Colin Wright's Blog, page 11

Expansiveness

In my experience, the more I learn about all the things, the easier it becomes to learn about any single, specific thing.

My understanding of design grew more rapidly after I started looking into fine art, computer science, and publishing.

My comprehension of South American history plateaud until I learned more about the economics of supply chains.

Reading a book about prediction markets helped me better understand my own decision-making process, and reading a journal article about embo...

Doing What We’ve Always Done

These past few weeks I’ve been shoveling money into my third-hand, 2007 Prius to replace the hybrid battery and the ABS system—both of which have recently stopped working—and to replace the catalytic converter after it was carved out by thieves.

I like my little car: bringing renewed life to old things is satisfying to me, but it’s also been a reliable (and fuel-efficient) companion as I’ve driven it around North America these past few years.

This hasn’t been a pleasant round of investment...

Infrastructure

When you travel, you have what’s in your bag—a small portfolio of hopefully not-too-heavy infrastructural components—but beyond that you have to live off the land, in a way. You’re reliant on whatever infrastructure is available wherever you happen to be on a given day, and consequently you learn not to take such things for granted and to adjust your habits accordingly.

This has been on my mind lately because I’m in the process of setting up a home base here in the US: possibly temporarily, b...

I Have Everything I Need

At times, I find, it can be beneficial to use the promise of a purchase to prod oneself forward.

I tend to do this with upgrades to the tools I use: I tell myself that once I hit a certain milestone, achieve a certain ambitious goal, that I’ll swap out my old microphone with that fancy-pants, higher-tier one I’ve been eyeballing, or I’ll invest in a new chef’s knife once I’ve mastered a collection of new recipes and proven to myself that a more pro-grade utensil won’t be wasted on me.

I fi...

Self-Nudge

As someone who finds a great deal of fulfillment in travel, I don’t enjoy being limited in that regard—in terms of legal limitations but also in terms of self-enforced, prudence-based constraints.

I’ve been keeping a close eye on things, and though I do think there are relatively safe ways to bumble about right now, in some contexts and for some people, I don’t particularly like the type of highly constrained travel that’s currently on the menu.

The number and magnitude of uncertainties at...

Shoring Up

The rudiments of my home base here in Milwaukee are in place, and I’m beginning the process of formalizing and reinforcing the framework of what I’ve built up till this point.

I’m substantially less-familiar with this stage of moving someplace new than I am with the other iterative steps between “arrival” and “feeling comfortable in a new home.”

When you travel frequently, with a monthly rather than multi-year cadence, you tend to establish yourself within extant infrastructural scaffoldin...

Establishment

There’s a method for exploration that I’ve found works pretty well for how I think, how I learn, and my relative energy and comfort levels when it comes to the unknown.

I’ve developed this method over the decade-plus I’ve been traveling full-time, setting up home bases in new, unfamiliar places, and generally doing my best to get set up—in the sense that I could feel at home in a new place relatively quickly and efficiently, without glazing over too many important things in the process—with t...

Seasons

If you want to know how you’ve changed as a person, I suggest you consider moving.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve had to establish a new set of habits predicated on novel circumstances and environments, and had to introduce (and explain) myself and my life to a cast of new characters: some truly novel to me, and some of whom were familiar to past versions of myself, but not the me of today.

Which is a flowery way of saying I’m in a new place, I’m meeting new people, I’m reconnecting with so...

Iterative Perfection

Since I started cooking a handful of years ago, making a big batch of curry and rice has become a minor tradition for me when I move somewhere new.

It implies I’ll be settling into a place long enough that it’s worth investing in the requisite equipment, spices, and fresh produce, but also that I’ll be around long enough to indulge in the bountiful leftovers that tend to result from my approach to such dishes.

I made some curry last night, so I guess that means I’m home.

I’ve made other...

Movement

I’m moving tomorrow.

Or rather: I’m leaving my pandemic-era hunker location to move into a US-based apartment for a year, as was my plan back in early 2020 before essentially every aspect of my then-ambitions were sidelined for something like a year and a half.

Moving for me is typically a fairly enjoyable process.

Part of that enjoyment is derived from what moving is—what it represents and allows and encourages—and part of it is the result of what moving typically isn’t, for me.

Bec...