How do you choose to live?
“The solution of mankind’s most vexing problem will not be found in renouncing technical civilization, but in attaining some degree of independence of it.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath
The weekend is over; a new week begins.
I kicked off the inaugural issue of The Miscellanies by giving ourselves permission to not keep up with our chaotic news cycle. This isn’t the same as giving up on being an engaged, informed member of society; we can be that without surrendering our attention to the ceaseless thrumming of “news”. In fact, I think doing so makes us more intentional and engaged in our society. These are all choices we make.
I get that there’s a certain addictive element to checking social media, or to dialing up MSNBC, or arguing online because Someone Is Wrong Online. I get it. Ask yourself though: what are you getting from this? Why are we making that choice, in that moment? My friend Sabrina wrote something recently that struck me with the nuclear force of its wisdom: essentially, arguments are pointless. So many of us are having arguments when in fact we’d be better off setting boundaries.
As she explains:
“There’s no point in indulging in extended back-and-forths with people who’ve shown you they either can’t understand what you’re saying or straight up don’t give a fuck. And there’s no integrity in manipulating or attempting to change other people while telling yourself it’s OK because you’re “right.” Just say your piece and set appropriate boundaries. Either they’ll have to get it together to keep benefiting from your presence in their life, or you’ll be free of their drama and nonsense. You win either way.” (emphasis added)
At the heart of that is being honest with our selves, and taking responsibility for our feelings.
There it is again: making choices. So much of life lies in making a choice - whether considered, or on the fly. But either way, I think life becomes more meaningful when we take ownership of those choices and set boundaries informed by those choices. I’m finding that life for me becomes richer, more meaningful - full of meaning! - when I live it with intentionality. When I choose to slow things down, by making choices either considered or in the moment, about what I’m going to do and what I choose to give attention to.
I’m Jewish, so for me this looks a lot like taking time to reflect on things, disconnecting way more than I would, and being out in the community during Shabbat, but this isn’t a religious thing so much as it is an ethic: a set of moral principles. You, too, can make that intention - that choice (intention is just a fancy word for choice!) to live life in this way. I’m not saying that you’ll see fireworks or food will taste better or that you’ll have a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and a spring in your step, but I think you’ll appreciate things you might not have seen till now.
While I’m at it: thank you for choosing to subscribe to The Miscellanies. Not going to lie: I was nervous about making one of these. I’ve been writing online in some way, shape, or form since around 1995 - I’m still salty AF that Yahoo! nuked my Geocities page before I could save it - and I’ve written for places like The Washington Post and The Guardian. And yet, it is wild and mind-blowing to me that people actively care about the things I write and say.
So: thank you for subscribing. If you like what you’re reading, please consider sharing it with your friends, and having them subscribe. As always, if you have questions or comments, you can reply to this email.
The weekend is over. A new week begins. Welcome to The Miscellanies.
The World Series is set.
To the joy of all Yankees haters, the Houston Astros defeated New York four games to two in the American League Championship Series (ALCS). As I wrote last time, one of the appealing things about baseball is just how much history there is around the game. To wit: this is the first decade since the New York Yankees became, well, The Yankees™ in which they’ve failed to make the World Series - a span of a century. A century! One hundred years! Here’s the breakdown:
You don’t have to like the Yankees in order to take a moment to gawp at this amazing run of excellence. For what it’s worth, this is probably the most likable Yankees team in recent memory, marred only by the presence of their closer, noted domestic abuser Aroldis Chapman. And if you thought there was karma in their defeat at the hands of the Astros, you should know that their closer, Roberto Osuna, is also a domestic abuser.
I’m not saying you have to root for the Washington Nationals in the World Series, but the universe was certainly sending a message when both Osuna and Chapman blew saves for their respective teams in the ninth inning of ALCS Game Six.
Speaking of which: what an amazing game! Respect to my Nats fans here, but these were clearly the two best teams in baseball playing, and they went at each other like it. Game Six was this series in concentrated form, and the ninth inning was an even more concentrated version. A quick recap, if you didn’t watch Saturday:
New York trailed the entire game. They narrowed Houston’s lead to 3-2, and were poised to tie in the seventh, but Michael Brantley (Cleveland represent!) made one of the greatest defensive plays I’ve ever seen:
I mean LOOK AT THAT. Aaron Judge was motoring. If Brantley doesn’t catch that ball, he scores to tie the game. Instead, he delivered one of the greatest double plays in postseason history, just on a degree of difficulty level. The Yankees stranded another pair of base-runners in the eighth, and then faced disgraced closer* Roberto Osuna in the ninth, now trailing 4-2. Osuna notched an out, then walked a batter. Then this happened:
Tied, just like that. You could feel the air rushing out of Minute Maid Park, the way the air rushes from your lungs with a gut punch. You could feel every Astros fan think the same thing: Is this where these Yankees turn into The Yankees™? Is this where we start talking about how Houston’s on the verge of choking away a 3-1 series lead? Joe Buck was probably getting ready to recycle his dad’s call (you know the one: “We’ll see you tomorrow night.”, which he’s done at least once already, in 2011).
New York still had two outs to play with. To score the go-ahead, possibly the winning run in this game, and force a comeback in the bottom of the ninth against the Bombers’ disgraced closer*, Aroldis Chapman. Instead, what usually happens after an emotionally cathartic home run happened; the next two batters flied out.
Chapman came on, and notched one out more than Osuna. But with two outs, he walked George Springer, setting up a clash with the diminutive José Altuve. So, of course, you know what happened next:
Which, in turn, set off all kinds of celebrations:
Anyway, if you’re an Astros fan or a Nats fan, congratulations. We’ll see you folks Tuesday night. Everyone else can start cueing up their “pitchers and catchers report in X days” tweets, if you’re so inclined, I guess. You’ll be missing a hell of a World Series, so that’s a choice you can make.
Go, go, gadget arms!
Because I’m a gadget nerd and I’ve spent lots of time handling technical issues for organizations and people, folks ask me for tech advice. Usually, this boils down to, Yo, my computer is doing something weird, am I being hacked? Is it broken? To which my response is:
define “weird”, please?
almost certainly not**
by the way, computers are dumb.
We normally think of “tech” as anything that’s related to electronics or computers or software. I want to expand that definition, because in reality, all technology is is knowledge put into practical use to solve problems or invent useful tools. That’s it. That’s all it is.
One thing I’m doing in this newsletter is sharing what tools I use to solve problems that I have - and that, by extension, you might have. My third-grade teacher, Vernessa Elder, used to nudge me to ask questions, because the questions I might ask were probably questions other kids had. I’m doing this in this spirit.
One persistent, painful problem I have is staying organized. I’m an incredibly disorganized person; you might be nodding along in self-recognition. It’s bad, and I’ve tried all kinds of things. The Reminders app on my iPhone. Moleskines. Bullet Journals. Various Getting Things Done™ (GTD) apps. On, and on, and on. I try one thing, and like a tough off-the-rack fit, I struggle with it for days, sometimes weeks, before I finally surrender. This struggle, though, makes it harder to do things and to live life the way I want to live it. The fact is that, if I want to be there for people, I need to be there for myself. That means being responsible for myself, so I can give more freely of myself.
This past Saturday, after catching my friend Megan Rosati’s horror shorts at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival (sidebar: they were excellent! Megan and everyone else in the Fatale Collective are simply wonderfully inventive, original writers, actors, and directors. I enjoyed the hell out of them, and I’m one of the scaredyest cats you’ll ever meet), I decided to tackle this problem. After traipsing around Cobble Hill in Brooklyn, I wound up in Washington Square. I wandered into McNally Jackson, and came away with this:
Basically, it’s a hardcover notebook by Baron Fig. You can learn more about it here (and order it there, too), but essentially it’s a notebook designed to make you more organized. The part that convinced me to purchase it (it’s $22) was that it’s got a guide of different organization methods in the back! That way, I’m not locked into any one method, I can experiment with the ones offered, and either settle into one or customize one.
I’ll see how it goes, but I’m cautiously excited.
For what it’s worth, my challenges with organization are fairly deep, and related to my long-time struggles with depression, anxiety, and PTSD, but that’s a subject for another time.
Let’s wrap where we began. We live in a cruel age, and I’m not just talking about Donald Trump. Cruelty - unkindness - is everywhere. As my dear friend Adam Serwer wrote, cruelty is so pervasive in our world today that “the cruelty is the point.” One place that you see this cruelty, specifically, is in social media. As Jaron Lanier put it in one of his books:
Social media is making you into an asshole.
Social media is destroying your capacity for empathy.
Oh, and one more:
Social media is making politics impossible.
I’m seeing this play out over and over and over again, day after night, weekend after week, on and on. And no one’s immune. I’m not. A lot of my role models for engaging with the world were horrible people to be around with, obsessed with delivering cutting remarks, constantly picking arguments and engaging in “debate”. I’ve worked extremely hard to transcend that, to act differently and to approach everyone I meet from a position of kindness, compassion, empathy, and respect. Even if, and this happens regularly, the other person might be unkind.
We need to look at the ways in which we build community. I’m writing this newsletter because it’s one way. I’m sharing things with you, and I hope, in time, you’ll share things with me. But we cannot build communities worth building — communities that last — by building communities based on cruelty. The illusion that social media fosters is that we’re engaging in community, but in reality, all we’re doing is shouting at each other, competing to see who can deliver the sickest own. Is that really how we want to live? To bring it back to the open: is that a choice we want to make?
You can make that choice. But is it going to result in the kind of life that you want to live? Are the kind of people drawn to you by that choice the kind of folks that you’d rely on on your darkest nights? Let me tell you: I’ve been struggling with recovery from drinking for over five years. I have seen some shit, been through more shit, and I have to tell you: these choices matter, and the people who are there with you as a result of these choices matter as well.
The weekend is over. A new week begins. You can choose differently today, and see how that works out over the course of this week. But you won’t know until you choose. So: choose. Don’t just choose to live, choose how you live. And let’s see how it goes.
Remember: if you need anything, I’m here for you, just like you’re here for me. And if you know anyone whom you think this might help, share it with them.