the results are somewhat unorthodox, because the potential short-term harm of allowing a departing member to communicate with the organization outweigh the possible long-term effect of a blurry line between rumor and reality.

ACTION NEEDED | confirm email subscription (repeat #2 of June 28 post)

Hello - if you saw this post last week, no need to respond - everything below the line is a repeat.

As a reward for looking at this post, here's another throwback that probably defines the word precisely - it should be thrown back into the forgotten shadows of old-school TOA.

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PLEASE NOTE - the following applies to the email subscription which shows the newest post from the past twenty-four hours.

If you are receiving emails that show the three most recent new posts, then no need to take any action - you are already living in the future!

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Hi reader,

I have good news and bad news (it's the same news) - starting sometime in July, this automatic email feature will no longer be supported by TOA's RSS management service. I've been experimenting a little in June and I think I have a decent solution for loyal readers.

If you want to continue seeing email notifications for new posts, do one of the following:

• If you are reading this post over email...
• Reply to the email and confirm you'd like to continue receiving emails via subscription

• If you are reading this post on the website...
• Send an email to "admin@trueonaverage.com" and confirm you'd like to sign up for an email subscription (it's FREE, folks)

• If your idea of a funny joke is to sign someone else up for TOA...
• Send their email address to "admin@trueonaverage.com" (makes for a great gift!)

• If TOA is an unwanted pestilence in your otherwise idyllic life...
• Do nothing - you'll stop getting these emails in a few days, and you can go back to enjoying your empty existence

In case you are wondering, there is no need to formally unsubscribe from the current email subscription.

My apologies for the sudden reader admin! Hopefully, it's a smooth transition for all interested readers.

Thanks for reading (and responding)!

virtual independence

The new normal, as I noted on Thursday, seems to finally be upon us, and with this happy transition I've found myself returning to certain activities I placed on hold for much of the past fifteen months. This isn't solely a reference to various social activities that were highly discouraged for public health reasons - it also captures certain routine tasks that I maintained under the unquestioned assumption of the future's predictability. A great example of this is checking band websites for tour information - with concerts returning to many of the area's music venues, I've devoted a few minutes every couple of weeks to scanning these pages for updates.

I've found myself making a slower return to a similar activity - checking for upcoming author readings. This is for the simple explanation that these events, unlike concerts, have not quite found their way to a new normal. My two best sources, the Harvard Book Store and the Brookline Booksmith, both seem content to remain in a 2020 frame of mind - the former's calendar lists virtual events out to August 10 while the footer on the latter's equivalent opens with an ominous "events will take place virtually until further notice". I've found these results so discouraging that I haven't even considered resuming another pillar of this routine, which is a simple Google search that starts with "greater Boston author readings" and ends with the date of the upcoming Sunday. This is not a disguised reboot of a recent post where I described (some would say ridiculed) a local community's slower than average (some would say slower than everyone) acceptance of the New Normal. Who would I be to imply that these local literary institutions don't have the freedom to make decisions as they see fit? It would be particularly rude to make this complaint on July 4, of all days. But I, too, have a certain freedom, which I've expressed for over a year by ignoring these virtual event offerings. My hunch is that many share this sentiment.

I initially thought my problem was rooted in the calculus of how I measured a given event's appeal to me, which I feel is a fairly straightforward calculation - when a local business hosts a virtual event, it competes against anything else that I can access virtually at a given moment, and the fact is that author readings tend to perform poorly in these comparisons. The virtual event poses an odd question - would you like to watch this author read from a book, or would you rather use the same screen to watch anything else ever produced in the history of human entertainment? The past year has demonstrated that if I am going to be at home then I would prefer anything, even TV, to a virtual author reading. (Quite frankly, my top preference in this case would be to just read the book.) I suppose it's possible that a virtual reading will someday come along which changes the equation, but I suspect my response would be similar to the way I've been watching the NBA Playoffs or Euro 2020 - a few hours later via DVR, when I can skip the tedium of commercials, substitutions, and video reviews. Or, it would be like how I listen to podcasts, which are the closest approximation of a virtual author reading - I download or track the newest episodes, then I listen to them when it's convenient for me. 

As I noted above, considering the relative appeal of a virtual author reading in comparison to other media options was my initial thought, and there is certainly some truth to the mathematical approach. However, I've recognized more recently that this argument ignores a fact about my pre-pandemic life, which is that I'd never bothered with an author reading unless it was in-person. It's not so much that a virtual event had a lesser appeal relative to a rerun of Arrested Development - it was that a recorded version of an event intended for a live audience never held any appeal to me. This is reminiscent of going to the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in 2019 - despite never having watched a single minute of the recorded footage from past conferences, I had a great time at the event when I attended in-person (1). You wouldn't be faulted for thinking this was somewhat inconsistent (or that I would watch recordings of future iterations, which I haven't) but to me it seems perfectly natural because the virtual option is not a substitute for in-person, but rather an entirely different event. I think what happened in this past year is that in my mind I automatically assumed the virtual author reading would be like a recorded version of an in-person reading, and I therefore ruled it out as a feasible option.

It's possible that I was too careless with my assumption, but I have some anecdotal evidence that I was on the right track. If I recall correctly, one of longtime TOA favorites Tim Harford or Chuck Klosterman commented that he found logging on for virtual book events to be a major improvement over the grinding schedule of an in-person tour. It doesn't surprise me when I think about it that this would be the case because I suspect the experience of someone featured for an event wouldn't differ much whether the event was in-person or virtual - there would be some banter with the host, a bit of reading from the book, and a few questions from audience members. It would, to a certain extent, be entirely predictable, but this might be easier to handle if the author could log off at home rather than have to go to some strange hotel. On the other hand, as I learned at the Sloan Conference the experience for someone in the audience instead of at home is actually quite different based on the fact of it being live, mostly because there is an element of spontaneity in terms of interacting with both the presentations as well as fellow attendees. From my experience, this element of spontaneity is a decisive feature and the potential of it determines whether I ultimately consider attending. I'm not sure it's as simple as the difference of predictability and spontaneity, particularly as there is no rule saying an in-person event must have spontaneity (or vice-versa). I can't quite put my finger on the exact factor - and I'm tempted to wave it away with something more general, like "the human element" - but it's clear to me that whatever it is, broadly speaking the in-person event has it while the virtual version lacks it.

I am hoping that these author readings return soon - like many, I have enjoyed the freedom of choice that has accompanied the widespread pivot to virtual options for many events, but I suspect like is also the case for many I am finding that these options have not replicated a critical ingredient that brings life to the in-person event. It's like going to the grocery store and finding nothing appetizing among the endless choices - I start to wonder if we have exchanged something intangible about quality in return for adding to the perpetually accumulating list of options. Of course, I don't want to create the impression that I'd like others to rush back to in-person events purely for the sake of my entertainment. I will make do, I suppose, reading books and watching TV until everyone is ready. I think for me the time will be right when the only reason for hosting events virtually is the justification that virtual is a substitute for the in-person edition. I obviously disagree with such a line of thinking. There may not be anything easily explainable about why being in the live audience is better than being at home, but I think others have made it clear enough that we would be better off accepting this as a universal truth, applicable to events of all forms. There is a reason that I check those websites, once or twice each month, for concert tickets - I could stream replays of past shows, often carefully selected for the flawless quality of the "live" performance, but I'd much rather hear a few mistakes while part of the crowd, enjoying the freedom of the future's spontaneity.

Footnotes / endnotes

1) The substitute effect

It may also have some similarities to the way I once thought about ride-shares: when I regarded them strictly as a substitute to cabs, I never saw the appeal because I never used cabs. Why would I use cabs due to the mere fact of a new user interface? Once I considered it as a separate product, I understood that the product exposed an inactive user base who had simply found cabs too tedious or expensive for regular use. Too often, we group ideas, processes, or products together as substitutes when it would be more appropriate to think about these as opportunities to grow (or shrink) the accessibility to or affordability of a subsequent effect.

the toa newsletter - july 2021

The loyal reader could be forgiven for assuming that today's edition would be full to overflowing with news - after all, isn't life back to normal? I'd say yes, yes it very well may be the New Normal these days, which means one thing - no news. Right? What better defines normal than the fact of no news? I toyed with the idea of digging to the bare bones with a classic proper admin - library fines are resuming, I think - but there was truthfully nothing to work with from June.

If we can't look back, then I guess we must look ahead, so here's what we have on tap for the coming month of TOA...

Email transition

The good news is that if you've already dealt with the email situation, then you can ignore any and all future reminders. This is for the best because I think everyone is getting sick of these "posts", but let's not forget that we're all suffering in this situation. I mean, what do you think, that I'm enjoying all of this for some reason? If you don't like getting my "ACTION NEEDED" messages, imagine the pure delight of writing those "posts" or of setting up the email process on the backend. The moral of this story - the admin of life never stops, and one day it will kill us all.

Pods

It's always been a bit of a struggle for me to write about podcasts, which is why my decision to (mostly) stop writing about them feels like a permanent solution as it applies to this little space. However, podcast episodes may prove to be an entirely different matter. I exchanged a few emails this spring with a friend loosely describing my favorite episodes of all time, and I think I'll start to turn those emails into posts sometime in July.

Reading reviews

I had a notion around this time last year that I should try and post reading reviews within three months of finishing a book. I think that remains the long-term goal, but in these confusing days of the New Normal the road to this elusive target is proving to be full of (highly tedious) twists and turns. At the moment, I have three books I completed before April that are nowhere near a TOA appearance, and then there is the pesky matter of writing something, anything, about those books I skipped back in 2019.

Tales of too-racist cities

It might be time to dust off the venerated TOA series, which for new readers means equal parts memoir, travel guide, and "get off my bike lane" rants that I cook up while I cycle back and forth over the Charles. This post would think about why treating everyone equally is an elusive concept for those who forget that good intentions are far from good enough.

Email admin, podcasts, reading reviews, Hubway, maybe racism... so nothing interesting to write about?

I don't know if that's strictly the case. I've always referred to the reading reviews as the bread and butter of TOA, but somewhere in the joke is a certain truth about writing, and perhaps about any craft - you need to practice, and 95% of practice is just a matter of doing it. I feel writing a reading review is in many respects practice for producing a real essay, requiring among other things that I think deeply about the topic, find connections across a wide range of ideas, and have faith that if I keep working a logical place to stop will emerge at some point.

Like there!

Correct! Thanks for reading, see you in July!