scheduling the death rattle

I suspect the average person these days has a perception that podcasts took off relatively recently, maybe sometime in the last five years or so, and perhaps this is accurate. The saddest cases may be convinced that Serial was the first-ever podcast, and that debuted in 2014. I'm not the best person to ask, however, as I never really noticed when podcasts broke through to achieve mainstream popularity. This is likely because I've been listening to podcasts for well over a decade. For me, the ascent of podcasts was like the experience of napping on an empty beach only to wake up surrounded by sunburnt tourists. I get that it's a big deal, but no need to tell me about it - I've been here all along.

If memory serves correctly my first podcast could have been as early as fall 2006, my freshman year of college, when I had a job as the campus mailman. This required that I walk around campus a few hours each week delivering letters and magazines to various department buildings. I would pass the time on these mail routes by listening to an episode or two of a favorite show. I continued listening to podcasts after graduation, filling my ears while commuting, running errands, or completing household admin, and as I look back I could see why you might say podcasts have been an ever-present fixture throughout my adult life. A few of my favorite shows from the early days remain in my current lineup - notable examples include EconTalk (which debuted in 2006) and More Or Less (a show I likely picked up when Tim Harford began hosting in 2007). Bill Simmons, who entered the podcast world in 2007 with The BS Report, also remains a regular listen.

But over fifteen or so years there have been many more examples of shows that have come and gone. The ones that stick out in my memory are not the shows that I abandoned due to waning interest (Radiolab, The Moth, 99% Invisible, among many others) but rather those that stopped producing new episodes. The first one I can remember is Brainfood Dude, an hour-long podcast that reviewed other podcasts - each weekly episode featured a few highlight segments from various podcasts. The final episode aired almost exactly ten years ago today. I don't remember the exact details of this last show, just a vague recollection that the host, Michael J. Franz, cited how a new job (as a teacher?) made it impossible for him to put in the necessary work for creating the show. Brainfood Dude was an invaluable source of new shows for me - other than occasionally checking podcast rankings, I didn't have another way to discover new shows.

There is a chance that I learned about Common Sense from one of those episodes, another favorite podcast that joined Brainfood Dude in retirement a few years ago. Dan Carlin's decision in the fall of 2017 to end his monthly current events program remains the biggest loss in the history of my listening habit. In his "final" episode, Carlin shared that he no longer had the energy to produce regular shows, citing the present political climate as one challenge but also mentioning that he was just getting older. (I say "final" because Common Sense has returned one or two times each year since it "ended", these episodes seemingly going up whenever the mood strikes Carlin.) I eventually filled the void with Middle Theory, a show hosted by Micah Hanks, who maintained a weekly schedule until just a few weeks ago when he also announced a schedule reduction for his podcast. Hanks, like Franz and Carlin, cited the impossibility of maintaining the workload necessary to keep up with the schedule for the show. I anticipate Middle Theory will follow the Common Sense example of airing a few times a year whenever Hanks feels the need to record another episode.

The obvious connecting thread of these examples is the way each host reached a point where he could no longer meet the demands of producing his show. But this raises a question - what were the demands? My understanding is that each program operated on its own terms, with no contracts or outside obligations forcing the hosts to produce episodes. The specific answers would obviously vary by show, but there is a shared reality that at some level the hosts imposed their own demands onto themselves. You can see this if you consider how the breaking points are measurable not with a single metric but rather in a combination of metrics. Brainfood Dude, for example, ended not because Franz didn't have time for producing a podcast, but because he didn't have enough time each week to produce a weekly hour-long podcast. Common Sense and Middle Theory both opted to reduce schedules, implying that the issue was not just about energy level but more specifically the energy level available per month or week given a fixed length for each show. This leads me to a possible answer - the demands on the hosts were driven by the length of each show, which necessitated a certain amount of work in order to complete a show. What I don't understand is why each host felt obligated to show some loyalty to this detail. At some level we all know the initial decision about length was made by each host on his own, so as audience members we should agree that these hosts are well within their rights to change the length as they see fit. In these selected examples, the hosts opted instead to reduce the schedule, even driving it down to zero in Franz's case. 

This leaves open the question of whether it would have been a better decision to record shorter episodes. However, I don't think this is a natural way to think about such problems. The way people retire, for example, has a similar element - one week you work forty hours, the next week you are done. I don't know many examples of people who, starting at age sixty, work a little less per year until they gradually reach zero hours a decade or two later. It seems that when we reach these crossroads where energy levels are suddenly short of requirements, we lean toward making a culprit of the schedule rather than reducing the intensity within the schedule, as if the schedule itself is some kind of fixed universal law. It's almost like we constantly imagine ourselves on one kind of treadmill or the other, where the only options are to keep going or step off. I think of this as form of schedule tyranny - our minds lock into the idea of making changes to maintain the schedule such that we forget the fact of having a schedule is subject to change.

The tyranny of the schedule manifests in many other examples. For example, I always wonder how many aspiring marathoners land on the injured list after blindly churning out the mileage scribbled into their training plans, some of which offer little guidance to inexperienced runners in terms of how to listen to their bodies and notice signs of overtraining. I also suspect that many nutrition plans work within the framework of the three square meals - breakfast, lunch, and dinner - which rule out the possibility that the number of meals could be adjusted (in either direction) to the benefit of improved health. My own experience with TOA has exposed me to a version of this issue in the context of writing. When a friend started a blog a few months ago, my only advice was to resist the temptation for setting a schedule, with my exact words something like "the worst thing for a blog is a schedule". Again, the issue in my mind has something to do with the effect of a schedule on sustainability, burnout, and energy levels, all of which need the right attention whenever someone is embarking on a challenge.

I suppose my advice reveals my understanding of the decisions made by those podcasts. If I had a weekly or monthly show with thousands of listeners, I would feel the pressure to keep up with expectations. I know I've been guilty of it myself on TOA, sometimes wrapping up posts in the wee hours just to meet a self-imposed deadline of one sort or the other. The reason I advise others to avoid scheduling is because I've come to see it as the fastest route to consistent mediocrity. This may not be obvious right away - in fact, for many beginners the external framework helps them get going. The challenge is separating completed work from quality work, which I think is a skill too advanced for those in the early stages. I think back sometimes to nights at the college library where I would see a few classmates rushing to meet a deadline or cramming ahead of a big exam. We were taking advantage of a certain energy that comes with the urgency of an approaching deadline, but we never figured out a way to determine if our eventual output represented our best work. In a one-off setting such as a final exam, there were no future reference points to reveal whether we had met our potential or had fallen far short. Even with top grades, you wouldn't know if your study process had led to your best work. In my mind there is a possibility that these experiences reinforced the reward of finishing over the satisfaction of completing the highest quality work, and I think a similar problem confronts beginners in creative pursuits.

I believe everyone eventually reaches a point where the relationship between completing work and skill improvement begin to separate from each other. In this moment, it's no longer good enough to just write, baby - you have to develop an understanding of your deficiencies so that you can deliberately work on the necessary skills. This became obvious to me over the course of several years on TOA. Initially, the idea of posting on a certain schedule helped me get through specific challenges for beginners - writer's block, committing time to the craft, editing and proofreading, and so on. It's a fact that some of my best posts were wrapped up at midnight, or later, because my invented schedule had set the publication date for sunrise. But over the years enough mediocre examples accumulated in my finished work that it became clear how a schedule at times forced me to prioritize posting ahead of quality. This feeling should be familiar to any writer - just go back to something you finished and note the revisions you would make today. If you feel the whole thing could do with a renovation, you probably should have spent more time on it.

For me, the only reason I would have posted such work comes back to the ever-present influence of the schedule. It's kind of like that old adage about the importance of showing up - of course it's impossible to succeed unless you show up, but just showing up isn't sufficient for success. The way I see it, the structure of a schedule is only helpful if it makes you show up to your work, but after you arrive the schedule quickly loses its relevance. The most helpful thing for improving the quality of your work is to separate the process from the influence of a schedule, especially if a schedule forces you to rush or compromise for the sake of completion. I suppose another way to express all of this is that you can write without posting, but the problem is when you post without writing.

Ultimately I think this consideration underscored the decisions made by those three podcasters. The reasons they shared undoubtedly explain tangible factors related to stopping their shows, but I suspect at some level they knew their shows were dropping in quality (or were about to if they kept going). For them, the shows required a certain level of effort not solely from the perspective of finishing the episode but also to meet a personal quality standard. As a listener, I can attest to this fact - I believe Common Sense will be one of the very best podcasts I'll ever hear, and Middle Theory had its own moments of supreme quality. When you make great work, you know when you've made average work, and I think this is what it came down to - for those hosts it was the inability to meet a personal standard that made it necessary to walk away.

I guess this leaves me with one unanswered question - why not then find an output that would maintain the quality level? Could Brainfood Dude have worked as a monthly program? What about Common Sense episodes that were fifteen minutes long instead of an hour? These examples reflect personal decisions about which I can only speculate, and of course there is the possibility as noted earlier that this thought never crossed their minds. However, I think I can look once again at my own work for a possible explanation. The challenge I've struggled with at times on TOA is the confusion of the craft with the output. At some level what I am doing here is writing, but once you involve a medium it becomes something different - on TOA I'm not just writing, I'm writing essays. If you add a schedule to the equation then it changes again - I'm writing essays posted daily (in 2018) or writing longer essays that are posted on Sundays (in 2021). If start printing everything I wrote and placing those papers between two covers, then I'm writing books; if this led to some kind of contract, then I'm writing a book series. It's an inevitable problem in a way because any activity is inevitably altered by the setting, which means the setting always exerts some influence over the activity. You might say you are relaxing, but if you are relaxing on the couch then it's different from relaxing in a hammock. The problem with writing as an activity is that the activity of writing changes the writing, which changes the author's relationship with the writing. I suppose this forms my hypothesis about those podcasts ending rather than restructuring - at some point the structures of those shows became so intertwined with essence of the work that the podcasters could no longer envision the work happening outside the existing structure.

This conclusion may be fair enough, but I think it represents a sort of missed opportunity. Why not try a different structure, just to see what happens? The point is underscored by the fact that opting to step back was essentially a death rattle for these shows, which meant the end of the creativity inspired by the work. In my mind, this was brought about in the roundabout manner of scheduling tyranny, and it never felt necessary. At the heart of change is always the fear of the unknown, and as creators this fear lurks in the white space of a new page or the silence ahead of the next word. We are used to confronting this fear. But there is something different when we face the fear of a changing structure because the structure was our ally - we showed up on schedule until we could look the unknown in the eye, and the looming deadline forced us to bring our skills and gifts into the work. And yet, we never realized that the structure of the schedule subtly undermined the relationship with the work. Being able to make a change in such situations is critical because in some ways it's a matter of survival, just as it always is when we must change, and the only thing at stake is our loyalty to our own abilities.

This is why I can't work out if there was wisdom or folly at the heart of those podcast decisions. The demands the hosts placed on themselves meant it was wiser to stop rather than continue, for the path ahead made it impossible to create their best work. But could they have rediscovered themselves within a revised structure? Ultimately, they knew best for themselves, and because of this I think they chose best for themselves. We should all be so lucky to see such realities for ourselves, to know when loyalty to the self is more important than loyalty to the external; we should all hope that the courage necessary for stepping away does not fail us in the moment of need, and that we have the strength to step back in when we must go again.

reading clearout (june 2022, part three)

Hi reader, hope you are enjoying the longest days of the year! If not, here are some notes on recent reading to help pass the time.

Mud Sweeter than Honey by Margo Rejmer (March 2022)

In this oral history, Rejmer gives voice to the Albanians from all walks of life who lived and suffered under the communist rule of Enver Hoxha. If this specific chapter of recent European history is unknown to you (as it was to me before I read this book), then it may help to see my first note from Mud Sweeter than Honey - Stalin’s death marked the end of the cruelest form of communist regimes, but Albania was an exception. One thing that sticks out from this account was how ruthlessly the totalitarian regime treated those who were educated, sensitive, or outspoken, perhaps revealing what those in power considered the greatest threat to their absolute rule. I think Rejmer's work in a broader sense speaks to the necessity of artists to use their abilities to set the record straight, with writers obviously bearing a significant portion of this responsibility in the aftermath of a time when so many voices were lost, silenced, or erased by the forces of propaganda, coercion, and terror. This isn't the kind of work from which I feel compelled to recommend specific chapters, but I should note that "A Stone on the Border" was the most unforgettable of the many searing accounts.

Dialogues and Letters by Seneca (June 2019)

Seneca, also known as "Seneca the Younger" (I couldn't find any info on "Seneca the Older") was a Roman Stoic philosopher whose work influenced many important figures of future generations (including Dante, Montaigne, and this blog). This particular work collected a number of his better-known essays, including "On the Shortness of Life", alongside letters written to someone named Lucilius (who is best known for being the recipient of these letters). I don't have a strong recall of this read from three years ago but it seems like relying on a handful of collected notes is an appropriate idea - as this book itself suggests, it's crucial for readers to identify their own nuggets of relevant wisdom within written works. 

It seems that the aforementioned essay was the likely source for a handful of the most impressive notes. I've written down that life seems short only because we waste time, that we should not put off for later anything that might be ruined by a downturn in health, and that the best way to shorten life is to pursue another's preoccupations. I should also mention that despite his reputation it seems Seneca was not necessarily an original thinker but rather one who collected, formalized, and popularized Stoic philosophy. This suggests that a modern-day Seneca might make for an ideal Business Bro ("Business Bro the Younger") but some of his insights offer counter-evidence to my grim conclusion. For example, he notes that a strong performer is often merely stronger than the task, or that we should avoid tasks which generate more tasks, cannot be easily abandoned, or come with the potential of a shifting finish line; Business Bro or not, it seems clear that Seneca would at least share my distaste for admin.

leftovers - reading clearout, june 2022 (never split the difference - tactics)

Last week's summary about Chris Voss's Never Split the Difference omitted some of the specific tactics I thought could help anyone in a negotiation, so let's take a moment to examine those in this post.

Mislabeling

I mentioned this briefly in the original reading clearout but return today to clarify another aspect of the point. If you are having trouble engaging the other party in a discussion, a deliberate mislabel can help draw them back in by way of tempting them into a correction. You can also employ a similar move when someone is unresponsive - ask, have you given up on this project? If they intend to reengage with the project, they'll jump at this opportunity to say "no".

A positive approach to negativity

I took a couple of interesting notes about negativity within a negotiation. The general theme across those notes is that you are better off going straight at the negative, which is for a number of reasons - denying the obvious negatives in a situation adds credence to it; acknowledging and diffusing the negative helps build working relationships; open discussion of the negative helps create a safe zone for empathy. 

These remind me of an incident from a Business Bro Training I attended a couple of years ago, which had a portion about conflict. I don't think I've written about this yet, but as I plan to eventually I'll keep it short for now. The main idea in the session covered how to manage and resolve conflict, which I mostly agreed with in terms of being a valuable managerial skill, but toward the end I raised my hand and pointed out that conflict sometimes represented the best opportunity for a manager to collect information that would otherwise remain out of sight. In my mind, the best approach first manages the tension of the conflict until all the information is collected, then the focus can shift to resolving the conflict. As Voss himself notes, a skilled negotiator can take a similar approach and use conflict to energize collaboration and encourage problem-solving.

The logistical argument

One way to regain control in a discussion is to ask for the logistics. This is a good tactic for those moments when you feel like the other side's good ideas are overwhelming your interests. By asking for the logistical details (how can we do that?) you may be able to wear down your opponent before they can take advantage of the moment to push for more concessions.

Human nature

Speaking of concessions, you should remember that many people feel better when they receive a concession. It may be wise to determine your single fair offer, then work your way down to it in one or two steps. (It may also help to keep this in mind when someone makes the first offer, as you can probably negotiate it down a step or two if they are using this tactic against you.)

It's also human nature to have more confidence in a highly-specific number. Rather than using round digits, throw in a few random figures - instead of $100.00, use $101.77, and so on. If this feels silly or doesn't fit the specifics of your situation, use ranges instead of exact numbers because ranges have the power to make you seem less aggressive.

proper corona admin, vol 106 - individual responsibility

There was a point around a few months ago where it seemed that being vaccinated against COVID-19 was about to become a minimum requirement for holding a good job in America. I started writing a post about this idea, which analyzed it through the lens of various helmet football incidents at the time, but I eventually stepped away from my draft. In my mind, the key point was that being unvaccinated meant a given player was more likely to miss a game - to miss work, in other words - and surely this risk would have some effect when teams were making decisions about signing players. However, I soon concluded that the effect would be almost impossible to identify and essentially abandoned the post. It may have worked out to my benefit - rereading the draft now, I don't see anything in the four paragraphs that I wish I'd posted a year ago.

All that said, I still suspect my idea remains true to some extent. My perspective today is far more cynical than it was a year ago, when I was essentially trying to make a logical extension on current events - if Aaron Rodgers is going to miss one game per year due to COVID, would you prefer having him or a slightly worse quarterback whose vaccinations will rule out such a consideration? The way I see it now is that since America is a country that finds a way to discriminate against anyone for anything at anytime, why would this situation with the vaccines be any different? I suppose I should wait and see before jumping to any definite conclusions, especially given that unforeseen mutations could mean that sometime in the near future the fact of being vaccinated will have no bearing on your likelihood of becoming sick. But if the initial data regarding the benefits of vaccination prove durable over time, then I have no doubt vaccination status - essentially, a way for an employer to factor in someone's risk of missing work - will soon become just another way to silently discriminate against individuals.

I think at some level it's too bad that I feel compelled to write this post. To me, anyone who spends some time with either a healthcare professional or a reliable dataset will overwhelmingly conclude that getting vaccinated is the best decision available to an unvaccinated person. It's also the best decision for someone thinking communally, given the way it lowers the risk of transmission to those who either cannot be vaccinated or who remain at high risk despite getting booster doses. But today's society isn't at the point where everyone always does the best thing, for themselves or for others, so here we are having to accept the situation. I can understand why someone values this decision as a specific expression of freedom. As individuals, we have a responsibility to accept what others choose and we should be careful, very careful, before criticizing choice, or legislating against it.

I'm not interested in telling people what to do, but I think I can offer an idea about what will happen as a result of one choice or another. The way I see it, we're talking about a decision where someone freely chooses to make themselves worse off, not just in terms of health but also finances, and I can't quite understand it. Am I the only one who thinks that ten years from now vaccinated people will be far better off than those who turned down the shots? There are organizations, including mine, where being unvaccinated rules you out from employment, so such a choice eliminates the possibility of pursuing one of the many good careers available in our line of work. The industries that have standards based on commissions or work volume punish you for absence, though perhaps not in a life-changing way, but enough to create some strain if you have shaky finances. If you factor in consequences such as long COVID, then you might be healthy enough for work yet impacted in such a way that it lowers your performance quality, which will surely impact bonuses or promotions. The way I see it, the vaccinations are basically just free money, making you more likely to land a good job or be available for work, so why not just get one and stay on track for that picket fence? I don't feel that doing things just for the money is always a wise strategy, but it does pass for wisdom in this country.

reading clearout (june 2022, part two)

Hi reader, another look today at a couple of my recent reads.

The Damned Utd by David Peace (March 2022)

As we all know 2022 is a World Cup year, which means a few more soccer books than usual here in the TOA atmosphere. The Damned Utd covers legendary manager Brian Clough's sensational forty-four day tenure in 1974 as manager of defending champion Leeds United, written as a novel and reading like a journal while remaining fully loyal to real-life events and results. Interspersed into the main arc is the backstory of Clough's managerial career up to that point, which saw him lead Derby County to incredible heights while also establishing himself as one of the great personas in the soccer world. The book is a spectacular creative accomplishment in my mind, perhaps occasionally trying a little too hard to bring the reader into Clough's headspace, but nevertheless a read that I recommend to any fan of the sport. I thought the most interesting idea from the book was a leadership insight - the best leaders are the ones who, recognizing the innate need to feel admired or respected, find a way to help others feel fulfilled in this regard while also knowing how to motivate themselves through their own low points.

Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss (November 2021)

I was surprised to see summaries of this book reference the nine key principles Voss, a former FBI hostage negotiator, uses to succeed in the world of highs-stakes negotiations - my recollection was that this book lacked such a rigid structure. I still thought this was a highly informative book, perhaps most useful for a reader with some personal experience in negotiations who could use Never Split the Difference to first evaluate their own process, then iterate using Voss's insights as guidelines or suggestions. For me, I found it to be an easy book with a number of helpful observations that I've carried with me since my reading, but I don't anticipate I will suddenly become the world's greatest negotiator for the sole fact of this read. One consistent emphasis in this book was on the use of labeling, which Voss sees as a surefire way to advance a conversation. A label usually forces the other side to say "I agree" or tempts them to correct you. For example, if you say "it seems like X is important to you" then the other side can either agree with X, which may help establish rapport in the negotiation, or it can disagree, which could lead them to reveal previously unknown information as they correct you.

This gets to a larger theme of the book - the main objective of the negotiation process is to acquire information. This links to some of the other notes I took from Never Split the Difference - listen as much as possible (since only the speaker can share information); avoid the temptation to fit new details into existing mental frameworks (since you may misidentify the relevance of novel information); remember to confirm the type of information contained in "yes" (because "yes" can mean commitment to action, but sometimes is used to either escape the discussion or buy time for an eventual "no"). As mentioned, I thought this book had quite a few helpful details (I may return to these in another post) but for most people just remembering to collect information will help them succeed in a negotiation. There is only so much wiggle room in these situations, so the sooner you know all the details the better positioned you are to find a solution that brings as much benefit as possible to all involved parties.

how to skip what you love

"I love doing that," I hear from my right.

Love doing what?

It takes a moment for me to realize that the comment was made for my benefit, this delay explained by my conviction that the Comm Ave Mall is for the people who ignore everything in it. By the time I turn my head, the woman had walked on, or I should say had kept walking, now alongside the squares, then past them, her indifference to my delayed acknowledgment leaving me no option but to speculate on what she meant by the comment. Love doing what? I can only assume it referred to my impulsive callback to kindergarten, jumping with both feet into a momentary recess from the grinding repetition of adult days.

The chalk outline had come up so fast that it almost took me by surprise, again, but on this run I'd noticed just in time. I had confirmed the path was clear, then angled sharply across the mall to align myself ahead of the diversion. I wasn't familiar with this game, I had never played it, but now there was no time to think so I did it - two feet if one square, one each if two squares, and a serious knee injury if three or more squares. Hopscotch bore some resemblance to the agility ladder I'd abandoned years ago, at the end of my playing days, so even in just a couple of seconds my feet had recalled the old rhythm and skipped themselves through to the final square. Like childhood, it was over in a flash. I stutter-stepped over the finish line, ready for the resigned mechanics of my daily jog, but then I'd heard the comment from the person who was now almost out of sight, each stride taking her further from the past.

Why would someone who had just claimed to love doing something immediately walk past an opportunity to do it? This logical question might not be entirely fair. It could be based on some personal ideal for consistency of both expression and action, which isn't a realistic expectation in practice. Who hasn't claimed some new inspiration, yet changed nothing about their creative work? Who hasn't seen the motivation from the morning disappear into another afternoon of inactivity? Maybe a physical limitation or fresh injury prevented her from fulfilling the scribbled prophecies of the pavement. I myself would never jump into a hopscotch game while walking, so maybe that's what the comment meant - like me, she would play if she were running, but being out for a walk was an entirely different matter.

I supposed it's possible I'm fixated on the wrong question. There certainly isn't any way to know, for sure, what was meant in the comment. But I also wonder why the comment was made at all, particularly as it bore some resemblance to a style of commentary that will be familiar to any city dweller - a guarded quip, fired over a shielded shoulder, all without breaking stride as the speaker retreats toward some meaningless appointment. There are so many moments in the city where I wonder for whose benefit such comments are made - the listener, or the speaker? In a situation like this one, I can't see why it helps me to know what a stranger loves doing, so I guess this is at least one example of the latter. I suspect there is something everyone carries around inside them, ignored and silenced and restrained for so long that they eventually forget it's even there, some shapeless remnant of a quality that sits for years in the shadows of the soul, then in a flash it's up and about and before they know it the sound is rising through their chest and picking up speed and it can't be stopped, it's out, at long last, for some much needed air... and wait, I love doing what?

I can't speak for anyone else, I just know that anything you skip for long enough will disappear from your life. I think there have been a few moments for me where, looking back, I unknowingly placed myself in great danger because I was trying to stifle my playfulness, which had always informed and advised my best instincts. I would look for a game to play and, if I couldn't find one, I would invent it; I would look for the humor in a situation and, if it didn't exist, I would create it. Playfulness is a quality that is so far removed from the adult's mind that I suspect most of us don't see it, particularly when we are complicit in leaving it behind somewhere like an assassin dumping a corpse. I remember recently thinking that a friend's new partner was a great match for him because they both shared this quality, but when I pointed this out to another friend it turned out the big revelation was my insight that playfulness was our mutual friend's best quality, or that it was a quality at all. I don't share this anecdote to highlight my powers of observation - it wasn't too long ago that I would have failed to notice this as well.

I don't find it difficult to imagine some explanations for this situation. The responsibilities of adult life leave no room for play - careers, caregiving, and of course that relentless admin, just to name a few, all suffer from too much playing around. I also think it matters that the biggest shift from childhood to adulthood is the way life becomes defined by perpetual competition, which of course is a systemic reality - the ruthless calculations of profit and loss mean any consideration of play is squeezed right out of the equation (perhaps we can add playfulness to capitalism's long list of collateral damages). I may lament the way many around me seem unable to grasp the loss of their own playfulness, but given the reality of modern life it's hardly a surprise.

That said, the most striking thing about it all is that if you look closely you see so many examples of people grasping for ways to bring their playfulness back into life. I think there is an element of this in the way people spend time around children or animals, and then there are the more obvious examples like recreational sports leagues, improv classes, or even drinking games that manufacture excuses for adults to play. I would even entertain the argument that something like TikTok thrives because it fills the void of playfulness that diminishes everyday life. And what is at the core of comedy standards such as standup, satire, or even a dad joke if not an injection of playfulness into the mundanity of daily life, current events, or common language? Somewhere at the bottom of this list, perhaps the very bottom, are the fleeting moments where we veer off-course for just a moment, just to mention that we'd like to play, because if we can't find a way to skip skipping it, and we don't know to just do the things we love to do, then at the very least we can keep acknowledging what's missing until we're ready to jump back in.

reading clearout (june 2022, part one)

Let's get June rolling with a few thoughts on a couple of recent reads.

Severance by Ling Ma (April 2022)

This novel follows a millennial (!) living in NYC as an epic pandemic (!!) slowly grinds modern society to a halt. Ling Ma's fictional world gripped by "Shen Fever" bears some resemblance to the reality we all know as COVID-19 (there are quite a few prescient moments in this 2018 release) but their version of The New Normal holds much more of a post-apocalyptic meaning relative to our own. For the most part I enjoyed reading Severance, though I would have preferred if the structure had placed greater emphasis on detailing the experience of living through the pandemic.

Some may suspect that I choose this book solely for the plot's resemblance to the post-2020 reality, which may be true but seems unlikely (I haven't sought out any other fiction set in a pandemic). Others might associate Severance to the otherwise unrelated television show of the same name, which I mention because I happen to know one of the show's stars, but I don't think this is why I read the book, either. (In fact, I have no idea how I ended up reading the book.) All that said, I did notice a shared feature of both book and show - despite enjoying the experience of consuming each, I didn't get the sense that my most urgent questions were always front of mind for the creators of these works. As mentioned, with the book I was left wondering about the pandemic itself; with the show my main question was why a company existed such that it required its employees to undergo the procedure. I don't bring these up as criticisms (or maybe I don't want to admit that I am being critical) but I do think both products would improve with a slight shift of emphasis in these directions. I think it's worth reinforcing a specific point as I speak of these examples - the hardest thing for a creator is understanding what makes their work interesting to someone else, and I suspect a lot of good work never reaches its full potential because the creator is either unwilling or unable to make the necessary concessions to acknowledge an audience's interest.

Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life by Yiyun Li (February 2022)

Li collects a series of essays written during a period of her life when she battled suicidal depression, a struggle which included at least one hospitalization. There are some searing moments in Dear Friend, but there are also passages told from a certain distance, which left me with the impression that Li pulled this book together as a way to continue progressing on her journey. My notes are a mix of mundane observations seemingly unrelated to this book (such as how travelers always leave home hoping to return as a different person) and insights that hint at rough drafts of a thesis statement (such as her question of why we hide from the unanswerable like 'what makes us forget the good things in life?'). There is also plenty here that reflects on the meaning of writing, including an observation that one specific virtue of the craft is the way it necessarily challenges an author's tendency toward self-protection. What I will remember from this compelling read are all the brief moments where I felt like I had glimpsed a hint of a hard-earned wisdom - that a person who isn't living for others doesn't necessarily live for the self, since such a thing is a particular skill; that the understanding between people always threatens a break, for understanding enables the worst form of silence; that the moment we feel like we know a person is the moment we lose them, since we throw away our desire to learn more about another.