Fernando Gros's Blog, page 6

Savour – Yearly Theme 2023

This New Year finds me back in the Japanese Alps after a pandemic-enforced absence. I’m sitting at my desk by the window, looking out as the wind blows last night’s dusting of snow off the pine trees behind my home.

I arrived having already chosen my annual theme for 2023. I’d even written a (rather long) essay explaining my chosen word. (And if you’re curious to know what these themes are about, you can read an explanation here.)

But as I settled into the snow, found solitude on the mountain, carving turns in the mist, and joy in shared meals with the family in a warm cabin, I wondered if my chosen word, Harmony, was too obvious. Was it too close to previous choices, and too simple in what it asked of the coming year?

I needed something less comforting and more challenging.

What Was Missing In 2022

As 2022 drew to a close I kept thinking about what a sad, exhausting year it had been. That was true. But in going through my diary entries, journals, and notes, I was reminded that there were also a lot of good experiences.

I was travelling again. Spending time with friends, after so long. Cooking and enjoying some great meals. Staying healthy. And generally experiencing a comfortable and somewhat luxurious life.

Yet somehow it had all felt a bit joyless. So often I felt rushed, stressed, focused on what could go wrong. Of course, many things did go wrong. There was sickness and sadness. There were cancelled flights. The relentless chain of chores wore on.

Even when everything went well I wasn’t enjoying it. There were beautiful days on either side of grief’s darkest moments. There were trips that went smoothly and with all the luxury of past travel. And there were glorious meals (and delightful music and films, and books, and TV shows).

Life was still throwing good things in my direction. I just wasn’t stopping to savour them.

Savour – the Yearly Theme For 2023

The problem has been obvious for a while. Spending too much time looking at screens, and in my own head, and comparing the present reality with what could’ve been. Living the slices of life that were left over after the pandemic shredded my dreams.

It’s a tired story.

I was worried about skiing again, after a long break. But back on the mountain, things went surprisingly well. I’d been so concerned about my fitness, being older, forgetting the technique. But out on the slope there was just the sound of the wind, my skis slicing through the snow, occasionally my breath on the longer runs.

Mostly there was nothing. Just me, in my body, enjoying the activity.

I was savouring the moment. But I was also empty enough to permit savouring to happen. There was mental freedom and physical embodiment. It was disarming, deeply emotional, and ever so relaxing.

Savouring Can’t Be Instagrammed

We most closely associate the idea of savouring with food. “Savour” comes from the Latin word for “taste”. But oddly, when we think about sharing food experiences now we revert to photos and images. We don’t describe the taste of food; we share photos of it.

But taste is an inherently sensual experience. Whenever we think of something we want to savour – the feeling of sinking into a hot bath, sand beneath our toes on a summer’s day, a loved one’s hand in ours – these are all bodily experiences.

To savour something is to be interested in it and to make room to enjoy it. We choose to savour, to linger over a flavour, to identify a smell, to appreciate a moment of sensual delight.

Restaurants are designed to make savouring possible. Same for cinemas. These spaces give you permission to enjoy the experience you’re about to have.

Having A Savoury Reputation

There’s also an older, much less used meaning of the word “savour”, which is connected to the idea of reputation. We might describe a neighbourhood or perhaps a company as having an “unsavoury reputation”, meaning they are known for distasteful or immoral behaviour; literally, acting in bad taste.

Taste is an unpopular idea now. We like to think we’re all equals. That one person’s tastes aren’t better than another’s. And we’re aware how, historically, taste has been used as a way to impose class structures and racial divides and to entrench existing privileges.

And yet we still have the problem of how to behave in the world. How to choose what we value. Which experiences to seek out. Which products to buy. Which services to support.

Even our most aesthetic choices are not neutral. Our taste, our preferences, our choices, matter.

Savour Thankfulness

All this reminds me of the Japanese habit of saying “Itadakimasu” before every meal. It’s not just giving thanks for the food, but for the whole supply chain and for every effort (and sacrifice) that made the meal possible.

Savouring can pull us into a much deeper experience of the things we consume and, more importantly, the life we choose to live.

I’m not confident 2023 will be an easier year than its predecessor. Life still feels so unsettled. But it could be a better and more satisfying year. I feel that by choosing to slow down and savour the good moments, I can find more joy and delight in each passing day. That alone would be enough to make 2023 an improvement on 2022.

Looking Back On Previous Themes

The theme for 2022 was Tensegrity. I was expecting a challenging year and 2022 threw everything at me. This theme helped me navigate all those challenges and course correct as the year’s surprises were revealed. It showed why a theme, which is adaptable to life’s uncertainties is so much more powerful and useful than a set of goals which you might be forced to drop once circumstances change.

If you want to look at previous themes, you can read about them here,

2022 – Tensegrity
2021 – Imagination
2020 – Momentum
2019 – Conviction
2018 – Simple

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The 2022 Blogging Review

Having already published my standard yearly reviews (a personal review and the State of the Apps), I wanted to try something new this year. This 2022 Blogging Review highlights the most popular articles and what went into the writing of this site’s content.

The Numbers Behind The 2022 Blogging Review

In 2022 I published 33 articles (including this one), down from 45 in 2021 and 50 in 2020. The breaks I took in January and from August to October were the main reason for this drop, of course.

Readers are still mostly desktop-based (52%). Mobile readers are overwhelmingly on iPhone (59%). There’s an even gender split: 51% to 49% (Google doesn’t offer any more detailed figures on gender). As for journeys completed around the sun, the largest slice of readers were 25–34 years (25%), then 18–24 (24%), 35–44 (19%), 45–54 (15%), 55 to 64 (9%) and over 65 (6%).

Most Popular Articles of 2023

Looking at the statistics, five articles stood out as attracting significantly more readers this year.

De Tocqueville And The Habits Of The Heart – I found myself re-reading Alexis De Tocqueville’s magisterial Democracy in America almost by accident. But it proved to be a very happy accident indeed as I found a number of really useful ideas, such as the concept of habits of the heart, which are practices that not only help us individually, but also make us better able to contribute to society.

The Future Of Twitter – written back in April, when the story of Elon Musk buying Twitter grew serious, this long piece found me trying to cover the story and piece together some history of the platform and how to arrived at what it is today. One of the most satisfyingly journalistic pieces I’ve published on this site.

Is Personal Branding Just Bullshit? – Although not the rantiest rant of 2022 (that award goes to my post-Oscars tirade, The Slap), this piece did find me particularly ticked off at the way in which personal branding is misrepresented. All of us, especially those who work for money, have some sort of personal brand, whether or not we choose to think of it that way.

How To Read More Books – in recent years a startling number of people have expressed frustration at being unable to focus on reading books. Here I gave some practical ideas on how to fill your life with more reading.

Why You Should WOOP – would you adopt a habit if it was shown scientifically to strengthen your state of mind and improve your chances of being happy? Then why not try WOOP?

The Rest Of 2022’s Articles

In the first half (approximately) of 2022 I wrote a monthly summary of my reading. You can see what I read in January, February, March, April, May, June, and July. I’m going to post a mega-article in January 2023, listing all my reading during the second half.

Grief, and relocating halfway around the world, dominated 2022 for me. It took many drafts to get my Leaving London article right, since there were so many experiences to compress into it. A few sleepless nights went into revising The Time Machine, which was about the way grief challenges the way we remember past experiences.

How to experience more creativity in our lives has been a theme since the early days of this blog. I believe the more we tap into our creativity, the better we are able to be true to ourselves and be our best selves in the world.

Mission Critical is an example of this kind of thinking, while Sympathetic Magic was a case study in pushing creativity to the limit. Better Every Day highlighted how creative thinking can help us strengthen our mindset. Finally, Living in the Long Moment showed how creatively tweaking our sense of history can help us build a more resilient sense of self and live more openly and generously.

I’ve always been fascinated by the way technology shapes our culture, and in recent years I’ve started to wonder how we can heal our relationship with technology. How To Think About Technology explored this directly.

A Post-Twitter World was one of several articles this year reflecting on the increasingly untenable nature of being very online. I often reflecting on the state of blogging, too, such as in How This Blog Has Changed and Share Cropping in the SEO Wasteland. Creation Matters More Than Curation explored the way in which ideas about online content have shifted and evolved in the past decade.

My Favourite Article of 2022

My personal favorite from 2022 was Daddy’s Home by St Vincent. I don’t write many reviews, and seldom do those reviews talk about music. This is odd because music is so important to my life.

I also don’t write enough about how I change my mind, which I do often, sometimes spectacularly.

St Vincent is my favourite contemporary musician. But I was disappointed in her latest album. Then I realised I was wrong. And I am glad I wrote the reasons why.

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2022 Review – The Year Of Tensegrity

The Holmes and Rahe stress scale is a psychological tool developed in the late 1960s to assess a patient’s risk of physical illness as a result of life stress. It lists 43 life events and assigns them stress scores from 11 to 100. You look over your last year and add up the scores from all the events you experienced. If your total is under 150, you’re probably OK. In the 150–300 range you’re at moderate risk of illness. Over 300, you’re at risk of developing an illness.

My score for 2022 is 511.

Yes, it’s been quite the year!

2022 The Year Of Tensegrity

This was a year of sad goodbyes. I said the final goodbye to my mother. I said goodbye to my home in London, and along with it all the unfulfilled dreams, personal and professional, that I had about living there again. I said goodbye to a beloved pet. And I said goodbye, at least for the time being, to most of my belongings. They have been on ships and in storage since the middle of the year, along with the rest of my things that have been in storage since 2019.

This year stripped me right down to the bare essentials of life.

My theme for the year, Tensegrity, was drawn from my pilates practice. Tensegrity describes the way our body is held together through a network of structures that make use of both tension and flexibility. We’re at our best when we’re both strong and supple.

Since the pandemic began I’ve been doing a pretty bare bones form of movement exercise. A mat, a roller, a block, and video lessons.

I chose Tensegrity as my theme because I felt uncertain and off-balance about the year ahead. I foresaw challenges that I might not be able to fix or resolve. But I hoped to grow stronger through the experience of moving through the year.

Tensegrity is a term used to describe a system of balance and support. It is based on the idea that our bodies, relationships and lives are in constant evolution and require constant readjustments. Tensegrity can be used to maintain stability during times of uncertainty, change, and grief.

When considering this theme last year, I said, “The tensions we live with never fully resolve.”

How true that turned out to be.

On Creating Structure

I had a few other hopes for 2022. The pandemic and perpetual working from home had turned every aspect of life in 2021 into one big amorphous blog. Writing about the kind of schedule I wanted to create for the year, I identified three changes.

1. How can I add holidays back into my life?


2. How can I feel the seasons of the year again?


3. How can I make my days more colorful and creative?

The changes worked fairly well in the first half of the year. I took my digital sabbatical every seventh week and cut down greatly on screen time. I used that to create momentum for more creativity and play. And I took more breaks, days and weeks off, which gave me more time to observe the seasons of year, especially the wonderful spring and wildly hot summer London had this year.

So, the first half of the year found me trying new recipes in the kitchen, drawing and painting, writing more creative non-fiction and poetry, making music for the fun of it, building Lego projects, reading for pleasure, tending the garden, silently sitting in the park enjoying the birds and clouds and flowers, or playing with our pet hamster.

But the moment I got on my one-way flight out of London I torched the whole thing. Not consciously, of course. We never do that, do we? But once I was in Melbourne, living out of a suitcase in a serviced apartment, I just forgot about those three questions. The habit tracking, the intentional structure, the daily writing, all fell away and life just happened to me.

And kept happening, over and over again.

What I learnt over and over again is that we live perpetually on the cusp of abundance and destruction. It’s a tension we cannot avoid. Our habits can fall apart so quickly. The best we can hope to do is to respect those opposing forces.

The Best Choice Of 2022

One of my favorite metaphors for life comes from an essay by David Sedaris, in which he likens life to a four-burner cooktop. One burner represents career, another family, the third is health, and the last is social life. But the problem is, you only ever have enough fuel to run three of them at a time. Sometimes only two.

Which do you choose?

When I think about what worked well in 2022, it’s clear the family burner was always on, and the decision to make that a priority was wise and worthwhile. I was with my mother during her final days, but was also able to see her on three prior trips this year. I accompanied my spouse on another career-defining (for her) move. I made three trips to visit my daughter in the US and share deep and wonderful experiences with her. And I cared for our hamster Espi in her final beautiful months of life.

I also managed to write a lot, attend some great writing workshops, and even resurrect some writing projects that went into pandemic-enforced hiatus.

When the time to grieve came I was able to lean into writing again, filling up the pages of my literary journal with sadness and rage and all the conversations I’ll never have with my mother. Those pages found me at my lowest but also accompanied me as I travelled slowly up the other side of the emotional hill.

The Need To Add Enjoyment

A few weeks ago I found myself at Melbourne airport, going from the First Class lounge to seat 1A on a flight to Adelaide. The whole experience was joyless. I wondered how I’d become so jaded. Grief was partly to blame. As was the amount of travel I’d done this year, after so long being grounded and at home.

But there was something else. Everything felt provisional, temporary, and so joyless.

I love the word enjoyment. When you break it down, en-joy-ment, it’s not just a feeling but a process. We choose to possess joy, to own it, to make room for it.

I spent a lot of the final quarter of this year thinking about enjoyment and how to add more of it to my life in 2023. Again, my year’s theme of Tensegrity helped me here. I wasn’t trying to erase the grief, or balance it out. Rather, I was seeing how the fullest expression of life contains both the sadness and the joy in their deepest expression, and how that makes us emotionally stronger and more supple at the same time.

Some Things I enjoyed in 2022

I tend to bemoan how much TV I watch, but it was another wonderful year for the small screen. Some of my favourite shows had solid new seasons. Hacks was great again. The Crown had a good course correction after some bad casting in recent seasons. The Marvelous Mrs Maisel is still my favourite thing on TV, even if season 4 didn’t shine as brightly as previous seasons.

But my picks for the three best things on TV this year were a bit less sparkly. I was blown away by The Bear, with its tight dramatic action, incredible editing, and being stripped to the essentials of story telling. I couldn’t get enough of Extraordinary Attorney Woo for being such a winsome yet confronting depiction of neurodivergency and for taking time to explore some profound social and ethical issues. And I loved everything about Andor, which at last is a Star Wars product made for grown-ups who don’t need long expository explanations or relentless east egg references for every obscure detail of the franchise.

As for music, Taylor Swift clearly had the best pop album of 2022. Jasmine Myra’s Horizons was my pick for jazz album of the year. But there was so much good music. You can check out my playlist of the year here on Apple Music.

I didn’t see enough films to really justify making a list, which I guess means I must add that to the changes I’ll make in 2023!

Looking Towards 2023

The Holmes and Rahe stress scale doesn’t even list every stressful event I underwent this year. There’s no score for the death of a pet, or the serious illness of a close friend. No points are added for living through a pandemic. Or the general overwhelming sensation we often feel thanks to all the digital technologies that fill our waking minds.

The theme of tensegrity reminded me, over and over again, in a calm and reassuring way, that I didn’t need to force things, look for easy resolutions, or avoid the pain and grief. The tension, the stress, were just part of this season of life. It will pass and hopefully I’ll be wiser and more adaptable because of it.

In a few days I’ll announce my yearly theme for 2023. In choosing a word and a direction for the coming year, I was painfully aware that the stress, tension, and feeling of being pulled in different directions isn’t going away any time soon. There’s no simple way to balance things out.

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State Of The Apps 2022

December is the month when we assess our relationships and the value they bring us. This year, perhaps more than any other, feels like the right time to look at the relationships we have with the tools that power our lives, especially the apps we rely on every day.

Time For State Of The Apps 2022

The categories for this year’s review are mostly unchanged from 2021. I’ve added two new categories: Mindset and Travel.

The apps I use changed a lot in 2022. More than in recent years. I hit a creative wall mid-year, relocated from London to Melbourne, and took a break from blogging. This forced me to rethink the apps I used and how I used them.

You’ll notice that Mac and iOS interoperability is now a huge theme for me. Wherever possible I put my focus on apps that work and update seamlessly across all my devices.

Finally, if you see something missing, the chances are I’m just using the default Apple iOS app for that purpose. I quite like Apple’s Clock, Mail, and Weather apps, for example. Safari is still my browser of choice. All these apps have great interfaces and keep getting better.

Anyway, on to the review!

Writing – Thinking – Reading

Writing is the core of my work these days, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that things change slowly here. I still write in Scrivener, read most of my books on Kindle PaperWhite (mine had a water-based misadventure in 2021, but is still working well), capture highlights with Readwise, make notes in Obsidian, and use Bear for ad hoc writing, such as drafts of letters or other copy. And I still use Wordy for the human copyediting of each article I post.

But there have been some changes.

First, I’ve been on the beta program for Reader by Readwise, a new RSS tool, which has taken over my day-to-day reading of articles, essays, and news stories. Everything goes into Reader and is then read later on iPhone or iPad. This has replaced my previous use of Safari’s Reading List.

There will be a full article on Reader in the new year. But for now I’ll say it’s great to have a smart, well-designed RSS reader, which is integrated into my note-taking workflow.

Reader also has some AI-based tools built into what they call Ghostwriter. This lets you create quick summaries of your highlights, or even entire articles. You can even output summaries in haiku format!

I’ve also added Word back into my arsenal, specifically to use the Writefull AI tools. Once I have a good second draft of an article, I copy it into Word and run some of the tools in order to find copy suggestions and discover better subheadings.

I’ve also been trying out Lex, another AI writing assistant, when I get stuck on an article. Almost everything I get from Lex is useless. But it always manages to prompt me to write again.

Overall, I think AI assistance will become an increasing part of my writing routine. Not as a replacement for writing or creating ideas. But as an aid for tasks I struggle with, such as choosing headings, or as a substitute for the kind of early feedback I’d get if I were working with an editor throughout the writing process.

At the other end of the spectrum, I’ve been keeping a literary journal in 2022. This started during a workshop with Sabrina Orah Mark. The idea is to write an entry every day, but as an explicitly literary activity, a journal meant for others to read one day. For this purpose I ink up my Pilot Custom 823 with one of the Iroshizuku inks I use (a different colour for each city I frequent), and a sage green dot-lined softcover Leuchtturm1917 A5 Medium notebook.

Productivity

Not having a dedicated workspace due to the pandemic forced me back into using Omnifocus as my main personal productivity tool. The question of whether to use a paper or digital productivity system is a huge one.

But when you’re facing constant interruptions, a digital system can be more robust. The way I use Omnifocus is more tightly regulated and focused, if you like. I’m not putting everything I can imagine in there. Just the tasks I must do and the most important projects at any time.

I’ve also taken to doing a lot of mind-mapping in MindNode. This started last year and has grown in 2022. I have a large mind-map with all my current commitments and smaller maps for each project. MindNode lets you turn a map into an outline, which is great for then creating the necessary tasks in OmniFocus.

Notion made a slight comeback for me in 2022 as I used it to hold travel information and share schedules. The Kanban display option has kept me using it for my editorial calendar.

I still love Fantastical as a calendar, and the way in which it handles time zones has helped me a lot in 2022. (Yes, I’m looking at you, South Australia, with your weird 30-minute time zone difference.) But I’ve stopped using Timeular to track time.

There were just too many disruptions in 2022. Time tracking has always worked best for me when I’m optimising a well-established routine. But routine was seldom seen in my 2022 experience.

And while most of my productivity tools are digital, I still make daily notes and to-do lists inside a Hobonichi Techo cousin (Japanese edition).

Mindset

After I almost abandoned Calm in 2021, the app way back into my life in the second half of 2022. Grief disrupted my sleep, and the app helped me address that. I also got into some of Calm’s mindfulness courses.

Much of my education time was spent on Zoom and conference calls in 2020 and 2021, but learning became app-ified again in 2022. I got into Masterclass in a big way, on iPad and especially AppleTV. I also spent a fair bit of time using Domestika. I particularly appreciate the global diversity of instructors on that platform.

Communication

Zoom still played a role in my learning as I returned to Japanese classes in 2022 and attended a variety of writing workshops and other events.

After a brief adventure with Line I went back to iMessages. As in 2021, this remains a category in which the default Apple apps shine.

The year ends with Twitter in chaos and the future of apps looking more uncertain than ever. I’ve been exploring the alternatives but none seems even slightly appealing. Sadly, most of the people I used to enjoy reading and interacting with on Twitter are no longer there. The platform drives little traffic to this site. New subscribers seem to come from other places. It’s hard to imagine Twitter remaining central to my digital communication strategy.

What do continue to be central are WordPress and MailChimp, which drive this site and my newsletter. In 2022 I dropped the monthly newsletter and refreshed the design on the subscription version of the blog.

But I feel a little hemmed in by both these tools, as they have changed and evolved so much since I started using them. WordPress has so many ways to break your site if you change or update it. MailChimp is powerful but unnecessarily complicated to use. I find myself reluctant to make changes in either, just to avoid the time I must spend in getting myself up to date with how they work.

Media

In 2021 I lamented the time I’d spent watching streaming TV services, and 2022 wasn’t much different. I spent big chunks of the year alone, packing, grieving, or adapting to a new location. TV was a solace. But I still want to rethink the time I devote to this in 2023.

Once again, Apple’s options reign, with my listening habits tuned to Apple Music and Podcasts. In 2022 I was particularly impressed with some of the curated playlists Apple put together in the jazz category, including New Latitudes, Outer Orbits, and Spectrum.

I still read the New York Times and Washington Post via their apps, but I’ve given up on all the other apps as I save everything into the aforementioned Reader app now. I’ve also increasingly found myself preferring the paper versions of magazines when available. Paper just seems to encourage more adventures and serendipitous reading – at least for me.

Creativity

Lightroom Classic and Photoshop still drive my photo workflow. Procreate is for my occasional forays into digital art on the iPad Pro, and Logic Pro and Dorico were my choices on the rare occasions I was able to do a little songwriting. I’m still using Amazing Slow Downer, the Boss Tone Studio, and WAZA-Air binaural headphones for guitar practice.

I did manage to create some music with the PolyEnd tracker, which is a standalone sampler sequencer that works differently to regular timeline-based music devices. It’s something like making music with a spreadsheet.

I also started using Melodics, a music learning platform that gamifies playing a keyboard or drum pads. My keyboard skills were getting rusty after closing down my studio in 2019, and this has been a fun little way to add some music learning to my evenings.

Like everyone else, I spent a hot minute playing with Lensa’s Magic Avatar mode. It was fun, but not $60+ a year worth of fun.

In the last few weeks I have started playing with Ableton Note, an iOS app, which lets you quickly sketch out beats and basic song ideas. I’ve been using it on flights and while sitting around at airports.

Travel

The pandemic changed travel, at least for a little while. This saw me using apps such as VeriFly to check off quarantine and visa requirements for the UK and US, and DPD for Australia.

For Japan, re-entry was via the new Visit Japan Web. At present it is browser based, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes an app in future. Japan also nailed it with an excellent, fast, paperless entry system covering all three stages of quarantine, visa, and customs.

Once again, my favourite travel app was Flightly. I love the way it helps you track your travel history and provides real-time updates on your flights.

It was interesting to compare each airline’s apps as well. American is probably my favourite, followed by Emirates. The Qantas app also works well. JAL had an excellent app for international flights, but ever since they consolidated international flights into their domestic app I haven’t been able to get it to work properly.

But what JAL does brilliantly is the app for managing food orders and shower reservations in its First Class lounge. You scan a QR code at your table, and your order is brought to you in minutes. You use the same app to book a shower stall if you want to freshen up before your next flight.

Food, Health, and Home

As in 2021, Erika Bloom’s Membership and Apple Fitness+ helped me keep myself in some sort of physical shape this year. Right now I’m enjoying the Fitness+ pre-ski season workouts.

My HomeKit automations were packed up when I left London in mid-year, along with my Anova Sous Vide cooker and Meater+ smart thermometer. Same with my Homepod mini. I miss asking Siri to turn on lights or play a favorite music playlist.

A Few Important Tools

Last year I expressed a desire to dedicate this review in future as much to physical tools as to digital apps. This is part of a broad desire to live a less screen-based life.

Well, I didn’t get there in 2022.

That was partly because of my relocation and all the travel. For the time being a digital focus, especially with regards to writing and personal productivity, makes the most sense.

But I still long to change this, to be less dependent on screen, trackpad, and finger gesture. I miss being messier, more tactile, and of course, less easily distracted.

The Future of Apps

It seems inevitable that in 2023 we’ll see more AI-like features being added to apps. I’ve already mentioned the ones baked into Reader by Readwise’s Ghostwriter features, and Writeful’s editing options. We’ll see this kind of stuff appearing more and more in all sorts of creative tools.

Personally, I’m a bit more excited about Widgets and Shortcuts. Apple keeps making these easier to use and I like entering apps from the perspective of a specific need. My iPad use is mostly built around widgets now and it feels so smooth to use the device that way.

Once again, the State of Apps didn’t highlight any virtual reality or augmented reality apps. I’m still skeptical about the value of VR beyond limited gaming and entertainment spaces. But AR could become an important part of life soon. Not because of any headset or glasses, but thanks to my recent experience using the new Apple AirPods Pro. But that’s a topic for an article in 2023!

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Living In The Long Moment

No word has been more overused in the last few years than “unprecedented.” It was used to describe everything from the pandemic to the storming of the Capitol building in Washington. We all joked about how we missed living in “precedented” times.

Don’t know about y’all but I could really go for some precedented times.

— Simon Holland (@simoncholland) August 18, 2020

In a way, this shows the narrowness of our historical focus. We judge history based on our lifetime. Or worse still, a thin slice of life reflected in our recent adulthood. Or when it comes to judging arts and culture, the formative season from middle school to the end of university.

But what if we took a more expansive view of history and our moment within it?

The Long Moment

Instead of defining ourselves in terms of a lifetime, or generation, or favourite decade, what if we had a broader view of our role in history?

This is precisely the idea Krista Tippett suggested in a recent On Being podcast entitled Taking The Long View of Time, which was part of a series of short podcasts called Foundations series. Drawing on the work of Elise Boulding, a sociologist best known for her work in feminism and pacifism, Tippett suggests we should imagine ourselves as part of a 200-year present.

Try this exercise:

Picture the oldest person you’ve met from your family. Maybe a grandparent, a great aunt or uncle, or even a great grandparent. What year were they born? Now picture the youngest person you’ve held in your arms. In what year would they potentially turn 100?

This is the long moment in history that is directly shaping us and which, in turn, we are directly shaping with our own lives.

What Does The Long Moment Mean?

My long moment includes the Spanish Flu, the rise of Authoritarianism in Europe between the wars, and the Civil Rights marches in the US. All of these happened before I was born, but they still reverberate with lessons relevant to the situation we find ourselves in today.

It will also include epochal changes we currently live on the edge of experiencing. The challenge to address climate change, perhaps with a major shift in the kind of energy resources we use. The possibility of human colonies on distant frontiers like the Moon or further afield. A possible shift in the global balance of power. And the relentless advance of technology changing the way we live and work.

All of these, past and present, belong to us and are part of our moment.

“So this is all a very grand way to speak of reality. But the beautiful and mysterious thing I’ve experienced in all of this way of thinking and imagining, this way of cracking time open and seeing its true, manifold nature, is that this actually expands my sense of the possible in the here and the now.”
– Krista Tippet

We Belong More Deeply Than We Know

When I listen to any old ʼ50s jazz tune, it belongs to me. Music made in the future, perhaps with instruments that don’t yet exist, could also belong to me. A Chaplin film could speak to me with the same force as next year’s blockbusters since they both belong to my moment.

It’s easy to feel, as we get older, like we don’t belong anymore. We had our chance. Our moment passed when our youth faded. The present is just weird and strange and enraging.

But only if we choose to see it that way. Only if we tell ourselves we don’t belong.

The long moment reminds us that history moves and changes at a tempo far slower than the world of fashion and marketing and relentless news cycles would have us believe.

After all, we’re just human.

We like to imagine we’re radically different to our great grandparents, but we have so much more in common with them. And we’ll have as much in common with our great grandchildren.

We might dress differently and surround ourselves with different kinds of devices. But in terms of what matters, in our quest for meaning, our search for love, and our response to the challenges facing the world we inhabit, we are so much more alike.

Which reminds us that we still belong, profoundly, to our own ongoing long moment.

The post Living In The Long Moment appeared first on Fernando Gros.

A Post-Twitter World

Twitter now faces a perilous future. It could succumb to catastrophic technical failure because of the vast reduction in its work force. A few weekends ago the platform had a “drinking on the deck of the titanic” vibe as people said their goodbyes expecting an imminent demise.

Twitter was already losing money and stands to lose a lot more; advertisers are withdrawing due in part to the massive cuts in content moderation and ad support staff. It is subject to strict FTC oversight and any failure to comply, again made more likely by reduced staff numbers, could cripple cashflow. Or it could fail to comply with European GDPR requirements, for the same reasons. Finally, there’s been an exodus of users and even the remaining Twitter employees, who simply don’t want to put up with Musk’s antics.

This begs the question: should you stay or should you go? And if you go, where will you go?

When the drama first unfolded, I sat at my dining table in Adelaide and tried to write something for those of us who used to love Twitter. The words didn’t come easily.

It’s a big table. Sturdy. Heavy. Made from old railway sleepers that bear the cracks and scars of years out in the elements. I bought it from a furniture maker in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, in 1994. It was made from reclaimed timber laid down over a hundred years before. The table predates the popularization of the internet, and the wood is older than the advent of radio and mass media.

Sitting at that table, I started to wonder whether the question was bigger than what you should do about Twitter.

Maybe the real question is whether you should be on social media at all.

Twitter: A Culture Company?

Back in April, after rumors first surfaced about Musk buying Twitter, I wrote a long piece on its potential future. It still feels relevant, especially on matters of content moderation and verification.

Since then it seems Musk’s big error was to assume he was buying a technology business. If Twitter was just about the tech, then you could understand how cutting costs, raising prices, and driving efficiencies could improve the company. That’s how an engineer or production manager would tackle the problem. It’s been done to turn around underperforming factories for centuries.

But Twitter isn’t primarily a technology company. It’s a media company. Actually, it’s a culture company. It runs on technology but its problems are human problems. It’s less like a factory and more like a country. Twitter’s fundamental difficulty is human behaviour, and especially the behaviours people exhibit while on the platform.

You know those mesmerising and ever-shifting patterns made by large flocks of birds? They’re called murmations. It turns out that groups of people online act collectively, to filter ideas and form beliefs, in ways that are very reminiscent of avian murmations. As Renée DiResta explains in this piece from Noēma, entitled How Online Mobs Act Like Flocks Of Birds, platforms such as Twitter have to “…prioritize rethinking design.”

The problems are simply too complex to solve with reactive content moderation policies. The culture of the platforms must change, and deep research is required into how people behave on them. It also requires changes to the behaviour that is rewarded and the incentives on the platform.

Of course, Twitter was trying to do this. It was conducting design and research initiatives to change the platform’s culture, such as Spaces (social audio) and Communities (interest-led sub-groups). It was also building incentive structures to reward content creators, such as Super Follows (a fan pays support service) and a Tip Jar (micropayments).

The teams working on all those changes have been laid off.

Twitter: The Hell Site

It’s popular now to refer to Twitter as the hell site. But it wasn’t always like that. Had it been, it would never have gained popularity. More specifically, it would never have been so popular with the kind of users who flocked to it early on, the artists and creatives and designers, and the media, marketing and advertising people who brought so much life and verve to the platform in its early days.

Twitter didn’t initially flourish because of news or politics. These came to dominate the platform later.

Back then Twitter was full of TEDTalks rather than commentary on TV news. The platform was upbeat, aspirational, and funny. People talked about their lives, and their lives were interesting and worth talking about.

A friend who runs a social media agency often used to ask, “What will happen to Twitter when it becomes mainstream?” Of course, now we know.

Despite being far smaller than Facebook, Twitter became more culturally influential. But it had to grow and attract more users and revenue, in order to appeal to and appease investors. It was never clear, at least back then, how to do that. Twitter was and still is a great product and a terrible business (as Kara Swisher has often said).

It pivoted to become more of a news service. It increased the ad business and tweaked the algorithm to tighten “engagement.”

We know how all that worked out. Twitter became an amplifier of outrage, a megaphone for the megalomaniacal, a killing floor for the victims of trolls.

Twitter Was A Tool For Demarginalisation

This past week or so I’ve noticed a lot of people expressing their gratitude for Twitter. It helped people make friends and land jobs. It gave visibility to people who felt marginalised in society because of their background, beliefs, or other aspects of their identity.

While so much of the debate around verification was centred on celebrities and journalists, looking again at who is verified is a reminder that the symbol is attached to so many academics, activists, and artists; the people who shape culture and make society better.

Of course, Twitter became an enabler of a lot of hate and misinformation. Sadly Twitter failed to get safety right from Gamergate onwards.

But, it was also an outstanding tool for hearing directly from experts, like in the early days of the pandemic, when many news outlets and public health officials lagged behind the advice of scientists and disease experts.

And, it gave us access to people in all sorts of fields whose voices seldom get heard in an increasingly narrow global media landscape.

We can all do with less of the toxicity. But can we do without the positives the platform provided? Would we want to?

The Latest Exodus

There’s was some buzz around Mastodon as an alternative to Twitter. This happened before, in 2018, and nothing came of it. Every few years there is a purported exodus from Twitter. Ello and Peach were touted as potential alternatives in the past. Post and Hive are being talked about now. This time feels a bit different. The exodus feels bigger this time. It includes more people who use social media professionally or as part of their personal brand. Many are trying to be optimistic. But there’s an air of provisionality as well, an “I’m doing this in case Twitter blows up,” kind of vibe.

It’s pretty obvious that Mastodon can’t replicate the network effects of Twitter. It’s hard to be found even when people know to look for you, let alone be discovered. For anyone who has managed to grow their career or personal network on Twitter, or who has sold their art, music, or other products or services thanks to Twitter, the answer will be something other than Mastodon.

This piece from the Columbia Journalism Review highlights what these challenges look like in practice.

On the other hand, it could even be that Twitter eventually thrives. Radical cuts and changes might work. It’s not impossible to imagine Musk hiring a competent CEO, the debt being restructured, a better ad and SAAS business being built, a more vibrant creator economy, third party innovation being built, and Twitter being relaunched after a new IPO.

But whether you choose Musk or “the tusk” the questions remain: why are you there, what do you hope to gain from the experience, and how will behave to get there?

The Real Question Is Not Where, But Why?

Starting again on Mastodon feels exhausting. Tumblr, in its 2022 iteration, looks like fun, and even has micropayments built right in from the first post. But that’s another mountain to climb. Same for somewhere new like Post. A lot of other people are trying to build “the new Twitter” and they may get traction, especially if they hoover up some of talented people Twitter has let go recently. But is it worth investing the time in it?

No, really. Is it worth it?

I’m not a Luddite. I’m not barking at the kids to get off my lawn. I love tech. I love being very online. Whatever direction I take in 2023 (and it’s all up in the air at the moment), it will involve a big internet-focused component.

But must it include social media?

Don’t Let FOMO Drive Your Decisions

With so much turmoil and so many new options emerging, it’s easy to let Fear Of Missing Out, or FOMO, take control. But again, really and truly, what are you missing out on?

Many of us feel like we’re eager to move on, to expand into new opportunities, to get on with living and flourishing again. We’re hungry for new opportunities and prone to worry about missing out on the next big thing.

When FOMO hits it’s worth asking: what do you really fear missing out on? Is it just the next new social media platform? Or is it something deeper, like making the most of the next stage in your life?

The Answer Is In The Work

It could be that Twitter’s woes are our collective blessing; a chance, instead of rushing into the next thing, to pause and ask ourselves what we want from these online para-social relationships.

And as we recalibrate our expectations we can also think about what we have to offer, the contribution we can make, to a better ecosystem of ideas and creativity.

Of course the best place to start is with our work, our real world relationships, and the quality of the life we live every day.

When I think about the times being on Twitter paid off me one thing is clear – those were the times when I had work to share and energy to spare.

Working on myself feels far more important right now than finding the next big thing in social media. Every new signup, every attempt to recreate my social graph somewhere else, is time I could spend doing the work.

Reset Before Engaging

A few years ago I wrote about going for an autumn walk around my Tokyo neighbourhood. People were going about their day and I walked past so many scenes of every day joy. Tokyo isn’t some kind of hedonistic paradise. But in most cases, if you walk around a city and look, you’ll see people enjoying themselves.

Went for a walk. Didn't see one angry person. Saw people smiling. Mothers walking with their kids. A couple holding hands. Co-workers sharing a joke. Old folks chatting. Neighbours saying hello.

Log onto twitter and…

— Fernando Gros (@fernandogros) October 3, 2017

The contrast when I logged onto Twitter was stark. Online life didn’t seem to be a good, or kind, or generous reflection of everyday life. Bad things happen, but in most of our lives they aren’t happening every day, relentlessly, forever.

For a few years now, social media has troubled me. In a way it’s always been troubling. Technology should make our lives better and simpler, not keep up perpetually distracted so our attention can be parceled and sold. That’s why I quit Facebook so long ago. It’s why I took breaks from Twitter over the years. It’s why I’ve quit other platforms as well.

Right now people are fleeing to Twitter alternatives with an evangelical zeal. They hope these platforms will be “better.” They blame Twitter’s algorithm for all the rage and hate. I guess that’s easier than analyzing all the billions of individual choices to contribute to the cultural catastrophe.

I’m not trying to absolve Twitter. The company made a string of bad decisions. But also, there’s an air of “the devil made me do it,” in the way many people describe their relationship to the platform.

The problem here really isn’t Musk or any of the other Twitter CEOs. It’s not the algorithm either. It’s that Twitter became a mirror. And we don’t like what we see. Sure, the mirror is distorted. Maybe even enchanted with dark magic. But, it’s still a mirror.

The post A Post-Twitter World appeared first on Fernando Gros.

Mission Critical

I’ve been thinking lately about my calling, purpose, or vocation. Grief can push you into that headspace, forcing you to revisit past moments of your life. As can relocation, especially moving from one country to another. Or your favourite country suddenly reopening its borders after a pandemic-inspired isolation. Same with major anniversaries, especially if your blog just turned 18, like this one did a few weeks ago.

This is more than enough to make you look back over your life and ask what the point of it is.

I’m not alone. This is the year of quiet-quitting. Everyone is re-assessing their commitments. It’s the year of self-reflection and connecting with your sense of purpose.

Over the years, my work has changed. I’ve been a musician, academic, writer, and photographer, drawing pay checks from making very different things. But despite the varied fields and foci, there’s been a constant set of ideas underpinning everything I’ve done.

People can grow. They can improve. With effort, compassion and support, they can learn and change and evolve.

Work And Love

I’m not drawing a dividing line between the work we do and the people we are. They are intertwined. And they should be. Work shapes our character. It gives us a space in which to thrive and find our value.

“I work hard every day of my life
I work ’til I ache in my bones.”
– Somebody to Love by Queen

The idea of work-life balance is simply a way to address dysfunction. Some people’s work sucks. They work jobs they hate just to pay the bills. Some people use work as an excuse to avoid their family. Others find themselves trapped in careers that were good to begin with but eventually stifled them and suffocated their personality. Balance is another way to talk about the disharmony work can create – forcing a gulf between who you want to be and the way you are.

There is no actual “balance”. Your work and life are not at opposite ends of a seesaw.

There’s a saying attributed to Sigmund Freud, though I’m not sure he actually said it, that goes “the purpose of life is work and love .” Whoever said it, I agree.

Work, not just what we do for money, but all the chores and tasks we take on, and love, not just the people we love, but the love we feel for the things that matter to us, be it art, music, nature, whatever, these shape our relationship to reality. They orient us in the universe. And they fill our lives with meaning. They give us a reason to get out of bed every morning.

The things we do teach us who we are.

Understanding Our Potential

I worked on sound and lighting for a high school production of Pirates of Penzance. My school was known mostly for sports. In my six years, only one theatrical production was staged.

The cast rehearsed a lot. But during the rehearsals, once we’d set up, there wasn’t a lot for the technical crew to do. So I started bringing my guitar and finding a quiet corner of the auditorium to practise in. As we got closer to dress rehearsals, I started plugging my guitar into the PA before the cast turned up. It was cool to hear my playing in that big hall. Then a cast member who also played brought his guitar, and we started having little pre-rehearsal jams, playing songs by bands like The Human League, Queen, and The Style Council.

By the time dress rehearsals started, these little jams had become full-cast singalongs. We’d turn down the hall lights and huddle together at the front of the stage. A bunch of nervous teenagers losing ourselves in music. Eyes closed. Arms draped over shoulders. United in song.

Those moments were beautiful, and for me they were a turning point. Music went from being a private hobby to something much bigger. I realized what music does.

It sets us free. It gives us permission to express ourselves, to open a door to our heart that we usually keep guarded and shut.

I’d never have realized this if I hadn’t volunteered to do something as mundane as putting out microphones and cables for a school musical.

Overcoming Self-Limiting Beliefs

My father has lots of sayings he recycles regularly. My favourite is “Don’t say you can’t when you mean you don’t want to.” It perfectly encapsulates what I’ve come to believe about motivation, desire, and having a growth mindset.

Caroline Dweck did us all a tremendous service by explaining the difference between a growth mindset and self-limiting beliefs. I’ve written before about these important ideas, in a 2020 piece called Have Fewer Beliefs, and a 2021 article entitled How To Maintain Your Motivation.

Our mindset is most clearly revealed in the way we look at failure and disappointment. For example, last night I tried to cook Japanese curry rice. It was the first time I’d cooked this dish in months. There I was in a strange kitchen with a new rice cooker and unfamiliar utensils. The results were okayish. I could be disheartened, say my failure proves that I’ve “lost it” as a cook, that I shouldn’t try.

That’s self-limiting beliefs in action – my one failure saying somehow permanent things about me and supposedly “proving” that who I am cannot change.

“The past is our knowledge, the present our mistake
And the future we always leave too late”
– My Ever Changing Moods by The Style Council

But maybe this disappointment just shows I have some learning to do. Maybe I should re-read the rice cooker’s instruction manual. Maybe I should pay more attention to how this different kitchen works. Maybe the ingredients aren’t the same in a different country. Maybe I just wasn’t concentrating.

Those are the kinds of questions a growth mindset invites you to ask. Since your abilities aren’t fixed, and can change, you’re more likely to see setbacks as an opportunity to learn, add to your talents, and gain a deeper understanding of what you’re doing.

Your mindset shapes how you move through the world.

Thinking And Making

Our culture prioritizes work done with our minds. It’s almost as if a job could be done by a brain in a jar, then it deserves to be more richly rewarded. Work done with our hands and our bodies is so often seen as inferior.

This is an odd notion. For starters, it can’t account for the premium we place on art and music and sport.

Also, it doesn’t explain why there is so much wisdom to be found in the writing of people who work with their hands and their bodies. Some of my favourite books on how to live well are by writers like Matthew Crawford, Gary Rogowski, and Twyla Tharp.

There’s a wisdom that comes from working in the physical world.

A recent New York Times piece, Tea Caddies That Last for Generations, by Vivian Morelli, explores this. Kaikado, a Japanese company, makes metal canisters for storing tea. For six generations, the Yagi family of Kyōto have crafted these canisters. The process of making them requires tremendous skill. And it also opens the door to fascinating insights about craft, education, and how to work well.

“The best craftsmen are not good from the start… They develop their skills over time, and that is how they can continue for a long time.”
– Seiji Yagi

I love Chef’s Table. The Netflix series is so beautifully filmed. All the food, all the dishes, all the restaurants are so inviting. But at its core the series is about creative people finding their voice, their unique contribution, their mission. The wisdom the chefs share is often as compelling as the food they make.

“Memory is very important. It’s a vehicle to get to know who you are inside.”
– Dominique Crenn

The Ever-Changing You

During my twenties, I spent a lot of time in the church scene. I played in various church bands, spent hours praying and bible reading, preached, travelled to Zambia and Zimbabwe to see various kinds of charitable work, went to theological college and trained for the ministry.

Eventually, I became disillusioned. Not so much with the beliefs as with their practical consequences. I grew tired of the negativity, of the harsh view of human nature and human potential. It left so little space for art and creativity and all the small quirks that make us unique and special. And as good as churches were at pointing the finger of judgement at individual “sins”, they were largely unable to address the big things that made so many of our lives miserable, like racism, social inequality, and ecological degradation.

“But even then I knew I’d find a much better place
Either with or without you”
– Don’t You Want Me by The Human League

Still, I started that journey in search of wisdom and I’m thankful I found a lot of it. It was my path into academia and a world of learning. It introduced me to people that I wouldn’t have otherwise met. And it taught me practical skills – meditation, empathetic listening, conflict resolution, and public communication – that I use every day.

I went in hoping to help people live better, and I left with the desire intact. A lot of the early years of this blog was me going through that struggle to find another path.

Thankfully, what science continues to show us, whether it’s epigenetics or neuroplasticity, is that personal growth isn’t some fringe idea. It’s hard wired into the chemistry of our bodies. We have tremendous potential to improve ourselves at almost every stage of life.

As long as we don’t lose hope.

The Future Begins Yesterday

A few years ago, I wrote a series of articles about creativity and mental health. It set the tone for much of my recent writing. This site isn’t a “wellness” blog. But what I share here is born of thinking and making, doing and reflecting, trying something and then figuring out what I can learn from its failure (or occasional success).

Which is to say nothing is changing now beyond an increased commitment to this core idea that’s been behind almost everything I’ve done with my life – people can improve.

This paradigm invites a cautious optimism about us and the systems we create. There’s not enough of that. We’re too quick to buy into the idea that everything is getting worse and there’s nothing we can do about it.

I’m not onboard with cynicism and nihilism. It’s never been appealing. The universe is just too wonderful. There’s too much beauty in the world. People just have too much potential for creativity, and kindness, and love.

The post Mission Critical appeared first on Fernando Gros.

The Time Machine

My mother died in the early hours of September 19th. I’d been with her for much of the day before and into that night. But I wasn’t there at the end. Her hospital bed was by a window. The plants outside reminded me of my garden in Japan. I’d longed to share that garden with her. I like to think that in her final minutes there might’ve been birds chirping outside her window, just as they often did in the early hours outside her home. But I’ll never know.

Regret Is Like A Time Machine

Grief shakes us up in all sorts of ways. Often, it pushes us towards regret. It feels impossible to avoid looking back and wishing things had turned out differently.

On a recent episode of The Happiness Lab podcast, host Laurie Santos described regret as being like a time machine. Santos’s guest, Daniel Pink, suggested that when we get in the Time Machine, we engage in a kind of fabulism, imagining different possible futures as a result of past decisions. How our life could’ve been better – or why it’s worse.

The question isn’t so much whether to have regrets or not, or even whether to jump into the Time Machine. It’s what we do once we’re in the past, once we’re looking at our past selves, and once we’re evaluating the decisions we made.

Decisions Beg Questions

On 10 September, I was packed and ready to leave for the US early the next day. My brother called to say Mum was in hospital, and the prognosis was not good.

Cancelling my trip was easy. The decisions that flowed consequentially from that were harder but also navigable.

But over the following weeks I had occasion to revisit decisions I’d made over the years, from moving away and living so far from my parents, to how I’d comported myself on trips back “home”.

I’d made the decision, years ago, to maintain a kind of emotional hygiene around those family visits. To ask a lot of questions about the past, to hold space for the sharing of generational wisdom, to not leave anything unsaid, and to not leave with unresolved conflicts.

None of that made watching my mother die feel any less sad or painful. And it does nothing to assuage the tragedy of knowing I’ll experience many things in the future that I would’ve loved to share with her but won’t be able to.

But it did seem to mean that when grief threw me into the Time Machine, I was able to be a little kinder to my past self.

The Question Longevity Asks

My mother was 35 years older than me. Assuming I have the good fortune to live as long as she did, the question arises of what those years will look like. That’s a lot of life still left to live.

And before we get into the question of how longevity has changed, and whether, now we can expect to live longer as medical care improves, there’s another question: how have our ideas of what we can do at each stage of life evolved?

When my mother reached 60, she was still regularly going to the swimming pool and also doing aqua-aerobics. That was unusual for parents of my generation. But we’re now used to people that age and far older being fit and active.

Assuming you have 30 or 40 years of adulthood left, or maybe more, what will you do now to help make those years as healthy and fulfilling as possible? It’s a question I’ve been asking for a while now, and it suddenly feels so much more urgent.

Can You Live Without Regret?

It’s become popular to say you have no regrets or to aspire to a regret-free life. Sometimes that’s associated with not having to explain yourself or not feeling guilty about your choices. But can we really live with no regrets? Should that even be a goal?

For one thing, as you get older, it’s statistically harder to have no regrets because you simply make so many choices, mistakes, and failures over the course of a lifetime.

Perhaps the important question isn’t whether you have regrets, but what you do with them.

Or to put it another way: When you get in the Time Machine, what are you hoping to achieve?

Too often we use regret to justify a kind of indulgent magical thinking. The best case scenario seldom happens in real life, so why do allow ourselves to imagine it might’ve been possible in situations we regret?

Or we get into the Time Machine to punish ourselves. To confirm some negative story we have about our own lives.

But if we can’t avoid the Time Machine, then maybe we can get into it with a different motivation. Maybe we travel to learn? To understand ourselves better? To ask what we can do better next time?

Make More Time Machines

Primer is my favourite time travel movie. It’s odd. It doesn’t really make sense. But that’s part of its appeal because the whole idea of time travel is so weird and gets weirder the more you think about it.

In one moment of the film, you see one of the characters dragging the parts needed to make a time machine into a time machine. Why is he doing that? What will it achieve? That never really gets explained.

But could we use the reality-altering power of grief and regret to build our own time machines?

On my final day in Adelaide, I spread my mother’s ashes off the coast near one of her favourite coastal spots. It’s a place she loved to walk and also somewhere I’ve often gone to take photos on my many trips to Adelaide over the years.

At some point I’ll set up a tripod and point my camera at the horizon over the waters that became my mother’s final resting place. The photos I take then will sit as part of a larger body of images made in that location. And they’ll connect the experiences we shared together, but also the experiences we had in that same location at separate times.

They will be a Time Machine.

The post The Time Machine appeared first on Fernando Gros.

Books I Read In July

I travelled a lot last month – from London to Melbourne to Adelaide, then back to Melbourne. Amongst packing up one home and trying to make another, I found solace in reading about nature, adventure, creativity, and travel. Here are the books I read in July 2022.

Earth’s Wild Music: Celebrating and Defending the Songs of the Natural World by Kathleen Dean Moore

Moore is a philosopher whose work has primarily focussed on environmental issues. In recent years, she has concentrated on the challenges of climate change. In this collection of essays, Moore pays close attention to the music of nature, the sounds and songs that fill natural habitats, and how human activity is overpowering the world’s natural music. This is beautiful nature writing, rich in detail, and surprising in the careful observation of the life that fills our earth. Exquisite and melancholy, this book makes you want to slow down and be more curious about the sounds you hear and the creatures that make those sounds.

Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be by Steven Pressfield

In popular media, Pressfield is best known for writing The Legend of Bagger Vance. But in creative circles, Pressfield has garnered something of a cult following for his book The War of Art, which tackles the question of writer’s block and the idea of “resistance”, a kind of internal struggle that holds us back from creating. Since then, Pressfield has written several books exploring this theme, and this is the latest in that line. Here, Pressfield tackles ego and self-sabotage with the kind of straightforward explanations and advice his fans have come to love. If you’re familiar with Pressfield, then you know what to expect. This book delivers the requisite moments of discomfortingly familiar failings and inspiring calls to embrace your creative freedom.

Silence: In the Age of Noise by Erling Kagge (trans Becky L. Crook)

Norwegian explorer Kagge was the first person to reach the North Pole, the South Pole, and the summit of Everest on foot. So he knows something about getting away from it all, and it’s not surprising that, for Kagge, silence takes on a metaphysical and mystical character. He believes modern life affords few opportunities to enjoy silence, and as a result our experience of life is less rich than it should be. In Kagge’s experience, adventure, silence, and making meaning of life are intertwined. A unique book.

Revenants by Adam Aitken

This collection of poems starts with a homage to the poet’s father, who lived and worked in Asia during the dying years of European colonialism. It then moves on to reflect on the poet’s experiences in France and Hawai’i. What we observe and how we are observed are recurring themes throughout an uneven collection that holds just enough ideas and engaging details to maintain the reader’s attention.

Other Books I’ve Read In 2022

Rather than use some other app or service I’ve chosen to collect all my reading here on the blog from now on. You can see my reading lists from other months here.
Books I Read In June 2022
Books I Read In May 2022
Books I Read In April 2022
Books I Read In March 2022
Books I Read In February 2022
Books I Read In January 2022

The post Books I Read In July appeared first on Fernando Gros.

Leaving London

My life is in boxes again. It’s time to relocate. Some moves find me wishing for more time. Hong Kong and especially Tokyo were like this. Others feel ripe, like the best time to move was right away. Delhi and Singapore come to mind.

But London is the most odd moving experience. It couldn’t come quickly enough, but yet leaves me wishing for more time.

This is my second turn in London. When I moved here in 1999, I was a young, fresh-faced PhD student, full of sharp edges, strong opinions, and the bravura that filled those of us into postmodern philosophy in the late ʼ90s. I was also still loosely connected to the church world and saw my post-PhD career incorporating writing about religion and its role in culture and society.

A lot changed in the intervening years. Quitting the PhD, moving repeatedly across Asia, returning to music and creative work, starting my own company, and being a parent reflected –over and over again – a different life from the one I had imagined at the end of the last millennium.

Returning to London was such a culture shock. The city had changed after two decades of relentless redesign and construction. Maybe it was Brexit. Or just the impact of the pandemic.

London was difficult to enjoy this time around, and I’m glad to be moving away.

A Life Compressed

I’ve leaving London just shy of 2 years and 11 months after arriving. That makes this the second shortest of my expat stints – a month less than my time in Delhi and 11 months more than my season in Singapore.

But the pandemic compressed a lot of living into this time.

By my calculations, I cooked way more meals during this time than I did in six years in Tokyo. A combination of work from home and no travel meant spending more time with my spouse than we had ever had. And my daughter packed up her life at college and moved back in, which gave a season together we’d never bargained for.

Add to that the tension and worry that went into coping with the pandemic – from the relentless sound of ambulances during the worst months to the challenge of figuring out how to buy food when supermarkets became unsafe places and trying to replace in-person experiences with virtual ones.

Like a lot of people, I’m emerging from this experience feeling older. Not just a couple of years older, but like I’ve transitioned from one season of life to another. As if a decade of ageing got crammed into two years.

A Life On Pause

It’s now over three years since I saw most of my belongings, especially my music gear, workshop tools, and paintings. The house here in London was too small for everything. So the idea was to settle in, then find a studio space nearby. That never happened.

The idea in moving here was to work on my next book. That felt untenable once the pandemic seized hold. I handed the best work space to my spouse and the next best space to my daughter. I wrote blogpost after blogpost, and attended several writing workshops, from the dining table.

Most haunting of all, I haven’t seen my house in the Japanese Alps since early 2020. It’s been dark for two winters now. It’s not just the skiing I miss but also the space, crafted to reflect my aesthetics and creative goals, and all the dreams that go with it.

Final Farewells

Usually my last few months and weeks in a place are full of farewells. Not just goodbyes to people but also to places, cafes, galleries, restaurants, shops, and other locations of special significance.

This time it’s saying goodbye to subscriptions and online food retailers. Like Farmison & Co, Field and Flower, Abel and Cole, First Choice, The Fish Society, and Rick Stein, who’ve kept us fed with amazing produce. The Sausage Man and Willy’s Pies, who’ve added a little fun to the kitchen. The Courtyard Dairy, The Fine Cheese Company, and The Cheese Society, who’ve provided some amazing cheeses. MexGrocer, The Japan Centre, Sous Chef, and The Chocolate Society, who’ve kept the pantry full of flavour. And Freddie’s Flowers, who’ve added colour and scent to the house every week.

I’ll also be saying goodbye to my dream kitchen, which came to life in 2021 thanks to some amazing work by Hazel and Joe at Harbour Joinery Workshop. The kitchen was a delight to cook in and the realization of years of my saying “I wish this was different” in the 15 kitchens I’ve lived with before this one.

Finally, I’m saying goodbye to Victoria Park. My home is opposite the park, and I open my curtains every morning to look in the park’s gardens, ever-changing trees, the people who jog, walk, and sit in the park’s various spaces, and the birds and squirrels that make their home in the park.

When the first lockdown happened, my daily walk in the park was my only connection to the outside world. Later, it continued to be the highlight of my day, through grey foreboding winters when the grass was loose and the soil muddy under foot, to summer time, when the sun set well after dinner time and the ground was hard and spiked with dry tufts of grass.

Espi

After the experience of loving and caring for our family hamster Echo in Tokyo, I resolved to never have another pet. But when my daughter came home from college, she insisted we get another hamster. We brought Espi (short for Esperanza, which in Spanish means hope) into our lives just as the UK went into lockdown.

While Echo had a short life marred by illness, Espi had a long life full of health right up until the final weeks. She passed as our time in London was coming to an end. I cried every night for weeks as she slowed down and seldom left her burrow, and then wept when she died. But I’m glad she is buried in the garden of the house that was her home.

Espi was timid. We figured she may have been treated poorly in the pet store. She never really took to being held, but in her final days she let me place my hand on her side while she ate, and on our last couple of times playing together she sat on my hand, for the briefest moment.

Espi loved to explore. She enjoyed coming out to explore her room or go into the play pen we set up for her, with wooden houses, tunnels and toys. Espi also loved to dig and remodel the bedding in her enclosure, creating new burrows and moving items around every night. We called her Espi the Engineer.

In the latter half of 2021, my spouse changed jobs and started to travel for work, and my daughter moved back to college full time. But for various reasons, including the pandemic, we weren’t ready to relocate. That meant I spent increasing amounts of time alone. Espi was my beautiful companion during those lonely weeks. Caring and playing with her, following her morning and evening routines, grounded me on days that felt interminably isolated and sad.

Final Thoughts On Living In London

I will come back to the UK one day – or at least to whatever it becomes when inevitable changes, like Scottish independence, reshape the country.

London still has some of the best galleries in the world, especially the Tate Modern. It’s also home to Chelsea FC. Live Premier League football is the greatest spectacle in sport. Outside the metropolis, the trips I’d pencilled in – to Cornwall, Yorkshire, the north of Wales, and the far reaches of Scotland – will wait for a non-pandemic future time.

I’ve gone through the whole range of emotions as my time here has drawn to a close: almost bottomless sadness, rage that burns like the sun, and anxiety that makes my skin feel electric. It’s like my body has been releasing layer upon layer of fear, confusion, and frustration from the last two years.

Mostly, I feel glad to have got through this safely. My life and work feel smaller but more focussed. My circle of friends has shrunk but feels more supportive. My family is more present for each other. And what I want from my remaining years is clearer than ever.

So here’s to my hopes for the rest of this year, from love and honesty, good food and great music, long walks on lonely beaches and tearing turns on freshly powdered ski slopes to poetry, brave film-making and bold fashion, cherishing our wild places and natural resources, and to making the world safer and fairer, and showing up for each other full of compassion and understanding.

I’ll be taking a break from regular blogging until late October. You’ll still get the monthly reading review. But after 117 blogposts since the start of 2020, it’s time to pause and recharge for a few weeks.

All the best,

f.

Note: Kitchen photos by Anna Stathaki and used with permission of Harbour Joinery Workshop.

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