AnnieModify

After reading¹ the recent news about the unsurprising lack of diversity in podcasting —

64% of the hosts of the most popular US podcasts of 2024 were men…Shows with video are more likely to have male hosts; the worst gender balance is with business and technology podcasts, where men host 92% of shows.

— I have decided to start my own business and technology podcast (with video) to help balance this dreadful imbalance². 

Please enjoy. Show transcript available upon request³.

Don’t forget to like, subscribe, share, burn it all down, etc. 

1. Thanks to Chris for sharing this, which I otherwise would never have seen because I don’t follow podcasting at all but I am sucker for reports about anything especially when I am procrastinating on actual work I should be doing which is really what this entire post is all about. 

2. I can only help with the gender aspect. Better than nothing, I guess. 

3. Transcript:
   Dramatic intro music. Eyes. Nodding authoritatively. Pause. Thump. Coffee slurp. Coffee sigh. “Today in business-tech podcast we’ll look at the state of business and tech. Business: bad. That’s right. Tech: Also not good. Tune in next time. “

I was feeling sad and overwhelmed and unmoored yesterday so after work I didn’t go to the gym or get groceries or any of the other things I should do.

Instead I drove to the park and walked in circles around the pond. 

I was still sad but outside sad is better than inside sad. 

The nice thing about being outside is that you can feel smaller. And if you’re smaller, the sadness is smaller. 

When I was a kid, I was lucky enough to live in rural places. Homes on country roads that fed into woods, creeks, fields. I did a lot of exploring and fort-building and tree-climbing, alone and with friends.

As an adult, I have discovered that no matter where I go, I feel at home, at ease, as soon as I’m around trees. That’s a superpower. 

My hiking buddy¹ and I talk about sadness often while we walk around in the woods. How scary it is. How much we fear it. How it feels like it will swallow us, eat us up. How it feels bigger than other emotions. How it feels like a place you will never leave. 

But all sadness needs is to be felt². Not ignored. Given a moment, a little space. 

My default reaction to sadness used to be: Box it up tight, tuck it away, pretend like it isn’t there. This is not helpful. It leaks out, disguises itself, gets stale and dense and brittle. Better to feel the sadness as it comes, in waves, instead of freezing it into sharp-edged pieces rattling around inside. 

To me, it feels safer to be sad outside. Like I can let it well up and  leak out and there’s room for it to be big and there’s still room for the rest of me. The trees and the ground and the sky are a witness, a reflection, a reminder that I have existed before and will keep existing. That nature is truth and I am part of it. That even where there is no path, I can find my way.

1. Jenn. We became close thru hiking together. Now, even though our friendship is much more than that, I still refer to her as my hiking buddy/friend which is a term of endearment and respect. 

2. I am referring to regular garden-variety sadness, not depression. Sadness is a feeling. Feelings are temporary. Depression is a persistent mental health condition. Big big difference. 

All systems have rules. Understanding and applying the rules well is different than memorizing and obeying the rules perfectly. 

Too much faith is the worst ally. When you believe in something literally, through your faith you'll turn it into something absurd. One who is a genuine adherent, if you like, of some political outlook, never takes its sophistries seriously, but only its practical aims, which are concealed beneath these sophistries.

— Milan Kundera

There are lots of systems you can choose from.

Productivity systems, for example. An easy example.

You can choose any sort of productivity system. You can choose a pre-made one or make up your own. You can use a simple or complex productivity system. It can be analog, digital, or hybrid. It can require a lot of fine-tuning and specific tools or it can be as simple as an index card. Or you can choose not to use a productivity system, which is itself a system.

In any system, what makes it successful or not successful depends on how well you understand and apply the rules.

Understanding and applying the rules well is different than memorizing and obeying the rules perfectly.

When you understand the rules, you’ve moved from memorizing them to analyzing them: how well they serve you, when they serve you, which ones matter, which ones are just for looks, which ones are actually detrimental, which rules help in some cases and not in others, etc.

If you understand the rules, you can apply them well for your needs and goals. Sometimes applying a rule well will mean ignoring it completely. You take ownership of the system in this way. You make the system a servant. You master it.

If you just memorize and obey the rules of the system — any system — you’re not running the system. The system’s running you.

Have you ever played Duck Duck Goose¹ and the person who’s it keeps walking and walking and walking and walking around and never picks the goose? It’s really boring.

There are very few actual dichotomies. Most choices are not binary. Most choices are more like: “Here is an array of options you can recognize (the subset of a potentially infinite array of options you can’t even see because you’re only able to recognize what’s familiar). Pick one!” 

No wonder making decisions is so exhausting. 

I can spend a lot of time musing over the array of options, but eventually I  narrow it down to one option and then it’s time to make the real choice which is  a dichotomy: 

Yes, do it, action, go, forward. 

Or No.

Choosing an option and then saying No to the option I selected for myself is wild! 

Why would I do that?

Because choice is dangerous. Exerting the force of my will upon the world, or at least attempting to do so, is a risk.

Risk of pain, risk of failure, risk of being wrong (whatever that means), risk of ending up in a worse situation, risk of being misunderstood, risky risky risky!

Sometimes it feels safer to just hang out, not move, wait and see. It isn’t safer, usually, but it feels safer. 

Passivity is a way to live but it’s not the way I like to live.

I like to happen. I like to be the thing that’s happening in my own life. I like to be the main character in my own story. 

And I only get to happen by choosing.

Otherwise:

• nothing happens and/or

• things happen to me but

• I never happen.

I make choices all day long but most of those are inconsequential, like:

what time will I get up, what food will I eat, will I be impatient or kind with my child, will I be impatient or kind with myself, will I make that phone call, will I go to the gym, will I worry, will I be grateful, will I floss today, will I finish this blog post, will I actually put away the clean laundry?

The answer to that last one is No.

It’s going to sit in the basket for a few days.

These choices all seem inconsequential but maybe they aren’t.

Tiny choices become a trend, the trend creates a groove, the groove becomes a rut and I walk the rut because it’s easier to stick with what’s familiar than to enact change, so here I am: that’s my life.

I can change it by making different tiny choices, one after another.

It’s not about the right choice or wrong choice or the accurate choice or idiotic choice or worst choice or best choice.

It’s about exerting your will. Choosing something. Selecting an option and then acting on it. Saying Yes. 

Duck duck duck duck duck goose.

It’s about the goose.

It doesn’t matter who the goose is. It matters that you pick a goose. Otherwise there’s no game, just a bunch of kids sitting in a circle being bored and sad.

1. Everyone sits in a circle. One person walks around the circle, tapping others and saying duck until choosing a goose. The chosen goose tries to tag them before they sit down in the goose’s spot.

11

Seeds are shitty little bastards.

You put them in the ground. Nothing happens. You water. You watch. You pull weeds. Nothing happens.

You wait. You water. You watch.

Nothing happens.

You give up.

You figure it’s over. Bad seed. Bad soil. Too much something. Not enough something else.

Forget it.

You turn your attention away.

In silence, a tiny stem pushes through the soil. Delicate roots reach and cling. Fragile new yellow-green leaves open.

Just like that. 

12

Whatever you’ve planted that is stubbornly not cooperating: leave it alone.

Quit messing around with it.

Go ahead and give up!

You tried.

Oh well.

Face and bear the anguish of love.

Face and bear bravely your own responsibility.

(I am so proud of you.)

Sometimes we bury seeds in a garden, sometimes we bury seeds in a grave. 

13

I see your effort, your love, your heart.

Wow, what a heart.

O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red!

Now: stop hiding in martyrdom and entertainment.

Stop playing in the shallows.

Dive. Dive in. Dive the fuck in. 

Start using all that you are to be who you are.

Release all the resentment, fear, and self-pity.

It’s not about whether you’re justified. Of course you are. 

It’s about whether it helps you live.

Sometimes it does help you. Keeps you safe, or at least makes you feel safer. 

Then the walls that were a fortress become a prison. 

Time to knock ‘em down. 

You have stuff to do. 

On the joy of making arbitrary small rules for yourself which you can break at will but which also might help you steer your own obstinate behavior a bit more in a direction you like

A long time ago I gave myself a little rule about what I would post on my blog or any social media: No complaining.

A self-imposed rule that, for me, meant I wouldn’t post for the sole purpose of complaining about something.

Obviously, I break this rule. Have done, will do.

But the number of times I do not break this rule exceeds the number of times I break it.¹ 

You can’t know that, of course. When I don’t break it, when I stop myself from complaining because of my own rule, no one knows but me.

I’ll be busily composing a witty complaint in my head and anticipating the commiserative responses, when the spectre of my self-created, self-imposed Rules Master bops me on my figurative head (which is inside my literal head) and says in a shrill voice²: NOoooOoooOOoo complaining!

Obviously: Making a rule doesn’t stop me from doing the thing I made the rule about. I have all the power here. I make the rule, I break the rule. 

But, often, I honor the rule. The voice sounds off, I pause, I think Ugh, never mind, and I move on to something else³. If I didn’t have the rule at all, I wouldn’t be mentally pausing. There would be no friction, even imaginary. No internal voice making me feel just ever so slightly guilty.

Self-imposed rules like this add purposeful friction. They help me pause and pay attention. What do I want to do? Or not want to do? How do I want to steer my little leaky ship of behavior today? 

It’s the old what-gets-measured-gets-managed rule, just less, um, formal: I’m not going to mark on a spreadsheet or log in an app when I do or do not complain online. But if I have a little rule, I will, at least, notice. Usually.

See also: Break dumb rules

1. I think that’s accurate. I’m not really keeping track.

2. For some reason, it’s this voice and I think the rule is mostly effective because I start thinking about shrubberies instead of whatever I was complaining about.

3. Like thinking about shrubberies. Or getting myself a seasonally shaped Reese’s peanut butter cup as a treat for exhibiting such enormous self-control and moral fortitude.